but I will settle him in my house and in my kingdom forever; and his throne shall be established forever.
I would like to say that I think that it is wrong for us to judge. We do not know the true motives of man and we only assume what motivations might be. However, in the same token, I would like to say that I don't think that God has ever required that we build for Him some fancy place to worship Him. I believe that God can be better worshipped in nature than in a building. I only wish the weather permitted for us to worship outside. I think that it would be a much more fitting cathedral to just worship God outside.In the Old Testament when they, when God instructed them in the building of the altars, God said, "I don't want you to bring any tool on the stone. I don't want you carving fancy stones and all. Just take the plain rock without bringing any tool on it and set it up for the altar." Because God didn't want people's attention to be distracted from Him to some fancy ornamentation that man had built.Now, I don't really feel that God has changed. I don't think that God is wanting to attract people to fancy architecture or to fancy ornamentation. I think the more natural that we can be in our worship of God, the more we are closer to the real heart and intent of God. As natural as possible. And as I say, if the weather would permit, I would rather worship God outside. I love to go up to the conference center and I like to take the classes outside and just sit there in the pine needles. And you get that smell of the pine needles, and you get the sound of the wind through the trees, and you hear the blue jays, and the squirrel is running up the tree and all. And I love to worship God in that kind of a cathedral. With the blue sky above, and just nothing of man's handiwork. Nothing of which you can glory in the work of man.Now God said, "Hey look, ever since I've been with you I've been in a tent. Moving from place to place. And in all the time, did I ever say build me a house of cedar? Have I asked for anything like that? No, I didn't. I'm content with the tent."We've been praying what we should do here. We, of course, probably we could use, let us put it that way, a much larger facility. It would be nice to be able to have just two services on Sunday morning. As long as the Lord gives me strength, I love the three; I don't mind it. But it would be nice if we could have a larger church where we wouldn't have to put people over in the overflow auditoriums to watch on close circuit TV. It would be great if we could all be gathered together in one place to worship the Lord. And we have the money that we could do it. And the Board has been discussing. We've got the property and we've been discussing building. But we, more or less, came to the conclusion that since we feel the coming of the Lord is so near it will be better to take the money and use it in outreaches to get the Gospel out to people than to spend it in a building. And so we can go through the inconvenience of having to put people over there and people... Of course, fortunately the weather is nice and some people are fortunate enough to sit outside. We've talked about getting some speakers like we had for the Easter Sunrise service and put them out there so people could come and start sitting out there in the lawn. And the overflow could just be out there on the lawn, and you just sit out there and worship the Lord. We don't know what to do. We do need larger facilities, and we're praying about them. I even looked at some plastic cathedrals. That is, plastic domed kind of thing. Pretty sharp, actually, and very inexpensive, and they just take steel girders. Sort of a glorified kind of a tent. And my wife doesn't like it but...But David desired to build a house for God. He said, "Hey look, I'm living in this palace. This house is cedar and God is living in a tent and I want to build a house." And Nathan said, "Oh, that's great, do what's in your heart." And God spoke to Nathan and said, "Go back, tell David not to build Me a house. He can't do it. I've been in a tent all the while. I got used to tents, sort of like it. I've never asked him to build me a house of cedar."Now knowing that this would be a disappointment to David, the Lord said to him.