Unity & Diversity!

Our planet is like a little pebble, but this is what I read. Our Sun, which is just a meager medium-size. There are stars, suns, that are thousands of times larger.

Thousands of times larger than our Sun. I’m not an astronomer. I’m not scientific at all, but I read this.

Astronomers have created the most complete 3D map of just our local universe, revealing new details about our minuscule place in the cosmos. Here is what their mapping looks like. Well, maybe not.

There it is. There it is. Now, it’s a globe, and this is what the scientists have done.

The universe, as far as we know, is not in the shape of a globe, but for the sake of mapping, for the sake of putting things together somehow, this is a mass of photographs. We’re looking at it through another medium today. If you were to look at it on the internet, it looks different than what you’re seeing there.

In other words, I’m looking at it on my computer here, and it’s lots of little tiny dots, and there’s every color in the rainbow there. Some of the dots are so many in number that it just turns out to be kind of like a mass. One could look at this and think it’s the product.

Maybe it should be hanging in an art collection in some art museum, and there’d be a little sign under it that some would-be artist, propelled by LSD, stuck some paintbrushes in and start flicking it on the wall, and this is what you’ve got. Nay, nay. This is not just a smattering.

What you see is billions, if not trillions, of stars and planets, but they’re there in a system. A system. Isn’t it interesting that we are one of those tiny spots, or maybe we’re so small we don’t even show up, because we’re a planet, so we don’t glow in the dark like an LED light.

There are times when we can’t be seen because our planet is in the dark, but isn’t it something to realize that we are somewhere in that mess, and isn’t it something that as a child somebody at night showed me in the sky, and there was the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. I’ll get to the scripture. Don’t get excited.

I’m coming. I’m coming. I saw the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper, and in all my days, as far as I know, it hasn’t moved.

It’s always there. The North Star is always there. I tell you there’s pattern, but everything is moving, but it’s all moving together.

Now last week, together in that it’s not coming together, it’s actually expanding. So last week I put a mic stand here, and just said this, that the astronomers tell us that the universe is ever-expanding, going out and out and out, getting wider and wider, so that the universe, in other words, looks like a cone, if you would. And so since it’s moving farther and farther out, the astronomers have turned back this way and said, well, let’s go back to where it began, because since it’s ever-expanding, that means it had a beginning.

That means that if we were to call this an arrowhead, there’s a point somewhere. So they start looking for the beginning, because since it’s expanding, it makes sense. There’s there’s a starting point, and they’re so excited because they think they have realized, now they haven’t got there, nobody will ever get there, but it’s obvious there’s a starting point.

And so the question is this, what happened at the starting point, and how did all these suns and moons and planets, by the billions, where did they come from? What was the material that was used to start this? But the word used doesn’t even make sense, because the word used implies a personality. Who strategized this? But of course, the scientist says there’s no, no, no, there was no strategist, and there was no person, there was no identifiable personality there, this is just all happenchance. But nobody can convince a thinking, intelligent individual, nobody can convince me, nobody can convince you, that given enough time and enough chance, this could show up.

Just give it time. You’ll start with something, start with nothing here, leave nothing alone, and eventually this is what you get. Rolex discovered it, and they came up with a watch.

Nobody designed it, it just, they came into the shop one morning and said, whoa, look at that, where’d that come from? It came out of nothing last night. Who worked here last night? Nobody. That’s how foolish the concept is, that the beginning was not a beginning.

Because when you say beginning, you want to know what began, and so they came up with a wording to describe the focal point, the beginning moment, and they call it the Big Bang Theory. Theory. It’s kind of like at the beginning of the universe, what actually happened was somebody tossed a hand grenade.

A hand grenade is designed that when the explosion goes off, every particle of it becomes what’s called shrapnel, and it goes in every direction whatsoever. And so they’re suggesting that the universe started like, this is all shrapnel. The question is, who made the original hand grenade? Where did it all come from? And sweetheart, there is no answer.

It’s nothing, nothing. And yet, what’s so exciting is that there’s two words that describe what you’re looking at. Now this is my idea, I didn’t read this in a book.

This is my idea, and it plays into where I want to go this morning. I want to use two words interchangeably as I go along. One word is unity.

Unity. The other word is diversity. There’s diversity.

Big planets, little planets, suns thousands of times bigger than our sun. You’ve got diversity. This is not a simple chocolate cake that somebody put the ingredients together and put it all together and said, there, you know, this is diversity.

Everything has its own little complement. Every galaxy is, every galaxy is like a snowflake. There are no two alike.

It just goes on and on and on. But you know what? With all of that diversity, complicated diversity, incredibly complicated, like our earth rotates around the sun, and you can set your watch by it. Well, almost.

Your watch is going to be wrong soon because somebody in Ottawa has decided we need to change the clock. But you can pretty well set your watch by the sun. So dependable.

It’s unified. It’s diverse, but it’s also a unity. It’s together.

It’s a diversity. But diversity has plan, strategy, design, unity. And that’s important this morning.

Tell me I haven’t lost you yet. Diversity, many parts, but parts in a unity. I said to April, I ran this by her.

I said, is this going to be confusing on Sunday? And she just kind of, we have a little dog that if you say, you say something to her in the right way, she’ll go. I said, is this confusing? And she’s so kind. She says, no, it makes sense to me.

And that’s good. I said, you and I are diversity, female, male, not by choice. I didn’t decide this morning I’d be a man, and yesterday I wore lipstick.

No, no, no, no. I am a man. I know who I am.

We are diversity, but we live together in harmonious unity every day except Saturdays. This church is diversity, white hairs and colored hairs and no hairs. We are a diversity, but we came together in unity.

As we sang this morning, the voices were diverse. Sopranos, mezzos, that’s not the same thing. Altos, basses, and some of them, some of you were all over the map.

But we were in harmony this morning, and I believe that we sang in unison. We sang in unity with heaven this morning because the Holy Spirit led us. There was diversity, but there was unity.

Where are you going, Dave? The patterns in this universe have been identified and studied forever. The Egyptians, every ancient group, every empire, they studied the stars. There’s something, they would use the word magical, there’s something mysterious, there’s something glorious.

And all peoples of all time have stared at the sky and have said, what is it? Is it telling us something? Remember the magi, the wise men? They studied the stars, they studied the unity, and they noticed the diversity, and suddenly a new star appeared. Well, and they took that as a sign. Saddle up the camels, boys, we’re going on a journey.

And the star moved. Stars don’t move. The star moved, and they followed it until it stopped over Bethlehem.

The stars speak. The stars tell of the glory of God. Of what did this mass consist of before the pivotal moment, when I’m calling the great hand grenade exploded? What is the scientific basis to conclude everything started with a bang, suggesting an explosion? They come up with explosion because, well, the sun is burning, it’s a pile of gas.

Now, our own government doesn’t believe in gas. They say we’re going to end gas, we’re going to end oil, and we’re all going to stay warm with LED lights. Lots of luck with that, Bunky.

But the sun is not going to stop shining. So those gentlemen this morning, with your little solar panel up here, you’re ahead of all of us, because you can gather energy. You are so smart and ahead.

The big bang theory actually does not disturb me, because they are at least saying that we know there was a beginning. We don’t know what was going on a half an hour before the beginning, and we don’t know what kind of products were available to start to create this mass. They’re suggesting that maybe there was almost nothing.

Some scientists on LSD have come up with some silly ideas. Well, maybe there was this little temperature thing that began, and then another scientist says, what raised the temperature? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t got there yet.

And they’re raising the temperature of what? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t got there yet. It’s just a total loss unless you open up the sacred word and you read these words, in the beginning, God.

Do you know what’s a struggle? The struggle for the scientist. This universe is troubling because they cannot figure it out, but they have a greater problem than that, and that is this. Doug, you have a brain.

Don’t you listen to those doctors. You do so have a brain. My doctor called me in one day and said, we were looking for a tumor in your head.

Remember, I sent you for that. I lost my sense of smell. I don’t smell skunk.

I can’t smell you. I don’t smell cookie. I don’t smell anything.

So he decided I had a tumor. Sent me to some kind of a radiologist, and they took pictures. He called me back.

I didn’t know. He just said, I want to do this, and he just sent me. I didn’t know what he was up to.

He never told me that he thought I had a tumor, which had taken away my sense of smell, and when I came back and he said, I have good news for you. He said, we took a picture of your head, like an exhaustive picture, and we found nothing. So don’t believe them, Doug.

Those doctors are a bunch of poached eggs, but the brain is just as complicated. Listen, this is what scientists, medical scientists are saying. Do you see how complicated that is? How every galaxy is moving? It’s like a symphony orchestra.

Everything is just, it’s beautiful. And look at the colors, and I suggested to you last night, not a suggestion, they have recorded sounds that are coming out of the universe, and it has rhythm. It has beautiful rhythm.

You can actually sing along with the sounds that are coming out of the universe. Listen, folks, this is a complicated mass of diversity, but your brain is more complicated, but there’s more, sweetheart. You have personality.

Oh, that gives them a headache. Where did you get this? I am idea. As a little kid, I used to look in the mirror.

I got really depressed. I didn’t look for long, but I used to look into my own eyes, and I used to wonder what’s going on in there to realize that what I see in the mirror is not the real me. To begin with, in my imagination, I’m much better looking than that.

I remember saying to my mom, will I ever fall in love? No animal has asked that question. What is man that you are mindful of him? You made him just slightly lesser than the angels. Your personality, your sense of I am, is the greatest mystery, greater than that mystery.

The your sense of I am is a greater mystery than even the complications of your nervous system and how your brain even works. So here’s the question. Okay, big bang.

Boom. The universe is created, and on this little planet called Earth, which is likened to a little pebble on a massive beach with billions of pebbles. And here you are, important you.

And there’s this sense inside you, my body will quit. My spirit is alive. It’s my flesh that’s struggling.

Every tribe that’s ever been discovered, not one of them has denied the existence of the I am. And every one of them, every tribe believes that your heartbeat stops, but you continue on. Where did we get that? It’s instilled.

It’s part of your nature. Speaking of nature, this mass of stars is so perfect, so symmetrically, incredibly organized by a divine hand. It never goes astray.

The Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, they’re always there. Do you know what depends upon that? The migratory birds. If the universe was not a unity, if the universe was simply a diversity.

Do you know what diversity is without unity? It’s a train wreck. If you and I this morning had gathered, I don’t know how many you are. I never count.

I never count. You go ahead and count. I don’t count.

Doesn’t matter. You’re here, and you’re important. The visitors, and their regulars, and whatever thing in between, I don’t count.

But listen to this. If we don’t, let’s say there’s 50 or 60 here. I don’t know how many are out.

What if everybody that came this morning wanted to sing their own song? We would have diversity, and we’d have a mass. Everybody’s going to sing their own tune. Everybody’s going to sing in their own melody.

Everybody’s going to do what what. That’s diversity without unity. That’s like Canada’s immigration system.

We now have diversity. We do not have unity. Unity is destructive if it’s missing.

Diversity is life. Diversity is perfect when it comes together in unity. Psalm 133.

Behold how good. Do you know it? Behold. Go ahead.

You quote it for us. Nice and loud. Unity.

Unity. Pulling together the diversity. You said you’re going to read scripture, Pastor Dave.

It’s coming. Stop pushing. The clock stopped at 11 30.

I like that. I’m going to skip some of these notes. The question is this.

Is there sufficient evidence in that mass called the universe? Is there sufficient evidence that an intelligent personality, thinker, intelligent strategist, is there enough evidence in this universe to prove that it was not just an explosion, a bang, but there was someone with intelligence, with strategy, somebody so omnipotent, unlimited power, omniscient, unlimited mentality and intelligence and knowledge, omnipresent. We haven’t got a spaceship that can get anywhere in this universe. They just wander around out there.

He’s omniscient. He knows all. He’s omnipotent.

He’s all powerful. And he’s everywhere at the same time. He’s as close to you right now as the air in your nostrils, Doris.

You look so cute sitting down there. I asked you this morning, how’s Bill? I don’t read lips. You don’t speak very loud.

I think you meant he’s doing great. Time plus chance, beginning with nothing, produced the universe. No.

And produced the personality of man. No. Unity and diversity is the foundational doctrine.

It’s called the trinity. This is not hate speech. We’re scarcely allowed in this country.

YouTube is listening. The government right now, especially Mr. Carney now, is pushing this envelope. Don’t say anything that upsets somebody.

You can use Jesus’ name any way you want to. You can use God’s name as a damn word if you want, but don’t you dare touch some of these other religions. I’m not touching them.

I’m going to report a fact. There is no diversity in the God of Islam. The Quran states so.

One God and no explanation. One God and many prophets. And his primary prophet, his final prophet, is Muhammad.

I don’t take issue with that. By the way, Allah is not a name. Allah is equal to the word God.

There are billions of gods. India has something like millions of gods. So Allah is not a name.

It’s a word. It’s God. We worship the Lord God omnipotent.

We worship the Elohim. We worship the one with many names, and those names were quoted in a prayer this morning by Pastor Kuke. He has a name, but the Lord God is a unity.

And as soon as you use the word unity, it means there’s more elements than one. If I hold in my hand a grain of sand and say, now there’s unity, you’d say, no, give me five grains of sand and show me that they’re in some kind of a unity. In order to have unity, you’ve got to start with diversity.

You’ve got to start with many and then bring them together in a unity. I’m going to make a statement. I’ve got a couple of statements to make.

I love the chairs. They help me. There’s diversity up here.

There’s a question as to unity. I could say right now that these three, whoever’s sitting on them, Eenie, Meenie, and Miney, they’re enemies. They’re not friends at all.

They’re filled with bitterness and hatred for each other. Jews, Arabs, Muslims, I don’t know. Is that hate speech? It’s reality.

This is not a good picture of the Godhead, the Trinity. Here is a good picture of the Trinity facing one another and dialoguing. Unity.

They agreed, let us make in our image. Let us make man just like us. Just like us.

In eternity past, according to the Quran, whoever this Allah is, he was all alone. He had the ability to communicate because he’s communicating now. Apparently, they say through the Quran.

I question that highly. It doesn’t matter. But this God, Allah, had the ability to communicate, but he was on a tropical island with nobody to talk to.

He was alone. But the Trinity, the Trinity communicate. There’s diversity.

There’s the Father. There’s the Son. There’s the Holy Spirit, the universe, the creation of all.

The Father willed it. The Son spoke it into being. And the power of the Holy Spirit empowered it.

Unity. Diversity. I’ve played, I have wept over this.

And the feelings that I have about this, I can’t communicate. I believe that without the diversity, consummated by unity, without this, there’s no salvation. There’s no redemption.

You’re lost in your sin, and there’s no way out of it. Without the Son, we don’t have a substitute for our rotten to the core souls, are guilty of sin. It took one.

Down from his glory, ever-living story. Do you remember that old song? My Savior came, and Jesus was his name. So if Jesus left heaven, and if he was the only, if Jesus is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit interchangeably, and there are some people who are theologically off the rails, and that’s what they believe.

But they say, yeah, he’s one God. Sometimes he’s Jesus. Sometimes he’s the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes he’s the Father. Okay, if Jesus came into the world among us, as God the Son, who was looking after heaven, and who were the angels singing to in the absence of Jesus? And when he cried into your hands, I commend my spirit. Who was he talking to? Jesus got along to pray.

Who was he talking to? In my Father’s house, this is the beauty of salvation. Why would the Father have a house if he lives alone, honey? In my Father’s house, there are already many rooms, but I’m going to prepare one for you. This is the beauty of the Trinity.

The Son says, through my commitment, through my sacrifice, there’s room at the cross for you, and there’s room in heaven for you. The Trinity makes it complete, and beautiful, and gorgeous. It’s too much to comprehend.

David, your time. Okay, I want to read, and Al’s going to come when I give him that kind of a nod. He’s going to come, and we’re going to sing a song to close.

John 17. Jesus spoke these words, lifted his eyes up to heaven. That’s where the Father was.

Father, the hour has come. What hour? Three in one determined an hour had to come. This wasn’t an explosion.

This was going to be a moment of sacrifice, a moment of death, which was going to shove forth the glory of life, resurrected life. Your daughter experienced healing through prayers. Here’s what I submit to you.

Your daughter, in the last weeks, last month, experienced resurrection power. Resurrection power is not reserved for when the Lord descends with a shout, but when we experience divine healing, and our bodies are made whole. My wife experienced resurrection.

She was on a deathbed in Hamilton Hospital, St. Joseph. She was dying. It was her last day here on earth, but Jesus walked in the room with resurrection power, and somebody said to me this morning, your wife is the best dressed woman in the house, and I said, oh yes, she is.

She’s not a corpse. She’s alive today, because Jesus is the resurrection, the power, and the glory. Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your son, that your son may glorify you. There’s the unity. Glorify me, Father, so that I share my glory with you.

It’s too much for our little two-by-four. So much of my two-by-four is just made up of slivers. I just can’t comprehend.

Show forth your glory in me, and I will share my glory with you, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on the earth.

I have finished the work which you have given me to do, and now, oh Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was. What glory was he asking for here? When he was baptized in the River Jordan, he was preaching in silence. He was preaching by way of drama.

When John the Baptist, when I met the president of Kenya, I was warned, when you go into the president’s residence, April and I were invited at eight o’clock in the morning to have coffee with one of the most powerful men in the world, and I was told, when you walk in there, don’t go near him and don’t touch him. You don’t touch, you’ll die. John the Baptist, what are you doing? Handling the eternal one, the one who spoke the world into existence and controls with his mouth the world and keeps the earth in its perfect orbit with, who are you to touch him? But man, John the Baptist was representing the hands of man, and Jesus submitted to the hands of that man.

Lord, far be it from me, no, you should be baptizing me. And Jesus said, no, what’s about to happen has got to happen, because you see, what was about to happen in a dramatic form, the hands of a man would touch the Savior, lower him into the waters of death. Father, glorify me through the death of the cross.

The glory was not in the cross. The glory was in the resurrection. Otherwise, he’s just another dead Muhammad, another dead Moses, another dead prophet.

Many have died the death of a martyr. We have no record of one coming back. Father, glorify me so that I may glorify you.

The fact that the Father raised him by the power of the Holy Spirit out of that grave, and then Jesus shows up in heaven, the excitement in Luke 15 of a wayward son coming home, the excitement of the Father, all the goings on, the celebration, the food, the dancing, the carrying on. It was a wonderful thing, ordered by the Father. It’s nothing compared to what happened when Jesus returned home in my Father’s house, many mansions.

The angels, when Jesus arrived in heaven, came unglued, and the psalmist captured the moment. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, be ye lifted up, you everlasting doors, and invite in the King of glory. And methinks an angel cried out, as though he didn’t know, but he loved to hear the continuous sound of it.

Who is the King of glory, he asks, not in ignorance, but in excitement. And who is this King of glory? The Lord, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. He brought glory to heaven, because you see, when he arrived, you were in him.

When he arrived, it was proof positive. You’re going home, because you were in him when he was on the cross. You were in him when he laid in the grave.

Your sin was paid for. You arose from the dead in Jesus Christ, and when he went to heaven, you arrived with him. Your name is already there.

In the Father’s house are many mansions, many rooms, but one, how long has it been? Three months? Four months? About four months. Your name was written down on that occasion. You know that.

Somebody made a beautiful little plaque. Your name is on the door. Hallelujah.

This came about through the diversity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and in unity, in unity, in blessed unity. Come, Al, I’m going to preach till five o’clock. You’ve got to find a way to stop me.

I’m on the verge of tears. I feel so blessed. I’m sorry for you if you’re not getting it.

It started not with a big bang, but it started with the Lord God speaking it into existence, and at that very moment, he had you on his mind. The Bible says that before the big bang moment, if you want to call that, before that moment, the cross was already an accomplished thing. It was in the mind of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

He was crucified in the Spirit before you were born. Dear God, get excited. I’m good till five, I promise.

Let’s stand. I’m wore out. You better stand.

You’ve got to stop me.