Herbert W Armstrong

   In the pre-pornography days of Forever Amber. Almost everybody wanted to own that book. But you almost never ran into someone and said, "Oh yes, I've got my copy of Forever Amber on the shelf over there, but I haven't read it," but there is a best seller. Almost everybody buys. It is a consistent best-seller every single year. Almost everybody has one or maybe several businessmen, members of Congress, the President have been known to have such a book, a best-seller on their desks in their library shelves. People are known to have them on dressers or maybe they make a nice decoration in the living room or atop a piano where they have one little vase and an interesting little lace doily there with one plastic rose.

   Lots of people have them in trunks, brides carry them down the aisle of the altar on the way to get married, and preachers almost always hold one up. That's this book here. And if you hold this up and kind of slap it a couple of times and then you say the Bible says, when you sound like you really know what you're talking about, it's kind of like the treatment you get when you walk into the doctor's office and you look at the National Geographic, Business Week, US News and World Report, and I hope a copy of the Plain Truth.

   Well, anyhow, you walk in there and hear all these books and you get a little bit of a view inside that you're given. This is part of the treatment. The nurse always makes sure that you get a little bit of a glimpse into his private office where you see 150,000 volumes. Or maybe would you believe 200 volumes? And you're supposed to assume that he's read every foot, every inch, every line of all those books. When in truth, he hasn't perused a quarter of the lineage of even one of them. But they're there.

   Lawyers have these law books and maybe people assume that the lawyers have read all those books. Well, they haven't, those are reference books. It just like a library. Most libraries I imagine in colleges and even big city libraries, the turnover is somewhere. Where is it? 3% of the total books that get about 90% of the use and then a large percentage of them aren't even touched or dragged off the shelves in 10 years or 20 years or 50 years. They just sit there and gather dust.

   Well, here's the strange thing about that persistent bestseller. The Bible, almost everybody thinks they ought to own one. It's like a talisman. It's like saying, "Well, if you got your Bible," like saying, "Well, oh, did you forget your ring? Or like saying, "Have you got your Bible yet?" Which is like saying, "If you check the astrology column today," people tend to look upon the Bible or something and maybe it will bring them good luck if they own one. I don't know why, but people have had a certain amount of church experience.

   Mama dragged them off with mild protest to Easter and Christmas a couple of times a year and as they grow up, even though they're sitting around drinking about the third Martini for lunch today in their homes, there may be a Bible which condemns drunkenness, but most people don't ever get around to reading the Bible to studying what the Bible says. That's why when I tell people that one-third of the Bible is prophecy and that nearly all of that prophecy, somewhere around 90% of that third of the Bible remains yet to be fulfilled in our day. It describes conditions and circumstances of the space age, conditions and circumstances of a world armed with such nuclear potential. It could mean the annihilation of 50 worlds like ours.

   I tell people that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a newscaster, that he foretold the times in which we live right now today and the times beyond us on into the change over from our era into a new and different kind of a world, a different kind of an era, an age in which there would be government from a divine source on this earth. It sounds like some kind of a nutty story. But believe it or not, it's true. Jesus Christ of Nazareth looked over beyond his day and made many statements which had to do with our time.

   The last couple of times, I've been introducing the short series into one of the Old Testament books called Jeremiah, and it says Jeremiah was a bullfrog. You know, in the song, this is the prophecy of the book of Jeremiah, a very real person who lived way back about the 5, 600 BC during the time of the imminent collapse of the ancient nation of Judah. And prior to the time of a captivity, a very infamous captivity in Jewish history, the Babylonian captivity.

   Now God's prophets were more or less grouped, not by just consequence of social or moral ills, but by God's design, they were grouped around impending national calamities for God's people. I know that eschatological researchers and theologians these days can take issue with that because we have this higher criticism thing that just imagines in advance that the Bible is not true that it can't be true that it's a collection of the writings of old sages and would-be reformers and people were like the town crier saying 11 o'clock and all is well except they were saying 9 o'clock and everything is rotten and they were looking around at social problems and racism and various inequities and this and that and they were just sounding off yay flee from the wrath to come.

   Everybody has the idea that a prophet was an ancient old guy with a long soiled robe and a long white beard. But he nearly tripped on a crooked old cane in his hand and maybe a speaking trumpet, a little hard of hearing, kind of bloodshot blurry eyes and, you know, wispy hair falling all over himself. A little bit of spittle dripping over the beard. And he was making all sorts of horrible prognostications about how God who was sitting up there in his heavenly armchair was going to cast his thunderbolts down at these people if they didn't straighten up and do what that prophet wanted them to do.

   Last time I showed you the calling of Jeremiah. He was a very young man that he didn't want to take the message. He was afraid. He told God he said, they won't believe me. And God said, I will make you just like a brazen furnace. I'll make your forehead as he told Ezekiel, another prophet as adamant as flint. Don't be afraid what they say to you. You go and take my message anyhow.

   Now there is a section in the book of Jeremiah that shows the entire scroll because they wrote on scrolls then, they rolled up and tied. And so as you unfolded it, we turn pages, they just unrolled it. It could be in several scrolls or one scroll in case of Jeremiah, it probably was all written on one, but it was entirely destroyed and then it was reproduced and here is a section of the Bible.

   It is very interesting because it shows how no matter how patriotic, no matter how absolutely smitten with the message to the point that it made Jeremiah sick when he was able to see with his mind's eye, the very streets of his own cities, the children, the women, the men, you know, the peer groups all over that society and what was going to happen to them as a result of various socio-economic policies of the fact that they had gotten clear away from God's right and holy religion. They were worshiping all sorts of false gods.

   Now, we don't do that today, do we? Except that we do depend on what, for our national survival, the dollar, what do we depend upon? Well, we're a powerful nation. But what do we depend upon when you get right down to it? We depend upon the combined strength of our national and natural resources, our industry, our economy, our gross national product, and our labor force and the military of the United States and its military arsenal is deterrent force and capacity as a result of our space age technology. These are the areas where we put our faith and our trust and our hope for the future.

   We do not as a nation, all of us collectively and unitedly depend upon God. As a matter of fact, the horse laughs, the guffaws, the hee haws of unbridled pleasure. At such a suggestion would echo through the corridors of business offices all over this country. If someone were to suggest that we, the United States should disarm all of this and depend upon God for our support. So we like to think we've come a long giant gulliver's step from ancient yesteryear.

   When those people worship false gods and idols, while we're emancipated, we're Christian people, we worship the true God except no, we really don't. We trust you see even more than they did in our physical strength to protect us. Jeremiah came along and warned them that if they didn't trust in the true God and get back to his own right and true religion, which was good for them, which was the way to blessings and peace and prosperity for them that likely the consequences of their own actions were going to lead into national calamities.

   Now, you see, when a political type does that at a convention, he can come along and he can throw mud and he can smear and he can call names and he can tell you that the existing politicians, the present administration is guilty of everything that is wrong with the country. And they call him a great patriot. He can attack the existing administration and say that the third door lies the guilt of every problem. Every mistake, every fault that has ever happened in this country virtually. And he's a great patriot. But you let a man who was the prophet of God talk about what's wrong with the country. You know what they call him just like they call Jeremiah. I'm gonna come back and show you in a moment they call him dangerous to the country and a subversive.

   If you ever heard someone say of the literary classic Gone With The Wind, "I've never read it and I don't like books about science or I understand it's all about life in Russia." Wouldn't you want to say? Well, why don't you just read the book? That's all it would take to understand. Gone With the Wind. The same solution works equally well with the most widely distributed and misunderstood book in the world. The Bible just read the book. We can't send you a Bible, but we can help you understand it with the keys explained in a free book that we have for you titled, Read The Book. You'll see Bible misconceptions answered. And a captivating history of Bible preservation. Be sure to write for your free copy of Read The Book. If you've always thought that the Bible wasn't meant to be understood, you need this booklet. Its title is Read The Book. Send your request to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney New, South Wales.

   Like all the prophets of the Old Testament, though they didn't volunteer. And though they sometimes had to be virtually dragged to their job, as in the case of Jonah, Jeremiah, like all of them got very wrapped up and involved in the message. It really began to get to him so much so that when he wrote the book called Lamentations, he said, "My eye runs down with tears all the day long because of the plight, the national calamity that has befallen my own people." He really did feel perhaps as only people with that kind of vision into the future, that kind of foresight about where the country was headed could understand and could feel his motives are revealed in the very first portions of the 36th chapter of the book of Jeremiah the 36th and 37th, that I want to quote portions of now, which you should read in its entirety in your home. If you want to have the refreshing experience of reading a couple of chapters of the Bible sometime.

   And for those of you that are hearing the simulcast and driving along in your car and not able to see it on television, you can remember a couple of numbers, Jeremiah 36 and 37. You ought to get it out and read it because it's quite interesting in verse two of chapter 36 he was told (Jeremiah36:2), "Take you a roll of a book that's a scroll and write there in all the words that I have spoken unto you against Israel and against Judah and against all the nations," not just those two peoples then and notice again, Israel and Judah, two different nations. That's a different subject.

   But most people don't seem to realize that in the first place in the entirety of the Bible where the word Jew is mentioned, the Jews were at war against Israel. I'll, just leave it there and let you try to figure that one out sooner or later I'll get to that, the Jews were at war against Israel. Yeah, it does make sense. It says here against Israel and against Judah and against all the nations. From the day I spoke unto you even from the days of Josiah to this day. Why? What was the motive? Verse three explains (Jeremiah36:3), "It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I propose to do unto them, that they will return every man from his evil way that I may forgive their iniquity and their sins." So it says Jeremiah called Baruch and that was his scribe the one who did the writing son of Neriah and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah, all the words of the Eternal.

   Now, this entire scroll, the book of Jeremiah, was written by a man named Baruch. He was told to go and read it. Baruch was, because Jeremiah was sick. He said in verse five (Jeremiah 36:5), "I am shut up. I can't go. You go and read in the roll what you've written from my mouth in the ears of the people upon the fast day." That was the Day of Atonement. Now in verse seven (Jeremiah 36:7), it shows the motive. It shows Jeremiah's motive. What he was interested in accomplishing by the reading of these many, many predictions about what was going to happen to farmers, to businessmen, to husbands and wives, to religious types, to politicians for the entirety of the peoples that lived in that day. It said in verse seven, "it may be, they will present their supplication before the Eternal and will return every one from his evil way. For great is the anger and the fury that the Eternal is pronounced against this people." So Baruch did it. He went and he read the book.

   Now you skim along and you'll see down in verse 10 when he read in the book (Jeremiah36:10), the words of Jeremiah in the house of the Eternal, the chamber of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan the scribe in the higher court, it describes exactly what it was. He read it. So Michaiah the son of Gemariah heard this and he decided we've got to take this to some of the sons of the king. So he did. He thought this is ghastly this incredible. Here's a man who has written a document that says the country is coming apart. We're going to be attacked from without, we've got serious socio-economic diseases and problems. We've got all sorts of pollution problems. We've got religious and social problems, etc.

   And so they took it to the princes, they're named in verse 12 (Jeremiah36:12). So he read it to them and the princes sent to Jehudi in verse 14 (Jeremiah36:14), the son of Nethaniah, they had funny names then. But I mean, think about Aloysius Percival McGillicuddy, that's kind of funny too. So maybe Shelemiah isn't that bad. And it said, "take in your hand the roll wherein you have read in the ears of the people and come so Baruch did and they said, sit down and read it to us." And so Baruch did. And that's in verse 15 and 16 (Jeremiah 36:15-16). And it came to pass when he heard all the words, they were afraid, both of them, all of them, all these younger fellows who were sons of the king and they said, "we're going to have to take this to the king the last verse 16." So then they asked Baruch saying now how, and this is an interesting portion of it to me. How did you write all these words at his mouth? They wanted to find out exactly. Now, how did this happen? Just, how did you do it? Were you in a trance? Did you hear a voice? How did you, the two of you conspire to get all this message together to say that these things are going to happen to the country? And he said, "I wrote them with ink in the book. I wrote them with my pen and my little scroll here. It was simple." Then the princess said, "you better go hide yourself and you better go tell Jeremiah to hide himself." And this was sort of conspiratorial. But they were letting him know, "I don't think the king is really going to be real happy to hear all this. So you guys better duck somewhere and don't tell anybody where you are and we'll take the scroll and we'll go tell it to the king."

   So they told the king about it. Verse 20 in verse 21 (Jeremiah 36:20-21), the king sent Jehudi to set the role and he took it out of Elijah and the scribes chamber that would be like the sort of the Secretary of State or somebody at that time. So this fellow now, of course, Baruch and Jeremiah are over here hiding somewhere. And so the king is reading it and he is sitting comfortably ensconced as it says in verse 22 (Jeremiah 36:22), in the winter house. He had a kind of a winter palace in the ninth month, there was a big fire burning on the hearth before. And he's sitting in front of his big kingly fireplace with his kingly feet on his kingly cushions. And Jehudi is reading this message and he reaches over and Jehudi is standing there and he's unrolling his scroll, you know, and it's kind of curling up at the king's feet. And if Jehudi is reading all this stuff about the economies and about the farmers and about the cattle and what's going to happen in drought and famine and what you're doing wrong and so on, it came yawn a little bit. He got a pen knife, he reached over there and he hacked a little bit of the tail end of it off and he threw it in the fire. He really enjoyed that scene to make a great scene for the kind of a king Lear. You know, you think it was not Lear but anyhow, a king or something or other, the little king movie, wouldn't it? You can just imagine. It really felt great about that.

   Here was what proclaimed to be a prophecy from God Almighty. And it says in verse 23 (Jeremiah36:23), "it came to pass when Jehudi had read three or four lines or leaves columns in the margin, he cut it, that is the king cut it with a thin knife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth." Yet they were not afraid nor rent their garments, which was habitually common as the great calamity was about to occur among those people. Neither the king nor any of the servants that heard all these words, not with a dire series of predictions. They were neither afraid when they heard the words nor when they described them.

   Well, then Jeremiah verse 27 (Jeremiah36:27), got a message from the king and it says the word of the Eternal came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the roll. And here is the beautiful part because at this point, you will see this human reasoning is so beautiful. The entirety of the book of Jeremiah that has to do with terrible consequences coming upon those people as a result, primarily their own actions. Jeremiah is only in a sense, a kind of an interested bystander. God says, "I'm going to send you to my people. You take the message I give you." Jeremiah didn't concoct the message. He was given the message, but he became very, very interested in it. Very excited about it, very perturbed about it. And he was very energetically eagerly performing his commission to try to take that message to the king. And yet Jeremiah got for his pains, an accusation of being a subversive, a virtual spy, a fifth column agent. As I'm going to show you he was accused of having gone over to the enemy because he dared to inform those people that they might go under in the advance of an attacking army that the armies of Babylon were going to come, that that nation was going to be destroyed, that the king was going to be taken into captivity, delivered to the hand of the king of Babylon. And he was called a subversive for having said so. And in practical fact, he was a fantastic patriot.

   Predicting the future has always proved difficult. The pilgrims envisioned a prosperous settlement never dreaming their land would become the most powerful nation on earth. The Wright Brothers predicted success with no idea that their new invention would usher in the possibility of global warfare. Henry Ford's automobile was the work of visionary genius, but he never expected our modern glutted streets and highways. What comes next? Can you know? There is a source which accurately foretells the future of man. It is the Bible. The keys to understanding Bible prophecy are explained in a free booklet, How To Understand Prophecy. This booklet doesn't foretell the pilgrims, the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, or Captain Cook, but it does bring the Bible alive with meaning and significance. Send for your free copy of How To Understand Prophecy. Send your request to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales.

   You know, it's always interesting how people tend to ascribe prophecies, doctrines, religious beliefs as being the opinion or the idea of the person who carries them. And that was precisely what the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and others thought about Jesus Christ himself when he was on the earth. They thought that it was his own personal opinions and his ideas. And even today, you can find that that still resides in the breast of human beings. They will hear somebody quoting the Bible. They will say, "now, where does he get off believing a thing like that?" For instance, I quote from time to time statements the Bible makes about the mortality, the temporal transitory, earthly mundane, physical and therefore fleshly nature of what is called the soul. Ezekiel 18:4 and Ezekiel 18:20 say, "the soul that sin, if that soul shall die." It also says in Ecclesiastes 3:19, "speaking of beasts like cattle and oxen and human beings as dieth, the one so dieth, the other. Beasts and men die the same kind of a death, a chemical-physical cessation of existence." And there is no soul that blasts of and goes anywhere. The words "immortal soul" are not in the Bible.

   Now, this book that we are telling you about, I want to point out something in it right now that you will get. Here's a section that says just what I was talking about. The Bible says. And then the Bible nowhere says. Now, here it says, the Bible says the soul that sins, it shall die. Ezekiel 18:4 and verse 20. And here the soul is immortal. The words immortal soul are not found in the Bible. And the Bible nowhere says, so you'll see these contrasts.

   So what I'm getting at and I hope you'll write for this booklet as for the others that we talk about because they are free of charge. The thing that I'm getting at is simply this, I quote that scripture I'm not responsible for it. It was in the Bible. Columbus carried, it was in the one George Washington read it was in the one on President Kennedy's desk. It's in the same Bible the Pope uses. It really is. It's in the same one that is carried into the pulpit by all the hundreds and hundreds of ministers who tell you the immortal soul is going to heaven. I'm just quoting it.

   And then people say Armstrong believes that the soul dies. You know, ding ding uh that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense to me what difference it makes what I believe. What I believe doesn't cut any ice. It doesn't change your job, it doesn't get you a raise, it doesn't lower your taxes. It doesn't stop the balding process for either you or if you'd like to take a look for me, it doesn't do anything. What Armstrong believes is Armstrong's belief. Armstrong's opinion.

   But when I tell you, the Bible says something and then I open it up and I explain it, lay it right out there and say, take a look. The Bible really says that. Then I'm not responsible anymore except to carry it to you. I could even say the Bible says this, but I don't believe it. Then you know, two things, don't you? You know what the Bible says and you know that I don't believe it. Oh, I can say the Bible says this and I do believe it. You still know two things. The Bible says it. And I believe it.

   Well, back to the point at hand, it's kind of interesting this section of the book of Jeremiah because it shows that same attitude in the minds of those people back then, verse 27 of chapter 36 (Jeremiah36:27). Then after all these other things that happened, he'd written it, Baruch had taken it to the people, they went to the princes, they went to the king, the king cuts it off, burns the whole thing.

   Then verse 27 the word of the Eternal came to Jeremiah. After that, the king had burned the roll and the words which Baruch wrote in the mouth of Jeremiah saying, "take you again another roll and write in it. All the former words that were in the first roll which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned and you shall say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, thus says the Eternal, you have burned this role saying."

   Now, here's the interesting part to me, why have you? This is the king. You know, this is what he said to Jeremiah. Here's his attitude. Why have you written there in saying the king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land and shall cause to cease from then man and beast. In the quotation. The point is the king is looking at Jeremiah saying, Jeremiah, what kind of a character are you to write? Why did you write in this book in this scroll that thus and thus is going to happen?

   Jeremiah had no more responsibility in that day than I've got now. He wasn't responsible for it. God told him to do it. He did it and it wasn't just his idea, it wasn't guided writing God Almighty, the creator that gives you every breath of air you breathe, that puts you on this good green earth by the process of that reproduction capacity that is in all living organisms and the origins of sex and the origins of male, female and the origins of all life cannot be by explained by evolutionary science. Quote end quote. And when science gets into evolution, it is in pure speculation. And I do know all about almost limitless adaptation and capacity for almost limitless variety within a species.

   But that does not explain fantastic living organisms from the not living and it's far less, it's far more likely I'll put it that way, for an explosion in a print shop to reproduce the entire encyclopedia Americana than it is for life to have come from a noxious mixture of methane and amino acids. And you'd better kind of think about that for a little while because that, whether we like to admit it or not, is the truth.

   And the divine creator God that made the entirety of the universe and this earth and put our first parents upon it had the power just as he does today to influence and to inspire the mind of a man. And he had the power to give Jeremiah that message. Jeremiah wasn't speaking his own opinions. But he told them a little later on, even after they accused him of being a subversive. He said in verse nine (Jeremiah36:9), deceive not yourselves saying the Chaldeans shall surely depart from us. That's the next chapter verse nine, because they won't depart for though you had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you and the remain but wounded men among them. Yet they should rise up and burn this city with fire. He said, don't kid yourselves, it's going to happen anyway.

   And you know, our peoples today need to hear and need to read some of these very same prophecies, not only of Jeremiah, but of Ezekiel and of Christ himself that portray fantastic calamities that are going to happen to our peoples. Unless we listen, it's time for you to hear that message. You ought to get these booklets, Read The Book and How To Understand Prophecy. And also the current number of the Plain Truth magazine there free of charge and no price.

   I've come on the air for so many years. If you've listened rather regularly, if you heard me say time and again, that one-third of the Bible is prophecy and that most prophetic sections of the Bible apply to today, that about 90% of that is yet to be fulfilled. Well, what about proving that to yourself? You know, I've been amazed at how many people will listen and are reluctant to write letters. It's almost like there is a syndrome about letter writing.

   As a matter of fact, you find people 40 years of age and under are very unaccustomed to writing letters. We've grown up in an age of television and of the telephone and it's a lot easier to just pick up the telephone and ask someone a question or to ask a neighbor or to chat about something over lunch, to meet someone on the supermarket and say, say, what did you think that guy Armstrong meant when he said such and such and to compare opinions about it.

   Well, look, the reason for being able to get people's attention in a 30 minute program and being able to talk about some of the issues and the problems is merely to get people to write in for the real definitive proof. It's a lot easier in your own living room. Take plenty of time to do it and prove these things to yourself. It's called How To Understand Prophecy. And all you need to do is to request it by sending a letter to Post Office Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. Be sure to tell us the call letters of your station, we need that. That's all there is no cost. But tell us the name of the radio station at which you've been listening, the call letters and then send your letter to Box 345 Sydney, New South Wales. Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye friends.

   You have been listening to the World Tomorrow. If you would like more information, write to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales.