Herbert W. Armstrong Audio Sermon Transcripts
The Church of God Faithful Flock brings you transcripts of sermons given by Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong.
A Positive Message
Sermon Date: December 1, 1977
Today I have good news for you, very good news. This church needs a reawakening. This church needs a spiritual reawakening if ever a church did. We also need a reawakening in our writings and in our preaching. We need an awakening from preaching a doctrine of gloom and agony and today's bad news. And we need to begin preaching the GOOD NEWS of the World Tomorrow. And that's what we are going to do from this minute on and I am announcing it now!
I wonder how many of you saw this in the current (I think it's Newsweek) yes it's Newsweek, on the news stands now: "The Gloom and Doom." The gloom of how religious people are sounding the message of doom. I read that eagerly because I was just sure I would see our name in there as one of those that are spreading the message of doom.
Thankfully I didn't find it there. We were not mentioned. And how we escaped it I don't know, I just thanked God for it. A test was made some time recently on a good many thousand people; a clerk surveyed. Whenever there has been bad news, real seriously bad news, and the papers have been filled with it more than ordinarily. People become depressed and the retail stores — spending begins to slow down, and it costs them millions of dollars.
But if some good news happens it makes the people generally happy, which is not often. Sales pick up in the stores immediately and people begin to spend. And I want to tell you brethren that as we begin to quit preaching the bad news of today's world and begin to preach the GOOD NEWS of the World Tomorrow, we're going to see the income of this work jump up once again.
Now we cannot preach the good news of Tomorrow's World and the Kingdom of God, if we don't show them the contrast. I say that it is necessary that we say a few things about the bad news of today and give the reason and the cause, and why it is bad; and WHY it is going to be good in the future. And that's the way we started out. That's the way I started out 43 years ago.
I said of gossip and rumors, and upon especially if it's bad news — oh how we do love to gossip and tear that rumor off if there's any bad news: or if it is of a derogatory nature; or if it's something we think other people will look down on, will frown on and will think it's bad. That too we love to proclaim. I don't mean the people next to you, I mean you, every one of you. And that is going to have to stop. Now I say that on the authority of Jesus Christ, not my idea.
Forty three Years ago God conferred on me — not on the church, not on a team, not on a partnership, because Garner Ted was only three years old then — He conferred on ME the responsibility of the Great Commission to get the gospel message of Jesus Christ to the whole world for a witness to all nations. And I am the one He's going to hold responsible.
God has always worked through one man. We seem to want to begin to forget that now and think that God works through committees, or works through teams, or this or that or the other thing. Now I was very happy to hear my son a week ago, make that very plain, that there is a chain of authority. And it is from God to Christ, and from Christ it is to ME, and under me to Garner Ted Armstrong, and then to the others under him.
Now maybe some of you don't like it that way. That's the way CHRIST made it. That's the way IT IS, and by HIS authority, that's the way it's going to remain. And if you don't like it that way why, you know what you can do! But that's the way it'll be in this church. And we don't take that vote to see what you think about it. And I know that I'm the one who's going to be held accountable and I'm very conscious of that fact.
But God did make the church back of me, to make possible the turning out of that Great Commission (because one man in today's world can not do it alone) and let us have a part in it. And perhaps your part in it is just as important as mine. But the leadership God gave to me. However, He conferred it not on the church because the church of this time (the Philadelphia era) had not yet been raised up when He conferred that commission on me.
Now I had.....you know well we get a lot of hate mail, Garner Ted talked about how much of it he gets, on television. And I think this was sincere and not a hate letter however, but one man wrote in, and the Managing Editor of the Plain Truth brought it to me; thought I'd be interested in reading it. "How do you know God conferred that commission on you? Did He come down personally and have a talk with you? Did you see Him? Did He lay hands on your head or something? Or are we just supposed to take your word for it? Or did you appoint yourself?"
You know they accused Moses of appointing himself didn't they? And I guess there are those in the church today that think I appointed myself. It was before the church was even born. Then God raised up the church to stand back of me, to get this job done. The Great Commission was conferred on me in mid-July of 1933. He charged me with the Great Commission to go to all the world with His gospel.
Then in August of the same year (1933) the parent church was raised up with 19 members in Eugene, Oregon. We started about as small as any church could start. That's the church for this era this time. God's church has existed since 31 A.D. and to a great extent it had to exist undercover — underground so to speak — ever since about the 60's or 70's A.D.
The gospel was not proclaimed to the world during all that time, and the first time for about 1,900 years (or for eighteen and a half centuries) that the gospel had been proclaimed publicly, was on a radio broadcast that I made in October of 1933. And I believe it was during the days of the Feast of Tabernacles.
He also commissioned me to take the leadership in building up of the church after it was founded; of building up this work of announcing the good news (because the word 'gospel' means good news, not bad news) of the Kingdom of God that will rule the world and bring us world peace and happiness. And that is good news!
Now I've been commissioned to spread good news over this world. The church and the work grew, we felt very slowly at the time, and yet we look back on it and for 35 years it was growing, and the income for it was growing at the rate of 30% (approximately) a year. Some years 27%, some 33, but averaging around 30% a year. That is an unheard of rate of growth.
I don't know any business corporation; I don't know any institution or any church that has grown at that rate for 35 years. The last 7 or 8 years that rate of growth has stopped. It has still been growing, but slowly. The income has increased year by year, but not as rapidly as inflation, which literally means a decrease in income, because a dollar doesn't buy as much as it did.
Nevertheless we grew so fast, it was really faster than we had human ability to handle. So we got into things that seemed good to us (and were good) but outside of the great commission. We built the Imperial Schools. Finally when things started going the other way we had to close them because they were not an essential part of the work.
It was wonderful to have those schools. They were the best schools, Elementary, Junior High and High School in these United States, that I think anywhere in the world. But only the members who were in the local churches here and in Big Sandy, and in Bricket Wood, England; only their children had the privilege of attending.
So then we tried to have something else for the other children. And that was of course the SEP, (the Summer Educational Program) up in northern Minnesota. Good things, wonderful things to do, and it's nice to do good things if you can afford them. We're still doing that. We're still affording it.
Among other things (I won't go on trying to enumerate them) but one, we started a commissary store that we thought would help our members right here in Pasadena. We took one minister out of the pulpit and put him in to run a store and be a merchant, and that is not part of God's program. I didn't do it, I allowed it to be done. I didn't have any knowledge of it at the moment: but I did close up the commissary store when I saw that it was only causing trouble.
Many of you members who were on overall being benefited would squawk and complain and go back and gripe and grumble and register complaints, much more than you would if it had been a store run by outsiders. You were much more free to do it because this was the church. And it began to cause trouble among our own brethren. Its fruits were bad not good. Some of you need to think that over, because some of you were doing just that.
We need to take a look on these things and take an inventory once in a while and see just where we stand in the eyes of God — because WE ARE BEING JUDGED NOW. JUDGMENT IS NOW ON THE HOUSE OF GOD. JUDGMENT IS NOT NOW ON THE OUTSIDE WORLD. GOD ISN'T TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD. GOD DIDN'T START CHRIST ON ANY SOUL SAVING CRUSADE.
THE ONLY ONES BEING SAVED NOW ARE THOSE PREDESTINATED to be saved. That is what predestination is and what it means. There were four long articles by four of our top men in the Plain Truth. Not one hit the nail on the head. So what is the meaning of predestination? WHY?
It means those that were CALLED are CHOSEN OF GOD to OVERCOME Satan now so WE CAN SIT WITH CHRIST ON HIS THRONE when He comes. I try to say that we are not just another church. We're not any old Protestant Church. We are totally different! There is no church like this on the face of the earth. No other church really believes what God says; and this is the Word of God.
There are MILLIONS who believe in the Bible, and they say they believe the Bible. But I can read you again and again and again; place after place after place here, a plain statement. And I said, "No I don't believe that." The first one that hit me it said; "the wages of sin is death." I didn't believe it, not then. I said, "I've been taught since I was a child the wages of sin is eternal life, not death. Eternal life, but of course in hell fire."
Then the very next part of the same verse;
Romans 6:23... the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord
Well now, I had a hard time believing that. I had always been taught I was an immortal soul, I already had the gift of eternal life, why did I need it as a gift? That was just the start, and I began to find that nearly everything I had been TAUGHT in the churches of this world were the exact OPPOSITE of what God says in His Word.
There were THOUSANDS who believed on JESUS CHRIST, and I don't know whether it was thousands, but there was quite a number that you will find in the 8th chapter of John, who believed on Him. It just says "many." And to them who believed on Him He said; "you plot and plan to kill me because my word has no place in you. Because you do not believe what I say."
I have come to see that Adam and Eve listened to God Himself who created them, and they did not believe what He said. There is a Protestant denomination that has a slogan "Preaching Christ to the World." They do preach Christ, but they don't believe what He said. And also Jesus Himself said "Many would come in my name saying that I am the Christ" — telling the world that Jesus was the Christ, not saying they are Christ.
If you run down every place in the Bible where people came in the name of Christ, they didn't come using His name saying "I am Jesus." One man did that. He walked into Garner Ted's office one time and introduced himself as Jesus Christ. "I have come to have a talk with you. I am Jesus Christ."
Ted said, "Oh you are, are you? Well now look, I am just an ordinary human being, and if you are Jesus Christ you are a lot stronger than I am. And if I am able to throw you out that door and throw you out of this office, then you are not Jesus Christ." He was not Jesus Christ! (Congregation laughs)
So the first time the good news that I know of, of the Kingdom of God, and that the Kingdom was going to be on this earth; and how God had made all the promises to Abraham, and He promised this earth: was put on the air in October, 1933. The first Sunday in 1934 the regular program began. It was then weekly. It was then called Radio Church of God; later changed to The World Tomorrow.
The Church and the Work began to grow. It had a very rapid growth as I said. We got into some things that were nice, though we couldn't really afford them when things began to go the other way a little bit; but God didn't commission me to get in the business of making money. Then Ted, who caused me to so organize this work that I could get nothing myself out of it at all, except what I am paid as salary. And from the first, I have never set my own salary. It has always been set by a committee competent to do it.
It started out, we had a man who had been twelve years an attorney in the Internal Revenue Department of Washington, DC. A woman (not a member of our family) and a man (not a member of my family) were, I appointed them as a committee of three, to determine what would be proper and right and set it as my salary. And we had a man who was an attorney in the Internal Revenue Bureau who knew what would be right in the eyes of the United States Government.
Now I am allowed many things and many benefits it's true, but I don't own anything except the clothes on my back and that I wear. I used to have a suit for every day of the week, and I always said, "This is it." Well I can do a little better than that now. But that, and a personal checking account is all I have.
If I should marry and there have been so many rumors about that. You all know about that. Now that's one thing your ears have all been open to. You know coming to that, I would have nothing to leave to a widow if I died, except a little bit of cash in the bank in a checking account, not even...I did have nearly $100 I put in a savings account, and that was over thirty years ago and I come to find out the time has elapsed, so I have lost that, instead of getting the interest that might have been built up on it, because I never built it up.
Well, as I said, we cannot proclaim the Kingdom of God (which is the family of God governing the whole world) the government of God. Christ was born to be a ruler. He's coming as the King of Kings. We can't preach that to the world without preaching something about this world and what's wrong with it and why! We get all things by comparison or by contrast, and if we don't tell them what's wrong and show the reason, we're never going to be able to really make people see at all the good news of tomorrow's world.
So we began (and I began) at that time telling them a little about today's world. So that led us to preaching more and more about today's world and its evils. And we've come to the place where 95 to 99 percent of what we say is about today's world and its evils, and not about the world tomorrow and what it will be like.
We do have booklets, The Wonderful World Tomorrow. I would almost gamble that half of you have never seen or read it, because it's been a few years and it sort of dropped out of circulation. One of the most wonderful books that we ever wrote. It should be the things that from what I've been commissioned to get out, and it's going out again, There is going to be a re-write of it too, or another book like it under a different title, and put them both out!
I've just had a reawakening, and it came from one of our ministers. At the Feast of Tabernacles I spoke, not only before every congregation at every Feast site within the Continental United States, but also before a special dinner planned at every Feast site, for all of the ministers attending that Feast and their wives.
And at every one I encouraged (because I don't think I neglected one) I asked the ministers to write to me. "You write to me and I will read it. I won't guarantee I'll answer every letter because I am hoping at least there will be so many I won't have time to answer them all. But I will read it." And I still have a stack there I have to read.
And one of the first ones that I read said that; "I had been spending the Feast of Tabernacles for several years now" — he graduated from Ambassador College several years ago and many of you (maybe half or more of you) would know his name if I would give it to you. Maybe he's not the best known minister in the church, but he's the one that I would say is among our leaders — or very close to the leaders. And he says, "I have hardly heard a sermon during the Feast of Tabernacles on what the Feast of Tabernacles is. Why we are here. What it means. Why God has us keep it, and what is the meaning of it."
I used to preach nothing else. But I assumed the other ministers are getting that message over now. And I try to give them something that should come only from me and that the other ministers can't preach, because I can go back to things before they came on the scene, and tell them things that the other ministers can't.
Many people in many churches are hearing no sermons about the world tomorrow. Well now, I have to personally take the blame for this. God has made me the leader. I have been doing it myself. I've been allowing it to be done. I have been allowing others to do it. The leadership is on me. It was conferred on me by God.
And by the way, this man wanted to know if God spoke to me and how do I know that I was called; and I sat right down and wrote an editorial that will appear somewhere in the February/March/April number of The Plain Truth. I'll just say this much about how I know — how did you come to be here?
Whom did God use to start His church in this era? Whom did God use in building it, at first alone without other ministers? Whom did God use in starting the World Tomorrow on the air? Whom did God use in starting The Plain Truth? Whom has God used in building this ALL THE WAY?
All I have to do is to point to what has happened. All I have to do is to think of YOU, directly or indirectly are my children in the Lord. YOU are my recommendation, as Paul said; others wanted some recommendation. They wanted some kind of accreditation, and he says "you are my accreditation, you who have been converted through my preaching."
John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus Christ while John was in prison to ask him: "Are you the Christ and how can we know and how can you prove you are the Christ?" He said, "You go back and tell John what you see being done." By their fruits you shall know...
If you want to know whether if it's true or not that God appointed me, look at the fruit. I don't have to defend myself. I don't have to say one word. Look at the history. Look at the fruit. Look what's been done and look what's being done today.
Now I said I take full responsibility but before YOU and before the whole COUNTRY, because this is being recorded, and the churches of God all over the world is going to hear this, I SOLEMNLY REPENT! And repent means you change to go the other way, and that's precisely what I am doing.
I will read you here in I Corinthians;
I Corinthians 2:9-10 But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things God hath prepared for them that love Him. (10) But God hath revealed them (un)to us by his Spirit...
But without the Holy Spirit of God you cannot understand the things God has prepared for us. You cannot understand prophecy which deals with what God has prepared for us. We each have a spirit. I have explained this so many, many times. It is the spirit that works with the human brain and imparts the power of intellect to the human brain.
But that spirit cannot see and it cannot hear, nor taste, nor smell, nor feel. The human brain does all of that. And even though what you feel may be down in the ankle, as I notice quite often uncomfortably now, (it's really up here that I feel it) without the brain I wouldn't feel it. And that spirit records only, and no, it doesn't know of itself, but records only that which can be seen or heard, or felt, or smelled, or tasted.
And you can't see spirit, you can't hear it. There is no way that spiritual knowledge can enter the normal mind of the normal man. They can't understand spiritual principals. They can't understand right from WRONG believe it or not! One man thinks it's a deadly sin to smoke, another thinks it is not. People can't agree as to what is right and what is wrong. What is wrong in this country is right in some other country. There you are!
I wonder what is the conception of most of you have about the Kingdom of God. We talk about when we get into the kingdom. I remember years and years ago when the Feast of Tabernacles was held up at Belknap Springs and a little group of about 35 of us would meet out there. The church was very small then. And a popular saying was; "Well we had better learn to get along among ourselves here now, because we'll certainly have to when we get in the kingdom."
Their concept was — the Kingdom of God, we're all going to be together; one great society hearing sermons morning and evening — morning, afternoon and evening and one great time of enjoying ourselves, with nothing to do! In OTHER WORDS the concept of, the same as so many protestants churches have of heaven, only they don't know where heaven is except way off somewhere and this book takes heaven and puts it down on the earth.
It's about time we had articles showing you what the Kingdom of God will be like and what the world will be like under its rule. And I'm going to start writing that kind of article. Now I already have about six or eight articles, some of them quite long, all set to type, all written. I've been doing a lot more writing lately and when I couldn't walk around because of a worse than a broken ankle, and had to spend the first two weeks in a wheelchair.
And believe you me I sympathize with those now that have to go around in wheelchairs, since I have experienced it. And it made me a little glad of one thing. A man who raises money for Israel, and he's the Vice-President of the Tel Aviv University. He lives in Beverley Hills. He's a wealthy man and I happen to know that he donates very liberally to Israel, and he asked me to have lunch with him one day, shortly after that last war (the holy day war).
He said, "Mr. Armstrong," he says, "There is something: I've gone as far as I can go and I can't give any more, but," he said, "We have hundreds of wounded soldiers in need of wheelchairs and they need $25,000 to get wheelchairs for them. And the need is great and immediate, and they need it quick! I don't like to appeal to you, and I don't go around asking for money, but I have given till it hurts myself, and I am not in a position to give it. What about it?" I said, "I'll hand you a check for $25,000 tomorrow morning," and I did.
Well when I spent two weeks in a wheelchair, believe you me I was glad I had been there. Now some of you are going to criticize me for spending $25,000 that way. You go ahead and criticize, but please say it behind my back, I don't care to hear it! I've done things that people wouldn't approve, but I know GOD is well pleased. And I do not seek to please men, just as Paul said he didn't.
I seek to please God. He's my judge. He is judging me day by day NOW, and He's judging YOU day by day. I'm not through yet neither, but I am going to point out to you so that I hope you will understand a good many things.
Now, I didn't have time to get together all that I want, but I will be writing articles along this line. What I don't get in today's sermon will be coming. But the main thing today is, we have been, in order to get the World Tomorrow message over, we talk so much about the world today, then we end up with one or two paragraphs of a better world is coming. And it won't be long now until Christ will come and will bring peace to this unhappy earth. We wind up with about one paragraph on the World Tomorrow.
Oh yes, we manage to get it in. Maybe we're getting it in there just to save my own neck, I don't know. Now I don't intend to change the balance to where we keep only 1% of the world today and 99% of the world tomorrow. I think we have preached at least more than that about today's world.
I think we have to talk about the conditions of today's world and tell them WHY. And tell them what LED UP TO IT. And tell them WHY man was put on EARTH. Tell them WHY GOD is ALLOWING it today, to lead on to what is going to HAPPEN! But we need to condense that part of it and play that down and then put the big emphasis, and the biggest amount of time, on the world tomorrow.
Now the next issue of the Bulletin that goes to our ministers is going to carry an article, and I'm going to give them many, many suggestions of what I want them to preach during the next year.
God originally populated this world with angels. Do you know why? And He put government over them. Do you know why He needed government? Because He had a job for them to do. God is a Creator and He wanted them to go on and finish the creation of this earth.
I often illustrate it this way. A great bank, or a great Insurance Company, or some great institution has decided to build a fifty story building (an office building probably). So all the plans and blueprints are made out and, just like this Auditorium, every square inch was on paper before I even stated at the first round to break ground for beginning of the actual building of this beautiful Auditorium, the finest on earth!
And I can go the limit on that, it is the finest. And those artists who perform in the great auditoriums all over the world; in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and America will tell you that. Several have told me that without question. And I get some kind of pleasure out of that because I knew that's the way God wants it. And I know God is pleased.
I don't care if EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU IS DISPLEASED. GOD is PLEASED. And I am trying to see that it is conducted in His honor and to His glory. But He needed government because... well no, let me finish my illustration here about the banks and the fifty story building.
They start out with a foundation and a super-structure, which is usually big steel beams. And finally it looks like (if I cross my fingers if you can see what I mean) you see the big beams going up and cross beams and nothing in-between, just like you see right through them.
Well that's the skeleton, or the super-structure. Do you know your own body is made the same way? There is a skeleton. You've got a back bone, and you have shoulder bones, and hip bones and joints. The bones through your arms. The bones through your legs. You don't see them, they're hidden, but they support you. They hold you together.
And so this steel super-structure holds everything together. And it's all down on paper. Now these hired two contractors, and I don't think they usually do it this way but they could have. One to build the super-structure, the foundation, and what is built is perfect — absolutely perfect, but it's not finished.
The outside walls are not on. The inside walls are not in. The corridors and the different rooms are not walled off. The floors are not there, or laid. All of the plumbing has to go in, the electric wiring. So many other things yet have to go in. Certainly they might hire a different architect to do all of that. And then finally, the furnishing. They'd need to hire a third architect to do that, an interior decorator. And that's the way they usually do, do it.
So you see, as far as it's gone, it is a perfect creation. God did not finish His creation. Now maybe that's new to you but it's true. He intended the angels to go on and do something with the matter that is in this earth and the many properties it has, and to make it more beautiful and to do something with it. And instead of that they destroyed it. They turned light into darkness. They turned beauty into ugliness. They turned it into chaos, and you read back here in the very second verse in the Bible:
Genesis 1:2 And the earth was [or became, chaotic and in confusion — waste and empty. The Hebrew words are 'tohu' and 'bohu'. It says here] without form and void [and that's not a very good definition, or translation] and darkness was upon the face of the deep...
They ruined it, and then in six days, if you read in the 104th Psalm and the 30th verse; God renewed the face of the earth for man — to put man here. God instructed manbut man did not believe what God said. But man had not experienced Satan's way, or God's way as yet. But God's way was available to him, was explained to him. And the Tree of Life was there that would have given him the love of God to fulfill the law of God.
Now God placed government on this earth and He placed the Super-Archangel Lucifer on a throne to rule it. He needed government because He had a great job for the angels to do and He wanted them to work together. He wanted them all to push toward the same goal in harmony, in unity, and together. They didn't believe in that. They believed in competition and strife.
Now tomorrow we are going to see another big Rose Bowl crowd that's as they did their Rose Bowl game was a week ago today. This is called the great Super Bowl and here are going to be eleven great behemoths you might say — big strong, husky men. Most of them over six feet to all the way up to seven. All of them weighing over 200 lbs on up — some over 300 — lined up on one side.
And they've got a goal. They've got a ball and they want to get that ball down across the goal at the other end. But you know what? Lined up against them are eleven other behemoths just as big and just as strong, and they're going to say, "You will not go we're going to shove you back. We're not going to let you succeed!"
That's the way we do in today's world and so we will have the ECSTASY AND THE AGONY tomorrow. The winning team will be in ECSTASY, and their big champagne bottles. But the losing team won't serve champagne. They may brake the bottles and throw it away. They'll have the agony and they will suffer to get beat. In this world someone has to get beat.
I was noticing the end of a football game,or it was at the end of some game, some ball game, was it Pittsburgh that lost, or the Rams, and they lost too? I don't remember. But I said, "They had to lose." And now the man who drives me said, "Well someone always has to lose." Not in the World Tomorrow they won't.
They don't care how much agony they inflict on the other, tomorrow it is going to be different. We're all going to think the same way. We're all going for the same goal. God remade this earth and man has done to it the same thing the angels did. We have besmirched everything our hands could get on. We have ruined and befouled the air. We have polluted the water; the streams, the lakes, even the ocean, until in many cases even ocean fish are unfit to eat. We have been trying to tear down and destroy and not to build up.
In this booklet let me just read you a few little quotes;"What is actually going to be the outcome of all [these things going on today of] the exciting, entertainment-crazed, gadget-buying and chaotic, divided and sick world is something TOTALLY UNSEEN by [the]statesmen, [the] scientists, [the] educators, [and the]World Leaders."
They don't see what's wrong today and how it ought to be, and how it could be changed.
Just a few little things I went through here that I have marked and may appear in an article again later. Here's a paragraph:"Desperately man wants to save the Society he has established upon the earth."
You see Adam rejected God and believed Satan. So Adam cut man off from God and God adopted a hands-off policy and said, "You go build your own world." And God has not tried to save this world — not YET!
But I can't get that over where I think most of you believe it! Now maybe you do. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am. Some of the ministers and some of the people think you really do believe it. But I think too much Protestantism has rubbed off on us. We think God is desperately trying to get everybody saved today — only those predestinated to be called.
But Christ had to confront Satan. Christ had to overcome Satan to qualify to REPLACE him on the THRONE. Satan is still there on that throne. God has not removed him, and I've said God will not remove him until one has QUALIFIED and has also been inducted into office. Christ qualified but He was not inducted into office, He went to heaven for 1,900 years.
Why? Because God has given man 6,000 years to work out his own civilization. To work out his own kind of government, his own kind of schools and teaching and education to where he got his own styles and types, not only of government, but of finance, of industry, of everything; agriculture, everything. And the chaos we have is the result.
Now man thinks (that's somewhere in here) that this world is the final culmination of about 6,000 years (I think I have it over here)."People think of civilization as the sum total of EVERYTHING GOOD that mankind has struggled from the dawn of history to establish! People think of civilization as the (far)-advanced,[educated] intelligent, well-ordered human Society that is GOOD [or something, I read over that word] to the point of perfection! The acme of human progress! Perhaps you have accepted [that] popular assumption."
And they believe so that when Christ comes to establish the Kingdom of God they will fight to retain this civilization because they love it. They believe in it. They think it's the very height of civilization. Civilization is coming to be a word that means EVERYTHING GOOD to most people. And this civilization is evil from one end to the other.
And Christ is going to come and tear it down and He is going to build us a World Tomorrow! Now what will it be like? Well I'll tell you one reason to know. I've got so many more things, and time is going on, and there is a cause for everything.
God's government is based on a law. You can't have a government without a law, and God's law is a way of life, and it's a way of life that would accomplish what God wanted. It's a way of life that would make everybody happy. It is the way that would give us peace. And that way is love.
It is an outgoing and out-flowing feeling of love toward others, wanting them to be as happy as yourself: As much concern for their good and their welfare as for your own. That's the way. Now we can have a football team where they all play together, and too often there is trouble on the team and that is why the team isn't winning any more — basketball, football, baseball.
They get rid of a certain player that was causing all the trouble and then the team begins to win again. But always there's the other team fighting against them in this world. God is going to give us a world where everybody will cooperate and everybody will love everybody else, and will be concerned with others.
Satan believes that lust and greed and vanity, and jealousy and envy, hypocrisy, pretense, competition that leads to strife and warfare, and resentment of authority, that those are the qualities that make for a great civilization. And that's what we have, because Satan has been influencing everybody.
The Apostle Paul, 4,000 years after Adam and Eve, said he feared lest the same devil, still alive, still existing, would deceive and influence them at Corinth, even as he had old mother Eve. Oh he was still doing it the same way, although he is invisible to us, we don't see him and he's got us believing he doesn't exist.
He's got us... some people believe God exists but he makes them think he is God. And that's the world we live in. God isn't trying to save this world. God is leaving this world to itself. Man says, "God get out of my way. Why are you sticking your nose in my business for? I have taken to myself" the KNOWLEDGE of what is good and what is evil. Don't you try to tell me what is good and what is evil," as God's law does.
So man has made up his own mind of what is good and what is evil, and he has been going that way — and look at what we have. Over half of the world in abject poverty living in filth and squalor. Over half of the world — total ignorance and uneducated. And in an affluent world like the United States, one tenth of the people are off in their upper story, mentally, and need mental treatment. Hospitals are full — sickness and disease.
I've dealt with and come into close contact with, the great and the near-great, not only around the world but right here in the United States. The captains of industry, the chairmen of the board and the presidents of the great corporations around Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and they're not happy.
And I find that even... they have one goal, to make money, and they succeed. And when they get it, it isn't enough and it doesn't make them happy. I don't find happiness in this world, but the way of God is going to give us peace and joy and happiness.
Now when I was sixteen I thought this was a great thing, getting my first job away from home. And my employer put his arm on my shoulder and said, "You're going to do great things. Yes sir you're destined to do great things. I've got great faith in you. Now you are going to have to work hard. You're going to have to study. You're going to have to apply yourself, but you can achieve great success."
You know he aroused ambition in me. Ambition is the desire to achieve a goal — or to have, to get, plus the willingness to put forth the effort to get out and get it. Now Satan will tell you that is a very good thing. That stimulates action to get things done. So that's a good thing isn't it? Most people believe it is.
Then later (two years later) when I was eighteen, I chose my goal. I had made a self-analysis on all the, well on myself (a self-analysis) and also an analysis of the various occupations, vocations, professions and so on. And I seemed to fit in the field of advertising and journalism so I chose that. And I was successful because I worked hard and I was ambitious.
But when I was fifty — no thirty-five, God turned me around and showed me that what I had was Satan's way of get. The peculiar thing is that in my business life I was always applying God's principal of concern for my customers and the welfare of others. I don't understand why unless God was training me for a job later on, because that wasn't human nature. That wasn't Satan doing that.
Nevertheless I found that this ambition and all the self-confidence that it generated, and that self-confidence oozed out of me until I was one of the most conceited, cocky guys you ever saw. I want to tell you, when I was twenty-five, and twenty-six and twenty-seven and beginning to do business with the great heads of the great businesses and corporations of this country, every so-called great man I met, and the heads of the biggest banks in Chicago and New York. I said, "I'm more important, I'm bigger than that man."
Well do you know how I reasoned that out? I probably wasn't making one hundredth, maybe not a thousandth part of the money he was. That wasn't it. I was only, say twenty-five years old. He was fifty-five or sixty-five.
By the time I was his age I was going to be bigger than he is. So that's why in my mind I was bigger than he is right now, because I was going to be. I was measuring it by what I would be some day, not what I was then. It was vanity it was egotism, I was filled with self-confidence.
At age thirty-five I learned that I had to exchange that vanity for humility. I had to come down off that high horse. I learned that I had to find a new kind of faith. Not self-confidence but faith. Faith in a living Christ. That is the kind of confidence I had to come to have.
And I had to start all over, and I did start all over from the SMALLEST BEGINNING. And this work has been the outgrowth, but I didn't do it. I was only an instrument. God did it through me. There isn't hardly an inch of this campus that I can't tell you, if I wanted to use that kind of language, that I thought that out and designed it and put it there. But you never hear me say that.
God put the thought in my mind and God used me in doing it. And I have been rather proud of the fact because I know it's God's doing that two years running we have received the award of having the most beautiful, the best landscaped, and the best maintained campus of any college or university in the United States.
I'm sure that the one at Bricket Wood was also the best in England and, of its type and kind, the one at Big Sandy would have the same rating because there is quality. There is beauty. God is the author of beauty and God is the author of quality, and some people don't believe that because they have been listening to Satan.
Satan is the author of darkness, of ugliness, of cheapness, of inferiority, of mediocrity. I don't believe in those things. I never did and I never will. But if you want to know what it is going to be like in the World Tomorrow, you take the two ways; the way of God's law of outgoing concern for everybody, and of cooperation, of serving, of helping, of working together and without opposition.
All trying to build up something great, something wonderful, something good. And when we get through and after the Millennium and we have converted humanity, that's when we're going to go out there to win souls for Christ. And after the Great White Throne Judgment that will follow that, then we're going to other planets! And they were created like I say the skeleton of the steel framework, but not finished.
But today they are all degenerated. They are decayed, and decay means they had once been better and they had gone down. A change had taken place. That is not the way they were originally created. And the decay that came to other planets in our solar system, and our astronomers can't see far enough to know what goes on beyond that. We just know that our solar system is part of a galaxy, and there are many galaxies and so on.
And we are going to build up the rest of the whole universe. We're going to repair the damage that's been done first. Then we are going to build on to the great super-structure that God has put there, and we're going to make it beautiful. And if you don't believe in beautiful, in beauty and character and quality you won't be there. And you don't belong in this church now if you don't believe in those things, you really don't, because that is God's way. That is the character of God and we have to accept and we have to receive His character within us.
Now, you take what goes on, and everything that man does and apply the principal of giving, of cooperating and helping do it and you begin to see what's going to happen in the World Tomorrow. Read this booklet again, there is a whole lot in it about it. I am not trying to describe it so much today, as to tell you what we've learned. To tell you that I have repented and that my leadership is going to change this whole work around. And God has given me the authority as its leader to do it.
So far as that is concerned I don't think I am going to have a bit of trouble. Every minister in this church is going to be 100% with me because I think they see that at a glance, and we just haven't realized that we have been preaching the bad news of today's world as we have. I'm sure we haven't realized it and I am sure that the ministers are 100% with me in it.
And they'll have to be because that's the way it's going to be and nobody is going to be a minister in this church that isn't willing to go along and proclaim the good news, the wonderful good news of the wonderful world tomorrow. We're going to build up and we're going to be constantly... we'll become God and we will envision great things and we'll be thinking of great things ahead. And we'll always be anticipating great achievement, great accomplishment and we'll always be looking back on great achievements and great accomplishments and great happiness that we have achieved.
You can get all excited and thrilled about this game tomorrow. How can you replace that with GOD'S WAY? OH HOW MUCH GREATER WILL IT BE to think of the GREAT things we can do with purpose ahead to doing it, and to getting it done.
If you are going to build a new home, or furnish a new home, what a wonderful ecstasy it is to think about it and plan it. If you are going to take a trip and you've never traveled before and you're going to get to maybe go abroad somewhere. Well you sleep it, you think it, you're always looking forward to something, for there is something good that is going to come to you.
That's what we'll be doing. We'll be anticipating great things. We'll be thinking great things and great thoughts. We'll be accomplishing great things. And when we think of the good we are doing to others, and how much good we have done to them, that's going to give us a joy and a happiness beyond anything that you can describe.
So we are going to preach the good news and less of the bad news. Just enough of the bad news to make them understand how good the good news is going to be. There is a wonderful World Tomorrow just around the door — around the corner. Sure the great tribulation is coming first. God isn't going to let it happen until man has come to the place when maybe the last two men alive would kill each other.
But that isn't going to be too long. This way — we have to prove that this way is wrong. We have to prove. God is insisting that we prove that His way and His way only is right. And He's taken 6,000 years to do it, and then 1,000 years He's going to save humanity.
And yet those that have seen the results and have been starting to live the right way, as soon as Satan is let loose at the end of the Millennium, hundreds of millions will turn wrong again. And that'll be the end of them though. Everybody who ever lived is going to be resurrected and there will be a time — I still think that a hundred years is a very possible interpretation of that little phrase in Isaiah 65.
But whether it is or not makes no difference. I don't care. God knows how long it is going to take, whether it's going to be one year, a hundred years, a thousand years or what, it will be the amount of time God knows it's going to take.
Everybody is going to see the results and have tasted until they get a stomach so full of Satan's evil ways and they get so bitter that they want to vomit it all up and they want to come to God's way of glory and happiness and peace and everything joyful forever on because there is the great life, the good life, everything abundant is just around the corner and coming.
Now we have to prove this thing first or people wouldn't understand it and they wouldn't enjoy it, but we're getting very close to it. We have come to the time and the generation. You know you can count a generation, not from how long you figure it takes until you are old enough to bear your first child.
But you go back to the time of Noah and that generation would all die from twenty and up. So the oldest at that time must have been around eighty to a hundred years of age at least. So subtract twenty from that and you've got... God called me back in 1933. We haven't got too much time to go but there could be another ten or twenty years. God knows, I don't. I don't know how much time we have left but the job is going to get done.
Now someone said; "Yes, but Mr. Armstrong you haven't shaken the world to its very foundation with this message. You haven't accomplished anything yet Mr. Armstrong." Brethren, God didn't call me to shake the world. You read back in Haggai where GOD is going to shake the world to its foundation.
GOD IS GOING TO SHAKE THIS WORLD not Herbert Armstrong, not Garner Ted Armstrong, not this church. He has not given us that kind of power and we don't possess it. But we are getting the warning out and we are announcing the Kingdom of God and we are going to go on announcing it and we are going to begin to paint a prettier picture from this moment on, I promise you that.