Instead of accepting the government of God, Adam rejected the government of God, just as the angels had done. In effect, putting it in modern language, in effect, Adam said to God, "God, I want you to get your nose out of my affairs. I don't want you're trying to get out of me, but I don't want you to have anything to do with me. I will think, myself. I'll decide myself what is right, what is good, and what is evil. I will think my own way through. I will create my own knowledge, and I reject you as my God. I reject you as my ruler!"
The World Tomorrow — the Worldwide Church of God presents the World Tomorrow with Herbert W Armstrong... ladies and gentlemen Herbert W Armstrong.
The real beginning of the account of Jesus, and it's the real beginning of the entire history and prehistory of the universe, is not in the first chapter of Genesis, I've said before on these programs, but in the New Testament, in John 1, verse 1 (John 1:1). Now John is the fourth of these four gospel books in the beginning of the New Testament. "In the beginning was the Word." Now that is a personage called the Word. It comes from the Greek word "logos," and it means "spokesman." It means the personage who was the spokesman. "And the Word was with God." Now God is another personage. And the two personages, the Word and God, were there together, "and the Word was God." In other words, the Word also was God, but a different person, and they're both God. The book of John, the second verse (John 1:2), "The same was in the beginning with God," that is, this personage called the Word. "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Now I would like you to notice this. At that time, there was no physical matter. There was no universe. Everything was just empty space, endless space, no end of it at all, but there was nothing there, nothing but space, no matter of any kind. Any yet, this being called the Word, later created space because it says that Elohim in Genesis 1:1, which means the Father and the one that became the Son, Jesus Christ, created the heavens and the earth. And as I say in the third chapter of Ephesians, you will read that God created all things by and through Jesus Christ. Now he's the spokesman, but he used the power of the Holy Spirit to do it.
God And The Word
Back in that prehistoric time of antiquity, there was two great personages, one called God, the other called the Word, but they were both God. They together formed god, like a family. They had supreme minds, and they began to think — and taking what we have in various parts of the Bible, and doing a little thinking along with it, and knowing that man was made in the image of God, and man was given a mind a great deal like the mind of God, only of course very much inferior to God's mind... I think that if we can just put ourselves back in the place of this God, and this Word, or Elohim as it is in the Hebrew language that Moses used, we can see that they began to think what to do. They thought, they designed, they planned before they did it. And the first thing that they decided to create was angels. Now let me explain that God and the Word, these two great personages, were composed of spirit. But there was no physical matter anywhere. But they composed, then, angels. They created angels out of spirit, and angels became immortal spirits. They have eternal life, and they can never die. So the first thing they created was angels. Then after that, they created the material universe, and as God explained to Job in the 38th chapter of Job, who had just completed building the greatest building on the face of the Earth in his day, that he had been like an employed architect and builder by the Pharaoh of Egypt. He was not the Pharaoh, but the Pharaoh had employed him to build the Great Pyramid in Egypt, a tremendously important building. God said to him, "Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when all the angels shouted for joy, and the morning stars," or angels, "were singing and shouting for joy" at the Earth. It was so beautiful when God first created it. Now that's long, long before any man was ever created on the Earth, or at least we think it was very long, we don't know how long it was. It might have been millions or billions of years, it might have been a very few years. That, I think, is all conjecture, because in the Bible, you will find the things that are revealed, and they're revealed in the Bible, belong to us, but the other things not revealed, the hidden things, belong to God, and we're not going to find out. There are some things that science just simply does not know, and cannot find out. And it's about time we realized that, that man is not so great as he seems to think he is. And yet, man's potential is millions of times greater than man realizes it is.
Well, already we begin to see how great this super-personage called the Word really was, that later became born as Jesus Christ. Now angels inhabited this Earth. This Earth was made as their abode, and they were put on this Earth for a great person, purpose I should say, and the government of God was put over them to keep them all together, to keep them pulling together, to keep them working together, and to increase their very great accomplishment.
Lucifer Placed On The Throne Of The Earth
Now God placed a king on the throne of the Earth. His name was Lucifer. He was a superarchangel. He is the one that was the supreme masterpiece of God's creative power, and God could create no greater. But God could not put within him, at the time of creation, holy, righteous, and spiritual character. Character is something that must be developed, and with the knowledge, the consent, and the desire, and with the decision of the one in whom that character is instilled. The character actually comes from God, but God cannot just put it there. It wouldn't be character if he did. That would make us like a machine. We'd have no mind of our own. God had given these angels the directive of the right way, but they had to make their own decision. And this great Lucifer, who was put on as the king, the archangel over them, led them into a rebellion. Now the law that was the foundation of the government of God was simply of the great spiritual law that we summarize with the one word: love. L-O-V-E. Now love is an outgoing thing. First, love toward God, in worship and reverence and in obedience, and in reliance, and faith. But love toward neighbor comes in the way of an outgoing concern for the good and the welfare of your neighbor, of helping, of sharing, of assisting, of serving, and that sort of thing. But this great archangel, put on the throne on this Earth, ruling over those angels, decided on the opposite course. Instead of submission to God, he chose the way of vanity to exalt himself. He says, "I will ascend, I'm going to knock God off his throne, and I'm going to rule everything. I'm going to make myself God." So he took whatever time it was necessary to swing his angels into that mode of thinking, and rebellion, until they joined with him in a swift flight up to the throne of God from this Earth, to try to knock God off the throne. But they were cast down, and it was a third of all of the angels. After that rebellion, the government of God no longer existed on this Earth. Now that's the important thing I want you to know now. But the king over the angels, the former Lucifer, as his name had been, and "Lucifer" means a bringer of light. "A shining star of the dawn" is another definition of it. And he now became the bringer of darkness instead of light. He now became an enemy, and his name was changed to Satan, which means "adversary," or "enemy," or "competitor." Now after that, great destruction came to the Earth as a result of this rebellion of the angels. You read of that back in Genesis 1 and verse 2 (Genesis 1:2).
The Earth Became Chaotic
"The earth had become chaotic, in confusion, waste and empty, and decayed." And then as you read in the 104th Psalm, 30th verse (Psalm 104:30), "Thou sendeth forth thy spirit, they are created," that is, the things that he creates are created, but first he sends his spirit as the, as I explained previously now, the power that does the making instead of electricity and machinery. In God's case, it's the Holy Spirit of God. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, and they are created, and thou renewest the face of the Earth." He renewed the face of the Earth. It had been brought to decay. It had been deteriorated by angels that were supposed to improve it, to build it up, to make it more beautiful. Instead, they tore it down, and great destruction had come. So in the first chapter of Genesis in your Bible, you read of the six days that God used in renewing the face of the Earth. That was not the original creation. Most people have thought it was, but if you have all of the Bible and put it all together, you begin to see other parts of the Bible fill in what is not there. Now God renewed the face of the Earth for man. Now God purposed to make man after his own image. In other words, God had decided to create, or to reproduce, himself. And man ultimately has the great potential of being made into God, but we have to build that character in this life, now, before we can ever be made into an immortal character, and of course that means that ultimately those who do, and who do make the right decision, will be changed from material substance into spirit. And spirit is so much greater and so much more powerful than simple matter. Now the first man was named Adam, and Christ is often called the second Adam. And because there is a system of duality throughout the Bible and in all the things that God does. There was the Old and the New Testament. There was the ancient nation of Israel which was the physical nation in this world, there is to be the kingdom of God, which will be a spirit-born. And anyway, the first man was Adam, but Adam now had to make a choice. Adam had the opportunity to turn away from the way that this Lucifer, now called Satan, had gone. He had the opportunity to just receive the spirit of God, and it was there in that symbolic tree of the Tree of Life. All he had to take it, he didn't have to repent of anything. He had done nothing wrong. But he had to make a decision. And if he went that way, it meant obeying the laws of God. He would have become the king in the place of this Satan, who was the former Lucifer. He would have ruled over his own progeny, and all human beings have come from him and his wife Eve.
Satan Deceived Eve
Well, God informed him, just as he had the angels in the first place. God instructed him thoroughly. God said, "But you have to make your own decision. I'll tell you the right way. I hope you'll choose that way, but you must choose. I will not do it for you." Then God allowed Satan to get to him, and Satan got to him through his wife. And Satan ridiculed what God had said. He said, "God knows better." He says, "You're not going to die because if you just take of this other tree, and take to yourself the knowledge of what is good and evil, instead of letting God tell you what is good or what is evil, you'll be gods yourself. And you won't die. And God has been misrepresenting," Satan tried to tell him, or he told Eve, and she believed it. She was deceived, but Adam was not deceived. And when she took to herself the knowledge of good and evil, Adam took it with her, and rejected the way of God. Now what actually happened is this. Instead of accepting the government of God, Adam rejected the government of God, just as the angels had done. In effect, putting it in modern language, in effect, Adam said to God, "God, I want you to get your nose out of my affairs. I don't want you're trying to get out of me, but I don't want you to have anything to do with me. I will think, myself. I'll decide myself what is right, what is good, and what is evil. I will think my own way through. I will create my own knowledge, and I reject you as my God. I reject you as my ruler and my king! I will not submit to your rule." And then God said to Adam, in effect, and I'm giving to you in modern language, and paraphrasing it in my own language. God said to him, "Okay, you have made the decision. The decision was yours to make, not mine. You have said you don't want me in your affairs. You don't want me to reveal any knowledge to you. You don't want me to be your God, you don't want me to be your ruler. Now, you have made the decision. I sentence you to 6,000 years, you and your children after you, that will form the whole world." "Billions of people will come from you, and I sentence you and all your family, the human race, to 6,000 years of being cut off from me. You will be cut off from me" as much as if there was an iron wall about 500,000 mile-thick between the people on the Earth and God. And they couldn't get through that great wall. They couldn't pierce through it, they couldn't see, they couldn't know about God. But God said, "I will reserve to myself certain ones that I shall call, that I will want to do something for me. I will have something for them to do. And I reserve the right to call certain ones out of this kingdom, and you have sold out to Satan, who will still continue to rule for that 6,000 years." And he is still ruling today, by the way. "I will call those that I want." Now among others, God did call Abraham. Later, he called Moses, and Moses led descendants of Abraham 430 years after Abraham. There were some, well, 2½-3½ or 4 million of them, and God had Moses lead out of Egyptian slavery, because by that time they were slaves in Egypt. And God led them out by miracles, and God made a proposition to them that they could become his nation. Now that contract, or agreement that they made with God at that time, and the people consented to it, God didn't force it on them. He let them make their own decision. And they decided they would become God's kingdom. They said they would obey God, and they would obey his government. The only promise he gave them, however, was that they would become the greatest nation on Earth. They would become the head and not the tail. They would become the wealthiest, the most prosperous, and they would have the highest standard of living, and the greater physical luxuries, but all material and physical. He didn't what is today called salvation, or the promise of eternal life. He did give that to Moses, he did give that to those had specially called to be his prophets, to whom he communicated and sent as messengers to carry the word of God to this nation, Israel. But outside of Israel, the other nations were cut off from God. You can go back in the history of ancient China, of Japan, of the other nations of Asia and southeastern Asia, of those in Africa, and they have never known anything of God. They have their own religions. They don't know anything about God. They never did.
Now let me explain one thing right here. Man made the choice, but God was responsible when God says, "I'm going to cut you off from me," because that's what man had chosen that he wanted. But if God cut them off, that means they did not have the knowledge of God, that they did not have the knowledge of salvation and eternal life, and that eternal life was never offered to them. Now that makes God the responsible party. I tell you, years ago in the early years of Ambassador College, who, one of our students as he was at that time, and later became Dr. Herman L. Hoeh, wrote an article that was one of the first articles ever published in the Plain Truth that I didn't write myself, and it was headed: "I Hold God Responsible." Now most people thought he was accusing God. Oh, no. God was the responsible party. Why, God wasn't guilty of anything. Man is the guilty party. But God is responsible. What I mean is this. Those that God has not specially called, those that God has not called and opened their mind to the truth, have not been called, therefore they are not lost.
God Is Not Calling Everyone Now
There is an idea today that's the greatest mistake made in the Christian world, that everybody must get "saved" and I think the different denominations and different churches have different ideas of what that means. Some think it means going to heaven, others think it means given immortal life and all that sort of thing, but nevertheless, those cut off from God had no knowledge of that. So God is responsible for that fact, and the result is they are not saved, they are not lost. Now God not only gave the Sabbath to man as a sign between him and man, he gave annual Sabbaths and Holy Days to his people, and of all things, that is the one thing that has been ridiculed and rejected almost more than anything I know, and yet in that very thing, the annual festivals that God gave his people Israel, was the outline of the master plan of God, of what he's doing. And it shows that those being called now are just a few, one out of thousands, or one out of hundreds of thousands. That's all. Hardly more than one out of a million. And the others are blinded, the others have not heard the truth. And the others, not being responsible, God is responsible for that situation, and it shows that over a thousand years from now into the future, there's going to be a great resurrection of billions of people, and they will be brought back in the human flesh, just like they were. You read of it in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, you read of in the 20th chapter of the book of Revelation. And then God is going to open their eyes and their minds. And then they're going to look back and see the 6,000 years of man going his own way, man going the way of Satan, man in rebellion against God and God's government, man forming his own governments — and I didn't quite complete what I started to say a minute ago. God said to Adam, "Not only am I going to cut you off from me and all knowledge, but I sentence you to 6,000 years of forming your own governments," and that's what we have. And look at the wars. There have been 133 wars since World War II, 133 wars between nations since 1945. And there have been wars. God said, "Form your own governments," that's what man had done. And their governments are only manmade, and they're not lasting. And they're being overthrown, governments are, and the thrones of these governments are being overthrown, at the rate of one a month, and have been for the last three or four years. And let me say right here, that the highest educated man in this world, are men who have been trained in their minds, but it's 100% physical, carnal, materialized information. They know only what can be seen through the eye, heard through the ear, smelled through the nose, tasted in the mouth, or known by feeling and touch. That's all. Now you can't see spirit. You can't hear spirit. You can't smell, taste, or feel it. So there's no way that without a revelation from God, that you can come to know the things of God. And that's why all these religions are so absolutely ridiculous when you come to know the truth. Man had been cut off from God. Well, I've said all of this before, but I want to bring this background before I proceed on. Now, God had simply sentenced the world to that for 6,000 years. But let me say that that 6,000 years is just almost completed now. We're in the very last generation of it, and that's why God has called this church to carry his message out, that the government of God is soon going to be restored on this Earth.
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