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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 2, 1981
PAGE 3
We did make the mistake of applying God's spiritual Law as the world
applies man's laws. The average policeman today has to enforce six times as
many specific laws as he is capable of remembering. I am reminded of a
comic strip "There Ought to Be a Law." Every day someone thought up a
reason for making a new specific law to cover some new minor infraction. It
depicted the ridiculousness of the system of man's laws.
Actually, God's spiritual Law is expressed in just one simple four
letter word--"LOVE." We apply that law to given circumstances.
Jesus, for example, "magnified the Law and made it honorable." At Mt.
Sinai He, as YHWH, expanded it into ten points--the first four defining the
PRINCIPLE of love toward God, the last six love toward neighbor. From there
it expands in principle to cover any and every question that may arise.
But when and how did this thing of SIN begin? It all began with the
super archangel, the cherub Lucifer. He was "perfect" in his ways from the
day God created him. Then iniquity (lawlessness) was found in him. His
heart was "lifted up" in VANITY because of his beauty (Ezek. 28:15-17). The
wisdom of his mind was lifted up in VANITY. This violated LOVE in the form
of obedience and submission to God. A spirit of competition entered his
mind. He said, "I will ascend into heaven (God's throne). I will exalt filY
throne above the stars (angels) of God." SELF-exaltation, vanity, jeal
ousy, envy, rebellion against authority, competition, desire to "GET" and
"TAKE" seized his perverted mind.
Sin, spiritually, is self-centeredness, self-exaltation, desire to be
beautiful, vanity, coveting, desire to GET and TAKE, to exalt the self,
jealousy and envy, competition, oft-resulting violence and war, resentment
and rebellion against authority.
These are the PRINCIPLES of spiritual SIN. There is also the matter of
physical sin--transgression of physical laws. Often physical sickness and
disease result from this transgression. While Jesus paid the death penalty
for our spiritual sins by His shed blood, He also paid the penalty of phys
ical transgression of laws that operate in our bodies and minds "by His
stripes." Many do not seem to understand that healing is "forgiveness of
sin"--this physical sin--because Jesus paid that penalty in our stead "by
his stripes."
But the Church, in the 1950's, still GROWING in knowledge as well as in
numbers, ruled on make-up based on specific Scriptural "do's and don'ts"-
as we then interpreted them. Actually we came to the same right ruling. A
very few women argued a bit, but I remember specifically of none who re
belled and left the Church. As near as I could observe our women were happy
to leave their faces as the Master Designer made them.
The Church was being blessed and growing--up to about 1968. For 35
years God had caused it to grow at the phenomenal and unmatched rate of 30%
average increase per year. Then, beginning 1968, Christ the living Head of
the Church, began to send me to capitals of nations all over the world. I
was unable to give day-to-day management at Headquarters. Sin entered the
Pasadena leadership. The Church stopped its phenomenal growth. I had to
deal with sins near the top in 1971 and 1972. In the spring of 1974 a
ministerial rebellion, led to a considerable extent by two top-ranking