Herbert W Armstrong

   NBC News asked me, "Do you believe the world is going to end soon?" I had to say no, I don't, and as a matter of fact, the gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing whatsoever to do with the end of the world. Oh, now that's going to be like a cold shower to some people. Why them's fight'en words, didn't Jesus come preaching and teaching about the end of the world? The answer is absolutely not. He came talking about the end of an age, and he came talking about the dawning of a new age, and I don't mean the age of Aquarius. I'm talking about an age where every problem that is so enormous, so big, most of us choose not to even think about the problems are predicted in your Bible to be soluble, to be within the reach and the grasp of the power of God, but you know they are not within the reach and the grasp of human beings, and that's what I want to talk about.

   This whole business of what is the Christian message. What is the gospel? What do I preach? What makes me different from anybody else? Am I just laying false claim to being different and preaching what I call a different gospel, which people haven't even heard, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ of Nazareth?

   Let's take a look at what happened at Expo 72. Here were, as it was reported, up to about 80,000 people, many, many of them young people, sincere people. I had had an opportunity to go and then the thunderstorm came along and I had to get back out to Pasadena, California that evening instead and so I was able to catch a couple of bits of it. I wasn't there unfortunately. I would like to have been at Expo 72, certainly in some of the big rallies out in the Cotton Bowl, but they were there to talk about Jesus Christ.

   Now which Christ came into their consciousness, the Christ that was pictured in their minds I can't be sure of. I'm not here to say one word about anybody's sincerity, good intent and the attempt they were making to put together a kind of a movement which would gather steam and which would bring about some change. I do very definitely worry and concern myself with some of the accuracy of these thoughts and programs, and I'm here to tell you that Jesus Christ of Nazareth would be sincerely concerned himself because the message he brought plainly tells us that it is utterly impossible for humankind to bring about the far reaching changes that are really required which could, number 1 keep humankind alive on this earth. We cannot save ourselves. That's all there is to it. Number 2, to solve the big agonizing problems that continually divide humankind. We are powerless to change our own nature. We're powerless to rid ourselves of vanity, jealousy, lust, and greed. We are powerless to bring about the absolution of chauvinism, of nationalism, tribal and group instincts, and racism. We cannot of by ourselves do what many people think we can do. So that kind of a movement is in a sense doomed to defeat before it ever begins, no matter how much we idealize it, no matter how much we might desire to see it so.

   You know, people seem to get the attitude that if enough human beings can replace the attitude of hatred with that of love, the attitude of selfishness with the attitude of altruism and giving, the attitude of jealousy with one of compassion, racism with understanding and tolerance and brotherly love, and become imbued with all the noble desires that we can kind of pick up a head of steam and have an avalanche going downhill that will snowball to such proportions we can run around and tell all the rest of the world what Jesus means to us, what a wonderful savior he is that he died for the sins of the world that Jesus loves you. That's the message, and they think that is the gospel. It's the truth that Jesus does love you. It's the truth that he loves all of humankind. But that, my friends, is not the gospel. Now don't get mad at me for saying that. I intend to prove it to you over and over and over again.

   Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God as a witness, and he predicted to his disciples that that gospel would be preached as a witness, and a witness means a testimony against. It says a witness against them, a witness unto them. He said they won't listen, and they didn't. No, no, they just did not.

   Let's go over a quick history and let me put you in the picture where we rightfully belong at this moment. Even after Jesus' death in those earliest days that are recorded in the Book of Acts as the apostles went out and bore witness of His resurrection, I cannot find a single sermon by Peter, James, John, or anyone else that went around talking only about how much Jesus loves you. That message is embodied in Christ's message toward the church in the letters of John and how Christian brethren are feel toward each other, how God so loved the world. That is in your Bible, you bet. But every single sermon you see in the first chapters of the book of Acts was the message about Christ being alive. They bore witness to the fact that he walked out of the tomb, that he was resurrected, that he lives, that he is a living Jesus Christ. And if that is true, what has he been doing for the last 2000 years and where is he now?

   I hear evangelical types talking about Jesus died for you. Well, he also was raised for you, raised from the dead. Do you know your Bible does not say that people are saved by his death? It says we are saved by his life.

   Very quickly after the death, burial, and then the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and very quickly in that very first church era, people began to be killed for that message, and they went out preaching and teaching the gospel of the kingdom of God just like Paul did to the Gentiles and just like Jesus did all of that 3 1/2 years of his ministry. He said, "Think not I am come to bring peace on earth," and everybody thinks he did. They will even little kitties are taught, you know, in the passion plays and at Christmas time and so on to talk about how the angels were supposed to have said peace on earth, you know, joy to the world. Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Well, we have all of our songs today and maybe the desire of some of those songs is right, maybe the attitude, what is intended is right, but the words sometimes get a little mixed up.

   You know that there is not one scripture in the entirety of the Bible that says peace on earth, goodwill toward men. You stopped to think about that for a minute. What an empty statement that is every single year at Christmas time, with war going on, usually somewhere, there have been more than 50 wars that could be graced with the term since 1945, and people would take time out to eat a little bit of turkey, maybe in a helmet, then go back to the business of killing one another the very next day. So all of these centuries, people have been saying peace on earth when it isn't even in the Bible.

   Now somebody's going to take issue with me and say, "Yes, it is, I know where it is." No, you don't. What you've done is misread that. That scripture really in the original read as follows: Peace on earth among men of goodwill. That peace will be on earth among men in whom is good will and because goodwill does not really motivate most men and men's minds, we don't have peace on earth.

   You know, one historian said but after the early 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd century of Christian experience that which emerged from behind a cloak of obscurity was absolutely unrecognizable as being the church that you read of in the book of Acts, and I'm going to take issue with that and show you exactly what some of those changes were and how it is that Jesus Christ as a person, a great personality, a great figure, a great leader, a wonderful man, a person who was martyred, his name, his attitude, his love, all of this was appropriated, but his message was absolutely thrown to the ground, and most people have yet to hear the message Jesus Christ brought.

   The Ambassador College publication "What Is the True Gospel?" answers one of the most divisive questions of our time. We live in a world of many different religions. While teaching peace and harmony among men, their people are led to war against one another. Witness the Protestant Catholic confrontation in Northern Ireland and the Jew-Arab crisis, all believing they have true religion. Ironic, isn't it? With over 400 denominations in the Western Christian world, haven't you ever wondered which one is right, who teaches what Jesus did? This free article helps you understand that message in the light of today's world. Send for "What is the True Gospel?" Your copy is free. There's no charge or follow up. "What is the True Gospel?" Dial this toll-free number 800-423-4444. That's 800-423-4444.

   Jesus Christ of Nazareth came with a message about world government, about the need for the solution to man's biggest and most urgent needs. The crying ills, the divisiveness of mankind, racism, poverty, squalor, misery, disease. He gave definite signposts, waypoints along the way that would indicate the setting up of his kingdom was getting near. Now people ask me, as I was asked on NBC News, do you talk about the end of the world? And my answer is absolutely not, because Jesus Christ did not. He didn't predict the end of the world. He talked about the dawning of a new age, the beginning of a new age, and he talked about the phasing out of an old age.

   Now those way points that he gave are listed in Matthew 24, where it talks continually that you will hear of all kinds of false religious revivals false Christs, false prophets, false movements, false religion. How do you know it's false? You don't unless you check it for yourself. Your Bible warns that even miracles will be done. When you see somebody walking on water standing around in midair. People are going to fall to the ground. They're going to be absolutely shocked if they see fire coming down from heaven. The Bible claims that people will have power to produce phenomena, miracles that would defy any kind of scientific or rational explanation, but it goes on to caution people. Even though somebody has the power, the Bible warns, to produce a miracle, if he says you're not to obey the laws of God, then go you not out after them.

   Well, you know, people just don't seem to read the Bible. It's as if we don't need to pay any attention to what the Bible says. We can stand around and talk about Jesus, and I worry about which Jesus they mean. If they mean the pusillanimous pansy, the putrescent put on, the historical hoax, if they mean the Christ of the Crusades, if they mean the Jesus that people clasped to their bosom with their own kind of a perverted idea and went out and persecuted every other race they could think of blacks and Jews and Chicanos and every other race they can think of, if they mean the Jesus, that people can clasp to their breast, a kind of an ivory towered cloistered little talisman, their own personal private religion, something they appropriate to themselves and then go out and light a cigarette in the steps of the church and hate all black people, then that Jesus Christ, I say, is just a word. It's just a phrase. It's a name. It's kind of a lot of clanging brass. It makes a sound. It gets some kind of an idea into people's minds, but it isn't the Christ of the Bible. It just is not the Jesus Christ of the Bible, because the Jesus Christ of the Bible would no more condone the kind of attitudes that people have had toward others of humankind that are part of their own brethren, their own bodily makeup, all of one blood on this earth. He would no more bless a soldier going to war. He would no more stand there and say, "Bless you, my child," while you're pulling the trigger of a machine gun than he would think of hating or killing himself.

   It's an absolute gross perversion to take the name of Jesus Christ and apply it to some of the religions of man. That's all there is to it. It's not my belief. I don't care whether you think it's my belief or not. It's not a belief of mine. What I believe doesn't matter. I could believe that the moon is green Swiss cheese. Wouldn't change what's up there. I could believe the Bible doesn't mean what it says. I could sit here and use every kind of possible psychology to try to tell you the Bible doesn't mean what it says, but why bother joining the general mass? You've got enough people doing that. Why shouldn't I be different?

   It says right here, I want to quote to you Matthew, the 10th chapter in verse 34 (Matthew 10:34), one of the major opposites that we shall continue to discover as we go through what the Bible says. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I am not come to send peace, but a sword." Mr. and Mrs. America and Canada, how does that square with your concept of Jesus Christ of Nazareth? It's in your Bible, Matthew 10:34. I didn't put it there. Jesus said it. It's a quotation faithfully reported. Anybody who believes in the Bible had better believe in what Jesus said and not go around blue penciling what he said, editing it out. He said, and I quote, "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

   It's a strange and a sad commentary upon our time that sometimes parents, brethren, sisters, in-laws, when they see a person really go all the way with Jesus Christ, not stand there and kind of clasp their hands in prayer, which they saw somewhere in some ancient painting of some sick type standing there in a long robe who never existed. I can't find any place in the entirety of the Bible where people got a kind of a sick look. Listen, if you're sliding down a rope out of a fire, it's OK to pray. If you're hanging upside down in a well, it's all right to pray. If you're falling out of an airplane, it wouldn't hurt all to pray. If you're about to sink and lose your grasp on a boat that's been broken up in the middle of a lake, it might be a good idea to pray. There is no prerequisite, no particular position of the hands that I can find anywhere in the Bible of making a steeple with your fingers or clasping your hands or doing something with them like you see people do to make it more religious or more spiritual. I just don't see that.

   Jesus prayed with his face right in the dirt. Daniel prayed 3 times a day. David did, kneeling with head bowed. Yes, and I suppose eyes closed, but you can't prove that in the Bible. I suppose it's only so people aren't praying to the pattern on the rug or only because they're not praying to the stuff they put in the closet. Although do any people really go into their closet and pray in private? It looks to me like a lot of people really rejoice in praying in public these days. Jesus Christ of Nazareth says, when you pray, enter into your closet, and your Father, which sees in secret, will reward you openly. He says, be not as the Pharisees, for they love to pray in the public places. They love to do their alms in front of men.

   So we find all these types standing around. "Our Father, we do thank thee this day," and our brethren, let me tell you, don't even change. They don't even change their tone of voice between the prayer, the announcements, and a sermon. It's hard to tell except by the content of the words who they're talking to. Well, Jesus says don't do that. So I don't do it. And my father before me since 1934, from the beginning of the World Tomorrow radio program on the air, clear up in Eugene, Oregon, there has never been one prayer over the air. And while I'm certainly not against praying as a formal ceremony for a large gathering or something of that nature and would be very pleased to if called upon, that isn't my own personal prayer. That's the same thing as asking like a dedication like Solomon did at the temple. It was a large gathering and so on. That has its place, but so far as all sorts of prayers just for display, that also has its place, and it isn't in God's word, I'll tell you that.

   But can we let Jesus mean what he says and say what he means? He says, "Think not I am come to send peace on earth," and he didn't. He didn't bring peace. If we think that there is some kind of a struggle going on, that the world is in the clutches of the devil, and God is trying frantically and feverishly to get people to believe on His Son, and he is struggling with the devil, well, who's winning? The population explosion means that Christianity is actually diminishing. It does mean that in actual large gross numbers, the Christian religion is a minority religion in the world today. There are far fewer Christians than there are Hindus. There are fewer Christians and there are people who just don't have any religion except animism and tribal religions and various taboos and superstitions. There really are. So who does this make out as the one who is really winning the battle? It makes out the devil as being the one that's a real champ.

   You know, you stop to think about it, you see pictures of the devil. Well, he looks very masculine, powerful, handsome, strong. Well, he's got the little red cap and the two little horns. I don't know where they got that. They didn't get it out of the Bible, but you see pictures of Jesus, and he's weak and sickly and effeminate. If you just swap those around and take off the horns and the pitchfork, which the Bible says nothing about at all. That's some completely paganistic, concocted human idea. There isn't one word about that in the Bible at all. It said that the devil originally appeared as a great archangel who was called Lucifer that meant great shining star of the dawn or light bringer, that he appeared in absolute radiant beauty.

   But you know why should we hurt people by telling them what the Bible says? We want to cling to our traditions. I say that facetiously because I don't think all of us do, but I think too many do. They like to hide their eyes from reality and run from the truth and kind of believe what they've always believed. So the true message of Jesus Christ sounds so strange to them. The true message of Jesus Christ, "Think not that I'm come to send peace on earth. I didn't come to send peace, but a sword." The true message of Christ "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines or commandments of men." The true message of Christ was "Repent you and believe the gospel." What is the gospel?

   Analogy after analogy. The young nobleman that went to a far kingdom to get for himself a government, a crown, a kingdom, and to return, and then to demand of his servants how well they'd done in his absence. The man who found a great prize of gold in the field and sold everything else he had to have that one prize. Is that just a personal relationship with Jesus, or is it doing what Jesus Christ said? Go you into all the world and preach the good news of the coming government of God. Preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. Why? To convert the world, that isn't what he said. He said as a witness, and then shall the end come. As a witness, as a testimony. It didn't say to convert the world, but we seem to have the idea that if enough human beings can get together, people have said if enough of the religious leaders could get together, that we could start the ball rolling. Well then, if we can do that, we don't need God, do we? God doesn't even need to exist, does he? A lot of people actually think he doesn't. They think Christ was a great man. But I think privately they think he's still dead and they think that he kind of lives in us, but they're saying that more or less like it's a personality that you can hang on to that you can kind of identify with what he was, but so far as looking at a living Christ that is in heaven at this instant, his eyes blazing like the sun, having the energy of 10 billion hydrogen bombs and then some about a quadrillion centillion times over, returning, conquering King, a high priest in heaven, the ruler of all the earth who is going to come back to the earth, how many people do you know who really worship that Jesus Christ?

   Did you know that George Washington had an adopted son who loved to join his father in hunting by horseback? Starting at the crack of dawn, they would ride together 3 times a week. Did you know that the parents of Ulysses S. Grant really named their son Hiram, but his boyhood friends nick him Sam after the famous Uncle Sam. And although President Madison was disliked by some for his opposition to the War of 1812, his wife Dolly was loved by all. She could handle all the men in her life except one, her son, who brought her to financial ruin. And did you know that Jesus Christ was a family man? As eldest son, he was responsible for his mother, 4 brothers, and at least 2 sisters. Little known facts about the family of this great personage are explained in the booklet "The Real Jesus." Request your own copy of this free publication and find out about the real Jesus. Dial this toll-free number 800-423-4444. That's 800-423-4444.

   I believe that science by these discernible curves that we can look at, that we can analyze and measure, the population explosion preaches that the end of the world could be near. The doubling of the population between now and the 2000s, the doubling of it again in another few years, maybe 17, the doubling again in about 7 more, the doubling again in about 2 1/2 to 3 more. Does your mind begin to accept this? Are we living in reality? Are we living in the 20th century? Do hydrogen bombs really exist? Can a B-52 bomber carry in its bomb bay more explosive force and power and all of the destruction unleashed by all sides in World War II, yes, it can. Yes, it can.

   Do we live in an age where the shortage of natural resources tells us man's span of allotted time on this earth is limited? Do we live in an age where drought, famine, food shortages, food wars, violent overthrow of government, racism, tribalism, and race war itself threatens not just world peace but threatens the survival of humankind? Do we live in a world where a faulty transistor, somebody miscalculating, just like some of the motion pictures they've sent out? Where we've got the DEW line, the early warning system, where we've got ICBMs and IRBMs and Polaris submarines. Is this our world? Do you live in the same world I do? Am I missing anything? Is it some narrow minded street corner, long bearded white robed, open-toed sandal, placarded, weird religion to say we are living in the end of an age? Is that some weird wild belief that I my belief, you know, what do you believe? Oh, I've got this belief, you know, I believe we're living at the end of the age. It doesn't make sense. We've got to be rational. We've got to look at the truth. We've got to face it.

   I know that we don't like to think about the very life support systems of humankind being used up. I know we don't like to admit to ourselves that nature itself cries out to us that we're fouling our own nest to the point we may exterminate ourselves, but Jesus Christ of Nazareth predicted it. In his warning message, he said to his disciples, "I'll tell you what will be the signposts, the waypoints along the way that will herald my return to this earth. You'll hear of vast religious upheavals, religious confusion, religious revivals," and as the apostle Paul said, "a great falling away will come first." So that's number one.

   Number 2, he said in Matthew 24, "You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you be not troubled, these things must come to pass, but the end isn't yet, for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom." And he said, "There shall be famines," and there are famines developing in India, and there have been drought and famine, and you can say, "Well, we've always had those things." Wait a minute. We haven't always had those things one on top of another, overlapping each other and rising to a crescendo, as Jesus said in Matthew 24. He said "There shall be famines and pestilences," and that means enormous disease epidemics, and he said "earthquakes in diverse places." So what am I going to do? I run into a cave and say California is going to slip into the sea? No, again, Jesus was not talking about a group of people grabbing a sack full of grapes and a can of tomato juice and sitting cross legged in a cave waiting for the end of the world to come. He wasn't talking about the destruction of all of mankind, but he was talking about these even natural phenomena as if nature itself was in upheaval.

   And then he said, "Many false profits shall rise and shall deceive many." And because iniquity, that's lawlessness in the original Greek language, shall abound, verse 12, and we live in a global crime wave, a time of lawlessness unparalleled in our society, which is basically a sick society. He said "The love of many shall wax cold," and it has and it is. But he said verse 14, "This gospel." What gospel? Well, the gospel about these great global earth shaking, absolutely universal things that would occur, not just the story of what a wonderful man Jesus was of and by itself, not only that Jesus loves you, but this gospel, the gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in all the world as a witness to warn, a witness, and then he said, shall the end come.

   Now he dated it, he said, and I quote verse 22, "Except those days, the days he described drought, famine, disease, pestilence, earthquakes, false religious revivals, and wars, except these days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved." He was talking of a time of the potential of human annihilation. That's his message. Something strange about that. I'm sorry. I don't think there is. I think science corroborates it. I know it does. It isn't talking about the time of the end of the world. It's talking about the end of an age and the dawning of a new one. You'll see the whole thing when you write for this booklet, "The Wonderful World Tomorrow." The good news Jesus brought there will be a world tomorrow, which is what this program is all about.

   Now maybe you've heard me announce that before and maybe you've hesitated. You thought, well, there's got to be something in there somewhere. There's got to be a gimmick. There's got to be a hook in it. What is it? But for those of you who would like this free literature, I just want to tell you over and over again it's absolutely free. There is no charge for it whatsoever. Now I know I've said some surprising things, and that's what the World of Moral Program is all about. We're trying to give you something that is so utterly different, so new that there is some justification for taking up all the time and the money that it costs to get that time on radio and television of God, a world ruling kingdom. It's talking about government. It's talking about solving the problems on this earth. Jesus came with a message that had to do with changing the economies of governments, with changing the way of government, making the world all worship the same God. Therefore, vast global religious reforms. His message was global in its concern for all of humankind.

   The good news of becoming government of God. It is best epitomized and set forth in this booklet "The Wonderful World Tomorrow - What it will be like." That booklet is absolutely filled with dozens of scriptures that will show you where to find it in your own Bible, and it's free of charge if you write to Herbert W. Armstrong, Box 111 Pasadena, California. That's Herbert W. Armstrong, Box 111, Pasadena, California. Remember "The Wonderful World Tomorrow - what it will be like" free of charge, no price. The address again in just a moment.

   Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye friends.

   You have heard the World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong brought to you by the Worldwide Church of God. For literature offered on this program, send your request along with the call letters of this station to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 111, Pasadena, California, 91123, or you may dial this toll-free number 800-423-4444.