YOU were born for an awesome and wonderful purpose! Yet, the wisest and most learned men do not know what it is.
From time immemorial, men have wondered about the purpose of life. Philosophers have pondered it, only to confess total ignorance.
Yet, the priceless knowledge of God's purpose for mankind has been made plain through your study of the Bible with The Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course!
The most astounding truth your studies have revealed is the fact that God is a Family, and that God is reproducing Himself!
Yes, God's stupendous purpose for your life is that you be “born again” as an immortal, spirit member in the universe-ruling Family of God!
Through this course, now drawing to a close, you have also come to understand the meaning of world events. You have learned the solutions to the seemingly unsolvable problems facing the world today! You have learned the way to world peace – the way to freedom from fear and worry, poverty, sickness and unhappiness.
You have also learned the truth about such traditional doctrinal questions as heaven, hell, salvation, law and grace, the Great Tribulation, the rapture, the resurrection, Christ's Second Coming and the Millennium!
Yet, what are you doing with this priceless knowledge?
Finding the place where one can learn God's truth is like finding a gold mine. These lessons of The Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course have revealed “riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom. 11:33).
The world has been blinded to this priceless spiritual knowledge (Rev. 12:9). This simply is not the time for most people to be called by God (John 6:44). God has not yet opened their minds to understand the marvelous truth about His purpose for mankind.
God allows the world to be spiritually blinded (II Cor. 11:13-15). Spiritual blindness covers all nations (Isa. 25:7). But God has begun to remove the blindness from some, including you, through His Church that is preaching Christ's Gospel of the Kingdom of God to the world!
To those of you who have taken this course and whom God is calling, Christ says, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear” (Matt. 13:16).
If you are like thousands of other students, you have been amazed and thrilled by the new truths you've discovered in your Bible. A new “way of life” has been opened up to you as a result of your studies. You have come to understand what it means to be a real Christian.
As the Apostle Paul clearly stated in Romans 12:2, spiritual conversion is a renewing of one's mind. This changing of the mind, with the power of God's Holy Spirit, is the key to a new and successful way of thinking and living.
Most Christians, believe it or not, are not even ready to start on the road to living God's way of life! Are you possibly among them?
One becomes a Christian upon sincere repentance, belief in Jesus Christ and in the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, baptism by immersion, and the receipt of the Holy Spirit after the laying on of hands. At that time God's Spirit enters one's mind and joins with the spirit in man. That is when the person begins to be “converted.” The spiritually begotten mind then begins the process of being changed or renewed spiritually, and godly character begins to be created.
A newly begotten Christian has made a commitment to serve God. He has embarked on a new life of spiritual growth and fulfillment. But this takes time. Time to apply the spiritual knowledge one is learning. Time to practice God's way of life.
But time does not stand still or wait for anyone!
What will you do with the precious knowledge you are learning?
Are you really doing something about this knowledge God is giving you? Or do you think you are too “weak” to change? Do you resist having to change? Does it seem too difficult?
We humans don't like to change. Humans don't like to have to admit that one's religion or one's ways may have been wrong.
Notice this striking description of the human mind in Professor James Harvey Robinson's book The Mind in the Making: “We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas… but our self-esteem which is threatened...
“The little word my is the most important one in human affairs, and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the same force whether it is my dinner, my dog, my house or my faith, my country and my God…
“We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.”
What a true description of the human mind!
Yet, the very key to our future survival is our willingness to repent of our own ways and change our own ideas, customs and beliefs so that they correspond with God's ways and teachings as revealed in the Bible.
We need seriously to count the cost before committing ourselves to living God's way of life (Luke 14:28-30). We must put God first in our lives, everywhere and always (verses 26-27). We must strive to live God's way of outgoing love and concern for others, based on God's commandments.
This is the cost in answering God's calling – in becoming a true Christian. Not one in a thousand people today understands what this means!
It requires a sense of urgency. It requires putting all other pursuits second. It requires forsaking all the false ways of the world and being willing to take whatever consequences come.
Christ will never leave us while we serve Him in fulfilling this special calling (Heb. 13:5-6). Satan will try to discourage us from finishing the job, sometimes through the influence of our loved ones. But Christ will finish the work He has begun in and through us (Phil. 1:6). He is not a quitter. He risked His own eternal life and position in God's Family for all of us personally, and won!
Therefore, you can win!
But first, you must start!
If God is calling you, you will face perhaps the most difficult thing for any human – admitting you have been wrong. This is the beginning of real repentance. You will want to change your life – stop following Satan's way and do what God tells you to do. You will begin to have the power to say no to wrong urges, habits, desires and attitudes.
The spiritually mature Christian must have the ability to discern truth from error. But it is not enough to just hear the truth. One must respond (Rom. 2:13).
Many today are hearing God's truth proclaimed on the World Tomorrow program, in the pages of The Plain Truth, The Good News and The Bible Correspondence Course. But only those who respond, who take action, will be saved!
You have been warned. You have seen the plain truth of God's Word revealed. You have seen for yourself out of your own Bible that the teachings of modern Christianity are false! And you have discovered that God means business!
What are you going to do with this precious, priceless knowledge that God has revealed to you through your diligent study of His revealed Word? The choice is up to you. You are accountable!
