The Third Thousand Years

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Excerpt from "The Third Thousand Years":

But the tragic lessons they left for history seem wasted on many modern minds. The things which ancient greed and ferocious brutality failed to do, certain power-hungry men of modern times think they yet can do. They still seek to build by force and fear a master race which will become an "instrument of destiny." The Napoleons, Kaisers, Hitlers, Mussolinis, Tojos, and Stalins of modern centuries are merely the more recent counterparts of the Caesars, Pharaohs, emperors, kings and khans of the historic past.

God's Ways Are Not Man's Ways

In contrast to all of this, God has proposed a completely different kind of leadership. God's plan does not call for a master race, but a society of "master servants," inspired men who lead with love, not lashes, and who excel in service, not suppression.

From earliest times the Lord has endeavored to promote this kind of leadership and this type of society. In the days of Enoch, God's revealed plan for happy living became the most dominant force on earth, but at other times it often dwindled to a mere shadow and was not allowed to have any significant influence among mankind whatsoever. Nevertheless, whether accepted or rejected, God's society has always constituted the one and only way to achieve a lasting pattern of universal peace and universal prosperity.

Those who are willing to consecrate their total energies and resources to the building up of such a society are called God's "chosen people." He calls them "chosen," not because he would exclude the rest of mankind from the same blessings, but simply because these are they who chose to accept God's call to service. With the Lord, a call to leadership means a call to service, and therefore his chosen people are really his "master servants."

This whole concept was explained by a prophet of the Lord in these words:

"Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson -- that the rights of the priesthood [God's service fraternity] are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.

"That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.... We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Hence many are called but few are chosen."

A study of history will demonstrate that whenever the Lord has succeeded in developing a "chosen people," they have turned out to be a rare but tremendously impressive society. The individual members of that society are revealed to have been a singular and superior type of human being. In a moment we will discuss the personal attributes which characterized such people so that the student can measure his own qualities against the personality profiles of those who were acceptable to God in the past. Such a study makes it easy to see why, in the eyes of Heaven, these people were called, "the salt of the earth," "the elect," God's "peculiar people," and his "Royal Priesthood." In more modern terms we might almost be justified in calling them God's humble "Supermen."