[Darris McNeely] Well, good afternoon, everyone. It is so very good to be with all of you and to see all of you out here today and services. We have a full house and packed to the gills, and they are out there in the warehouse as well, and Mr. Myers is leaving the building on me here. So, okay, right. So good news is I don't tell jokes. So we love Mr. Myers as our pastor for many years, and I kind of forgotten what the announcement session was like with Mr. Myers. So it's good that it was just temporary. Anyway, we're friends. I really appreciated the choir. It's been a joy and a pleasure and a real privilege to teach, again, this year at Ambassador Bible College and have this class here. And you parents and family that sent these kids to us, compliments to you, and we appreciate what you have done with them and who they are, and hope that they will be better off for the year they have been here.

The choir was very good. When I heard that earlier on this year they were going to be doing the hallelujah chorus, I thought, "Nah, too small. It's not going to happen." Sometimes everybody wants to sing the hallelujah chorus but only the Mormon Tabernacle Choir can sing the hallelujah chorus or a choir of that size, but actually, they have done a very, very good job even with the hallelujah chorus. And that is reflected throughout everything else they have done. So very, very nice blending of the voices and an exceptional choir for ABC this year. So probably...well, I better not say. Every choir mutually excels every other choir before them, right, Mr. Shoemaker? All right.

I want to sketch a time for you here this afternoon and explain a moment. It is a presidential election year. In the country, America is as divided as badly as it ever has been. Politics are bitter and divisive. The Republican candidate is a person despised by the media. He's looked upon as a dangerous threat to democracy. Yet he is supported by a faithful conservative middle class who are concerned with how the country is changing. The Democratic candidate had been vice president to a very divisive president whose policies aggravated the nation and created division. This Democratic candidate is looked upon as inept and out of touch. Students are protesting a foreign war. They are setting in and occupying buildings on college campuses, taking things over, occupying buildings, and order has broken down.

And among the issues, the social issues that are dividing the country are climate change, economic inequality, and social injustice. And the nation is in the midst of a sexual revolution. And there is the ever-present threat of nuclear war between America, Russia, China, and others. And, of course, there is a virus that has come out of China causing a flu pandemic, causing widespread illness and death. Am I describing 2024? No. I'm describing 1968. I'm describing 1968, and it mirrors 2024 in many, many dramatic ways, more even than I have the time to go through at this particular time. I lived through that period. I was a 17-year-old young man in the Church of God at that time. I was influenced by that period and those events. I was in high school. I was, you know, interested in politics and keeping up with cultural history and history in general.

the Church was talking about those events in its headlines, in its magazines, and in the sermons that I heard at that time. Doom, prophecy, bad news, end time, those are some of the sermons and articles and headlines of the magazines and articles that I remember going through, listening to, hearing about in 1968. It didn't offer a lot of hope on the surface, and if that's all you listen to, you wondered, "What kind of a future do I have?" I made a decision. Not right away. I was in kind of attending the Church, but I wasn't perfectly in the Church, if you get my drift, be honest about that. And yet I knew the truth. And those events, those headlines, those church sermons, that mood of the Church at that time was influencing me. And I was listening, and I was hearing, and it created questions.

But in time, not right away, not just in 1968, but in a short time thereafter, I made a choice. I made a choice to live in what I like to call a big high-ceiling room with lots of space. I don't like low ceilings. I chose to live in a room with big windows all the way around from floor to ceiling. Windows that let in light, bright light that perked me up and cheered me up, that helped to dispel the gloom, the doom, the worry. And it also gave me a vision and a view out into a world, those big windows did, to look at the world, to see the world, and to face the world with confidence, with faith, with joy, with love, and with hope. I chose to live in a big ceiling room with big windows, letting in light and allowing me to see a big world out there with possibilities. A world, yeah, that was troubled, difficult, challenging, but the world that lay ahead for me, the world that I had to go into. And I was told that it could be just a few short years until Christ might return at that time with the scenario that the Church had. But that came and went, and I chose to live.

Now, how did I do that? How did I do that in that period of time with those world conditions as I've described and the Church? I want to spend the afternoon in the next few minutes just telling you how I managed to navigate that difficult time in the world that, in one sense, very much parallels our world today. An argument could be made and a discussion that it's a lot worse today, and I could lead that discussion and participate quite avidly in that discussion, yes. But 2024 wasn't it in the headlights in 1968. And I will have to tell you, just a couple of years before that, you know what was one of the top songs on the Billboard charts at that time that we listened to on this thing called a radio, AM? It was a song called the "Eve of Destruction." Anybody remember or ever heard that song? The "Eve of Destruction." It was gloom and doom, and it soared to the top of the charts. It was quite popular.

And then, again, it mirrored the mood of the times, the headlines of the times. And again, if you were a student of Bible prophecy, which I was, and the Church, you thought, "Wow, they're getting it too. They're worried. They're understanding it." "Eve of Destruction." How did I deal with all of that? Well, I was sitting in the congregations, and I was at the age 17, just as many of our ABC students are right now, and looking at all of this and trying to sort it all out. But I was listening to the messages, the sermons, the sermonettes, and the Bible studies, and I was reading the articles in the magazine and the booklets, and I was just studying it. And there were things that were beginning to form and gel into my mind that were shaping my view that, as I said, I chose to have a big ceiling room with big windows, letting in a lot of light as a metaphor to describe the life that I chose to live and to embrace.

Let me turn with you or you turn with me, over to Luke 21, and let me just give you a few scriptures here. Three, actually, to help you illustrate what I was reading and what helped me to navigate that moment and that time, what can help you navigate today as a young person, figuring it all out, trying to understand what this world's all about, what it does mean, and what God offers, what the Bible has to say. Our students come to ABC in a remarkable year of their life to be taught everything from Genesis to Revelation, to be read and study the books of the Bible. Ambassador Bible College is exactly what it says it is. It's a Bible college. It's not a technical institute. It is not a liberal arts institute. It is a Bible college designed to pass on the truths of God to the next generation of the youth of the Church of God. And that's what we do. In our best effort with the faculty and the program that we have, we go through it.

And I usually tell the students every year, "You get more Bible than I got in three years of Ambassador College." I did not have all the Bible classes. I didn't go through the book of Acts. I didn't go through the Old Testament. Don't ask me why. I don't really know. I had a lot of Bible classes. We had a lot of, you know, focus there. But I didn't get that comprehensive overview that you get in nine months. And I think what we provide is a very thorough grounding in those scriptures. And so what we give you, in essence, is what I received in my youth and helped me to turn the corner and navigate a very, very difficult period of our country and the world even at that time. In Luke 21, in Luke's version of the Olivet Prophecy, Jesus makes a statement right at verse 9. And He says this...and this is what triggered me at that moment. He said, "When you hear of wars and commotions..." We hear of wars and commotions today? Absolutely. Big wars. Big commotions. Big events. Big activities that are taking place.

What did Jesus say? "Do not be terrified." Don't be terrified. Don't be scared. Don't fear. The last night of His life with His disciples, Jesus said many times, "Do not fear." He said, "Do not be terrified." What? War? Commotion? Upset? Pandemic? False religion? Don't be terrified? Big headlines?

Luke 21:9 He said, "For these things must come to pass first, but the end will not come immediately."

There's going to be a lot of commotion and tumult and upset, but the end will not be immediately. Now, the interpretation of that verse can have different shades and, you know, perhaps different layers of meaning. But here's how I took it at that time. It's bad, but I began to learn as I studied prophecy, that there are certain key trigger events of the biblical scenario of the end time that will have to happen before that end will come. And if you know what they are and you have not seen them come to pass, the end is not immediately.

And regardless of what's taking place, don't get scared out of your pants. Don't be so frightened you can't get out of bed because of anxiety and despair, which did happen to me from the very first sermon that I ever heard in the Church of God. Very first sermon on prophecy scared the living daylights out of me. I literally didn't get out of bed for several hours the next morning. I thought it was all coming down, crashing around me at that time. I was a very impressionable 11-year-old. You have to know certain key points that are going to happen and you don't get panicked. You know how I translated that a couple of years after 1968, 1969 when I graduated from college? I did finally in 1970 go off to Ambassador College. And in that first year of Ambassador, I think it was about February of 1971, we had a big earthquake in Southern California. I was in the big men's dorm at the time. It was called Grove Terrace.

You know, six levels, six floors of men. Nice men's dorm. We had just gotten up, starting to get up at about 6:00 in the morning. And you know how we all are at 6:00 in the morning or whatever, you're not all put together. Let's just leave it at that. When all of a sudden, bam, boom, it shook. The building started to shake. Everything started to move in front of you. Students ran out of their buildings, their other dorms, in their underwear and they're men, and the ladies in their nightgowns, thinking that the buildings were going to collapse. I didn't make it out of my dormitory, but I do remember moving down into the hallway and kind of looking out a window through one of the rooms and seeing the building across the street, which was the gymnasium at that time, swaying back and forth. Maybe my building was swaying, I was swaying. And, you know, if you've never been through an earthquake, there's nothing that will unnerve you like an earthquake.

This one at that time, the Sylmar earthquake, they call it, where the epicenter was, it was 6.5. And it was big. But you know what I thought? I didn't immediately go to the Scripture, earthquakes in diverse places. I didn't think this was the big one. Why? I just knew. There were other things that had to happen yet. And after a few minutes, it died down. And, you know, we have aftershocks of an earthquake like that, that's significant. And for several days afterwards, we kept having tremors. And you didn't know if another one was going to pop. One night, we were kind of getting bored. And in our dormitory, one of the guys went to bed early. And we were kind of all talking around like students continue to do today, just talking around late. And we said, "Hey, let's pull a trick on our friend Bill."

So we listened to his door, and we heard him snoring, so we knew he was asleep. So we carefully opened the door, crept in on all fours, and got a hold of the legs of his bed. And we started to shake that bed just like this. And, "Earthquake," we yelled out. Bill jumped up out of the bed and ran outside himself, thinking that he was scared to death. And we were laughing on the floor. And he didn't like us too much after that. But just so you know, I can enjoy a practical joke, and I can pull a practical joke when the time comes there. Don't be terrified.

Luke 21:34-36 Jesus said this, "Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and that day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch, therefore, and pray always, that you be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."

This is the second thing that I learned. The first one was don't be terrified. Don't live your life in fear. The second one here, again, is from the same sermon and passage of Scripture, but it says, "Watch." Now, that can have, again, multiple layers of meaning. But one of them certainly is to understand your times, to discern your time, and have the wisdom to know what Scripture says so that we are not caught unaware, so that we understand where are, what's happening, what's taking place, where it fits within the overall plan of God. This is the Scripture that helped me. This is part of what began to help me frame things up in a big ceiling, big window, lots of light coming in room. To watch and to understand my world and to understand what it is.

There was a third verse that began to work on my mind. It's over in Acts 17. Acts 17:26, when Paul was speaking to the philosophers and the jurists on Mars Hill in the city of Athens. And he gives this famous sermon.

Acts 17:26 Paul says this, "He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell in the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings."

A remarkable verse, giving great insight into God and His plan and the fact that God is in control. This helped me to appreciate not only 1968 or 1972 or whenever but it helps me appreciate and understand 2024. God is the God of history. God is in control of history. He has determined the pre-appointed times of every grouping of men and women in the nations of the world.

The great empires that have come and gone are on God's timetable, and both in the ancient world and in the modern world. And the empires that prophecy shows will come once again, this final Babylon, will be on God's timing, in His time and in His way according to the Scripture, because He has set it in His pre-appointed time. And so that gave me understanding, and it should give all of us understanding to navigate today because it helped me then. I looked at what Jesus said, "Don't be terrified. Watch. Understand your time. Discern it. Know that God is in control of history and of these events." That's what I took away. That's what has formed an anchor of my life. That's what helped me survive the 1960s. It kept me from making big mistakes. I made my mistakes. By the grace of God, I didn't make a big one that transformed and radically altered my life.

I've been reading lately about the impact of drugs. Those that dropped acid in LSD in the 1960s were experimenting with all of that, which was quite rife, you know, in the youth counterculture of that particular period of time, and is a now attributed to a growing rise in Alzheimer's disease among those who played with their brain during that time, and not just with LSD, but also with marijuana, which has the unique ability to stay within the fatty tissue of the brain and not be expelled with normal processes of the body like alcohol will. Marijuana does something different, they know, and yet half the states today have legalized marijuana. In that period of time, 1960s, it wasn't phrased this way, but we were battling for the brain. There was also another battle going on at that time, was the battle for the womb, because by 1973, abortion was legalized in the United States.

And so there was this huge battle for some of the most basic fundamental aspects of human life, the brain and the womb. And it was the truth of God. My point is it was the knowledge of God's plan that I began to learn through the holy days. In my earliest years, the sermons I heard about the holy days shaped up my framework about life and the Bible and God's plan, that there was a plan, and it made sense. Somehow even in a 14-year-old mind, the holy days clicked with me and helped me to have a framework for understanding the Bible and to begin to understand God and to give me the courage then that, you know, taking off 8 days, 9 days, 10 days to go to the Feast of Tabernacles was no big deal, was the thing to do.

You know, my sports career was shut, scuttled quite early. You know, any dream I had about athletics or whatever, when you take off, you know, 10 to 14 days in September or October for the Feast of Tabernacles, you ain't going to be on the football team. Just isn't going to happen. And the Sabbath, you know, it makes other changes as well. So those things began to shape my life and, again, kept me from the brink of a lot of life-changing matters. And as I began to understand all these other matters, I learned to live with what the Bible says is light. I learned to live with understanding. The light of God's truth. God's way of life. I began to understand who God was and what He was doing and what the purpose for life was and the beauty of that.

And the holy days added into that, but the nature of the beginning to understand even the nature of God as I did in that phase of life, not anywhere near what I think I understand now, which is far more and still not enough. But as an 18, 19-year-old, I had a framework that was coming together. And that light of God's truth was beginning to guide my path in many ways. And it was giving me understanding. An understanding of the Bible and of the world and why people were rioting and about human nature. And about that time, the Church's understanding of the origin of human nature was really coming into focus. And that gave me an understanding of what I was seeing with war, with strife, with rebellion. The understanding.

The wisdom came later with years. I'm talking about light, understanding, and wisdom. The wisdom came with years and experience as it does with all of us. But this is what I was beginning to deal with. And it helped me in those years then, to take that next step into Ambassador College, and then into the ministry of the Church, where my wife and I have been for all these years. And that, you know, one step led to the other to make a decision to go for God. I remember the weekend I made that decision. I had to make a decision, literally. In my mind, it was positive, negative, A, B, 1, 2, whatever, you know. It was it. That was it. Either do it or live the rest of your life apart from the Church. And I said, "All right, I'm going to go for it." And that led to every good thing that has happened to me since. My wife, my family, my friends, my peers, you. I'm standing here today. Made all the difference. Because the truth of God gave me light, understanding, and wisdom and helped me to frame up a way of life.

I want to tell you about another time and another young man, and how that young man dealt with a time of calamity, impending doom, and gloom. I'm going to paraphrase this from some readings that I have done through the years regarding this period of time. So bear with me. It's a very short paragraph. "All over the world, a certain anxiety was in the air. For more than a generation among the nations, there was an ominous and pervasive perception that the lights were going out on the civilizations that had been in place for thousands of years. Foundations were cracking, and it was felt nothing would ever be the same. The dikes were cracking. A dark flood lapped without. There was a premonition of doom and approaching darkness. People were nostalgic for the better days of the past. Men ran to and fro seeking to preserve the knowledge of the past and present. People turned to religion, old and new, for solace, comfort, and meaning. There was a premonition of judgment. There was every effort to make the nations great once again and keep everything from collapsing into chaos."

That's describing a time, 2,700 years ago. Twenty-seven hundred years ago. And it was describing the age in which a young man named Daniel, in his teenage years, was witnessing and learning and seeing all of this take place. Doom and gloom. His own nation about to be taken down. The nations collapsing. He was probably hearing the words of a prophet named Jeremiah. He could have run into one named Habakkuk and another named Zephaniah at the same time in the streets of Jerusalem. And as you know, Daniel wound up taken to Babylon when Judah began to be taken over by that nation, by that empire. And we know the story from the book of Daniel. Remarkable story. One of our favorites. The stories of the lion's den, and, you know, the three young men that wouldn't defile themselves with the king's delicacies in the first Chapter. A man like Daniel that was given insight into dreams and interpretations. Messages from angels. It's a fantastic book. We all know that book. We know the story of Daniel.

My favorite scripture in Daniel that students hear me talk about is in the fifth Chapter. If you will, I'll share it with you. Daniel 5. To me, it sums up the man. It sums up what Daniel had to do, to bear up, and to live a life of hope in a time of catastrophe, bad news, a time of worry, and anxiety when it would be very easy to be depressed. And yet Daniel stood into it all. And when we come to Chapter 5, now perhaps a middle-aged man, a little bit older after a number of years in Nebuchadnezzar and then being put aside for a period of time under Belshazzar, the story of the final night of Babylon is in chapter 5 of Daniel. And the disembodied hand comes out of nowhere and begins to write on the wall at the banquet held by Belshazzar. And all of the worries that are really there are not even considered by the king and by his entourage. They're partying while the nation is coming apart and the Persians are at the gate and judgment is upon the nation. And this hand comes and writes and scares them to death, you know, witless. And they don't know what to do. They can't understand it. And finally, the queen mother comes in, and at verse 11, she makes this announcement to the king. To me, a great verse.

Daniel 5:11-12 "There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the Spirit of the Holy God. And in the days of your father, light, understanding, and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, were found in him. And King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, your father the king, made him chief of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers, inasmuch as he had an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding."

What a remarkable testimony from a woman that was, you know, steeped in the paganism and the magic and the mystery of Babylon of that time, and yet, she knew that in Daniel there was something different. Light, understanding, and wisdom, like that of God, was in him. And you know the rest of the story. He's called in, and he interprets the dream. And he survives the regime change to the Persians, and the story goes on. What a remarkable testimony.

Daniel, too, at age 17 or 18, whenever it was that Jerusalem fell, lived a life in a time of trouble. And yet, he chose to live in what I call a big ceiling room, with big windows, with light coming in, and the ability to look out into the world, even the world that he then entered into in Babylon, and he learned to meet it and not be overcome by it, not give in to it. He could live in Babylon but not become a Babylonian and not become acculturated to all of their ways. And you know the story. They resisted right at the beginning, and he endured for decades living a life of light, understanding, and wisdom. The light of truth. The light of God. The light of the Scriptures that he knew and he had at the time. And that he sought to understand deeper the revelations that came to him from God, that even became Scripture. The understanding that he did have that that his moment in history was an indeed a big turning point and big things were happening. Nations were coming down, new ones were coming up, his was disappearing, his life was turned upside down, but he had the light of God's truth.

He had the light of a relationship with God, which for anyone at any time, whether it's the time of Daniel or any of us today in 2024, it is that light of God's truth. That is what is so important and so meaningful to us that will keep us balanced, that will keep us from being scared, that will give us hope while we know the world is changing and it's creating events and circumstances and scenarios for us in the workplace, for our children in their classrooms, and for us as we live our lives, that are unprecedented for us, and yet we live in the light of God's Word. And it gives us hope. It gives us confidence. It keeps us from being terrified, and it gives us an understanding of why it is happening. And we can read whatever source, blog, website, idea, ideology, pundit, whoever it might be, we can read whoever we choose to read and try to understand a new source or, you know, ideas and if we take with us the foundation of the Word of God, we can then understand whether that source is speaking anywhere near anything that we need to listen to a second time or we should jettison it and maybe find somebody else with a little bit more understanding. Because we have the ultimate understanding of the Word of God, the truth of God. That God is a God of history controlling it, and it's all going to come to pass on His timetable.

But, in the meantime, we are to live righteously just like Daniel did, just like other servants did, and to live in a world and in a culture that is not of God. That's what Daniel did. Because he and us, choose to live life in a big ceiling room with big windows, not in a low ceiling, dark room, narrow-minded, without focus, fearful, not knowing where to go, what to do. You know, there's a life to live, and when you're 17, 20, whatever your age, for those of you graduating this year and for all of the rest of you listening, with your lives ahead of you, there is a life for you to live with hope, with understanding in the light of God's Word. There is a life for you to prepare for with an education, with a skill, with a training, to go out and to meet that world. And if it is in a university, if it is in a college where you may need to go for some specialized medical field or other engineering or whatever it might be and you're going to have to navigate that today, God help you and He will, but go into it with confidence, go into it with courage. Don't go into it with fear. Don't go into it with an experimentation frame of mind thinking, "Oh, there might be truth there." Go into it armed with the Word of God.

And if you're coming out of Ambassador College today, tomorrow, or any time in the past or any time in the future, or if it's just the Church for you and your relationship with God, then learn it, know it. Let that be your arm. Let that be your strength as you go into a university, a college, into a workplace environment. Arm yourself with light of God's truth, and you will be able to deal with it in the same way that Daniel did, and you will be able to answer the questions, the ridicule that may come from an instructor, from a peer whether it's the time you take to keep the Sabbath, to go to the Feast of Tabernacles, or it's because you're not going to join in with the demonstration, with the support, with the wording, with today's sexual revolution that is seeking to alter the very framework of the DNA of human existence. I said that in my time in the '60s, the attack was against the brain and the womb, that's still there, but, now, it has moved into now an attack upon the essence of humanity, the DNA.

As Satan engineers a world seeking to destroy mankind, you know that. You can know that. You can understand that, and that can help you to lean into that world that you go into and will have to deal with. And whatever education training you will need, if it's not university, if it's a trade and it's other skill, go for it. Do it. Prepare yourself. Live your life. Live your life with understanding, and as you have that light and understanding, then as you go through the experiences, you will gain the wisdom. Sometimes it will come by experience, by the things you say or don't say, by the things you do or don't do in the moment. You may stumble, you might, well, "I wish I'd handled that one better," but if you know that you missed an opportunity, you'll learn from that. And the next time it comes up, you'll have the answer for the hope that lies within you. Because hope does lie within us. It is the hope of God's kingdom, it is the hope of eternal life, it is the hope of a relationship with God today, that works. And that transcends the messaging of the world. And it can help us to understand even the messaging that the Church must give as it warns, as it gives a witness, as it explains the gospel and the truth, as it seeks to fulfill biblical mandates to give a message of warning, it will help you to appreciate that and not to dismiss it, thinking it's all gloom and doom.

Because you have an inner hope that you have cultivated, that you've worked with through your relationship with the Word of God, and as it leads you to a relationship with the Creator, your God, and on your knees and in the study of this Word and in your prayers, you're developing that. That's what Daniel did. Daniel lived with joy. Daniel lived with love. How else could he have walked into the room with Nebuchadnezzar, who must have been a fierce-looking guy, intimidating? None of us have seen intimidating. So, you know, we think what King Nebuchadnezzar would have been and Daniel had to walk in and explain things to him from the Word of God. You think I'm intimidating? You ain't seen nothing. Daniel saw the beast, and he knew how to deal with it because he was living with a joy, because he knew God, and it gave him a peace of mind. He wasn't scared. Hope was his banner. He overcame the nihilism of his time. He overcame that with faith. He not only knew there was a God, but he knew that God. You know there is a God. You think you know there is a God. You think you mastered all the proofs and whatever path is taken for you? Good. But do you now know that God? Do you know Him because of the time you've spent with Him in prayer and of reading His Word and thinking about it?

It's one thing to know that there is a God. It is another thing to know that God. And when we cross into that dimension, we're living with hope. We're living with joy. We're living with faith. You're called to push back. You know, even with the chaos and the evil that has erupted on so many of our major college campuses in recent weeks over the current war in the Middle East and the ideologies that are driving that, I've been reading that there are certain pockets of people on those campuses, other students, that are beginning to push back. And what little bit I've read and seen where that is, you think, "Good for them." They're pushing back. They don't want to see their campus destroyed, taken over. So there's a bit of pushback. There's pushback going on in other parts of our culture today against the revolutions and the evil that is creeping out and taking over pockets. And when we see it, that's good. Where people stand for truth and understanding as they know it, we should as well with our lives, with our example, we should not be intimidated today. We push back with truth. We push back with words that explain who we are when you might be challenged, when you might be laughed at, when you might be pushed aside. You push back because you come back in and you're able to explain it. The Bible is full of the fearless examples of those disciples who fought against the powers of the darkness of their time.

Daniel talks about that. In one passage, later on, Daniel talks about those who knew their God and did great exploits. They knew their God, and they did great exploits. The ABC education that we are engaged with here in this building equips for works of service in the body of Christ. It equips all of us for that. And those of you graduating this year, you're a part of the future laborers in the Church of God in whatever way you yield yourself and as God places you as well. But that ABC education equips you for that work of service. The ABC, Ambassador Bible College, education also arms you to wage a warfare against the rulers of the darkness of this age. It helps you to see that the components of today and government and technology, education, popular culture, they're not your friends. They really aren't. Oh, we use their technology, we may need to use their educational curriculums, we have to and will live within that government, but they're not our friends. They're not the friends of the kingdom. They're not the truth, and understanding that's important. They're not the friends of those who want to be like Daniel, who want to live in the light, understanding, and wisdom.

The Ambassador Bible College education weaponizes you to knock down the gates of hell. You are weaponized with that ability to knock down the gates of hell, the powers of the darkness of this world with the words of this Book, as you live it, think it, internalize it, and let it be the guide of your life. You are weapons in the hands of God, like a sword of the Spirit. Look at yourself that way. All of us should, as we use this and draw close to God. And when a body of people begin to act in that way with that confidence, with that courage, without fear, living in light, understanding, and wisdom, then the great works that we read about in chapters like Acts 19 where Paul made a dent into the darkness of the city of Ephesus so much so that people came out, and they burned their books of the black magic and the black arts, and they turned from that. We have that around us all today, and the only way that that will ever be pushed out is by people who understand that they are equipped and armed and weaponized with the truth of God. We hold in our hands that one Book which gives us all the power in heaven and in earth to do that. This age that we're living in today, it's not 1968, it's 2024. And I don't pretend to know how many more classes of ABC graduates will have, how many years until the culminating events at the end of the age that Jesus spoke of, God knows. All I know is what I have to do today and in my life, and that's all that any of us know.

And when we approach it without fear, when we approach it with a careful watching and understanding, when we live in the light of God's Word, when we understand what God is doing, and when we let the accumulated wisdom of our experiences and of our wealth of relationships with one with another galvanize us, bond us together, bringing us together, then we can live with confidence, with hope. And we can understand the message of the Bible, and as it is translated into the duty of the Church, we understand it. We don't bemoan it. We don't negate it. We don't work against it. We understand it. And we understand what it means. And we're able to then live with hope, live with light, wisdom, and understanding.

I made a decision at one point in my life, it's been the same decision that many of us have. And a few, perhaps in the room, here today are listening or grappling with, but I have confidence that you will make the right decision. But choose to live in a room with big ceilings, lots of space, with windows that let in a lot of light, the light of God's Word, the light of God's truth, so that as you look out those windows into the world that is there for what it is, you can have love, joy, and peace to enter into that world and to meet its challenges and to not be overcome by it, to live with light, understanding, and wisdom, and to live with hope in a time of trouble.