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the serpent does. "And the serpent cast out of his mouth 1Jater as a
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,
flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by
the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her
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mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his
mouth. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war
with the remnant of her seed." The "remnant" is the last segment of
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the church, the Laodicean era. We're getting into the Laodicean
condition but we are not the Laodicean Church!
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But some of the younger ministers began to say "Ah, this idea of church
eras is all a hodge-podge -- Mr. Armstrong is wrong. We have here a
doctrinal committee of intellectuals and so let's study intellectually
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too n�ny instances that was the real object! Well, there isn't any
such cornrnittee any longer and there isn't going to be. God doesn't
reveal his will to intellectual scholars with an intellectual approach
that goes into a matter in little tiny ways.
So Satan went to make war with the remnant that keep the commandments
of God and the testimony of Jesus. The Laodicean Church will be keep
ing the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus or they couldn't
be the Church of God. But they will be lukewarm and asleep. This era
is not here yet.
Let me tell you what I have always said for fifty years. Fifty years
ago I was writing that the message to the seven angels of the seven
churches in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Revelation has a dual interpre
tation and meaning. Number one, it is telling of the seven successive .
eras or stages of time in the 1900-to 2000-year existence of the'church
And number two, it is telling of the spritual condition in the church
during those eras. The account starts out with the Church at Ephesus
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and the predominant situation in the first and second century during
and right after the days of the original Apostles.
Laodicea had what will be the prevailing condition in the final
church era: drowsy or asleep and lukewarm.
And Christ is going to
spue most of them out of His mouth. And I sometimes wonder how many
of us are just not very much on fire for God, brethren. I say that to
your shame, every one of you. I say wake�! I'm not going to say
you're alright and everything is so wonderful and everything is going
fine and flatter you. I'm going to tell you the truth. And sometimes
the truth hurts. And I hope it hurts. I hope it hurts enough that you
wake up and realize it and do something about it. And I hope that you
go home from this service and get down on your knees and ask for the
mercy and the forgiveness of God, and ask Him to come back into your
life. Because that's what you need to do and your eternity may depend
upon it.
Well now, I have said that the spiritual condition of which Laodicea
is a type will dominate at the tail end, but I have also said that all
of those conditions -- all the way from EPhesus up to Laodicea, all
seven -- are present at all times in the church. But now we in the
Philadelphian era have the Laodicean condition. That's what I'm
talking about today, but we're not Laodicea.
We also have the condition of Ephesus -- we have lost our first love,
and it's time to get back to it. Everyone of these conditions are in