In Hebrews 5:12, the Apostle Paul corrected Church members for having to be taught basic truths again when they should be the ones teaching. They didn’t comprehend deeply that they were being prepared to help rule the world with Jesus Christ.
This is a prophecy for today. Ninety-five percent of God’s people have turned away from God and from their calling as teachers. That is an ugly reality.
“Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection …” (Hebrews 6:1). He is talking about perfection. That is our goal.
God’s Church members, Paul wrote, “have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy [Spirit], And have tasted the good word of God …” (verses 4-5). What a wonderful gift the Holy Spirit is! It is in our members and with our young people and those unbaptized. It is a power that God uses to work in your life.
Paul was trying to make people realize what was at stake. He was blunt: If you keep being dull and fail to learn to teach the world, do you realize what will happen? If you don’t change, then this is your end: “But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned” (verse 8). Someone who turns his back on his calling will not receive eternal life. These are the stakes!
“That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us” (verse 18). That is surely one of the Bible’s most inspiring verses. God has set an awesome hope before us—but we must lay hold on it! If you don’t, you will tend to go around beaten down or unhappy. With this hope and this vision in your mind, you will have a wonderful life.
God wants you filled with hope! This hope stabilizes your life, like the anchor of a ship. To prevent a ship from drifting, you drop an anchor to secure it. Without this hope, you will drift. Some 95 percent of God’s people have done just that! We must not let that happen to us.
In an April 29, 1963, co-worker letter, Herbert W. Armstrong, writing about the true gospel of God, the soon-coming Kingdom of God, wrote: “It sounds incredible—almost unbelievable, I know—but it’s true!” What a wonderful statement! God wants to give us everything! That is something we must not take lightly or let go of. Get that in your mind, and it will be an anchor. You will remain stable and won’t let yourself drift away.
God’s Soldiers
In an epistle to Timothy, Paul again emphasized the importance of teaching: “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:1-2). We must learn to teach and share this wonderful message God has given us. Teachers are needed, and they will play a big role in the future.
Here, though, Paul adds another dimension to this picture: “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (verse 3).
God’s people are in a spiritual war. We experience some hardness and tough times. But we need to be good soldiers! Not just any kind of soldier—God wants good soldiers!
Not every soldier is winning victories. In fact, 95 percent of God’s people—people we loved and still love—are not where they ought to be; they have lost that war so far, and 50 percent of them will never come back. That is the worst tragedy imaginable.
“No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier” (verse 4). Who chose you to be a soldier? Christ did! And He wants you to follow His example, fight valiantly and conquer spiritually (1 Peter 2:21). If you follow Him step by step, you will win many victories.
It is imperative that those of us in God’s faithful remnant are winning spiritual victories today. We must be spiritual soldiers who win victories!
Failed Generals
During the United States Civil War (1861–1864), the Union Army was led by a lot of poor generals. Though they had superior numbers and greater resources than the Confederates, they simply didn’t win the victories they should have.
You could argue all but two of Abraham Lincoln’s generals were not great. Lincoln couldn’t find anybody who would go out and gain a victory. He didn’t just want generals who fought. He said, Give me victories!
T. Harry Williams’s Lincoln and His Generals is a good book about leadership. Williams explains how Lincoln was the main source of the victory in the Civil War. Though he had little prior experience with war, he did have something special: He had a grand strategy. From the beginning of the war he had that, and when it was finally implemented, it did win the war!
Lincoln’s strategy was quite simple: He wanted to move from the north down the Mississippi River and down the Atlantic coast, squeezing the Confederates in the middle. That is ultimately how the Civil War was won. Yet for years the war dragged on, and his generals would not implement that strategy. One general after another had to be relieved of his command.
Those Union generals had fought only small battles before. Then suddenly they found themselves in this great war, killing their own countrymen. They weren’t experienced in that, and they didn’t know how to win! On top of that, they paid little attention to Lincoln.
For three years, Williams wrote, Lincoln asked for “decision, action, fighting, victory”—and his generals “replied with indecision, inaction, delay, excuses. He became oppressed by the spectacle, so familiar in war, of generals who were superb in preparing for battle but who shrank from seeking its awful decision.”
Lincoln pleaded with his generals: Give mevictories!We are at war!We either win—or we are going to lose! The reality of warfare is that you must defeat the enemy—or you have a bloody stalemate, or you lose. Some 750,000 men died in that war!
Finally Lincoln found the man he could depend on: Ulysses S. Grant.
Total War
The North needed to implement what Williams called “total war”: Put everything out in the field and send it south! It was a marvelous strategy. When General Grant was given control, he understood exactly what Lincoln wanted. He implemented that strategy, and it won the war pretty quickly!
We need to think about “total war.” When Herbert W. Armstrong wrote Mystery of the Ages, he had a “total war” approach toward distributing that message. He wanted to reach “the largest audience possible”! Mystery of the Ages was the focus, and Mr. Armstrong looked for every conceivable means for dispensing it—“total war.”
Mr. Armstrong didn’t complete that job before he died, so we continue that effort. We need to keep improving in that. We must realize we are in a total war scenario. We must give everything we have to this cause! Such passion for God’s Work will benefit your life in wonderful ways.
Amos 7:10 prophesies of a time when “the land is not able to bear all his words.” That will require doing everything possible to get God’s words out there! That is total war!
We are in active warfare against Satan the devil. Every one of God’s people—even the young people—are targets. We must overcome (Revelation 3:21). If we do not, then we lose. Victory kept eluding the Union generals—but Christ is showing us how to win. God loves every one of His people. He wants every one of us to win victories, spiritual victories! We must have a goal; we must have a passion; we must have a grand strategy. Anyone who does not will not win this war.
I believe God placed Abraham Lincoln in that role. Nobody else could have done what he did. So often there is only one man—but it’s amazing what one person can do if he is out there with God’s power behind him!
God gives you power. His people have the Holy Spirit of God, and we even possess the very throne of David! God is training you and giving you authority to go out and teach the whole world about His way of life. This world truly does need leaders!
To win victories and fulfill that calling, we must have a grand strategy. Here are four points that you could call our “grand strategy.”
1. God is re-creating Himself in man.
That is an almost unbelievable statement, but it is true! This is why we are here. If you really understood it fully, you might come close to fainting!
God tells us, If you will come out of this world and wage total warfare in God’s Work, distributing this message to this world and overcoming Satan the devil—then you are going to be a God being forever! That is a cause and a reward worth fighting for! Keep that reality in your mind, and it will make you a tough Christian soldier.
We need to be all in, excited and passionate about God’s Work. We need to live by Lincoln’s words, Give me victory!
How many people will give themselves to God today? Not many—in fact, just the lowly. But we must not stay in that lowly category. God is preparing us for greatness—to rule the world and share the throne of Jesus Christ. Each member is precious to God. Even our young people are being trained for that exalted future! He has you here because He wants you to help lead the whole world.
Read Malachi 4:5-6: This is about God building a Family! He tells fathers to promote and live this vision, or they will have to face Him! He wants fathers (and mothers) to turn their hearts to their children, and children to their parents.
We are God’s Family. We are here to learn to give. Develop your own grand strategy where you set your heart to giving to this Work as much as possible. If everybody is doing that, then great things will happen!
God loves a giving attitude. Years ago a young man attending a singles’ event told me, I really hope they have something to give us. That didn’t sound right to me. Sure enough, he came back disappointed; it didn’t meet his expectations. He went on to attend a couple more but was never satisfied. Why? Because he was going there to get.
We will not achieve victories in God’s way by getting! We have to give and serve and love. We are God’s Family, totally different from anybody else on Earth! We are thankful to God for that, because it’s all His doing, not ours.
2. We must overcome the spirit of fear.
Abraham Lincoln thought George McClellan would be the supreme general. McClellan had enjoyed success early in his career, but it was in minor battles and in peacetime. And McClellan had little respect for Lincoln. Where will that kind of an attitude get you?
McClellan was a great organizer. He knew how to train soldiers. But whenever he was about to go into battle, something happened to him. He became nervous, afraid and fearful. He was slow and timid. He could never bring himself to go on the offensive. McClellan had talent, but it wasn’t to be a general. McClellan thought he would be the supreme general, and he even had presidential aspirations—but he never gave Lincoln a victory! He drove Lincoln crazy.
We all have to face and overcome fear. That takes time—I can attest to that. Sometimes a really deep-seated problem can require a lot of time to overcome. But we are in a war, and we must overcome!
You must be bold and you must be aggressive if you are going to lead the world. That is what God is training us for and why He sets such high goals for us.
Almost every time McClellan would get ready for a battle, he would begin to magnify the size of the enemy army in his mind, then insist that he needed reinforcements. Actually, the enemy was far smaller than he thought—even only half as large! But in his fear, he inflated the threat. McClellan grew nervous and oppressed, and he simply couldn’t attack like he should. He finally had to be demoted.
We must not be cautious and fearful in warfare. God will make you successful if you will just heed Him and let Him lead you in the battle.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands” (2 Timothy 1:6). We must stir up the gift that is within us. Even the unbaptized young people in God’s Church have the Spirit with them. The members have the Spirit in them, and our youth are working toward that. To get there, they need to stir up the gift that is with them!
What happens when you stir up the gift of God? You will make changes that only the Holy Spirit can make. There is real power in that Spirit, and you have access to it! But the Spirit is not going to push you or pull you or force you. It doesn’t work that way. You have to do the stirring up.
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (verse 7). The spirit of fear doesn’t come from God—it comes from Satan, your own human nature or the world. God wants you to have a real, godly aggressiveness in your life!
That Spirit is also a spirit of love. What does love do? “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear …” (1 John 4:18). There is no fear in God’s love. Grow in this love, and that will cast out your fears. You begin to build faith, you become more relaxed as you grow in faith, and blessings flow. That is a wonderful way to live!
God’s Spirit is also the spirit of a sound mind. Our world faces many problems, but when commentators discuss solutions, they are not of a sound mind! Some of them are insane! What kind of future awaits our world with such thinking?
The leaders of God’s future world are not given to the spirit of fear. Those who will lead in the future have the spirit of power. God gives us a sound mind and a mind filled with love.
You must overcome the spirit of fear. You can do that. You are here to win victories.
3. In you dwells no good thing.
That may sound strange. But truly, the only good thing in you is God’s Holy Spirit. Do you understand that?
Christ said, “I can of mine own self do nothing …” (John 5:30). If you look into yourself honestly, you recognize the same thing.
The Apostle Paul wrote an illuminating passage in Romans 7 about the challenges of spiritual conversion. “If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good” (verse 16). He is saying, I’m not good—the law is.
“Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing …” (verses 17-18). That is true of all of us! If you try to do things just with your own natural ability, you will not achieve anything spiritually.
Paul is describing a war he was fighting. He had spent his life killing Christians! So much sin had built up in his life. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (verse 24). There is only evil in men. Our human nature is Satan’s nature!
Paul realized that in man “is no good thing.” He needed God to change that. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord …” (verse 25). Christ is going to change all that and show you how to attain spiritual victories! Paul thanked God for that.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:1). We walk after the Spirit. That is what is good: the Spirit of God.
“Because the carnal [natural] mind is enmity [hostile] against God …” (verse 7). That is the normal state of man. We all have sin from being in Satan’s world that we must purge. “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (verse 8). In you is no good thing. It takes the Spirit working in you to please God.
“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you …” (verse 9). Before baptism, that Spirit can be with you. Still, the Spirit has to lead you if you want to have good in you.
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (verse 14). Are you led by the Holy Spirit? Again, it will not push you. You have to do the pushing and the stirring yourself, and then voluntarily submit to what God leads you to do.
Our young people have that Spirit with them and are working toward receiving the indwelling Spirit of God. After baptism, when hands are laid on you by God’s faithful ministers, then God will give you the Spirit in you, and you will have more power than ever before! You can overcome Satan the devil at a higher level.
When Jesus—the Son of God in the flesh— was on Earth, He spoke to thousands upon thousands of people. Consider the 5,000 to whom He fed the fish and the loaves. He said those people only came to have their bellies filled (John 6:26). After He was crucified, it turned out only 120 people were converted by the ministry of Jesus Christ—the Son of God! (Acts 1:15). That is a pitifully small number!
God is working with more people than that today, and He certainly worked with more during the time of Mr. Armstrong. We have people to get the message out. But from those people, we need commitment to total war! Everybody must work together to get this message out and do the Work of God. That is the reason God has called us today.
4. Partial victory is not enough.
Often, Lincoln’s generals achieved only partial victory but claimed complete victory.
Gen. George Meade “won” the battle at Gettysburg. He had delivered a defeat such as Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had never experienced. “Lee was so badly beaten that he had to get out of Gettysburg or lose everything,” Williams wrote. Lee hasted to evacuate his army from Gettysburg, but he was trapped by the Potomac at its flood. Had Meade followed him and destroyed his army, that would have ended the war shortly. That was what Meade needed to do to win!
Instead, Meade was content to let Lee escape. Lee even had time to build a bridge to cross the swollen river! He had all the time he needed because Meade wouldn’t follow him. “Meade fought Gettysburg with great tactical skill. … Nevertheless, he was content to fight a completely defensive battle. He showed no aggressive spirit” (ibid).
“He felt that he had something great by holding his ground and forcing Lee out of Pennsylvania,” Williams wrote. “The day after the fighting stopped he issued an order to his troops in which he congratulated them for having ‘baffled’ an enemy army of superior numbers. But our task is not yet accomplished, he said; we have to ‘drive from our soil every vestige of the presence of the invader.’”
When Lincoln first heard about Gettysburg, he was jubilant! But then he read Meade’s congratulatory order. “When he came to the sentence about driving the invader from ‘our’ soil, his hands dropped to his knees and in an anguished tone he said: ‘Drive the invader from our soil! … Is that all?’” (emphasis mine).
Lincoln knew the only way to win the war was to destroy General Lee! Lee meant everything for the South! He had a formidable reputation. But Meade wouldn’t pursue him; I believe he was afraid of him. Meade feared that if he went on the attack, he would suffer the same fate that Lee had. “His defensive victory of Gettysburg ruined him as an offensive general,” Williams wrote. He wasn’t an offensive warrior. He settled for a partial victory.
Had Meade finished the job at that time, it would have been the beginning of the end of the Civil War. But because of that failure, the war continued two more years. There are real consequences for such mistakes!
It is not enough to be on defense in warfare! To really overcome Satan and win the battle God has given us, we must be on offense. We must be aggressive! You have to attack Satan’s way of life and Satan’s message. You have to promote and back and support God’s message with all the force possible! How much do you love getting that message out there? God is challenging all of us.
After Meade’s failure, President Lincoln told his secretary in exasperation, “We had them within our grasp. We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours.” It practically made him sick!
He composed a letter to Meade that he never sent. “Most probably he wrote the document to release his own tortured feelings on paper,” Williams wrote. “Whatever the reasons, it was an excellent essay in military art; and it demonstrated that Lincoln appreciated a strategic principle that Meade and many generals seemed never to have heard of: that the destruction of the enemy armies was the primary objective of the Union armies.” He wrote to Meade, “Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.”
This was agonizing for Lincoln! He told the secretary of the Navy, “It is the same old story of the Army of the Potomac. Imbecility, inefficiency—don’t want to do …. Oh, it is terrible, terrible, this weakness, this indifference of our Potomac generals ….” When asked why he didn’t remove Meade, Lincoln replied, “What can I do with such generals as we have? Who among them is any better than Meade?” He had not yet realized just how capable General Grant was to make him supreme general.
We are in a war, and the stakes are incredibly high: eternity with God or dying forever. God is obviously going to expect us to give Him victories. Give me victories! He says. If you don’t, then you can’t help me rule the world! God’s people today must have many spiritual victories.
Consider this scripture deeply: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). It doesn’t say, “only if you’re converted.” You just resist the devil—even you young people, on your level—and he will flee from you! That is a promise. Submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and God will look after you.
You must resist Satan. If you are not obeying God or close enough to Him, then Satan is going to hang around. And the time will come when he is knocking on your door. That is the way he is. We must learn how to deal with Satan and cause him to flee! If you are obeying God, you can do that whether you are converted or not.
“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up” (verses 8-10). Again, this isn’t just for the converted, but everyone who is obeying God. Don’t run around beaten down and discouraged. God says, Do these things like I tell you, and I will lift you up! If you know God, you know He will lift you up. He does it all the time for us!
Follow this formula and you will be developing the very character of God, and you will be a leader, preparing to sit on David’s throne with Christ! Many of our young people will be converted when Christ gets here. They will be on that throne, ruling the world! That is almost unbelievable, but it is true!
Lincoln’s General
“Shiloh was the first great bloody battle of the war,” Williams wrote. Though it was a Union victory under General Grant, it was costly. “The list of Union killed and wounded was long, and there were charges that Grant, by his incompetence or neglect or drunkenness, was responsible for the heavy losses.” Lincoln had the accusations investigated, and in the end, he was satisfied with Grant’s performance. When one adviser recommended Grant be removed, Lincoln listened, then finally said, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”
Lincoln stuck with Grant, and over time came to see not only that Grant was a fighter—but that he achieved victories! Lincoln realized that he had the skill to be the supreme commander. And Grant was humble enough to yield himself to Lincoln’s strategic thinking; he understood Lincoln’s grand strategy. As a result, they both thought and fought the same way. When Grant began implementing Lincoln’s strategy, the Union started winning and winning. He was a wonderful man and a great general who was willing to submit himself to a great president, the greatest perhaps America has ever had.
After Grant conquered Vicksburg, the president told one officer why he liked Grant: “He doesn’t worry and bother me. He isn’t shrieking for reinforcements all the time. He takes what troops we can safely give him … and does the best he can with what he has got.” With that victory, Lincoln said: “Why, Grant is my man, and I am his the rest of the war.” Lincoln finally had his man.
We need to be like Grant. Not “shrieking for reinforcements” or always finding things to complain about, but simply doing the best we can with what God gives us. We need to go out and give God spiritual victories! That will make you happy, joyful and successful in every way.
Williams really shows Lincoln’s genius as a war leader. Lincoln managed to be the strategist all the way through.
Grant wrote to him close to the end, “Should my success be less than I desire, I expect the least I can say is, the fault is not with you.” If I don’t win this battle, it’s my fault. I’m going to bring you victories or I’m to blame! How could Lincoln not love this man?
Of all Lincoln’s generals, Grant was practically the only one willing to take full responsibility, punch through difficulties, take the fight to the enemy, and follow Lincoln’s grand strategy.
We too must know our grand strategy. If we have that grand strategy in our minds, along with the hope that God gives us, then we are going to win victories! It will change your life and make it much more wonderful, exciting, successful and joyful. Yes, we all have trials because we have to grow. We all have human nature we need to purge and sin we need to overcome. But God is helping us do that. He is teaching and correcting us.
Consider what God is doing in your life! He is working with each one of you. He is preparing those in His Church to be teachers and leaders. God’s whole plan is to make leaders who will share the very throne and power of Jesus Christ. You will never have another opportunity like this. Can you imagine yourself on that throne? As Mr. Armstrong said, it’s almost unbelievable, but it’s true!
The End
I thought the end of Williams’s book was very powerful.
The Union finally achieved a series of victories under Grant, William T. Sherman, George Thomas and Philip Sheridan. Lee ran out of places to run.
“Sheridan, smashing victoriously at the Confederates, telegraphed Grant: ‘If the thing be pressed I think Lee will surrender,’” Williams wrote. “Grant sent Sheridan’s dispatch to Lincoln. The president telegraphed Grant: ‘Let the thing be pressed.’ It was his last important order and like most of the orders, a good one.
“On April 8, a Saturday, Lincoln boarded the River Queen and started home. As the ship swung out from the pier, Lincoln stood a long time looking back at the land. He may have been thinking of the weary years of defeat—of McClellan, Burnside, Hooker—or of the hour of victory and Grant and Sherman.”
Williams then concluded the book with this sentence: “That day John Wilkes Booth registered at the National Hotel in Washington.”