The greatest empire this world has ever seen was the British Empire. It was the largest in history, and it was also the best. It was flawed, as all human governments have been. But in terms of what it did, not just for British subjects but for the world, no empire has come close to the British Empire.

God made that empire great. He did so through miracles, through laws based in part on His laws, and through men and women who loved and sacrificed and built Britain, hoping that they could make the whole world a better place for future generations.

Winston S. Churchill was born as that empire approached its peak. As a young man, he threw himself into serving Britain, writing, fighting wars, and emerging as a political leader. When the empire experienced its sorest trial, a desperate nation turned to him for help. God used him to save Britain and Western civilization.

Yet Churchill also lived to see the British Empire enter its fatal decline.

God is not against empires. In fact, He Himself is building an unparalleled empire—an empire that will eclipse the British Empire infinitely: the God Family Empire.

God is building a family, and the emphasis is on family. But using the word “empire” expands our scope and the magnitude and majesty of our calling and our future.

Webster defines empire as an “extensive territory of enterprise under single domination and control.” God’s Family is an empire! God is an empire builder. He wants to instill empire thinking in His people.

The British Empire can teach us some outstanding lessons. Understanding more about Churchill and the empire he loved will help us understand and love the empire of God.

How deep is your devotion to the God Family Empire?

Churchill’s Expansive Vision

Martin Gilbert wrote a multi-volume biography on Churchill that required an immense amount of research. Yet in all his writing, he had little to say about Churchill’s highest purpose. He didn’t understand what motivated this extraordinary man to do extraordinary things.

What motivated Churchill? The British Empire!

Churchill’s vision of empire is inspiring. His first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, had the theme of empire. In his second book, The River War, he wrote about a shameful episode: how the British government failed to support Chinese Gordon in Khartoum in 1885, which led to the beloved general’s death. Churchill was a boy at the time, but he would go on to risk his life in combat and to devote his next 80 years to advancing Britain and the ideals it stood for.

Britons like Churchill worked and sacrificed for something far greater than themselves. They believed not only in the glory of the empire but also what it had done for the world and what it could do for the future.

When everyone unites their efforts to support the high purpose of a civilizing empire, it can accomplish amazing things.

You and I need this same motivating vision to do great deeds for the God Family Empire!

British statesman Joseph Chamberlain said in 1897, “In carrying out this work of civilization we are fulfilling what I believe to be our national mission, and we are finding scope for the exercise of those faculties and qualities which have made of us a great governing race.” If we want to be a great Church and have a great impact on this world, we must exercise the faculties and qualities that made Britain a great people when the empire was at its peak!

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli stated, “I have endeavored to develop and strengthen our empire, believing that combination of achievement and responsibility elevates the character and condition of a people” (emphasis mine throughout). An empire transcends the individual, the self. Those who do all they can to build an empire that is doing something good for the world are also building their own character.

Harry V. Jaffa wrote that in Winston Churchill’s view, “[t]he glory of the British Empire was its service to a cause that transcended Britain, that transcended history, that transcended time itself.” Dedication to empire enables people to transcend themselves, transcend politics, transcend history! This is infinitely truer when the empire you are building is the God Family Empire!

Churchill loved the empire, something so much bigger than Britain. He had a vision like few people have ever had, and he would not give it up—even when it almost destroyed him politically.

Most people in the nations of Israel today believe empire is evil. Meanwhile, many Gentile peoples seem to love empires! And so often those empires are evil.

You can see an empire rising in Europe today destined to become the most savage empire this world has ever seen. It will achieve power through sophistication and stealth: It won’t openly declare its intent to wipe other powers off the map. It first becomes their lovers—a different tactic. That is what it will do to Israel because Israel won’t listen to us.

Kirk Emmert recognizes in Winston S.Churchill on Empire that the concept of empire is extremely unpopular today: “It is, therefore, not surprising that Winston Churchill’s support of the British Empire is one of the least admired aspects of his political career. Thus, although his commitment to empire was central to his whole political ‘life of action and advocacy,’ most Churchill scholars have dealt cursorily with, and often dismissed, his views on empire without first taking sufficient care to understand them.” He was fascinated by the British Empire.

The empire was central to Churchill’s whole life. Obviously he was human and made mistakes; I’m not trying to defend those. But he certainly was a great man for the British Empire.

Today, we are raising up the ruins of the God Family Empire. And we are the only people on Earth who really understand Winston Churchill’s thinking about empire because we have a dimension to add to it that Mr. Churchill needed. In fact, it’s a dimension this whole world needs!

The Positive Purpose of Empire

Jaffa wrote in the Foreword to Winston S. Churchill on Empire, “The word ‘empire’ in the title is to be taken on many levels. … The glory of the British Empire was its service to a cause that transcended Britain, that transcended history that transcended time itself. [I]t acts to lift human life away from barbarism and savagery towards civilization and human excellence.” An empire like that is good. This world needs that kind of empire! But usually it is just the opposite.

We should love an empire that serves the right purpose. Empire is not immoral. In fact, the British Empire set Churchill’s imagination on fire because it did so many great things for the world!

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “the great object in our time is to raise the faculties of men ….” Is there anything wrong with an empire lifting a human life, making it greater? That is what we in God’s Church are here for. We can really have an impact with God’s help. We are here to raise the faculties of men and to get people thinking about and working to build this God Family Empire!

In Churchill’s Military Histories, Algis Valiunas writes, “To build an empire, provided one does so for the right reasons, is the highest end a nation can set itself.” What a lofty goal!

“Conquest only initiated the redeeming work,” Valiunas writes; “work itself, in its countless forms, was the essential civilizing agent.” It takes organized work! “The imperial presence makes war on endemic indolence [or laziness]: It shows men who had never thought to hope for anything more than precarious subsistence what they might make of their lives.” Is that evil?

Examples of the ways the British Empire benefited the world abound. The lives of peoples in many nations were elevated—and are to this day!

Here is one example: “The explorer John Speke, who discovered the source of the White Nile, found African misery so appalling that he exhorted his countrymen to do ‘nothing less than to regenerate Africa.’ The prey of Arab slave traders, and the subjects of brutal black tyrants, the tribesmen of Buganda (now Uganda) stood in need of British protection: ‘They require a government like ours in India; and without it, the slave trade will wipe them off the face of the earth’” (ibid). This man said the empire needed to regenerate Africa!

This points in a remarkable way to Matthew 19:28: “And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” God was telling these 12 apostles that they would be part of the government of God under David. He said this is the government that will regenerate the whole world. That’s inspiring—and it is real!

Thayer’s Lexicon says of this “regeneration”: “The production of a new life consecrated to God, a radical change of mind for the better.” That is what God’s people must be doing: changing, thinking differently, and building a new life consecrated to God—in ourselves and in those we lead! It also means “the restoration of a thing to its pristine state” or “the renewal of the world” or “a glorious change of all things.” A good and civilized empire can accomplish great things such as this!

Churchill recognized there was something great about the empire he served. He knew what it could do. In a world with many peoples who had barbaric and beastly practices, the empire could provide freedom and direction that would civilize and ennoble people, as well as protecting them from exploitation and tyranny.

In his 1939 book Step by Step, Churchill wrote, “For 400 years in four successive great wars, we [the British] have prevented the Low Countries from falling under the control of a great military power. Be it the Spain of Philip ii, or the France of Louis xiv, or the France of Napoleon, or the Germany of William ii.” You see God’s hand in this history. The Spanish Armada was going to wipe out England, but it was crushed—by what? The Spanish king later said, “I sent the Armada against men, not God’s winds and waves.” As a result, rather than England being crushed and the Spanish Empire dominating, the Spanish became history and the British Empire ascended to unparalleled power!

That empire—where the throne of David was—did much good for the world. That list didn’t even include the world wars, but Britain fought gallantly in those as well, and prevented the world from being enslaved to German tyrants!

What made Churchill so great? Some historians will tell you that it was primarily his passion for empire.

The Natural Order of Things

Winston Churchill saw the empire as something much greater than just the British Isles. He had the whole empire in mind, and he loved it.

In his book Churchill: Retreat From Empire, Raymond Callahan explained: “Churchill’s hostility toward Bolshevism abroad and socialism at home had its parallel in his reaction to nationalism in the empire. He had grown up with the late Victorian surge of empire building. He was 8 when Britain occupied Egypt, 11 when Gordon fell at Khartoum, and present when Gordon was avenged at Omdurman in 1898. The empire he had known as a young man always would seem to him part of the natural order of things ….” He loved the empire with a passion like nobody else I’ve ever read about.

The God Family Empire should be “the natural order of things” for us! We need to build that kind of attitude, where this Empire is just natural. Many of us have grown up with it! If we didn’t, then we need to study hard until we know it from beginning to end. We need to know all about the man who “restored all things” on Earth (Matthew 17:11). In a sense, we all must “grow up” in that empire Herbert W. Armstrong established. Really dig that history out and absorb it. As God says about the little book, we need to “eat it up” and digest it (Revelation 10:9), and absolutely know our Bibles. Mr. Armstrong studied the Bible like no man I’ve ever read about. He dug and made sure to prove everything he believed. And he was willing to risk everything in the process.

Churchill grew up with the empire and loved it, and he had good reason for loving it. He didn’t love it simply because it was powerful. He loved it for what it did, and the suffering it saved the world from. This had everything to do with making him a great leader!

His example shows how we must build this natural order of things and love the God Family Empire with more passion than he had for the British Empire.

In The River War, Churchill described Britain’s efforts to educate Egyptian clerks to facilitate rail work. They set up two makeshift schools in the shade of two palm trees to teach 20 students. “The simplicity of the instruction was aided by the zeal of the students,” Churchill wrote, “and learning grew beneath the palm trees more quickly perhaps than in the magnificent schools of civilization.”

God has given us a college on 170 acres in Edmond, Oklahoma—an insignificant plot of land compared to the world. But we can impart this vision of the God Family Empire. Learning can grow here in a miraculous way. What we are doing on this little plot of land will soon fill the Earth! It is a small beginning, but God is going to expand it until it covers the universe!

Civilizing Both the Ruled and the Rulers

Anthony Froude wrote in Oceana, “A man … who is part of an institution, who has devoted himself to a cause or is a citizen of an imperial power—expands to the scope and fullness of the larger organism …. His thoughts are wider, his interests less selfish, his ambitions ampler and nobler. … A great nation makes great men; a small nation makes little men.” Likewise, a great church will make great men and women of all of us, too. It gets us away from selfishness. We can so easily become wrapped up in ourselves and fail to reach out as God wants us to!

“True imperialism develops manhood,” Churchill said. That is politically incorrect, but true! An empire rooted in law and morality creates quality men and women! Churchill himself was a real man, and the empire made him a real leader, one of the greatest in the end time. The right kind of empire—true imperialism—builds real men and real leaders.

This spirit of empire makes leaders stronger, and it turns followers into leaders.

Churchill, Emmert wrote, considered “the fostering of civilization as the highest purpose of empire,” and believed “that empire civilizes both the ruled and their rulers.” That is infinitely truer of the God Family Empire! It civilizes us! It makes both the rulers and the ruled more spiritual! The whole Family grows spiritual because it is ruled by the Father and the Son. Empire does that.

This is the Father’s Empire! And we are to become perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). The more we comprehend this Empire, the wider will be our thoughts and the less selfish our interests. Our ambitions will be ampler and nobler if we fill our lives with this Family Empire and make it the natural order of things. We will become real leaders!

Setting an Example for the World

Powerful empires have a powerful effect on other nations and peoples simply by virtue of their example, whether for good or evil.

On July 10, 1833, Lord Macaulay stated in a speech before British Parliament, “There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. [T]hat empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.” Even if unintentionally, an empire exports its laws and morals around the world. And look what Israel is exporting around the world today! It is the depth of corruption and a plague of evil!

The God Family Empire has a message of law. This Church is delivering a message around the globe that’s going to straighten out all the problems in this world forever! That is quite an empire!

In his book Marlborough, Churchill wrote that love is “a sublime passion, which expresses and dominates all being.” John and Sarah Churchill’s “courtship, marriage and lifelong union,” he wrote, “proclaim the glory of that wedlock in which the vast majority of civilized mankind find happiness and salvation in a precarious world.” Such love and dedication lift “the relations of men and women above the human scene with all its faults and cares. They rekindle in every generous bosom the hope that things may happen here in the life of the humblest mortals which roll round the universe and win everlasting sanction ….”

We need to speak to the world about why marriage and why family. For example, our book The Missing Dimension in Sex can straighten out warped thinking and correct the evil being taught in Israel today. That wonderful book Mr. Armstrong wrote was right out of the mind of God.

Even beyond that, we need to show people through our personal examples and in our families how to live a life of hope forever! That is serving as an empire with the very truth of God. That is the positive purpose of an empire!

Give Your Life

In 1942, in a speech in London during the thick of World War ii, Churchill exclaimed, “I have not become the king’s first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” This statement “was not just bravado,” Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor, later said. “He was affirming a faith for which he was prepared to give his life, and he proved it throughout his life.” He kept putting himself into positions where he ought to have been killed, but he never was.

Dr. Moran then stated, “If Winston has believed in anything at all in the course of his long life, it has been in the British Empire and all that it stands for.”

During World War ii, Churchill stated, “[W]hatever may happen on the Continent, we cannot doubt our duty, and we shall certainly use all our power to defend the island, the empire and our cause.” He showed his willingness to give his life for the empire.

Are you willing to give your life for God’s spiritual Empire? All the greatest gifts the British Empire bestowed on the world cannot even compare to what the Kingdom of God will do!

Britain’s monarchs had to think expansively! “Insecurity resulting from proximity to powerful expansionist France and Spain led Henry viii and Elizabeth i to augment English sea power. Emboldened by the protection provided by the fleet and by the subsequent defeat of the Spanish Armada …” (Emmert, op cit). What would have happened if Britain had been crushed by the Spanish? They would have become strong Catholics! Of course, we know who really intervened there. But is there anything wrong with an empire that has enough power to stand up to another empire and defeat it? Churchill certainly didn’t think so.

Valiunas writes this about the empire: “What Kipling dubbed the ‘savage wars of peace’ kept the British military busy almost without a breather for 60 years. Victoria understood that these innumerable eruptions of trouble were inevitable, and warned her men never to let their guard down: ‘If we are to maintain our position as a first-rate power, we must, with our Indian empire and large colonies, be prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other, continually.’”

It takes work to build an empire. And it requires battling and fighting to sustain it! Are you willing to do that for God’s Empire? We are going to be attacked. We cannot let that deter us. Before World War ii, Churchill warned that the nerve of the British government was not equal to the occasion. Is our nerve equal to the occasion? Are we really up to the occasion of building God’s Family Empire? It takes courage, nerve and guts to do that!

Churchill was said to have always wanted to be where the shooting was. In principle, that’s the way it should be with us. We always want to be where the fighting is—to help and serve, and never flee from this inspiring responsibility God has given us! Like Nehemiah, such men and women do not flee (Nehemiah 6:11) unless God tells them to flee. They are there for the duration of the battle! That’s the way Churchill was, and that’s the way God wants us to be spiritually.

Our calling demands unwavering support and dedication to the God Family Empire. Jesus Christ said, You may have to give up your physical family, but you’d better be willing to die for your spiritual family! This calling may require sacrificing your own life (Luke 14:26). At baptism, we agreed to those terms. So many great men and women of God have had to sacrifice their lives for this.

We must view the God Family Empire the way Churchill saw the British Empire. God wants to expand our ambitions and make them of the right kind. We need to love this Empire so much that if someone were to tell us to give it up—even with the threat of being thrown into a fiery furnace—we would refuse without a moment’s hesitation!

Churchill said after Dunkirk: “[W]e shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be … we shall never surrender. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the oceans, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.” This was a leader who understood and fought for empire.

Valiunas writes that Churchill wanted “to ensure that their belief not falter, for the empire’s continued magnificence depends greatly on their exalted love for it.” How much do we love the God Family Empire? Do we have an exalted love for it?

We really need to love this Family of God Empire—to the point of being willing to die for it if we must! We need an exalted love for this wonderful Family Empire that God is building, and build that vision within our minds!

Great Men Make History

“Tocqueville wrote that historians in democratic times do not take account of great men who dominate vast events, but rather show vast events dominating the masses of men,” Valiunas notes (ibid). This is the way historians today think and write: as if history just rolls along like the old Mississippi River, beyond our power to bend or change. “Huge irresistible forces come to occupy the foreground of historical writing, while individuals heaped into lumps can only gape helplessly at what is being done to them by history,” Valiunas continues.

Tocqueville believed the problem with that kind of history is it doesn’t recognize how an exceptional man can come along and dominate world events when he has the power to do so, like Winston Churchill.

Churchill himself was not that kind of historian.

Valiunas writes, “Churchill’s early achievement as a historian of the imperial wars … whose object is nothing less than to fortify the British will, and thus to ensure the empire’s continuance and expansion.” That is an entirely different and altogether nobler purpose for writing history!

It is also a marvelous example for the ministers of God’s Empire: We must work to fortify the will of God’s people to ensure that God’s Family Empire continues and expands!

Churchill wrote six volumes on World War i. It was the most astounding history people had ever read, and it is a classic. Why? Because he wrote not only about the history of World War i but also how that war should have been fought! That is pretty brazen: a man with no scholarly credentials saying that war was fought in the wrong way!

In that war, the cream of British youth were massacred in the meat grinder of trench warfare. This grieved Churchill. He strained and toiled in search of some means of breaking the bloody deadlock. At last he devised an outstanding strategy involving attack through the Dardanelles. Had the government backed and supported him, the plan would have succeeded! But they were halfhearted, and Churchill lacked the authority to correct it. The plan failed, and they castigated him. He lost his job, and then all he could do to contribute to the war effort was to go lead a battalion in France. It was a crushing demotion, but he was happy to go. He yearned to help fight the war the right way.

Churchill knew terrible mistakes were made in World War i. And he learned profound lessons from those failures. Later he was able to apply those lessons—when he was installed as prime minister during World War ii. At last he was given the authority to get things done! That’s why, when they called him in to take over the reins of government, he was so relieved.

The right man with enough authority can really dominate world events. That is what God will do with us. He promises His people who overcome that they will rule with a rod of iron (Revelation 2:27). The God Family Empire will have impressive authority!

The Dangers of Turning Inward

Here is a statement very much in the spirit of Churchill—but whose source may shock you: “The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and superstition, but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than any former period.” Those words were spoken not by a British leader—but by the first president of the United States!

George Washington saw America as an empire that stood for freedom, that would spread and that would defend those who wanted freedom, even if dictators tried to force their submission, which they do all the time in this world.

“Washington’s reference to the newly independent America as an ‘empire’ is moreover as instructive as, in appearance at least, it is archaic,” Jaffa wrote. “Americans have traditionally been ‘anti-imperialistic.’ … America’s discovery of federalism … was itself a discovery in the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, not only of how empire and freedom might be reconciled, but how empire might become the very ground of freedom. Washington’s words became a very apt reminder of Churchill’s theme. Empires will always emerge to determine the fates of governments …. The only question is whether they will be civilizing or barbarizing empires. In the long run, the only alternative open to civilized mankind is to create the structure of civilized empire (however it may be called) or be ruled by barbarians and savages. No one reflected more profoundly upon this theme than Churchill …” (op cit). God’s Empire is the ultimate civilizing empire! We must come to think imperialistically if we are to think like God!

The pilgrims came to America with the supreme goal of establishing the rule of God on Earth. Even our Constitution has a biblical foundation.

God gifted America and Britain with the birthright blessings of Abraham. We have been given such wonderful, prosperous lives. Britain even had the very throne of David! Ephraim is going to become the leading nation in the World Tomorrow, and a lot of it has to do with an empire that God gave them because of Abraham’s obedience.

Yet now, that throne and those blessings mean nothing to Britain and America. These two nations are wallowing in depravity and plagued by division. Our governments know almost nothing about foreign policy, let alone empire. America is withdrawing from the world scene today. America has such tremendous power! Think of the good it could do and the sanity it could bring to the world if it were to use that power the right away and operate more like an honorable empire!

When General Gordon was left to die in Khartoum in 1885, that was a warning sign to the British Empire at its peak. “After the empire abandoned General Gordon to his ignominious fate, ‘continental observers did not hesitate to declare that this failure was only the beginning of the end.’ And in a ‘hopeless way,’ Churchill noted, this view came to be ‘widely shared in England’” (Emmert, ibid). Such thinking is a death knell to empire! It disheartens warriors and emboldens enemies.

If such thinking takes hold in God’s people, that is disastrous. Look what happened to the Laodiceans! If God’s people get discouraged and don’t conquer that attitude, they give up. We must conquer discouragement! We need the spirit and attitude of Christ! He faced trials far worse than anything we will and maintained the highest of morale!

Negativity and pessimism are ever-present dangers. If you are trying to expand an empire, there will always be critics. No matter how virtuous the goals may be, some would rather turn inward and selfish. Churchill battled such detractors, whom he called “little Englanders.” As Emmert wrote, these were those “who wanted to turn inward, renounce the empire, and attempt to ‘live by ourselves alone.’”

“Churchill thought that this effort to retreat from the world would inflict a ‘frightful crash and obliteration of life’ on Britain,” wrote Emmert. Turning inward would cause degeneration to rapidly set in.

Churchill said the problem with little Englanders was that they just wanted safety and a quiet life. Doesn’t that sound nice? I just want to be left alone. Well, this dangerous world doesn’t afford us that luxury! During World War ii, such thinking nearly brought the opposite: the worst imaginable disaster!

Churchill accomplished one of the greatest feats of history in leading Britain to victory in World War ii. Yet late in life, he was saddened. Why? Callahan explains how the empire was “beneficent and an indispensable prop of British power and greatness. Yet his entire political career would be played out in an era of challenge and dissolution for imperial rule” (op cit). Toward the end of his life Churchill agonized because, though he had saved Britain, the empire was dying. People gradually began calling it a “commonwealth” instead, and sought to withdraw from the world. It couldn’t make a difference as it had before. It grieved Churchill to see what was becoming of this once-great empire.

Look at the Church of God. If you are merely a little church here in Edmond, Oklahoma, or a little church in Eugene, Oregon, then if you turn inward, you will go nowhere. People who think like that have little minds. That’s not the way God thinks!

Ninety-five percent of God’s people have lost God’s vision of empire and have degenerated into selfishness. They are squabbling about government and struggling to keep their churches intact, but they are doomed to fail. Lose the God Family Empire vision and the government of God, and you won’t amount to any kind of success.

‘Our Kingdom Is the World!’

In 1937 Winston Churchill wrote, “I want to see the British Empire preserved for a few more generations in its strength and splendor.” Callahan comments, “It was this romantic vision of Britain as a world power that guided Churchill, but in the end was destined to failure” (ibid). Churchill was a heroic figure, but also a tragic one, because, as he said, “The empire I believed in has gone.”

Churchill will be among the billions whom God resurrects in the Great White Throne Judgment. Under Christ the King, the God Family Empire will teach Churchill about the throne of David and add that dimension to his knowledge. I have a feeling he will come to see that his life was not a failure at all. But it could have been far more successful had he known about David’s throne and how Jesus Christ would return to rule from that throne!

What sort of man do you think Winston Churchill would have been had he not grown up in the empire with all those blessings? What if he had grown up in Ethiopia or some small, desolate, impoverished nation? He grew up in the great British Empire, and he loved it. It forged his thinking, making it ampler and nobler, more ambitious in wonderful ways.

This brings to mind the example of William Shakespeare, the greatest English poet to ever live. In The Mysterious William Shakespeare, Charlton Ogburn quoted Hermann Sinsheimer writing this glowing description of the masterful bard: “There was not room enough for him in the island of Britain. He had to roam far and wide in order to keep his genius supplied with raw material. Like Drake and Raleigh, he discovered and held as booty the material which set his imagination on fire. The fact that, except for The Merry Wives of Windsor, he did not set any contemporary plays on English soil finds its ultimate explanation in the mission of a national poet to enrich from outside sources from every corner of space and time, a nation that is struggling into her proper uninsular shape. Between the lines and between the characters one may read the legend: Our island is too small; our kingdom is the world! Shakespeare was, in the realm of poetry, one of the founders of British ‘Imperialism.’”

What marvelous insight! Do you think Shakespeare would have been so great had he not been born into that birthright nation where the very throne of David was? He didn’t understand what he should have about that throne, and I don’t believe he was kneeling and thanking God for all the blessings and all the opportunities God gave him in that empire. Yet he had them, and it was all because of Abraham’s obedience. Look what you can do with prosperity and what kind of a success you can have!

And now we have the very throne of God in this Church! And we are going to be kings and priests in the God Family Empire! We need to be thinking like Shakespeare, where a single country is too small for us. God wants us to think “beyond the borders of Israel.” That is the way God thinks. Our Empire is the whole world and beyond!

Consider these inspiring words by Emmert: “A coherent, elevated view of empire emerges from Churchill’s own writings and speeches …. In his opposition to both little Englanders and to unbridled imperialists, he defended what he viewed as a modern, essentially political, understanding of empire. Contrary to current critics of imperialism, Churchill argued that properly constituted, imperial rule was civilizing in that it improved both rulers and ruled, preparing the ruled for self-government, and cultivating the moral and political excellence of the rulers.”

This is infinitely truer of the perfect Imperial rule of the God Family!

God’s Church is the Kingdom of God in waiting. It is the nation that will be born in a day when Jesus Christ returns to rule all nations (Isaiah 66:8). It is the God Family Empire in embryo!

God has a mind and ambition that we can hardly fathom! He really wants to build this Earth and make it beautiful and happy and joyful. And then He wants to take that out into the universe!

We truly cannot grasp the mind of our Father and Husband, but we must keep building those minds in ourselves. We have weaknesses and faults. But we cannot retreat into small thinking, desiring to just be left alone and to have a quiet and peaceful life. We must foster imperial ambition! Get tuned into this Empire, and it will have a monumental impact on our success as individuals, as families, as a Church, and as a Work!

Build your love and passion for the God Family Empire!