Reprint Article
A rt ic l e n u m be r r05 1
7,000 Years of Preparation
Reprinted from the Royal Vision, September-October 2000
By Joel Hilliker
God’s plan for having a real family of billions
I
t was perhaps the most pivotal moment in
history. The entire universe was in chaos. The Earth lay
desolate. God surveyed the scene. “And the earth was
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters” (Genesis 1:2).
In the Hebrew language, that verse says the Earth was
tohu and bohu. This was not the way God had originally
created everything. Isaiah 45:18 says, “For thus saith the Lord
that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth
and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain,
he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none
else.” The word translated “in vain” is tohu. God didn’t make
the Earth or any other part of the vast universe tohu and
bohu. He made it perfect, and He formed it to be inhabited!
So what caused this state of destruction in Genesis 1:2?
God had first created the angels, including that pinnacle
of created beings, Lucifer. To provide them an exciting life
of productivity, He created the material universe for them.
That is talked about in the first verse of the Bible—God had
created the heavens and the Earth just for them. They would
first take care of the Earth, and if they could do that, God
would send them out into the universe!
But it didn’t work out that way. After some time, they
chose instead to follow Lucifer as he exalted himself against
God and staged a hostile takeover of that universe-ruling
throne. They didn’t have the patience to allow God to give
it to them. They wanted it all right then and there. But such
thinking always leads to disaster. It takes character to
rule rightly, and the angels didn’t have it. In the intense
war that ensued, the beautiful Earth was decimated—leveled
and destroyed—made tohu and bohu.
Mr. Armstrong wrote in The Incredible Human Potential
on page 46, “When [the angels] turned traitor on Earth, their
sin must have also brought simultaneously physical destruc-
tion to the other planets throughout the universe, which
were potentially and conditionally put in subjection to them.
“As God surveyed this cataclysmic tragedy, He must have
realized that since the highest, most perfect being within His
almighty power to create had turned to rebellion, it left God
Himself as the only being who would not and cannot sin.”
This profound realization, a result of the tohu and bohu
pictured in Genesis 1:2, was the point when God crystallized
a new plan in His mind—a plan that would take 7,000 years
to complete.
The Feast of Tabernacles pictures the seventh day of that
week of millenniums. The Last Great Day, the eighth day,
COPYRIGHT © 2011 PHILADELPHIA CHURCH OF GOD
is an entirely separate holy day—and it pictures the culmi-
nation of the entire plan. As we will see, God’s complete
7,000-year plan is all preparation for what the Last Great
Day pictures: the time when all people who have ever lived
will be given a chance to be born into God’s family.
A New R ace
Looking around at the destruction wrought by the angels,
God knew that the only way He could spread the joy of His
government and His family to the whole material universe
was to reproduce Himself. He wanted real children—real
sons. Sons reared up to exhibit His very own righteous char-
acter, who could be put anywhere in the universe without
supervision and remain totally committed to the supremacy
of the God family, with the Father at the head. God yearned
passionately for a real family!
At that point, God determined to create a new race of
beings, utterly unique in creation. Cast in His own likeness,
and intended to exhibit His godly character, this would be
a race superior to every other physical creature. It would
dominate the Earth and, in so doing, learn how to prop-
erly exercise power and authority. This race would, alone,
experience the joys of family life—marriage, creating and
nurturing children—and, in so doing, learn how to use
government to have peaceful and productive relationships
with one another. It would have a spirit to impart intellect,
just as God Himself has; it would be able to think, reason,
judge—to create! And that spirit God designed to combine
with His own Holy Spirit, enabling this race to understand
the deep things of God, and to love as God Himself does.
But this race would not be composed of immortal spirit—
not at first. Not like the angels. No, this new race would be
flesh, subject to death. They would have to prove themselves
first and voluntarily choose to live righteously before God
would give them eternal life. If they failed, God could just
allow them to die and return into the dust of the ground.
But to those who proved themselves, God would preserve
the righteous character within them, and, though their physi-
cal bodies would expire and fade away, God could transform
them into spirit! Knowing, then, that they would use it for
the good of the God family, never to turn away and rebel
as did Lucifer, God would give them all the power that He
Himself has—the power to travel throughout the limitless
universe, the power to create and to destroy.
This was God’s plan! This is how He would reproduce
Himself, adding children to the God family.
 7 ,T0h0e0 TYhe ra eres Ro ef s Pu rr erpeacrtai o
A Hug e Fa m i ly
Before we continue with how He planned to implement this
plan, we should realize how huge was the size and scope of
the family vision God had.
Mr. Armstrong wrote, “So the angel potential was to
take over the entire universe—to improve and finish the
billions of physical planets surrounding the uncountable
stars…” (Incredible Human Potential, p. 50). Scientists say
that there are 100 billion galaxies, and every galaxy has 100
billion stars. That’s 10,000 million million million stars!
Unfathomable!
This is the level God was thinking on when He was
contemplating this new race of potential gods called human
beings. He created this incredibly expansive universe, fully
intending for it to be inhabited! He wanted a huge
family. Not one or two or 10 or 20 children, but multiple
billions of God children! All exhibiting His righteous char-
acter, the perfect character required to appropriately handle
universe rule.
So, how would God carry out such an ambitious plan?
Obviously it would require immense preparation. The mil-
lions upon millions of angels had all been instantaneously
created as separate beings. This time, God laid out a plan
that would take 7,000 years to unfold, and it would all start
off with just two people—one marriage, a man and a woman.
Th e D e c e p t ion
As the story continues in Genesis 1:3, God renewed the face
of the Earth, filling it with raw materials: water, soil, fire,
wood, stone. He populated it with fish, birds and animals.
Then, He placed upon it the first two of these potential
gods: Adam and Eve. They were full-fledged adults, with no
knowledge, no understanding yet. Just cast in God’s own
likeness, and ready to learn. God placed them in the idyllic
Garden of Eden and began to educate them, to prepare them
for their incredible human potential. They would be
the physical progenitors of the multiple billions God would
ultimately seek to have in His family.
Satan must have been intensely jealous of these two
people, knowing that God was preparing to exalt them to a
position he had never been offered. He wanted to do whatever
he could to confound God’s intentions.
God allowed Satan into the garden, and this adversarial
being went right to work. “And the serpent said unto the
woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that
in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis
3:4-5). You can be God right now! he said. You don’t have to
wait for God to exalt you! Remember what God has been
teaching you about your incredible human potential? Why
wait? Just take it!
That argument proved too compelling to resist. People
can be very short-sighted. Eve gave in, Adam went along,
and suddenly everything was awry. These were supposed
to be the beings that would take over where Lucifer and the
angels failed! They were supposed to eventually rule the
universe! And they had succumbed to the first temptation
that came their way. This became the foundation of present
civilization. From that point, man would build things his way.
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t inos n
Man Cut Off
But God’s purpose was not to be deterred by the wrong
choice of two individuals. He allowed mankind to continue
to reproduce and multiply, creating generation after genera-
tion more of these potential God beings.
Here is where so many religions get off track. God was
not thinking, Well now what am I going to do? The world’s
religions believe God is trying to save all mankind now,
frantically trying to keep Satan and his deceptions at bay.
But read verses 23-24: “Therefore the Lord God sent him
forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from
whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he
placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a
flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of
the tree of life.”
God is not trying to save mankind now! In actuality,
He cut them off from access to His Holy Spirit! God
Himself has closed their ears and shut their eyes to spiritual
understanding. Why? Why would God subject virtually all
of mankind to the devil’s evil influences, consigning him to
a life of misery, generation after generation, with unhappi-
ness, suffering and bloodshed multiplying continually—until
things would get so bad that the whole race of them, these
wonderful beings of such fantastic God-plane potential,
would be ready to blow each other off the face of the Earth?
How could such a nightmare possibly serve as preparation
for mankind entering God’s family?
The answer is at the heart and core of the Last Great
Day’s meaning. The truth is, God cutting man off from His
Spirit was a calculated move of such strategic brilliance that
people can’t comprehend it without having that Spirit.
Clues to one of God’s reasons for His decision can be
found in Isaiah 6:9-10. “And he said, Go, and tell this people,
Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but
perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make
their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with
their heart, and convert, and be healed.” This is the same
story as Genesis 3:24—God doesn’t want people to under-
stand, to see the truth. Not yet! It is His purpose to keep
them blinded for now. Why? Look at the next verse.
“Then said I, Lord, how long?” Isaiah asked God, How
long must mankind remain cut off from you? “And he
answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant,
and the houses without man, and the land be utterly
desolate” (Isaiah 6:11).
We begin to see one reason for God’s strategy: God
wanted man to prove something to himself. By maintain-
ing a hands-off policy for a full 6,000 years, God would
show man just how evil things could get under rulership
without character, under unrighteous people who can-
not handle power. Again, it takes character to rule
rightly. If Satan had seized control of the universe, it would
have remained tohu and bohu forever. With mankind as the
ultimate authority on the Earth, eventually the cities will be
waste without inhabitant, the houses without man,
and the land utterly desolate. If you don’t believe that,
God said, just stick around—I’ll let you see it with your own
eyes. He’s giving mankind one chance to prove to himself
how incapable he is to hold authority without having God
as his Head.
 7, 0 0 0 Ye a r s o f P r e pa r at i o n
Later we’ll see God’s primary reason for this hands-off
policy. Again, this is all preparation for bringing as many of
these beings into the God family as possible.
Firstfruits
During this time of man’s civilization, God did call out
a few. To these few, He gave His Holy Spirit, as He had
intended to with the whole race of human beings from the
very beginning. These were God’s firstfruits. Called for a
special purpose, called to positions of greater responsibil-
ity—and therefore required to overcome under conditions
of greater stress.
These few were allowed to understand the mysteries of
God. And that meant there was the possibility they could
reject them. Remember, in the overriding plan, God wants
every individual to make the choice to obey and to prove
their loyalty. That means we are each given one chance
(Hebrews 6:4-6).
Once we have “tasted of the heavenly gift,” we are
under God’s judgment. What are we going to do with that
gift? That’s the question God will demand of every human
being, every individual in this human race that He wants
to exalt to the God level.
Again, right now, while the world is in the throes of
Satan’s oppression and man’s unjust rule over man, God is
giving only a very few people that choice. Think in terms of
God wanting as many of these multiplying billions of humans
as possible to enter the God family, and you begin to see that
He has to be highly selective of whom He calls and chooses
right now. There is a great deal of risk involved, because
times are so dangerous, and the chance of those individu-
als succumbing to Satan’s attacks, as Adam did, is so high.
Look at the Laodicean era, which God Himself proph-
esied over and over. He knew, as He was building the
Worldwide Church in the Philadelphia era, that He would
lose probably half of the people He placed into that
Church—even that perhaps 95 percent would get swept up
in that rebellion clear up until the Tribulation. God knows
that with the firstfruits, He is putting eternal lives at risk!
Wh y Sata n Is Stil l A rou n d
This raises an important question: With all this risk, if God
is really interested in saving all men, why doesn’t He just
get rid of Satan now? Our lives would be much easier if we
didn’t have to deal with the devil.
Think about this: Just the fact that Satan is still around
right now ought to demonstrate to anyone that salvation for
mankind isn’t God’s intent right now. Because when God
does want to save mankind, He doesn’t need Satan around
anymore—and He will simply lock him up! God has the
power to do that any time He pleases. Christ has already
qualified to replace him. Revelation 20:1-3 show that when
the time comes, God will say, Okay, take him away. Satan will
be gone during the Millennium. God will be accomplishing
something quite different to what He is doing today.
So what is God doing today? Well, as we learn on
Pentecost each year, God is calling the firstfruits now because
He needs help in the Millennium (see Revelation 20:4). The
Church today is a teachers college.
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Consider Christ’s soon-coming responsibilities. He will
come to claim the Earth-ruling throne that is rightfully His.
He will clean up the planet after man has made everything
tohu and bohu. He will reeducate the whole world. He will
build a new society of millions of people from the ground
up. A tremendous amount of responsibility is about to fall
on His shoulders. God knows His Son needs a helpmeet.
He needs a wife.
Now consider the rate of failure among God’s people.
You would think God would be tempted to give up on the
human race! Yet the fact that He keeps working with us and
raising up more people to do His work should prove just
how much He needs help!
It’s easy to think, Christ is perfect—He is spirit. He can
do it all Himself. But even on a physical level, a marriage
would fall apart if the wife had such an attitude. Husband
and wife should be one flesh, working together toward
the same goal. Christ needs us for this great plan to work.
Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, and our lives wouldn’t be
nearly so hard. We have difficulties, trials, tests and suffer-
ings because God needs us, and needs us to be perfect, to
have the character to rule rightly, for Him to succeed
in this great plan.
God uses Satan to help build that character in us. He
can get rid of him at any time, but right now Satan serves
an important purpose in helping us to qualify—to make
our lives hard. Because, as Mr. Flurry always says, there
is only one bride! And she has to be one exceptional
lady. To hold that exalted position, we must overcome Satan
as Christ overcame (Revelation 3:21). No one else will ever
have to qualify in this extremely dangerous and risky way.
“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrec-
tion: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall
be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a
thousand years” (Revelation 20:6).
Again, all these events are pointing toward the Last
Great Day. Right now, God’s purpose is to prepare for His
Son a bride. Christ must have a wife before He assumes His
responsibilities on the throne of world rule.
Th e M i l l e n n i u m
What will be God’s intent during the Millennium? Consider
the projects we’ll be undertaking. With great effort we will be
rebuilding whole cities, entire nations. Raising up colleges.
Erecting homes and farms. We will be creating utopia, ruling
from that magnificent headquarters temple in Jerusalem.
Before we go any further, sneak a glance at Revelation
21:1. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first
heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was
no more sea.”
Wait a minute. This is just ahead in the story, and it is
talking about the whole surface of the Earth being purified
with fire—everything burning up, to the point where even
the seas are completely evaporated! That means all these
beautiful new cities we just spent 1000 years building up—all
the homes and parks and businesses, all the churches, even
that glorious headquarters temple—will be made ashes!
That fact provides us a better perspective when we talk
about the Millennium. We spend seven days during the Feast
of Tabernacles celebrating it, and then on the eighth day we
 7, 0 0 0 Ye a r s o f P r e pa r at i o n
celebrate, in part, the fact that everything we built will be
burned! What is God’s intent for having that thousand-
year period, building a utopia that will all just burn up?
Let’s back up just a few verses. There is one last thing—
something very important—that God uses the Earth for in
its present form, what Revelation 21:1 calls “the first earth.”
Throughout the Millennium, as we instruct people in
righteousness, as we teach them out of books like Mystery
of the Ages and The Incredible Human Potential, as we clear
land and level mountains and make more arable soil and
farmland (Isaiah 41:15-20), we will be preparing people for
a huge event.
Here is the final act of preparation: “And when the thou-
sand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his
prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are
in the four quarters of the Earth, Gog and Magog, to gather
them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand
of the sea” (Revelation 20:7-8).
Things are beautiful in this utopia, and people are
treating each other right, and most of the population of the
Earth has been born during the Millennium, and they have
never experienced Satan. But God isn’t finished with Satan
just yet. He must be loosed. Why? Because even after 1000
years of utopia, during this “little season” (verse 3) Satan is
able to deceive so many people, their number is as the sand
of the sea! Yet another monumental failure by men!
“And they went up on the breadth of the Earth, and
compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved
city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and
devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast
into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the
false prophet [were], and shall be tormented day and night
for ever and ever” (verses 9-10).
That is the last this world will ever see of Satan. And that
purging of those weak, rebellious people who succumbed and
then tried to make war against God’s headquarters—that is
the very last act of preparation required in this great
7,000-year plan.
Second Resurrection
What happens next is what we’ll have been telling the mil-
lions of people about throughout the Millennium. What
happens next is the whole purpose for everything we’ve been
building for 1000 years. What happens next is the greatest
responsibility any of us will have ever faced. What happens
next is the moment God has been anticipating ever since He
surveyed the tohu and bohu brought about by the angelic
rebellion, the moment He’ll be able to offer all of mankind
that choice.
“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat
on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away;
and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead,
small and great, stand before God…” (verses 11-12).
Everyone who ever lived, cut off from God. The horribly
sinful men who were burned up in Sodom and Gomorrah will
be there. All the people who mocked Noah and then drowned
violently in the deluge. Korah and those who followed him,
whom God swallowed up in the Earth, and all the rest of
the hard-headed Israelites who died in the wilderness. The
Pharisees and Sadducees, Pilate and Caiaphas, who murdered
reprint article • page four
the Son of God and knew not what they were doing. Those
who through the ages have cruelly tortured and martyred
God’s saints, and spat upon God’s message. Men whose last
instant of life was spent in hatred and fear, as a soldier on
one of a thousand, thousand battlefields of this weary Earth.
The billions who have lived and died in atheist Russia, or
pagan China. All those who spent their lives under the boot
of a dictator, who knew nothing but the worst of the evils of
man’s rule over man. And the dictators themselves, who used
power as a weapon, and who never had to learn to submit. All
the exalted men of history, educators, scientists, inventors,
philosophers, false prophets, whose greatness of intellect
served only to further distract and deceive a race already
pitifully ignorant. Slaves, harlots, pirates, gang members,
thieves, drug addicts, illiterates, suicides, people formerly
possessed by demons. People who never knew love in their
families—who maybe died at the hand of an abusive husband,
or father, or mother. All the children in Africa who never
lived a day with real food in their bellies. All those in poverty
and squalor. Those who lived in absolute darkness as to why
they were alive, the purpose of their existence. The people
you went to school with, whom you worked with. The boss
who gave you trouble over the Sabbath. The family members
who could never understand your religion. Brought to life
again, in their minds instantaneously after their last, prob-
ably painful moments of life in Satan’s world, resurrected to
physical flesh and blood, in the Second Resurrection. Even,
probably, the majority of those who died fighting us and our
Husband, the glorified Christ, 1000 years before in the Valley
of Jehoshaphat. We see them all. Standing before us, with all
of their ideas and hatreds and dysfunctions. The cumulation
of a failed race. Probably about 50 billion people or more.
Can we grasp the magnitude of the job that awaits us?
Teaching people in the Millennium was a piece of cake com-
pared to what faces us at this moment.
Th e L a rg e s t Au di e n c e P o s s i b l e
Continuing in verse 12 we read, “…and the books were
opened: and another book was opened, which is the book
of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which
were written in the books, according to their works.” Finally
the books of the Bible are opened to their understanding.
All of these people are no longer cut off from God’s Holy
Spirit. They may freely take of the tree of life.
For the first time, these people are experiencing a
world ruled by a righteous King. Satan, the great deceiver,
is gone. The scales can now be removed from their eyes. It
will finally be time to reeducate all mankind—the entire
human race—in God’s way of life. To give them Mystery
of the Ages, The Incredible Human Potential, The Missing
Dimension in Sex.
Do we realize what a huge responsibility this will be?
It is so big that though it’s over a thousand years away, we
are already preparing for it!
The largest audience possible! We hear that phrase
all the time, but do we realize that ultimately it’s the Last
Great Day that we’re talking about? When we meditate
about this, we can begin to understand why God went to
such tremendous trouble to make sure we are prepared.
One thousand years is not one day too long for us to get
 7, 0 0 0 Ye a r s o f P r e pa r at i o n
the Earth ready to handle this massive population explosion,
with this many problems all coming up at one time.
In fact, we can’t do it ourselves—not Christ with the
whole collection of God-beings who make up His helpmeet.
The job is too big for us.
We need the assistance of all those we taught through the
Millennium, who by this time have also been changed into
God-beings, on the child level. This is the great event we were
preparing them for during the Millennium.
Just as we understand and constantly hear and have rein-
forced in our minds that we’re not here to get salvation, but to
prepare to teach—that’s the same thing people will be hearing
for 1000 years in the Millennium: They are not there for their
own salvation! The Ambassador College Bible Correspondence
Course calls them “Second Fruits”! Their purpose is to pre-
pare for the Great White Throne Judgment! That’s
the reason we build that utopian society that will just burn
up when it’s all said and done. The Millennium is merely the
“teachers college” for the Second Resurrection.
All Men
God the Father has been preparing from before He created
man for the 100-year period of the Great White Throne
Judgment. Now, the 7,000 years of preparation is complete.
God will already have a tremendous family: He has His
loyal, faithful Son at His side. And Christ has His helpmeet
at His side—His wife who has made herself ready. And they
have their huge family of millions of children, all trained up
in the way that they should go, all God-beings, a dynamic
team of educators, ready to assist Him. And now, Christ
will have multiple billions more potential children, standing
beforeHim expectantly, for a 100-year judgment period, a
100-year education period. And they will all be taught and
given the understanding of the incredible human potential
that God purposed for them when He created this remark-
able race. All given the choice to accept it or not. His Spirit
will be poured out on all flesh. Every man.
That is the major reason why God cut mankind in
general off from understanding all these things that we now
understand: because He wanted to wait until He could
create the perfect conditions for offering all of
mankind this magnificent choice. And did you know
that most of these people, the people that we see every day
around us, and interact with regularly, are going to make it?
reprint Article • page five
This masterful strategy of God’s, this 7,000-year plan, will
bring in a large percentage of all mankind who ever lived.
It’s worth the risk for God to bring us in today, even if a
small percentage of mankind fails (including those firstfruits
who rebel) and are burned in the lake of fire. It’s worth it
because He needs us to raise up others, so that all of us will
be there for the 50 billion children we’ll help bring into the
family during the Last Great Day.
God wants all men to come to repentance, to be saved
and to come into the knowledge of the truth. All 50 billion.
Th e H op e of t h e Wor l d
God has a deep love for every person on this Earth—even as
they ruin their lives, so mixed up it’s like they can’t even tell
one hand from the other (Jonah 4:11). If only they knew their
awesome potential, if only they knew about their purpose
for being alive! They are all potential gods, and will
one day be God! And God wants to send them out
into this universe to beautify it, and to spread His
government and peace everywhere they go.
Mr. Flurry wrote in the September/October 1999
issue of Royal Vision, “We are the hope of the world.
No other hope exists. The world has nothing to look
forward to. Christ’s bride, however, who is concerned
about her future children, does everything she
can to help those people. We are Christ’s helpmeet.
We need to think about that a great deal more….”
The work we do today is all preparation. This is why
we’re getting Mr. Armstrong’s books out today. This is
why we have to work so hard today. This is why we have
to develop the character to rule rightly. This is
why we are making ourselves ready as Christ’s helpmeet
today! It’s all preparation. Because the better we do our
job, the more teachers we’ll have for the Millennium.
And the better we do in the Millennium, the better pre-
pared we’ll be to handle the Second Resurrection. And
the better we do in the Great White Throne Judgment,
the bigger God’s family will be.
Let’s take on this Last Great Day vision—this great
family vision—in everything we do, and allow it to
motivate us in our everyday lives and in our interactions
with everyone we meet—all our potential children in
the great God family. One day we’ll help give God the
family He is so yearning for!