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HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91123
London
October 18, 1983
Dear Brethren and Co-Workers with Christ:
World troubles continue to expand. Among recent news stories have been
kidnappings for ransom, and airplane hijackings. There was an extreme precedent
6,000 years ago. The whole world, then yet to be born, was kidnapped by Satan.
Adam's children, now multiplied into about four and a third billion people, have
become "A WORLD HELD CAPTIVE."
The world was intended to be the children of God, forming God's world.
But the hostage Adam and his children preferred life under the kidnapper. Under
Satan's deception, a deceived human society was built into the present world--"A
WORLD HELD CAPTIVE," preferring the satanic captor to the intended parent. In
John 8:31, 44 Jesus called even those who believed on him children of the devil,
who preferred SATAN'S way of life to the ways of their Creator who desired to be
their father.
God the Father paid the ransom price. He GAVE his only begotten Son that
they might not perish, but have eternal life as children of God. The Son, Jesus,
brought LIGHT into Satan's world, but men loved the darkness of Satan's
deception rather than the true light.
However, Jesus called 12 disciples as students to be taught the TRUTH by
him. He called them OUT of this world of Satan's, opened their minds to Satan's
deception, sent them forth to teach still others God the Father would call to
become HIS children, ransomed, bought and paid for by the blood of Christ. He
called them OUT of Satan's world, as the pioneers starting the embryo of GOD'S
world--an entire new and different world.
Actually, while the new spiritual world of God started by ONE MAN--Jesus
Christ, the second Adam--and with the Church, the pre-foundation of the Church
was begun through Abraham and the prophets. How significant it is that God
called Abraham out of his local world of Babylon to start a NEW family, even
though physical, in Canaan, not mixing with nor intermarrying among the strange
Canaanites! Abraham lived there only as a sojourner. His real country was the
Kingdom of God of the far future.
I am writing from London. Have had meetings with important key leaders
here and in Europe, and obtained confidential information of crucial world
events
soon to occur. I feel God will move swiftly soon to make a short work
preparatory
to Christ's coming. It won't be long now!
Be faithful, pray more diligently. The kidnapped will soon be rescued!
With deep love, in Jesus' name,
Herbert W. Armstrong