As I listened to the first speaker that Sabbath, he said something that captured my attention. Our teens today, he observed, face all sorts of evils; society is so much worse, so much more dangerous, than it was 20 years ago. He then gave a list of items ranging from gangs to drugs to racial violence.
The news we read every day confirms what he was saying. The world is getting sharply worse and intensely more dangerous for all of us, especially our teens.
My memories of those last 20 years, however, tell a different story: a story of progress, of old problems being left behind, and of most things getting better.
That list of evils? I was right in the middle of them all, 20 years before some of those things became so common. And while those appalling evils have become so much more prevalent in society, my exposure to them has consistently lessened. That is because I have lived my entire life in God’s Church.
I attended pyc just as many of you have. The director of our camp, Mr. Dennis Leap, told us many times to test God—that God’s way of life works beautifully. This stuck with me (perhaps because he said it so many times!). Anyone who has been in God’s Church for long can confirm the positive results a God-centered way of life brings. God’s blessings make us rich, and He adds no sorrow with it (Proverbs 10:22).
The more we see our potential, the more we orient ourselves around God’s Work, the more we will receive the blessings He promises, not just in the World Tomorrow, but during this age of man as well. If you stick with the program, over time, God will pour more and more blessings into your life as He always does for His people, culminating in your entry into His Family. Meanwhile, though, the people around us are being destroyed spiritually, mentally and emotionally—and eventually, even physically—by the evils Satan promotes.
How desperately those people need the mystery we dispense! The entire world needs what you have: the knowledge that straightens out your life, that allows you to reason with God and to separate yourself from the evils that Satan broadcasts 24/7. What a blessing it is to have Mystery of the Ages, God’s ministry, parents who have turned their lives over to God—and to be able to support a work that will usher in a new world where the evils that surround us have been eradicated.
As time goes on, your choices will affect the next generation too—either for good or for evil. The choices my parents made, that their parents made before them, still affect both me and my children—again, either for good or evil. Herbert W. Armstrong said that even in the World Tomorrow, it will take three or four generations “before we find that we have taken away all these false teachings of the Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church and other ideas and traditions of humans, and taught them the truth of God,” (sermon, October 1983). This is even with Jesus Christ Himself administering perfect government. We have an early start on this process, and as someone receiving the truth as a young person, perhaps even born into God’s Church as I was, you have a special advantage that other teens do not—that even your parents did not if they were first-generation Christians.
Mr. Armstrong also wrote about the long-term difficulty of removing false education—stemming from the evolutionary concept—in The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like: “One of the great problems facing the returned glorified Christ will be that of reeducating the supposedly educated. These minds—and they are, indeed, the world’s finest and best minds—have become so perverted with false education that they will be unable to accept truth until they first unlearn error. And it is at least 10 times more difficult to unlearn error, firmly imbedded in the mind, than it is to start from ‘scratch’ and learn new truth.”
He closes that line of thought with this bombshell: “It may actually take them longer to come to a knowledge of truth—to become truly educated—than the illiterate of this world.” That’s right: This world’s elite education is so far off that those people would be better off as illiterates. Do you see how blessed you are? As someone raised in the truth, you don’t have to face that spiritual illiteracy we will spend generations combating.
Mr. Armstrong identified a third area in Mystery of the Ages: “There are blessings for observing the laws of health—absolute guarantees good health will result—and that sickness and disease will become in the third and fourth generations a thing of the past.” This is just one area of physical blessing that will increase as time goes on—and that you have access to today. By following God’s dietary and health laws, you gain access to the physical blessings they bring. And in those situations where you do become sick, God gives you special access to healing through the laying on of hands by one of His ministers.
Of course, we all have our unique problems to deal with. We are constantly rooting out more of the wrong things in our lives and backgrounds that Mr. Armstrong was talking about and replacing them with the truth of God. And as we reduce Satan’s influence and draw closer to our Father, the blessings increase. We are establishing a pattern today that reveals God’s blessings and that everyone will see in the World Tomorrow. You are the generation that is not exposed to the false teachings of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, to the evolutionary lie, and to the physical sins that bring on disease. You are the generation—the first generation ever—with unfettered access to Mystery of the Ages. You are the generation that prophecy tells us will become princes and princesses in all the Earth (Psalm 45:16), helping to usher in the greatest time of peace and prosperity the world has ever seen under a perfect government led by the Family of God.
Stick with the program—because God’s way of life really does work beautifully.