Herbert W. Armstrong Audio Sermon Transcripts
The Church of God Faithful Flock brings you transcripts of sermons given by Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong.
Europe & Mideast Trip
Sermon Date: November 28, 1981
Greetings again everybody! Nice to be back. Now I arrived back about, let me see, I think it was about five thirty or six o'clock this morning, London time. I finally got to bed about midnight our time, after quite a long flight from London.
I think first of all perhaps you'd like to hear a little about the trip. I'm a little impressed by one thing said by Mr McNair in the opening prayer, about how this land has been blessed above all lands.
Now, on this trip I spent a few days in Jerusalem. Jerusalem had been called the glory of all lands. But do you know that our United States of America, in our lifetime, has been blessed above the land of Israel, and above Jerusalem? And right now that is the trouble spot of the world, and is going to be the trouble spot of the world until Christ comes to put the fire out.
I just had to recall that this country has been blessed above every other country in the world. And I wonder if you know why? Now, this afternoon I have no prepared sermon at all. I just arrived back late last night, as I say, we've been, you might say, travelling all night on the plane, because it was about five or six, five thirty, or six, or something like that in the morning when we arrived here by London time, by the time we'd been on for several days, and even later than that, a few days before, when we came from Cairo and Jerusalem.
And, of course, a trip like that is a very tiresome trip. You have to get over a jetlag because you arrive here after you've been up all night, and then it's just time to go to bed and sleep another night. Going the other way you get it just the opposite.
We left here, I believe it was about noon, and inside of about a couple of hours the sun had set and it was dark, because the sun was travelling this way and we were going the other way. We were going about as fast toward the east as the sun seemed to be going toward the west. And then we were all night on the plane arriving, I think we arrived at this time about four o'clock in the morning in London, London time; or not London, we landed actually out at Luton, quite a ways north of London.
We prefer to land out at that airport. It's so much easier to get through customs, immigration, and everything out there. And then my car can drive out right to the airplane there, and of course that can't happen if we go into London and at the Heathrow Airport. They have to send a bus out for us and we go through a lot of regulations to get through immigration, and then customs before you get in, and then it's still almost as long to get into London because it's heavier traffic, as it is on the 'motorway', as they call it over there, and we call it freeways here, into London from out in Luton, which is the other side of Bricket Wood by some little distance.
Anyway, I think I'll tell you first about the trip, and then I want to get back to some other things that I think we need right now. This world is in a very upset and disturbed condition. We stay here in this beautiful city, and we talk as if it's a terrible thing to have some rain out there. It's a great blessing. The sun is still shining, you know, it's just filtered sunshine. The sun is still shining up above those clouds just the same as always, and it's a great blessing to have that rain. If there are any forest fires that will help put them out.
The people up in Oregon really rejoice when they get a little bit of rain. Let me see, someone in the morning service talked about that, it seemed like Oregon again, someone who had been up there. Up there they just enjoy the rain. It all reminds me of how we're inclined to be like the ancient Israelites. They were grumbling and complaining, the Bible calls it murmuring, all the time. They had to criticize and find fault. Everything was wrong. They were discontented.
You know, we're their great, great, great, great, grandchildren, and we seem still to be the same way. We don't appreciate the things we have, but we grumble about even the good things we have. We find fault. And I notice how we disobey another thing in the scripture that says we should rejoice in good things and believe the best instead of the worst, but we seem to want to believe the worst. If there's some bad news, if someone does something wrong, the rumors will fly all over the United States about it. If something really good happens it's never mentioned.
When I said something about female makeup, and I just happened to think of it right in the middle of the sermon, and I let it go on the Sabbath during the Feast of Tabernacles when I was speaking over at Big Sandy, by the next day what I said was known all over the United States.
Women who didn't like what I said saw to it. They got on the telephone; they spent their money for long distance telephone calls to get the news out to others — the bad news. Good news, we never gossip about. Did you ever think of that? Rumors are always bad news, SHAME ON US! What's the matter with us, brethren? Jesus Christ has been trying to clean up this Church the last three years through me, and that's one thing that needs to be cleaned up, and all you brethren need to clean up your minds.
If there's some bad news, you got to get on the telephone, you got to spread it everywhere. We're just like the Israelites of old. We complain, we grumble, we want to talk about the bad news. We should rejoice in the good news. If you want to spread rumors, spread rumors about something good instead of something bad about people.
Well, to get back to our trip, we arrived in London on, let me see, was it Thursday or Friday morning? Anyway, we had a meeting over there. Our minister from New Zealand, the head of our office there, and also Herr Schnee, the head of our office in Germany, came over to have reports and talks with me. I spoke to a united congregation in London of more than a thousand people on the Sabbath. That was two weeks ago today, I believe.
And then on Monday we flew on. I stopped off to have a board meeting of the King Leopold III Foundation of Belgium, of which I happen to be a member, and had luncheon with King Leopold and his wife Princess Liliane.
The others in the plane went into Belgium, I mean into Brussels, they had lunch in Brussels, did a little shopping for lace or some things like that, that some of the ladies in the party wanted to buy. If you're ever in Brussels that's the place to find some of the most beautiful lace. And then we were back at the plane about two thirty or three o'clock in the afternoon to fly on to Jerusalem that night.
And beginning Tuesday morning I had many things to do in Jerusalem. I believe it was that night they had a special performance for me at the ICCY building, which is a special three-storey building that we are supporting. It's the International Cultural Center for Youth. We are, in that organization, bringing the young people, especially teenagers, of the Arabs and of the Israelis together. And they both performed for me again, as they had done the year before, and have done many times in previous years, especially when we've sent a lot of students over to work in the archeological project over there.
And I had a very nice meeting with President Nevarn on Friday. He had been, on Tuesday, in Cairo where he had a meeting with the new President Mubarak, and also he had gone especially for a meeting, sort of condolence meeting, with Mrs Sadat, the widow of the very recently assassinated President Sadat.
Now, a year ago I had quite a meeting with President Sadat, and that was televised, and many of you have seen it. It was on the air here on our program and in some of our other televised pictures. And, anyway, he asked me, even though he had just returned from Jerusalem, I was going over, and he asked me to carry his best wishes to President Mubarak and also to Mrs Sadat, both of whom I saw in Cairo.
So we went on over to Cairo, and there I had a meeting on the first morning after our arrival, with the new President Mubarak. I met with Dr Hadam first, and Dr Hadam is the third man in power in Egypt, only behind the President and the Prime Minister. And it used to be the President and the Vice President, and there was no Prime Minister. I know the first time I met Dr Hadam he received this telegram during our conversation.
He looked at it, and he smiled, he said, "Well," he says, "I just had word, I'm the Prime Minister." He said, "President Sadat..." (and this was a few years ago) he said, "President Sadat, according to this wire, just arrived in Syria. When he's out of this country I'm the Prime Minister. When he returns I won't be Prime Minister any longer."
Because at that time the President acted as President, Prime Minister, and everything. So they had a Vice President, and when President Sadat was assassinated, only about, what was it, only about a month ago I think, the Vice President, Mubarak, took the office. They had a quick election, and I think he received about ninety-nine plus percent of the vote, and he is the President for the time being. There is to be another election after a certain time, but I think that is one, or two, or more years off.
Anyway, I had a nice talk with him. He was a little shy and bashful, and appeared not to be too warm but a little stiff at first. However, you'll see the whole conversation. Either a week from Sunday or two weeks from Sunday, it will be on the air here.
I'm going to make a whole television program out of that meeting. Our television crew was over there, and President Mubarak warmed up as we talked. He warmed up to me and became very, very friendly. And he assured me that he is going to continue on President Sadat's efforts at peace with Israel and through the United States, and their peace project at Mount Sinai. And of course I've heard a lot of talk on other sides about it.
I have found that in Cairo, in top circles even, that there is some skepticism as to whether he will be able to really hold the country. I find now many different versions of what happened in the assassination of President Sadat. I'll come to a little more of that as I go along. But I've had a lot of firsthand information that you don't get in the newspapers.
First from Dr Hadam, who was just the Vice President Mubarak, as he was at the time, was standing, or sitting, but they had risen to stand at the time because the airplanes were going over. The whole thing was planned in advance and very professionally timed. The shooting took place while the airplanes, the jet planes, were going over and making a big roaring noise, as jet planes do, and they were flying low so the noise, and purposely so, so that the noise would be almost deafening.
They were looking up. And I saw pictures over there that were not in the newspapers here. President Sadat was looking up, and down below were the men coming and shooting. And I saw the pictures of the whole thing. And Vice President Mubarak was standing right next to him. He was grazed in one hand with a bullet, and that's all. And I didn't notice anything wrong; it must have been just a very slight thing, because I didn't even notice a bandage on his hand. And next to him was Dr Hadam, and he escaped without any trouble. He's the one who yelled out immediately for the ambulance to get President Sadat to a hospital. So I had his version of it.
And then later, the morning that we left, I had a very nice visit with Mrs Sadat in the Gaza Palace where I, in the same room exactly, where I met her husband, President Sadat, a year ago. Many of you have seen that interview, or portions of it, on our television program.
Now, at that time Mrs Sadat had met me at the car, took me by the arm, escorted me in. President Sadat, well I have to go back a little bit, I had been over in a building where President Sadat was giving a national television and radio address to the nation. There was an auditorium on the ground floor, an office building above, and I was up in an office at the top of the office building.
At the end of the address I came down, our party, and we were escorted to a car immediately behind President Sadat's car. In between his car and ours was an ambulance. Wherever President Sadat went the ambulance went with him just behind his car. In it was a physician and a nurse with equipment and everything; anticipating an assassination. And there was a siren car ahead and a motorcycle escort with sirens blasting out, and we were rushed through the streets from this place, this auditorium and office building, on over to the Gaza Palace.
President Sadat got out of the car first, rushed into the palace to meet a visiting delegation of American Congressmen, and he had to see them first. Mrs Sadat came out, took me by the arm, escorted me into the house and into a salon off of the entering grand lobby or hall, or whatever you call it, and talked with us for quite a while, about, oh, fifteen minutes or so, until President Sadat came in. He got rid of the Congressmen as soon as he could to come in and talk to me. Then of course, she very graciously retired.
But I had become, by that time, well acquainted with her, and so I wanted to have a meeting with her this time. I sent her a telegram on the very day of the assassination, and I knew that she would remember me.
Now, incidentally, I had talked to Dr Hadam about one thing.
I said, "Did not President Sadat have quite an armed escort there? How does it happen that those men were able to come right up, and I could see them just running up before the stand with their guns just ready to shoot?"
And he says, "No, there was no armed guard. President Sadat said, 'This is a military parade. No one will be there except my own soldiers. They're my own sons. They all love me. I don't need an armed escort.'"
But it was one of those sons who loved him who shot him. Or as a matter of fact, there was about three or four of them, I don't know which one shot him. It just shows you that in these days and ages you can't trust your own son.
You can ask any Police Chief and he'll tell you that the largest portion of murders occur in the home. Children shooting parents, parents shooting, brother shooting sister, husband or wife shooting each other. That's true in almost any big city in the United States. I think it's true in big cities in other countries as well. But I know it's notoriously true in this country as any Police Chief will tell you.
Anyway, President Sadat had no guard, no protection whatever. It shows you, you can't trust anybody in this world.
Well, I had a visit with Mrs Sadat. I came to know her better than I ever had before. I spoke with her for about forty-five minutes. And I had heard that she did not wish to discuss the assassination with anybody, it was such a terrible shock to her that she didn't want to discuss it. But to my surprise she opened up and told me all the details of it.
She was in the stand with two of her grandchildren, and one of her grandchildren, a little boy a year and a half old, was brought in by a maid while we were talking, and he came up and kissed me on the cheek, and she kept him there for the rest of the interview. But she went into all of the details, and told me she was right there in the stand with two grandchildren. She might have been about the second row, there were about three or four rows of people in the reviewing stand with the President.
Nevertheless, her maid was with her and shoved her down onto her — well, not only her hands and knees, but clear down flat on the platform immediately at the first shot, and threw herself, her own body on top of Mrs Sadat and the grandchildren to protect them. And they were spared.
Mrs Sadat is half English and half Arab, but she seems to be more English than Arab. She's not like an Arab. She is a most unusual woman.
I've met many of the head women of the world. I had a long talk with Golda Meir when she was Prime Minister of Israel; also with Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, the second largest country in the world; also a long talk in her own home with Mrs Bandaranaike who was the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka; and I know, of course I know Mrs Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines; and beside Princess Liliane, the wife of King Leopold; also Princess Grace of Monaco, who sat next to me at a banquet one time where I was co-host, and her husband sat across from me.
And the custom in Europe and the Middle East and the East, is the host and the second man will always sit in the middle of the table across from each other, not at the end of the table. So Prince Rainier and I were the co-hosts and he sat opposite me, but his wife, Princess Grace, sat on my left, and I had quite a conversation with her. She's a very charming lady, by the way, and very accomplished, she may have been a movie star, but she came from a very fine family I understand, and is quite an accomplished woman.
So I have known some of those women, and I think that a meeting is being planned for me to have a meeting either on my next trip, late January or February, or at least next summer, with the Prime Minister of England, Mrs Thatcher. And it just occurred to me that perhaps I should write a book on the women that are heading governments in the world these days.
You know what Isaiah says in the third chapter, that in these last days that, women would be our rulers. And indeed they're becoming that. Don't be surprised if we have a woman president next, because Teddy Kennedy's already made a try at it and he missed out. Maybe some woman will beat him to it next time. Mr Reagan said he's only running for one term that he intended to be a one-term president; at least he made that statement during the campaign before he was elected. I don't know what he'll decide now. If he's popular and he is still good, that's going to be quite a temptation to run again.
Well, after we left Cairo we flew on to Geneva. Had to have a conference with our office there, and our manager, and we were there over night. And then on the way to London, early in the morning, and I had to be up from three o'clock in the morning on to make all of the connections, we stopped off in Munich where I had decided that I would like to have another talk with the Strongman of Europe, Franz Josef Strauss.
He has wanted to be the Chancellor of West Germany and has never made it. He was a guest in my home here ten years ago. At dinner that evening he spoke, I believe he had spoken to our students during the day and he was all over the campus, and had dinner in my home that evening with his wife and his bodyguard, who was along with him, he carried an armed bodyguard everywhere he went, and I talked with him in the library of my home. I knew that he wanted so much to be Chancellor.
I said, "Dr Strauss, you, in my judgment, are not going to be Chancellor of West Germany, but a greater office is waiting for you."
And then I made a comment about it, "when it happens."
You'll find the greater office described in the seventeenth chapter of Revelation, as the man at the head of the government called the Beast, and the Beast will be a union of the nations of Europe. And I believe it will probably be five nations in Western Europe and five satellite nations that are going to break loose from Russia in Eastern Europe.
And the best candidate to head that group of ten nations is Franz Josef Strauss, in my judgment. Now, some people think that, oh, what is his name? — von Habsburg of Austria might lead it.
Now, he has written a book of the program and the design for a United Europe, but also, Franz Josef Strauss has, and his book is called, 'The Grand Design'.
Well, I wanted to talk to him again. And I was quite impressed, that was just day before yesterday morning, and why he is called the Strongman of Europe. He is a very powerful man, a very vigorous positive speaker. He had just returned the day before from having, the day before that, or two days before I saw him, a private interview with President Brezhnev of Russia.
And I was met at the airport in Munich by Herr Frank Schnee, our manager of our office in Bonn, or Germany, and also with Mrs Henig, who is the wife of the official photographer of the West German government, and also happens to be a photographer for the Worldwide Church of God. And we share the West German government in paying his salary. And Frau Henig had come along to bring me two nice large pictures taken by her husband of just the day before, when Franz Josef Strauss was having a private meeting with President Brezhnev from Moscow, which I presented to Dr Strauss.
And in the course of our conversation, I mentioned to him that I had thought of the possibility of a meeting with Brezhnev.
I said, "Dr Strauss, what do you think? Should I have a meeting with him? Can it be arranged?"
He says, "Perhaps it could be arranged, but you shouldn't have it."
He says, "I have learned something about Brezhnev, and I know the Russians backwards and forwards. When you meet Brezhnev, he will have what he's going to say to you all written out. He will read it and it will be in Russian. You won't understand a word he said, and then he'll say, 'Now, I want your reply! Now you answer!' And he's very dominant, very gruff."
He says, "Nothing could be accomplished in speaking to him. I could accomplish nothing. Nobody can."
There is one man who knows the Communist's whole philosophy, their plan, their objectives, their methods of accomplishing those objectives.
Now, President Carter, when he was in office, did not understand the Communists or Russia at all. He began to learn a little about it, especially after the captivity of our diplomatic people in Iran. And he was surprised. He didn't know anything about Russia. I have known it for fifty-five years.
Fifty-five years ago the Communist Party in the United States had a home study course in Communism. They were very careful to give it only to people that they thought they already had on their side and would study it from their point of view.
I received it from a man who posed as a plain-clothed detective, and had an office in the police building at Portland, Oregon. He was actually an FBI man. And I happened to know him very well when I was up in Eugene, Oregon in those days. And he supplied me with that fifty-five years ago, and I know the subtle means of Communism.
I'll just say this, they're aiming at nothing less than world domination. They admit that Communism has not worked, and they say it cannot work until the whole world is under its sway. That explains why their people are not living as well as the people in the free world. They have their explanation of things of that sort.
And in the meantime, they're working, first of all, by propaganda. And they are the most clever propagandists in the world. They work through university students and university professors. They believe that the end justifies the means. Now, the means can be lying, deception, pretense, anything whatsoever that will accomplish their result. Anything dishonorable, anything wrong, anything evil is justified because they must rule the world, and that is the big thing that counts.
They don't believe in religion anyway. Religion, they call the opiate of the public, of the people. And as a matter of fact, the religions of this world pretty much are, because they're not the religions of the Eternal God. Of course the Russians don't know that. They do know what's wrong with the religions of this world, they just don't know the truth. I don't think they would accept it if they knew it, because their hearts are evil.
But I was surprised at the grasp of the world's situation that Franz Josef Strauss knows. Now, I was allowed to take my executive assistant, Bob Fahey, with me. I had on the trip with me also, Mr Gene Hogberg, who is our news analyst in our news bureau here on campus. I very much wanted him to go, but I could only take one man and I felt that I had to take Mr Fahey. But he was surprised as well as I, at how knowledgeable Dr Strauss is in the world condition. The Russians are not deceiving him at all. He knows them. He knows what is up.
Now, one thing he said that might shock you a little, he said that the three assassination attempts, first on President Reagan, secondly on Pope John Paul II, but both of them survived the attempt, and thirdly on President Sadat. Every one, he says, "Every one were done by individuals who had no official connection, were not members of any group or anything like that, and so everyone thinks it was just a crackpot man doing it."
He said, "That is not altogether true. The Communists know just how to work, and they have had men who did not pose as Communists, but who worked on these individuals who did the shooting, and influenced them into being puppets and willing to do this thing, and used every psychology on them to get them to do it."
If you will study the assassinations of history and the men who have done the assassinating, you'll find that usually they are very small short men, they are men who are nothing and nobody in the world, but who want to be somebody, and they want to do a thing like that because they know it's going to make them famous, and they're willing to pay the price and be killed themselves afterward in order to do it.
That was true of John Wilkes, wasn't it, that shot President Lincoln. That's been true of other assassins that we've had all the way along. It was true of the one who assassinated President Kennedy. A little man who had been to Russia and had a lot of Communist connections. And I think now more than ever there's no doubt that that was really a communist attempt.
When President Reagan began to show that he was the first President we've had in some time who was firm, and who would not be budged, Dr Strauss says, "The Kremlin decided he must go." They influenced the young man who did it. And the young man who did it doesn't know it was Communism that influenced him. He doesn't realize what happened to him.
When the Pope at Rome made his visit over to Poland, and he's a Polish Pope, that was beginning to turn the Poles away from Communism, and you know what's been happening lately, if you've been reading the newspapers. And the Russians don't know quite how to handle that situation in Poland right now. They decided the Pope had to go. The man who did it is not a Communist. He doesn't know he has any Communist connections.
When Anwar Sadat kicked the Russians out of Egypt they decided Sadat had to go. Now, I'll tell you something else, the assassination of Anwar Sadat was on the precise anniversary, eighth anniversary of eight years, from the time that he was holding a celebration, that you might say, pushed the magic button that opened the Holy Day War against Israel. The precise anniversary of Sadat starting the war against Israel. Now later, Anwar Sadat changed and went over in a peace mission. He turned to peace. But I don't know, the Arab mind doesn't work like ours.
And here is something else that I had not read in any newspaper report in this country till I got over there. Anwar Sadat was shot during a memorial parade, a military parade that was a military celebration, and was a celebration which the Arabs over there regarded as a victory in that war.
They were winning that war until the last few days. The last few days the Israelis turned the tide completely, but they were caught off guard. The Israelis were not ready. Moshe Dayan had won the previous war, the Six Day War, but Moshe Dayan was caught napping and was not prepared, and Sadat's forces attacked Israel on the Day of Atonement, which to them is the most solemn day of the year, as a Holy Day, and they were caught napping. And indeed, the Egyptians were well toward winning that war the first several days, but then the Israelis caught up with them and were driving them back, and they had driven them back across the Suez Canal, and the Israelis were on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal.
And in two more days the Israelis would have taken Cairo, and would have been in control of the Egyptian government and the Israelis felt that was a bigger bite than they could chew, they couldn't digest it. They couldn't run it if they got it. And that is why that when the American Secretary of State, — oh, I can't remember names, you know his name better than I do, anyone of you could remind me of it — anyway, he was able to bring about peace.
And I was over there with my airplane the same time that he was. And so the Israelis were willing to make peace. But somehow the Egyptians had always felt that they were inferior, and the very fact that they were ahead in the war until the last few days, they feel, lifted them up. Now they're equal with the Israelis, they could lift up their heads, and that's what the celebration was all about that ended in the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
Now, I think Anwar Sadat was wholly sincere in his effort for peace, and I think that President Mubarak is, but I doubt if he'll be strong enough to hold out.
Brethren, I have met the great and the near-great of this world. I have probably met more heads and rulers of government in their own offices, or kings on their thrones, so to speak, than any other man in the world. And let me tell you, I find they're just as human as you and I, and many of them are not especially great men. Some are greater than others.
Franz Josef Strauss is a very strong man. He's a determined man. I'm not saying a righteous man; I won't judge him that way. But he's a politician, and he's a knowledgeable and a clever politician, and he does know the world condition, and I got a lot from him, and Mr Fahey and I have been discussing it with Mr Hogberg, and he will be writing articles, and I will, that will come out in the 'Good News' and the 'Plain Truth'. But we are getting our fingers on the pulse of the world and the world situation; believe me, more than any other source in the world.
The sources of CBS and NBC networks, or ABC, the newspaper people of the main great newspapers, or of the big news services like the Associated Press, International News Service, or Reuters, they do not know the world situation even as well as we do in many cases. And I wonder if you realize what God has done for us in His Church that we may know.
Now, I did not get to see King Hussein on this trip, of Jordan. I wanted to see him very much, but I had noticed just a few days before we left that he would have to be out of the country, and he would not be in Jordan, and so could not be there to see me. I couldn't come and I would see others, but the King himself wanted to see me and asked me to postpone it until he could be there the latter part of January or early February. So that's what I have done.
Now, meantime, King Hussein was in, where was it? It was one of the capitals of North Africa, where the Arabs were having a meeting on this whole thing after the assassination of Sadat, and a proposal that has been put out by the Saudi Arabians. Well, it ended with them in a fight one against another, and the Arab nations can't get together, they are all divided.
Now, I see by this morning's newspaper that our Secretary of State has come up with something. I didn't have time this morning to read it. I have to have a magnifying glass to read it anyway, and I didn't have time. I haven't really digested that yet myself. That's fresh news just today. You can read it if you care to.
But God is keeping us informed, and God is taking care of this Church, and is going to protect us. And my seeing the King of Jordan may have something to do with that. It may have something to do with the lives of everyone of you. You'd better be praying about it if you value your own life. Because, let me tell you, that God is masterminding this whole thing, not the Russians. They think they are, but God is the one great power behind all of the thrones.
Well, we learned a lot of things, and some of the things we learned will come out in the things that we'll be writing in the articles on world condition. I just wanted you to know that God is keeping us, keeping His own people informed with everything that we need to know.
Now, this is God's Sabbath, it's not a time to discuss world news especially, and I want to get back to a subject I was talking to you about the last time I was here, about three weeks ago. And I'd like to turn to a couple of scriptures first, in the eighth chapter of Romans. Let's get to something a little more spiritual. In Romans the eighth chapter and verse seven speaks of the carnal mind, the natural mind. That is not, it doesn't say natural and especially evil mind. It's just the mind everybody's born with.
But "...the [natural or] carnal mind is enmity against God..." (Romans 8:7)
That is hostile against God. Do you realize that? That the natural mind of men are hostile against God? I find that people that don't know God, or even if they think they're in some church, and they really don't know God, though they think they do, if I begin to mention any of the truth of God they want to change the subject in a hurry. It's very unpleasant to them, because they don't realize it, but their minds are HOSTILE against God. And they're uncomfortable when you talk about God to them.
It's just like they say, "Well God, what are you trying to stick your nose in my business for? What are you trying to get from me, God? I want you out of my life!"
They think God is trying to harm them. They're afraid of religion. They don't understand — hostile against God. "...for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." (Romans 8:7)
Take the Protestant religion, there is one basic truth, or it isn't truth, one basic belief that they have, and that is the law is done away. They believe you repent. You don't even, mostly they don't even put repent into it, but if they do you're just sorry for what you've done. You accept Christ. Now, that's all, then you go right on, of course you go on still doing it again. To them repent doesn't mean turn around and go the other way, it doesn't mean give up the way you've been living. They don't understand it at all.
But if you accept Christ you're going to go to heaven when you die, otherwise, because of Adam's sin, you're consigned to go to hell. And most of them think that. How many of us have believed that kind of rot, brethren? Too many of us have let that rub off on us, and we don't understand the real truth.
"So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. [because that's the natural fleshly mind, the way you're born] But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if [IF] so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." (Romans 8:8-9)
Brethren, does the Spirit of God dwell in you, and how do you know? I want to tell you, that many of you don't know whether the Spirit of God is dwelling in you or not! Listen to me brethren! I want to wake you up! A lot of you don't know that, and your whole eternity is dependent upon it!
"But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit [and here's a capital 'S' meaning the Holy Spirit], if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you..." (Romans 8:9)
Is the Spirit of God dwelling in you? How do you know? What does the Spirit of God dwelling in you do? What change does it make — if any — in your life? Has any change been made in your life?
"...Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." (Romans 8:9)
Maybe you have said, "I accept Christ." You've been baptized in water, you've been received into the Church and you say you're a Church member, you're a member even of God's Church. But if the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit of God, is not dwelling in you, and unless you are being led by it and you are following it, you are not a Christian. You're just a member of an organization.
How do you know? Do you know what is the Spirit of God? Did any change ever take place when the Spirit of God came into you?
Now, turn on to another verse, verse fourteen ".. as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." (Romans 8:14)
Are you being led by the Spirit of God? Now, is that just something to talk about, or is it something real, that really has happened and changed your life? Is your life different? Is it led in a way, by the Spirit of God now, that it was not before your conversion? How do you know what is the Holy Spirit? How do you know whether you have received the Holy Spirit?
Do you know that there are perhaps a few million people in the United States, I know it's many hundreds of thousands, who believe there's only one way you know whether you have received the Holy Spirit, and that's if you speak in tongues? Well, that's what they think is the evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit.
Now, we're going to have to go into a lot of these things a lot more than we have in the past, brethren, because I think we don't fully understand! And I want to get this Church on the track! I want you to be able to rise and meet Christ in the air and to be changed from mortal to immortal, from human to divine, so that you are an immortal divine being when you meet Christ up in the air.
And I'm afraid that many of you are not going to make it! LISTEN TO ME! I'm talking to you, brethren. What good does it do me to pour out my heart to you if you don't listen, if you don't believe?
Jesus came and preached to thousands and only a hundred and twenty out of those many thousands believed what He said. He said the five thousand, they listened to Him, but He said, "They didn't come to listen to what I said. They just came to get their bellies filled" (John 6:26).
I go and I speak to a group of our people in some city in the United States, and maybe most of the members of eight or ten Churches in that area will come, and there'll be a much larger group than their normal Church Services.
And they go back and say, "Oh, I got to, get to see Mr Armstrong. I got to see Mr Armstrong, God's apostle. Isn't that great?"
"Yeah, well, what did he talk about?"
"Oh, what did he talk about? Well...uh...well, I don't know what he talked about, but I got to see him. Isn't that wonderful?"
Now, how much did that profit them? TAKE A LOOK AT ME! I'm nothing, I'm a nobody! Except as the Word of God is in me, and unless Christ is using me, I'm nothing, you're nothing. But we can all become something through Christ Jesus, but only if we have the Spirit of God, otherwise we are not Christ's.
And brethren, I have been awakened lately. I'm afraid that many of our people in the church come and sit here, and listen, and they don't really comprehend the message, and they are not Christ's at all. They're not really Christian. They're not going to meet Christ in the air, and He's coming in this generation.
I want you to take this seriously, brethren! I don't know what I can — all I can do is shout at you or something, and hope that some of you will get the message. You need a shaking up. You just need to have someone shake you, and shake something into you.
I think that a lot of you are like you read back here in Ezekiel (oh now, I forget that chapter) where, anyway, it says...
"...the people come, and they come as God's people [yeah, they're members of the Church. And it's a prophecy for our day. And they listened to God's minister], and they sit there as God's people, and they hear your words ...And, lo, you are unto them as one that is playing on a wonderful, beautiful instrument, or singing a beautiful song [although they don't hear the words or get anything out of it]: they hear your words [but they don't understand them, they don't do anything about it, it makes no difference in their lives. They come as God's people] ...they hear your words, but they do them not." (Ezekiel 33:31-32 paraphrased)
It doesn't mean anything to them. If I can't shake you up, if I can't send you home with a different realization than you had when you came here, I've wasted my time — and my love for you. You know I don't get paid any extra for it. I don't do it to please me or for profit, but I do want you to realize it.
" ...as many as are led by the Holy Spirit, they are the sons of God." (Romans 8:14 paraphrased)
Now, what does it mean, being led by the Holy Spirit? Let me tell you, first of all, the Holy Spirit isn't going to grab hold of you and pull you along. It won't do that at all. The Holy Spirit won't get behind you and shove and push YOU against your own will. It isn't going to do anything like that.
I tried to preach a sermon on it about three weeks ago, I believe it was, whenever I spoke here last. Let me see if I can...where do we...see a lightbulb in there? That's like you if the Spirit of God is not in you. (Click) The Spirit of God comes. (Click) Did it make any difference? It changed the lightbulb, didn't it?
You know, the Spirit of God in you will change you as much as that electric current coming in there to change that lightbulb. Has anything taken hold of you and changed you that much, or are you still just the same as you were, but you've just joined an organization? You just sit here as God's people. Brethren, your just sitting here in a seat is not going to get you into the Kingdom of God. It just is not!
Now, I'd like you to understand this just a little more. I don't have...I've taken so much time already, I don't have much time left. I want to go back a little bit to the seventh chapter. Paul spoke about the law of God, and he said in verse fourteen, the seventh chapter. "For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under [death]." (Romans 7:14)
Brethren, you and I were all born carnal. Paul said "...I am carnal... [that didn't mean he was just naturally trying to be as evil as he can. It didn't mean that at all!] For that which I do I allow not: for [that] I would, that do I not; but [that] I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it [the law] is good. [But he said, I'm not good, the law is.] Now then it is no more I that doeth, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me [that is, in my flesh] dwelleth no good thing:" (Romans 7:14-18)
Do you know, that in you dwells no good thing? The way you were born you were just so much dirt out of the ground, that's all. And that's where you're going to go back. And "...it is appointed to men once to die [and for most all people], after that the judgment: (Hebrews 9:27 paraphrased)
But the Church is an exception, and judgment is already on the Church. We're the first fruits. That's what the Feast of Pentecost means every year.
"...for to will is present with me; [that is make a decision, and a determination, and then to will] but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would do, do I not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. [Now, we're all going to have to wrestle with that problem]. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:" (Romans 7:18-22)
Paul believed in the law of God. He knew it was the way to live, the right way to live, the way he wanted to live. But he found he wasn't living that way. Do you have that same trouble? Well, I've had it all my life and I've had to struggle with it.
"But I find another law in my members [and brethren that same law has been working in your members, unless you're doing something about it. It was in Paul, it's been in me] warring against the law of my mind, [the law of his mind is the same as the law of God which he's accepted into his mind. That's the law of out flowing love, first to God and then to neighbor] warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. [It's there because Satan has put it there beginning from the time we were a day old.] O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord..." (Romans 7:23-25)
God only can deliver us. And it's through the power of His Holy Spirit.
Now, first we have to come to realize we have been wrong, and realize that of ourselves we're helpless to do right, and we've got to have the help of God. And if we do that and we repent of what is wrong, and of the way we've lived in the past, that means we turn from it and we don't want to do it anymore!
That doesn't mean we go on living that way and say, "Well, I'm sorry. Now it's alright."
You know, most people in the Protestant churches think if they just say, "Well, I'm sorry, I repent," then they go right on doing it. They haven't repented. But if they accept Christ they think that's going to get them into heaven. Now, we know you don't go to heaven. We know you get into the Kingdom of God, and that will be right here on the earth.
But it is not a change of place; it's the change of your state and condition. You won't be flesh and blood any longer. The only life you have now is the blood circulating in your veins, and the breath of air that goes in and out of your lungs. That's what keeps you alive.
There's a spirit in you, but that spirit in you is not what keeps you alive. That does not give you life! That has nothing to do with your being alive or dead. It just functions in your mind as long as you're alive. And your life comes from the food you eat and the water you drink, feeding the body, and keeping the heart pumping blood, and your lungs breathing air in and out. That's all that keeps you alive. That's where your life is. That's the only life we have, brethren. We don't have immortal souls. "...the soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezekiel 18:4,20)
So now, you come to the eighth chapter of Romans.
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them [that] are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."(Romans 8:1)
And the Spirit of God, the law of God, is the way of God, and the Spirit of God opens your mind to understand that way. If Adam had taken of the Tree of Life, that would have opened his mind to revealed spiritual knowledge. And Adam never had spiritual knowledge. Adam said, "No, I'll just acquire my own knowledge."
God made Adam so he could acquire knowledge of the physical, the material. And do you know that in all of the colleges and universities of this world, All they know, and all they teach, you listen now, get this, and understand this, all they teach is about physical material things! Spiritual principles they know nothing about. The things of God they know nothing about.
They don't know what they are. They don't know what a human being is made of. They don't know why a human being is on earth. They don't know what God's purpose is and where we're going. They don't know the way. They don't know the cause of all of the world's troubles. They haven't solved their troubles; they don't know what causes troubles. They don't know the way to peace. They don't know the way to an immortal eternal life.
And God won't give you eternal life, and it is a gift of God, and He won't give it to you until you are willing to start to live by the law of God, and to live God's way. Now, God will put His Holy Spirit in you if and when you really repent and accept Christ. But listen, God only gives you a little tiny bit of His Holy Spirit to start.
The Bible talks about pouring out the Spirit of water. You pour out water. I've got some water here. I could pour it out. It's like air that you can blow, and it moves. And the Spirit of God moves. But the Spirit of God will come into you, and you only have a little of it to start with, and if you don't grow in the Spirit and in the knowledge of God, what little you had is going to leave you.
Brethren, take the parable of the pounds and the parable of the talents. The one who was given one and did nothing with it, when Christ comes He will take away the one you had if you haven't increased it. If you have not grown spiritually in spiritual knowledge, and in the spiritual way of living, so that you've actually lived a different way, you will lose out entirely, and you will burn up in the final Lake of Fire. You will never be in the Kingdom of God.
God will only give immortal life to those who will live it in a way to be happy, and in a way to make other people happy, and in a way to walk with God, and "two [can't] walk together except they be agreed" (Amos 3:3). And God doesn't agree with the way you lived your life before you were converted, if and when you were converted, and supposing that you were.
The Spirit of God coming into you impregnates you with divine life. The spirit that is already in you does not give you any life. The spirit that is in you only supplies the power of intellect to a physical brain, and that physical brain is kept alive and active only by the air you breath, and the pumping of your heart, and that has to be kept going by food and water out of the ground.
You are of the ground, and out of the ground. That's all you are, brethren! Understand it! Nobody else is teaching you that. No other church on earth will teach you that. That's why this is God's Church! And it's quite different from any other church on this earth — quite different.
Now, when the Holy Spirit comes, that impregnates you with immortal life. But listen, you are like an embryo in your mother's womb, as you were at one time. And you hadn't even grown large enough to be called a fetus yet. That takes four months, when your body began to take on human form and shape. But listen, if you were not fed on physical food, you wouldn't have grown physically, and your mother would have had a miscarriage. You would never have been born. You would have died inside of her body, and she'd had to get rid of you already dead.
That is an exact type. If you don't grow spiritually you will be aborted! You will not go on. You've got to grow in the spirit and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Brethren, listen to me, you talk about education, you go to school, you start in the first grade, they teach you to read, and write, and to figure — reading, writing, and 'rithmetic — the so-called three R's. All they're going to teach you there, and all they're going to teach you when you get to high school, and all they will teach you in the university is physical material knowledge. They're not giving you spiritual knowledge.
When you are converted then you begin your real education! You can't get it in the colleges, or universities, or the schools of this world! You can't get it there! You didn't get a real education! You only got a lot of physical knowledge, and about fifty to seventy-five percent of that is rot, and is wrong, and is error, and not truth! Your real education begins when you're converted, and you feed on spiritual knowledge, and the Word of God is that spiritual knowledge. You feed on the Word of God instead of material food.
And if you're not studying the Word of God, if you're not being educated every day of your life, like you're just starting to school all over again. You're only starting in the first grade. As a matter of fact, you're hardly in the first grade yet, you're only in the kindergarten spiritually, when you're converted. And if you don't go on studying spiritually, and spiritual knowledge, the Holy Spirit opens your mind to comprehend it. Before that you couldn't have understood it anyway. But when the Spirit of God comes you can begin to understand it, and it will reveal that knowledge.
Now, it is the impregnation of divine life, but it's only a start — if you go on, but you must grow, and grow, and grow every day of your life. Do you know more spiritually? Do you have more spiritual knowledge than you did a month ago? Most of you don't, brethren. Look in the looking glass and see, and say, "Here's someone that doesn't know any more than he did a month ago 'spiritually'." Shame on you! You won't make it into the Kingdom of God if you don't change that!
Am I wearing myself out telling you that? Are you going to go away heedless, paying no attention. Nobody else gets up in front of you and tells you this. I'm the only minister that God has that can talk to you this way, And you had better open your ears, and your minds, and your hearts and listen, or you won't make it into the Kingdom of God, I'm telling you!
The Holy Spirit, then, is the power that opens your mind to comprehend spiritual truth. Here are the great people graduated from Harvard. They can't understand spiritual truth, they've just been educated in physical knowledge. Now they have to get spiritual knowledge. You can know more spiritually than they do. But do you? We're going to school every day we live. And you gain in spiritual knowledge through the Word of God, and, believe it or not, and listen through prayer. How much do you pray? And by listening to the Word of God as God's ministers give it to you.
Now, that was a wonderful sermon preached from on this platform this morning. It think most of you were not here and didn't hear it. Mr Jackson preached a very fine sermon this morning. But that was spiritual food, and that's what we need. But we need to grow in spiritual knowledge.
Most churches don't believe in acquiring spiritual knowledge. I have a sister that's still in the same church I was brought up in, the Quaker church.
She said to me one time, she said, "Herbert, you don't...you don't read the Bible to try to understand it, do you?"
I said, "Well, of course."
"Oh," she said, "but you can't understand it."
"Oh yes I can, but you can't, Mary," I told her.
I said, "Don't you read the Bible?"
She says, "Oh yes, of course I read it."
"Well, why do you read it if you don't read it to understand it?"
"Oh," she said, "just for inspiration. But we're not supposed to understand it."
I said, "Whoever told you that? Whoever told you that was lying to you, and you'd better quit believing them and believe what God says in the Bible. But you don't believe what God says. You say, 'If I can't understand it, why should I believe what He says?'"
I make it plain. You can understand what God says to you through me. I'm trying to make it very simple and plain, and very clear, so you can understand it. And if you don't accept it that's your fault, not mine.
The Holy Spirit in you will begin to open your mind, but you must "...grow in grace, and...the knowledge of...Jesus Christ." (II Peter 3:18)
That is the last two verses of Peter, second Peter, of Peter's letters. Peter, the first apostle, and the chief apostle at that time. And he was speaking the truth of God.
Now, next to that, once you see and understand the truth of God, you have to use your own will to say, "That's the way I will live, that I will try to do that way. I will quit doing the other way."
Do you know what the Bible says about talebearing and rumors? Well, this Church has not practiced that. We're the biggest talebearing and rumoring Church that I ever heard of! Shame on a lot of you people that do it! Some of you right here are guilty of that! You're going to answer to God for that if you don't stop it! Good news — do it, good news — tell people. Bad news shut your mouth up about it. And try to believe the best in people, not the worst. It seems we want to believe the worst, and we want to whisper that to everybody, we want to talebear it.
I say something, if someone takes exception to it, they get on the telephone and it goes from one end of this country to the other, to the whole membership. Read what James wrote about the tongue. That's another thing that we do that is wrong, and if we're going to grow in God's grace and knowledge we quit doing those things.
I've tried to clean up our women's faces recently. I think some women didn't like it, they resented it. I am very glad that most of the women in this Church here, I find, I've had reports that most of you, when you knew I'd made that decision, took your make-up off right off the bat, even before you heard a sermon on it.
Well, congratulations, and thank you for doing it. But you didn't please me by doing it, you only pleased God. Sometimes I wonder what the women would do if the men started painting up their faces in all kinds of ways? Some of these things are so ridiculous, but we don't think about that. The only thing women think of, other women do it, the world does it, and we must go along with the world mustn't we? Oh no, we mustn't. God says, "... come out from among them, and be [ye] separate..." (II Corinthians 6:17)
You want to still be with the world? Go to the world, don't come into this place. This place is not of the world. We're to be different from the world. We're a separate and a holy people, and we've got to live that way.
Now, the Holy Spirit will open your mind if you study the Word of God, if you listen to the Word of God. And you'll grow in Spirit as you pray to God more and more, and pray for the brethren. Pray for people, even for your enemies.
I pray for my enemies even before I do for some of my best friends and some of the brethren. Of course, God may bless them by punishment to wake them up. Maybe that's the best thing for them. God knows, I don't. But I only pray for them, not against them. I don't want any harm to come to them; I just want blessings from God to come to them. You can pray for your enemies. God isn't going to hurt them, not unless it's for their good. He won't do anything that is not for their good.
Now, next to understanding, the Holy Spirit will give you the love of God that keeps His law. You were not born with the kind of love that will perform and keep God's law. You have to have a special love that comes from God. It's impossible for you to really love God like you should. We only love Him because He first loved us. And it's His love coming through the Holy Spirit into us, and some of that goes back.
And you see, there are two wires going into this light. One brings electric current in and the other goes back. The Holy Spirit comes in, but it flows like water, or like air moving. And part of it must go back to God in love toward Him, and part of it out to neighbor in love toward them. And God will give you that kind of love. It's a different kind of love than you were born with.
Next, the Holy Spirit will give you the faith of Christ. That's not some faith you work up. That's a gift that God puts in you, that kind of faith to believe Him, If you study His Word, if you get to know Him. Faith is only knowing that whatever God has promised He will do. You can rely on it. That's faith. Then the Spirit of God will give you the power to do it.
And all those things will make a change in your life. The electric light coming into that bulb here, changed it and made it light up, made a big change. You and I are to be the light of the world. We're to let our light shine. Not that the world can hear what we say, but that it may see our good works and how we live. (Matthew 5:14-16)
Now, part of our good works, they won't agree with in the world, but some of it they will. It reminds me of the first time we held the Feast of Tabernacles, or really the second time, in Mt. Pocono.
There was a merchant there running a store that said, "You people, we found when you were here last year, you're just the best people we ever knew in our lives. And all the merchants and the businessmen here say that they've never seen people like you. Well, we think you're just the best people we ever knew. There's only one thing we can't understand, why in the world do people so good as you have to believe that crazy religion of yours?"
Well, this man answered, "Well, that's why we're so good. It's the religion that does that and it will do the same thing to you."
And he was speechless. The world can see our good works, they know we're pretty good people if we act like good people, if we act God's way.
Then finally, if we endure to the end, if we grow in grace and knowledge, finally, if we die we'll be resurrected into the Kingdom of God. If we're still living, we'll be changed. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye [God will give us immortal life] ...this mortal will put on immortality." (I Corinthians 15:52-53 paraphrased)
That's the process, brethren.
I wish I had time to talk on that for all day and all night. I've only said a little, but I hope you got that little, because time is up. But let's go on into the Kingdom of God. Let's get this Church ready. Let's get each one of us. You get you ready. You can't make the neighbor next to you ready. You can made you ready, be sure you do it. And God bless every one of you.