November 2025 Member Letter

November 6, 2025

Dear Brethren,

From all accounts it was a wonderful Feast of Tabernacles! We now have the final attendance numbers and total amounts for each of the holy day offerings. I am happy to report that we set a new record for both—with the highest festival attendance and the highest holy day offerings in our history. Thank you so much for your generosity and your part in the success of this year’s Feast!

Healthwise, I am doing very well, and once again, I want to thank all of you for your prayers on my behalf. My wife and I traveled to two sites for the Feast: Fort Myers, Florida, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We are now planning a trip to Chile in mid-December, and we have a new congregation in Melbourne, Australia, that I am looking forward to visiting in February.

There is a lot in the news these days about “war and rumors of war” (Matthew 24:6). Just recently Sharron and I were searching for a movie to watch on a Saturday night when she found one titled A House of Dynamite. This film depicts a missile with a nuclear warhead being launched from Asia toward the United States, specifically the city of Chicago. It painstakingly imagines the government’s response, beginning in the White House Situation Room, where watch floor duty officers have been alerted to a nuclear missile that is expected to hit Chicago in 18 minutes.

Noah Oppenheim, who wrote the screenplay and collaborated with the film’s director Kathryn Bigelow, had this to say: “I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point where we could knock every one of those missiles out of the sky. All it takes is one to get through to wreak enormous destruction.” Oppenheim went on to say, “There are enough nuclear weapons on Earth to destroy human civilization many times over, and only nine countries possess them. The threat is as real as ever.” The estimated initial death toll of a nuclear bomb striking Chicago is 8 to 10 million, but that is only the beginning.

This scenario isn’t reality. It is a movie, but it seemed all too real and has received a great deal of attention! By the next day, all the major news outlets (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox) were addressing the issue and posing the question of whether such a scenario (if it played out in the real world) would result in the annihilation of the world—the end of the age. Of course, the real reason for such attention is the reality of the times in which we live. Earlier this year the Doomsday Clock was moved one second closer (89 seconds) to midnight. Many scientists have remarked that we are living in the most dangerous time in human history. We now have characters on the scene who appear to be willing to take the world to the edge of its existence.

The time of the end and the latter days are terms found in the Bible (Daniel 10:14; 12:4; et al.) describing a dark period of history. From what we read in the Bible, the world is in for a shocking future. But there is another story being played out here on earth that has a much different ending. What is that story?

Mark Twain once wrote: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” One of the most requested booklets from the Radio Church of God days was Why Were You Born? It was originally written in 1957 by Herbert W. Armstrong. It contains a most important truth, one that underpins the entire theology of the Church. David wrote about this in Psalm 8:3-4: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him?”

Having just returned from the Feast, I do not want to dwell on catastrophic events that are on the horizon, but to focus on a much brighter future, the one God has in store for humanity. In the wake of the assassination of a charismatic conservative social influencer here in the U.S., some are proclaiming we’re now experiencing a spiritual revival in this country. Any true spiritual revival must be based on restoring the right relationship between humanity and God. False religion is false religion even if it advocates some correct moral values. The rejection of the Sabbath, holy days, God’s plan of salvation (and accepting heaven as the reward of the saved) is still a false religion. But it is attractive when good things are advocated. Sometimes, we can forget that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is still ultimately evil. False religion comes in all kinds of packages. Without worshipping God “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), anyone can fall prey to false religion.

If you think about it, you realize that the purpose in life—why man was created—has to be one of the major questions for each of us. Science cannot answer it. Religion, for the most part, has failed to explain it. Our world seems poised on the brink of destruction. Why? Satan and his deceptions are the true causes. It is not God’s plan to allow man to destroy himself. But man left to himself would destroy all life. God must and will intervene to prevent this from happening.

In Genesis 1:26-27 we get a glimpse of God’s plan and His purpose in creating mankind. We see that God is creating a family that will consist of many sons and daughters (Hebrews 2:10; 2 Corinthians 6:18). He didn’t create man to watch him destroy himself. That is not the future that God intends for mankind. Our future is described in 1 Peter 1:4-9. It is an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance, reserved in heaven. It is “the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.” Brethren, you were not born merely to exist, to struggle, to die. You were born to become a child of God—to enter His family, to share His nature and to live forever in His Kingdom.

Man left to himself would no doubt destroy all life on the planet, but that is not God’s plan. Why were you born? To become part of the God family, to live and rule for all eternity in the Kingdom of God. It will be a world without Satan, when man will again have the opportunity to choose the tree of life. Scripture assures us that the future of man is not self-destruction. God will prevent that. Revelation 19:11-21 and 20:1-4 describe the future, and it does not include the destruction of all human life. There are no more powerful words in all of Scripture.

After Christ’s return, the choice of life will be revisited, and this time humans will choose the tree of life. The world will not be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Man’s rebellious governments will be defeated, and Jesus Christ and the saints will rule as the government of God. We need not worry about the future. We pray for God’s Kingdom to come soon, but as His saints our inheritance is preserved in heaven. We look forward to that future, and we celebrate it each year during the Feast of Tabernacles. God’s plan has a happy ending, even though (as portrayed in some movies) man under the sway of Satan would destroy all life. The good news is that God won’t let it happen!

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

Jim Franks