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Go To Meeting
(Church at Home)
Lyall Johnston—July 11, 2015
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Greetings, everyone! This is Lyall Johnston, welcome to Church at Home! Church at Home is sponsored by the Christian Biblical Church of God, and we are dedicated to restoring original Christianity for today.
Whatever happened to the great British Empire of which it was said that 'the sun never sets'? That nation today, it could be said in one sense that it has been reduced to the great anthems, as we hear them on the last night of the proms, where with great gusto the words "Rule Britannia! resound around the Albert Hall: "Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the waves! Britons never, never will be slaves."
- as we remember the greatness of the empire
- as we remember the leaders that took us to that greatness
- as we reflect on the migrations of the British people around the world to various other Islands and countries
- the British navy was supreme.
- the British navy was so powerful
There was no other navy in opposition that could defeat it. It could roam the oceans wherever it pleased, and rolled over many peoples.
What happened to that empire? Today the remnants of that empire are seen in what the British Empire became the British Commonwealth of Nations. Today, the Commonwealth of Nations; even the name British has gone.
Just as we speak, Briton does remain united, in name at least, with the result of the referendum where more of the people of Scotland made the decision that they wanted to stay as a part of the United Kingdom and not to break away. But there is much unrest. There is still a large portion of the population that want to be independent, that want to break away from what is known as the British Empire. All is not happy!
From the Commonwealth of Nations, and even the United Kingdom, what is going to come next? Why has this occurred? The answer is quite plain! There is a Source that gives us the answer.
When a nation forgets its God, and our God, for the people of the British Empire, is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We, as a people, descended from that line. We descended from Abraham and through his son Isaac, and through his son Jacob, and specifically through Jacob's son Joseph. Two of his sons—Ephraim and Manasseh—God inspired Jacob to take those two boys and adopt them and put the name on them that God had put upon Jacob.
Jacob's name that God had given him was Israel! So, the name of Israel was put specifically on the heads of Ephraim, the younger son, and Manasseh, the older. They were to become a great multitude of nations and a great nation.
A book that you can order online (at cbcg.org) that goes in and describes all the details right back through to Abraham, right down through today, how those people, which we have become, are modern Israel today. That book will give you the details. It will show you the migrations; it will show you, first, the captivity of our ancestors and the route that they took—or should I say routes—to come to the British Isles. And from the British Isles and other places around the world, such as: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Of course, we know that the Manassehites, the people who have become that mighty nation the United States of America, also immigrated and left from the shores of the United Kingdom because of religious persecution and other reasons. Also, because God had a plan for the American people as well as the people of the British Isles.
Today, the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh are known as the British peoples and the Americans. This is an incredible story, but the important point here is that the God of those people, as already stated, was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
Ephraim and Manasseh were blessed by their grandfather who adopted them and put his name Israel on them. They received the birthright blessing. When we look at the history of what we can call modern Israel—the United Kingdom and what was once the British Empire, those outlying regions from the United Kingdom, and Manasseh—and we see how they have been blessed, what other conclusion can we come to if we will receive the word that God has said?
- A mighty people!
- A great people!
Problem: Because we received a blessing, because Abraham obeyed God, God went into a covenant with Abraham and that covenant was unbreakable. That covenant still exists today, and that covenant was a covenant of blessings, both physical and spiritual.
The physical blessings went to Ephraim and Manasseh through the blessing that Jacob put on their heads. That was the covenant and the blessings that God had promised through Abraham.
So, the British peoples became a mighty people! They became a Commonwealth of Nations. What happened to that great British Empire?
Let's go back to the statement that we made earlier: When a nation forgets its God, and our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, when we forget Who our God is… And in the United Kingdom and many of the nations of the Commonwealth of Nations have forgotten the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
- We've turned to our own idols!
- We worship men and women!
- We call them idols and we bow down before them!
- We worship them!
- We praise them!
- We're saturated with idol-worship!
- We're saturated with all the things that we produce with our own hands!
That takes us away from the knowledge of Who our God is!
God says, "When you have been blessed by Me, and when you begin to say, 'Look at what we have accomplished. We are so great! We have produced all these things with our own hands. Aren't we wonderful people?'" And we pump ourselves up and puff ourselves up with pride…
You know, when God has to say to the British peoples—that's us—He talks about the 'pride of Ephraim.' We have become a proud and arrogant people, to the point where we just thumb our noses in the face of God.
- we take His name in vain
- we walk all over His Sabbath Days
Both His weekly Sabbath and His annual Sabbaths! We put in place pagan gods and pagan ceremonies! These go up to the nostrils of God as an abomination. So, we have brought upon ourselves those curses that God said would occur.
In Deuteronomy 28 God outlines these curses along with the promises. God says, 'IF you obey Me, look at what I will do for you. IF you will acknowledge Me as your God, IF you will worship Me and not the things that you create with your hands, not the creation, then I will bless you..
He shows how He will bless us in our crops, and have not the nations of modern Israel—as we will call them according to the authority of God's Word—been called the 'breadbasket of the world'? God has given us those crops so bounteous and plentiful by the blessing of God. He gave us the weather, the rain, and we produced those crops and we supplied the world with food, with bread, exactly as Joseph did in the ancient world, in Egypt.
There were seven years of plenty and the Pharaoh of that time gave Joseph the authority to story those crops, to reap them and to store them. Then came seven years of famine and Egypt became the breadbasket of the world. They were able to feed those nations around them that came to them for help.
That led to the family of Joseph—or should we say Jacob and his 12 sons and all their families and servants—into the land of Egypt, which later led to their slavery, because a Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph and God blessed the children of Israel and they multiplied so greatly, but Pharaoh became afraid. The Egyptians became afraid of them, so they persecuted them. They set hard tasks over them. But the Israelites continued to grow until they became a great people—600,000 men, not counting the children and the women.
When they left, God delivered them from Egypt, they were a great crowd of probably somewhere between two and three million people—a great nation!
We are the descendants of those people, specifically for the British people the tribe of Ephraim. We are modern Ephraim today. There are some who say that the Untied States is Ephraim and Briton is Manasseh. Not the view here, but irregardless of that, the prophecies of today are to those two sons of Joseph.
God says that when we become a nation that is unrighteous, when we forget Who He is, He said that He would take away the wise man, He would take away the prudent leaders and put in their place the basest of men.
- Can we see that today?
- Can we see that in some of our countries of modern Israel, that God has setup the basest of men?
- When they are legislating and making laws that are destroying a people?
- Destroying our nation?
- Destroying the nations?
Even with a change of government, to reverse some of those decisions, to reverse some of those laws that have been set in concrete, virtually becomes impossible and the slide downward continues until the time that the Scriptures talk about that 'the stranger in our midst will rise up against us.'
God also said that He would bring drought, He would hold the rain. We can read examples of that in Scripture where God has done that. Why? To bring us back to acknowledge Him as God and to worship Him!
That is the only way that we, as the British peoples, will be able to reverse what is happening today. God said that, yes, He would bring drought, famine, sickness, disease and withhold the rain. He said that the 'fruit of our bodies would be cursed' and can we not see that today? Where the fruit of our bodies is cursed? Where there are so many problems: congenital birth defects of our little ones. This is all a result of our disobedience to God, His commandments and His laws.
To reverse this, we must turn around. We must cry out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in heartfelt repentance, and seek His way of life! It's been done before when a nation was told by the prophet Jonah, the Assyrian peoples, they repented. God withheld His punishment on them for their sins.
- Will we, as a people, do that today?
- Are we prepared to put away our pride?
- Are we prepared to put away our arrogance?
Oh, yes, we're an arrogant people!
Look at what has happened over the years; look at what has happened to the British peoples. Where is the arrogance? We have the upper class, we have the middle class and we then the lower class! The upper class, and even many among the middle class, are very prone to great pride arrogance, seeing those in a lower class than themselves as inferior human beings and frequently treat them as such.
When we go back in history, many of those of the British nations looked upon other nations as inferior beings. Other peoples! Other races! Seeing them as inferior, men and women made in the image and likeness of God! We treated them as so much cannon fodder.
Some of our so-called 'great leaders' were nothing more than butchers when it came down to the way in which we treated those people that God gave to us to rule over. Took them into slavery. Is God pleased with that? God hates arrogance! God hates pride! Yet, God says and talks about the pride, the proud and the arrogance of the British peoples.
We need to repent of that, because we have said that we have become great. 'We became this great British Empire by our own power and by our own strength,' when, in fact, the reason for our strength and power, our wealth and greatness, was because Abraham obeyed God!
Abraham knew who God was! Abraham was prepared to obey God even the point where he was prepared to kill his son Isaac. When God saw the obedience of Abraham, He said, 'Stop, Abraham! Don't slay your son! I have prepared a sacrifice. But because you were prepared to not hold your son from Me, you were prepared to sacrifice him at My word, now I know that you will always obey Me.'
As the British peoples, does God know that about us? or Is God testing us? Because we will not obey Him as our forefather did, God will punish us to bring us to the point where we will finally recognize our God—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—we will repent of all our sins before Him and we will obey Him! Then God will bless us!
Are we going to do that? Well, Biblical prophecy shows, reveals, that we will fail to do that nationally! Until such time as God punishes us, until such time when we go into captivity, then we will realize that the words of God that we have heard from His Scriptures—the Bible—we will begin to see that these were true, that these were right. And we will say:
- Why did we not listen to You, God?
- Why did we not listen to You?
- Now we hear!
- Now we understand!
- Now we know why we're in captivity!
- Now we know why we are dying!
- Now we know why all these things came upon us!
- Forgive us, Father!
- Show us Your ways!
- Teach us Your ways!
When we come to that place, God will forgive our sins. God will again bring us to that place where we will come under that covenant made with Abraham, where, again, we will become a great nation. But this time as a great nation what we are going to do is continue to obey God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
But that will happen after the return of Jesus Christ. When He comes in great power and might and sets His feet on the Mt. of Olives. When He again restores His laws and commandments in the land of Israel today, which is in so much conflict. When He will setup His throne on Mt. Zion, and from Mt. Zion will go forth the Word of the Lord, according to what He tells us through His prophet Isaiah.
God first is going to bring the descendants—those that remain after much tribulation, after the times of sorrows, after the last days—then God again will bless a nation that repents. He will write His laws in their hearts and minds, and they will know that He is God!
They, again, will become a nation obedient to God, and God will so bless that nation that we're told that the reaper will be overcome by the sower. The crops will be so plentiful and when the rest of the nations of the world see what is taking place under the rulership of Jesus Christ, then they are going to want a part of those blessings.
They will, eventually, come up to Jerusalem, and they will know the ways of the Lord, and the whole earth is going to be filled with the laws and commandments of God. But not yet!
We have got much suffering to do, but individually we can repent! In Matthew 24 Jesus said that 'this Gospel—the Gospel of the Kingdom of God—shall be preached in all nations as a witness.' Not to save all nations, but as a witness to the nations of what God is about to do and why He is doing it; the troubles we face and then the end result.
God shows us that all the troubles that we are bringing upon ourselves. When we learn to obey Him, when we learn to follow Him, then God will deliver us, and God will again bless us. God will create an earth where all people will know Him and all people will cast aside their idols. God Himself will remove all the idols from the land.
Only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will become the God of all peoples—all individuals and all nations—and all people will worship Him. We will see a time of such great glory that we cannot begin to even imagine what that is going to be like today. Because we believe God, because we know His Word is Truth, it will happen!
We face, as we have been saying, the problems of terrorism where we have already seen the effects of this in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister has announced that the level of terrorist activity is second to the highest; it has one step to go to reach crisis area where an imminent attack is expected. We can see that the people of the United States are terrified of terrorist attacks.
We have seen people being beheaded by one terrorist group. Within our nations we have these strangers—these terrorists—a number of who have gone to fight on the side of the terrorists in Syria and Iraq. We've seen the beheadings of innocent men, and in recent times that threat has reached right around the other side of the world, where as we speak a terrorist group was discovered in Australia. They were planning to take innocent people or an innocent person from the street and televise the beheading of that individual.
There is nowhere that, as a people, the descendants of the British people are safe. Our only hope is in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!
I encourage you to go back to the book of Deut. 28 and read what God has outlined for us, IF we obey Him, the blessings that He will pour out upon us. But also if we reject Him—because God knows that if we reject Him and choose our own ways, if we choose to walk in pride and arrogance—then we have to be punished, because
- God loves us
- God wants better things for us
- God does not like to see us take away what is going to bring destruction and death
- God cannot tolerate sin.
If this message means something to you, do go online and request the book that gives you the history and the origins of who we are, the book about Ephraim and Manasseh, the British and the American peoples. {Two Nations that Changed the World—America and Britain—Their Biblical Origin and Prophetic Destiny by Philip Neal}
Also, if you are one who has been seeking God, and you just feel disenfranchised, where you have been going along to your church and you feel and know you are just not being fed from the Word of God… Jesus said, 'Men shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.'
- Are you being fed?
- Are you receiving that spiritual nourishment?
- Are you being taught how to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God?
- Are you being taught about the need for repentance?
- Have you ever been told that repentance, true genuine repentance—having broken God's laws and commandments—needs to be followed by baptism by water and by the laying on of hands so that you may receive the Holy Spirit?
You can find on our websites a lot of material—cbcg.org and churchathome.org—on that subject. There is another book that you can also find and download called Lord, What Should I Do? Are you in that position? Are you wondering?
- I want to know God
- I want to know His Son Jesus Christ
- I want to serve Him
But I don't know how. That book will help you: Lord, What Should I Do?
Continue listening to Church at Home and also on the Christian Biblical Church of God website—cbcg.org—you will find so many sermons and books that will help you in your search and following the way of life that God has given to us.
Once again, thank you for inviting me into your home. Until next time, this is Lyle Johnston saying so long everyone!
Scripture referenced, not quoted:
- Deuteronomy 28
- Matthew 24
Also referenced:
- Two Nations that Changed the World—America and Britain—Their Biblical Origin and Prophetic Destiny by Philip Neal
- Lord, What Should I Do? by Fred R. Coulter
LJ:bo
Transcribed: 9-2-15
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