In his last Pentecost sermon, given May 26, 1985, Herbert W. Armstrong spoke on “Why the Firstfruits?” In it, he said something that haunted me from that day forward. He said, “There is a reason why we are the firstfruits. And I wish I could drive that home, but I fear that most of you just don’t get it” (emphasis mine).
He said, “I perceive that even our ministers, when they preach, take it for granted that the whole goal is to get us into the Kingdom of God; and that’s all we are called for now. … Why? Why are we the firstfruits? I am going to try to make it plain this afternoon, and still I think you won’t get it.” He feared that the firstfruits would not get what God was trying to teach them.
Mr. Armstrong said that because he loved those people. Who is it that loves you most: the person who only says nice things—or the person who would tell you the brutal truth?
That message was a prophecy about the Laodicean era. We now know what happened: God’s people did not understand the purpose of their calling, and God’s Church went into spiritual decline. The results were devastating.
We need to truly get that message—more deeply than we ever have. Because if we don’t, we have a bleak future.
God Gave the Law
Anciently, the feast of firstfruits was the culmination of the spring harvest. Physically, Israelite farmers worked hard to grow and produce a crop for that harvest.
We are God’s spring harvest, and we must grow and produce fruit. Through that growth, we prepare to bring in the great fall harvest—when God will open up His Family to billions upon billions of people. We are here to become teachers for God for all those people!
That is what the day of Pentecost is all about. That is really worth celebrating!
Mr. Armstrong was trying to help people understand that God has not called us simply to get us saved. He has called us to help save the world!
Anciently, God gave the Ten Commandments on the Day of Pentecost. “And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:1-3).
What does that have to do with the firstfruits? What does it have to do with you today? Everything.
When God gave the law, the scene was dramatic, with thunderings and lightnings and the trumpet blast. It was as though the Israelites were looking into a blinding furnace—and they stood back and said, Let Moses speak to us! We don’t want to face that God! (verses 18-19).
Anyone who would push aside the law of God has a controversy with this God! Not with Herbert W. Armstrong or any human being. If you break that law, it is this God—the one who came to the Israelites like a hundred-megaton H-bomb—you will have to reckon with!
And this is the God who directs this Church today!
There has always been a movement to push God aside, to make Him smaller and soften Him into something manageable, to take the edge off who He really is. But we have the privilege of leading the world into coming to know this God—the true God!
The Word and God
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). These two God Beings have been together for eternity. They got along perfectly. They had peace for eternity, no fights or arguments. Imagine! Is that not what the world needs now? That is the kind of peace God has called you and me to help Him bring to this world.
“The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (verses 2-3). God made all things—angels, men and everything else. The great God of Exodus 20 is our Creator.
Imagine the day when God and the Word decided to re-create themselves. That was a fantastical, unbelievable idea!
They started by creating the angels. They gave the angels a tremendous opportunity. God said to Lucifer, “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering …. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee” (Ezekiel 28:13-15). This being was given a throne. He was perfect as created.
Everything was going beautifully for perhaps millions of years. The angels were singing for joy when they were obeying God.
Then, suddenly, iniquity entered. Things began to go wrong because of sin! It took out a third of the angels, and now they have only darkness facing them forever! God had given Lucifer a throne. The angels had a future that stretched out into the universe before them—and they wrecked it because of sin. They lost their glorious inheritance.
How could Lucifer have such gall as to question God? And how can people today take His words so lightly? Do they know and understand the mighty God of Exodus 20? The created ought not to talk back to the Creator. Who is any one of us to question God?
That rebellion brought Earth and the universe to a state of tohu and bohu. “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. …” (Genesis 1:2). Satan and the demons had made a ruin of it.
Do you realize sin is that destructive? Do you really believe it can bog down your life and keep it from moving ahead? All those angels who turned away should have learned that lesson. God is showing us that lesson so we do not have to learn it the hard way.
In the World Tomorrow, we will have to teach people about the terrible effects of sin. We will warn them passionately not to get involved in iniquity, or lawlessness.
Each of us must ask ourself: Do I treat sin seriously enough? Or do I have some problems I have decided I will just live with? God cannot have that attitude in His firstfruits.
Christ Is Creating Firstfruits
After the angels failed, God then said, Let us make man in our image. Let us re-create and reproduce ourselves! (Genesis 1:26). What a plan! And He started again right here on Earth.
What an opportunity God is giving us!
Probably the hardest thing for us to do, our greatest challenge, is to keep this concept in our mind: We are going to be God beings! Satan wants to destroy that, but it is the truth. God is re-creating Himself, and we are going to be God beings! Let’s not lose that truth! Anything that waters it down even a little bit is satanic! God doesn’t take it lightly.
Satan and the demons rebelled, and man was supposed to correct the problem. Sadly, he rebelled too. When Adam and Eve sinned and were expelled from the garden, mankind in general was cut off from God. He has called only a very few throughout human history—His firstfruits.
Satan has palmed off a great lie on the world: that Christ is trying to save the world now. He is not.
What Christ is doing—with all His being, working so hard—is creating firstfruits. He is trying to get the firstfruits ready, and then He is going to teach the law to this world through those firstfruits. He is not trying to save the world now—He is not even attempting that. But Satan would love to have us believe that He is.
This is why it is unacceptable for the firstfruits to get wrapped up in themselves—to just focus on getting saved or making it into the Kingdom. God did not call us for that. If the firstfruits become oblivious to the great fall harvest, then they do not understand their calling. They do not know why they exist!
“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). People are perishing spiritually. They got wrapped up in themselves, and they did not love God’s truth.
In the firstfruits, God is building a group of people who love His truth so much they will give up their lives for it if they have to. We are going to teach the whole world how to really love God’s truth!
God sends strong delusion to His people who do not love the truth (verse 11). He wants to know who loves Him. If you are going to get married, you want to know you are loved! So God says, First of all, I want to know who loves me. Think seriously about that. It is so easy to drift gradually away from God’s truth. God does not take that lightly. If we love God, we will not take it lightly either.
The Reward of Obedience
Jesus Christ told His disciples, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love” (John 15:8-9).
“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (verse 10). This is love: keeping the commandments of God.
Christ was totally committed to God. He did not come to Earth to promote His own philosophy; He came to please the Father. He said, I and my Father are one. My Father is greater than I. He came to talk about His Father, not to turn anyone away from what His Father taught. He loved the Father’s government.
We must be people who love God’s government. If we are to share the throne with Jesus Christ, we must be obedient the way He was.
“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (verse 11). Christ was full of joy and happiness. He showed us how to have full joy. This is what we are here to do. This is a fun-filled experience—and I mean that! Not that every day is easy. It is not a rose garden. But there is real excitement in obeying God! There is real joy in doing what God has called you to do!
We have been called out as God’s firstfruits to learn to teach others how to be full of joy. Now we must learn to be full of joy ourselves. I hope your life is brimful and running over with joy, because that is what you are going to teach people in the World Tomorrow.
We are going to help people see how their choices were ruining their lives. We’re going to teach them the law of God and give them practical instruction on how to make life work.
Hold Fast Your Crown
Jesus Christ says to us in the Laodicean era: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Revelation 3:21). Can you believe that? We can overcome as Christ did! We have the same Spirit.
This is a reward to the Philadelphians—to those who come out of the Laodicean era and hold fast.
There are different levels of firstfruits, just as there are Christians who grow 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold (Mark 4:8). God says the sky is the limit! He will even share His own throne with you, and you will be right there helping Him rule this Earth in a spectacular way! If you want it, it is yours!
“Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Revelation 3:11). Let no man take your crown. This is the greatest crown Christ has to offer! Some people say, I will just follow the Church and whatever they do. But God holds you responsible too. This is an individual matter. Satan is working to take that crown away, so if you want it, you must hang on to it. Remember what happened to a third of the angels! We certainly do not want to lose ours.
You are here to be a king and priest! (Revelation 5:10). God is going to give you that office for all eternity! How can we get ho-hum about such a dazzling reward? That is why Mr. Armstrong felt people did not get it. Some would say, Well, I just want to make it to God’s Kingdom. If I can be a doorkeeper or something like that, that is good enough for me. Mr. Armstrong responded, If you see no further than that, you won’t be there!
Saviors on Mount Zion
“And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s” (Obadiah 21).
Firstfruits will either be saviors, or they won’t be anything!
What does that mean, that we will be “saviors”—co-saviors with our Husband, Jesus Christ, the ultimate Savior?
Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon says judge in the Hebrew means those who “defend anyone’s cause, especially that of the poor and oppressed.” If we see somebody poor and oppressed in the World Tomorrow, we will get upset and will stop it! We are saviors, and we will not tolerate oppression and abuse. We are going to judge the world and defend the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
That word can also mean one who delivers from the power of his enemies. Another definition is “to condemn, to punish the guilty.” You are preparing for a position where you will sometimes have to condemn or punish the guilty! When anyone turns away from God, when they do anything God would be against, you are going to stop it because you are a savior. Can you do that? Are you ready?
Another definition of judge is “to rule, to govern.” You are going to be ruling and governing, leading and defending people. It can also mean “to litigate.” You are going to be like a Philadelphia lawyer, defending the cause of the person who is right and just, the person who will stick with God no matter what. The whole world will begin to hear: This is the way, walk ye in it.
Strong’s Concordance says saviors deliver people from distress. Do you know how to do that? People are in distress; something is not right in their life—usually some sin. Could you remove that distress as a judge and as a savior? Can you save them from suffering, from discouragement, from mental agony? Yes, you can!
Savior also means “to set free” (Gesenius’ Lexicon). If you are a savior, you know how to set someone free. It means to get a victory. You are not just living with your problems—you are victorious over them. You know how to overcome. And you can sit down and counsel with a person and tell him how to use God’s Holy Spirit and conquer his problems. You can sit down and judge. You can rule and govern. You can take God’s Word and say, If you will just obey this, your life is going to work. It doesn’t matter if everyone forsakes you—this will work. Because it is God’s law and truth!
What a blessing and an honor to be preparing now to be saviors! I hope you realize how precious the firstfruits are to God!
Your Priestly Calling
God ordained Jesus Christ “a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 5:6). That is the priestly order that God is placing His firstfruits into as well! That is what Revelation 3:21 is about. That is a truly exalted calling!
“For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity” (Hebrews 5:1-2). If a man is a self-righteous know-it-all who cannot realize that other people have problems, he cannot serve God. Jesus Christ is not that way.
In the World Tomorrow, we are going to be dealing with a lot of very ignorant people, and we will need a great deal of compassion. It would be easy to think, I do not have time for this—these people are a mess! But God’s priests know that they themselves had all kinds of problems—and Christ got them through and helped them conquer those problems! So they say, Come, sit down. Let’s talk. I can help you.
You need to be developing this capacity right now! You need to prepare to sit down with people and love them and want to help them and serve them. Whatever their status today, their potential is to become God!
No one can take to himself the honor of becoming a priest of God (verse 4). God must do it. He has to put us where we belong.
Verses 9-10 say Christ is “the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.” God wants every firstfruit up there at that same priestly rank! But if you try to exalt yourself, or get arrogant, you’ll never be there.
In verse 11, Paul stopped himself and basically told the members, “Most of you just don’t get it!” This is a prophecy of the Laodiceans, who lost the understanding of their calling. “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat” (Hebrews 5:12). Paul was correcting them for having to be taught basic truths again when they should be the ones teaching!
Are you ready to be a teacher? It’s not an easy calling! You need to be able to sit down with people and teach them how to think like God! Can you do that? You have to know this Bible.
“Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection …” (Hebrews 6:1). Matthew 5:48 says we are to become perfect like God.
Can you really help people become perfect as God is perfect? That is not easy! But if you can do that for people, you are truly a great priest.
The World Is Groaning
This world desperately needs teachers. People are truly ignorant about how to build happy marriages and rear stable, productive children. People are losing themselves in meaningless, materialistic pursuits. They don’t know how to build strong relationships, to make peace with fellow man, or to live upright, moral lives in pursuit of godly goals. They are vulnerable to all kinds of satanic attacks, through widespread wrong use of technology and entertainment, junk food, drugs and other substances. Immorality and perversion are common. Corruption plagues our businesses and politics, and our nations are pursuing policies that are leading to conflict and war!
This is the world we live in. We are accelerating toward a grand-smash climax of destruction that will end this age of man!
The creation is groaning right now. “For the creature [creation] was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the [creation] itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). Whose “glorious liberty” is this about? The children of God—the firstfruits! We are going to help deliver creation from the bondage of corruption!
“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” like a woman delivering a baby (verse 22). “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (verse 23). We have the firstfruits of the Spirit. It is going to take the Spirit if we are going to be the firstfruits.
We are the pioneers. We are the first ones after Jesus Christ to use the power of the Spirit of God and develop the very character of God so we can help Him solve the problems of the world! We have glorious liberty that we want to give the world!
How deeply do you recognize and want to relieve the groaning misery of this world? If we cannot see that God has called us to solve all those problems, then we might as well be Protestants! We can solve those problems with the power of God’s Holy Spirit. If it works in your life, it will work in the lives of people in New York City, in Los Angeles, in every place on Earth! Thank God it will work. And we can remove that gigantic groan from this planet.
“For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” (verse 24). If you have no hope, you are miserable. That is what is wrong with this world: It is hopeless. And I can understand why: It is falling apart! Those who are not hopeless should be—and they would be if they were paying attention! But we have the true hope of God—and we are going to save them by hope.
We must relate to those suffering people. Remember Jesus Christ, our High Priest. He can sit down with the ignorant, with the poor, with someone who has never had a day’s education, who might barely even look human! But He wants to give them what God has for them. He is going to give them hope and help them see how to attain eternal life.
Christ is preparing us to help Him reach and love and educate all those people. There is no hope without Christ and without the firstfruits.
There are soon to be people by the billions whom you will have to sit down with and teach. You can say, Hey, I have gone through that. I know what you are talking about. I have lived it. I know exactly what you are saying. One by one, people will begin to be healed—because those priests are going to sit down with them and say: I was encompassed with infirmity too. Do not be intimidated by me. I am going to show you how God helped me. And I love you.
That kind of love for people is not natural. It is not something any human being can manufacture. It is a miracle from God!
Turn Many to Righteousness
“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (Daniel 12:3).
Some people only think of turning themselves to righteousness. That’s a wonderful thing to do—but it’s only a start. God wants us to turn others—to turn many to righteousness!
Those who do that are the people who will shine with the brightness of the firmament, like the stars forever and ever!
Jesus Christ said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Why? So He could have firstfruits. So He could prepare firstfruits for when He returns. And then they could begin to work and turn billions and billions of people to God and prepare them for the God Family. That is why the Church exists. He built it so we could do this awesome job.
This is the Church age. Nobody else will have a chance to be a firstfruit after Christ returns.
Look at the 12 disciples: Every one of them was called to a different job. Christ has a different job for every one of you. He has something in mind that He wants you to do. And you are going to have to develop your talent and your ability. You are going to have to humble yourself, go through trials, seek God’s will, and come to understand what Christ is doing in your life. That is all part of being a firstfruit.
Walk on High Places
Habakkuk 3:17 prophesies of the horrific time just ahead of us: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls.” These are nuclear winter conditions: the fig tree not blossoming, the vines empty, the flocks cut off. This is a time of grievous suffering!
“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. …” (verses 18-19). That is the kind of attitude God says we can have! Even with those trials, we can have the positive, outgoing, joy-filled attitude of running along like a deer spiritually, walking on high places!
Just before the Great Tribulation, God promises to take His faithful remnant Church to a place of safety. It may take everything we have in the way of faith to trust Him for that. We will have to turn and walk away and trust God to take care of us. We do not know what will be there. How will He feed us? Will it be with water and manna? I am not sure. But it makes no difference—we simply need to trust God!
That is the kind of faith it is going to take for the firstfruits to guide the world in the World Tomorrow. We must be able to tell people: Do not trust yourself. Do not rely on anyone else. Just look to God. No matter how bleak things appear, look to God, and it will always work!
That is the way this Church has always had to operate. We look to God, and because of that, He is going to exalt us to be king-priests forever!
“… His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise” (verse 3). Soon, everyone will be praising God—because you and I are going to teach them. And anytime we find someone getting off track, where he is not praising God and not exalting God, we will steer him right. We are going to fill this Earth with the praise of God—because God deserves to be praised! That is what the firstfruits are for.
“But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him” (Habakkuk 2:20). God is in His temple, and all people will have to listen to Him. In the World Tomorrow, we are going to tell people, God is going to fill this Earth, and you must listen to Him! He is going to teach you and heal you! Here is how to become a member of His Family.
This is what we are about to teach the world. People are going to picture that God of Mount Sinai. They are going to begin to see God as He really is, and they are going to listen to Him.
The whole world is waiting for this future. God has called out His firstfruits to do something about this world’s miseries and to help billions of suffering human beings who do not even know we exist yet.
We have glorious liberty that we are about to share with the world. Hold fast your crown. The whole world is waiting for you!