Herbert W Armstrong

   Now, I've been speaking recently on recent programs about the human mind which very few people understand, you know, even psychologists don't understand the human mind, they don't understand its makeup and of what it is composed. And also I've been discussing the fact that Satan the devil is once again in world news, you're listening to world news all the time. You spend a good deal of time reading your newspapers, looking at telecasts, newscasts, and it's nearly all bad news in the midst of 20th-century progress. Why?

   Also, I was speaking recently of Hitler's unbreakable, supposedly unbreakable secret code. Now, it seems that all nations have secret codes by which they can transmit information across the world to their own people. And if it's intercepted by anybody, they can't figure it out, they can't understand it. Well, you know, there's one secret code that is absolutely undecipherable, unbreakable. Even Hitler's secret code was finally broken and World War II was won by the allies largely as a result of that. But there's one code, one secret code, there's only one way to break it. And that's a way that the inventor of that code intended it to be broken. And that secret code is the Holy Bible. If you could understand the Bible and you probably can't, you probably don't. If you could, you could understand the human mind, you could understand the reason for your own existence. You could understand the purpose being worked out here below and that there is a purpose being worked out here on earth. You would understand whether there is a Satan and why and who he is. Did God create him? Where did he come from? How did he come to be? Is he just like Santa Claus something that doesn't exist? Or is there really a wily Satan? We need to know these things because they all figure in the world news, they all figure in the conditions that face you in your life. Where you are and where you live now, in all personal controversies, in all controversies with between nations, in all troubles between, say husband and wife, all clashes between people. There is one explanation that very, very few people seem to understand. They don't understand the nature of these clashes. They don't understand why we don't get along with one another.

   Let me read you a little of it in God's secret code here and see if I can decode it for you. So, you can understand it. And it's in Ephesians six and verse 12 (Ephesians 6:12), for we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Now we are wrestling with these things. It's just like a wrestling match. You know, when I was a boy, 12 years old, I remember Frank Gotch was at that time the world wrestling champion. That was the time when wrestling was real wrestling and not the kind of a show that it is today. And that was a sport that some of my playmates and I were interested in at the time and it seems like all life is a wrestle with things and with problems and with other people. But we're wrestling not against flesh and blood, that is against people, against other people actually, but against Principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spirits, against spiritual wickedness or a better translation would be wicked spirits in high places.

   Now, there are wicked spirits and the spirit is invisible, something you can't see, you can't hear, you can't know anything about it. Something that therefore science just simply laughs off and says doesn't exist because science cannot believe anything. They can't see, touch, feel, smell, or taste. The only way knowledge normally gets into your mind is through the five senses of sight and hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling. But now our troubles are not coming from other people and yet, actually, they seem to be, but other people are only instrumentalities and behind other people and behind all of that are evil spirits of which Satan, the devil is chief. And the Bible does speak about Satan, the devil. But most people can't understand that to most people. Perhaps that's a lot of foolishness because they can't believe in what they can't see and what they can't understand. But let's see if we can make some of that a little bit understandable.

   I'd like to read next and II Peter, the second chapter and verse four (II Peter 2:4), for if God spared not the angels that sinned, can you imagine that angels are supposed to be holy, righteous, perfect spirit beings. Now, the Bible describes angels as composed of spirit that God made his angels spirits. They are spirits, they're not flesh and blood, they're not human, but they do have minds far better than our minds. They do have minds, they know they have knowledge and they're able to do things but God spared not the angels that sinned.

   Now, the Bible shows that about a third of the angels did sin. Can you imagine angels sinning when people think they're supposed to be so righteous and holy, almost like God himself, but deliver them up in a chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment. That's in II Peter, the second chapter and verse four.

   Now there was a super archangel, a Cherub named Lucifer who headed all of these angels. And he is the one who was perfect as God created him. And yet he became Satan the devil because he turned of his own volition. He had free moral agencies just like you and I do. God gave us minds. He gave you a mind. He gave me a mind, but God allows me to decide for myself what I'm going to do about this and that and the other problem which way I'm going to decide. He allows you the same thing. He allowed this Lucifer, a super archangel, a Cherub to do that, deciding and iniquity or lawlessness was found in him because he became jealous and envious of God. He became rebellious and he turned against God and in craftiness and deceit, he deceived even his angels and turned at least a third of the angels into rebellion against God and into sin and they became demons and he became Satan the devil as a result of that violence came to this earth because they were on the earth and this Satan had a throne, it was on the earth. I've covered that and I've read you the scripture showing it and describing it before. But that was prior to man ever being created on the face of this earth.

   And now I'd like to turn back and show you a little bit about the creation of man in the first chapter of Genesis in verse 26 (Genesis 1:26). It says, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, let us more than one person. You read that there is more than one person in God in the New Testament in John one and verses 1 to 5 (John 1:1-5), in the beginning was the Word. The Word was a person and the Word was with God and another person, God was a person. The Word was a person and the Word also was God and they were both God and they had always existed that they weren't born, they never just came into existence. They always existed.

   Now, angels came into existence because God created them and brought them into existence. But God had always existed. And so had the Word. And so, you read in Genesis one verse one (Genesis 1:1), and remember this was written by Moses originally, it was written in the Hebrew language. Moses wrote the very first words in all the Bible in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth now, well, that is an English translation. Moses didn't write it in the English language. He wrote it in the Hebrew language and the word he used for God was not God, God, that's an English word. The word Moses used was Elohim. And that is a uni-plural noun meaning more than one person but forming one God like family, more than one person but only one family. The Jones family, the Smith family, the Andrews family. So, on the one family but more than could be a dozen people or more like the word church, one church, one church at this town, another church at that town, many people in this church, but only one church.

   Now, the word for God is a word like that. And it includes the one who was God and it includes the one who was called the Word and God, Elohim the uni-plural said, let us not me more than one person make man in our image after our likeness. He made animals each after the animal kind, but he made man after the God kind because God was reproducing himself. And I don't know any religion on earth that understands that. That's in God's secret code, the Bible. And it's very plain in the Bible. If you just have, well, it took a machine to understand and break down Hitler's code. It doesn't take a machine to sort of decipher God's code in the Bible. I'll tell you what it does take, it takes the Holy Spirit of God. And how do you receive the Holy Spirit of God? You repent. You admit how wrong you are. How long you've been. You admit how right God is how wrong you are. You have been wrong. I have been wrong. But are you willing to admit how wrong you are? And how wrong you've been? Have you?

   Well, you can't receive God's spirit until you do and then until you believe God. Now, God spoke to the man that he created, but the man didn't believe him. Jesus came and spoke to thousands upon thousands of people, but they scoffed only 120 believe what he said. Did you know that? And Jesus was God with us God in the human flesh. And yet a very few believed him a very few, only 120 out of thousands, many, many thousands who heard him speak, but they didn't believe what he said.

   So, the second thing you must do is to believe God. And that is the second rarest thing in the world. The hardest thing for anyone to do it seems that admit how wrong you are, to admit you are wrong, just break down and admit it. You are wrong. That means repent. Turn from the way you believe, turn from the way you're acting, the way you're doing to a different way of believing a different way of living a different way of acting. But you have to what the way you turn to you have to believe Christ. He is the Word of God because the Word that was with God in the beginning was made flesh and dwelt among us and became Jesus Christ. And so, Christ is the Word in person. The Bible is the word in print, the word in writing. And so, we have also now the Bible in writing.

   Now then how did God make man? In the second chapter of Genesis in verse seven (Genesis 2:7), it says and the Eternal God formed man of the dust of the ground will just made out of the dust of the ground. And God breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life and man became a living soul. The word in the original Hebrew that Moses wrote was nephesh. You know that all animals were nephesh just like human beings. A nephesh is the breathing animal made out of flesh from the ground. That is the real definition of soul or of nephesh. They call it soul when it applied to man. And they called the same thing creature when it applied to animals, but man is an animal being, that's all. But he has a mind that animals don't have.

   Now let me explain a little bit of something. When God formed man, he did not complete him, he was not created complete. Did you know that a woman bakes a cake. But she doesn't quite complete it. She bakes a cake and it's not completed until she puts the icing on, a cake is a completed cake in a way, but it isn't complete, complete yet until she puts on the icing. And God had created man, but he was not complete physically, he was not complete because God wanted him to reproduce. And to have children and a man by himself alone could not reproduce himself. You never knew a man who could, neither did I, no man ever could. He was incomplete physically. So, God created another physical being, a woman to be his wife. His name, this first man was Adam. His wife's name was Eve because she was the mother of all living. She was your ancestor. She was your mother and my mother and our ancestor now they too became one, they united and they become one. They produced children first they had a son, his name was Cain. They had another son, his name was Abel. They had a third son, his name was Seth. Then after that they had other sons and daughters. Several of them, the Bible doesn't tell you how many or give their names, but they became one family. But the two united and became one.

   Now God created a mind in you and in all people. But that mind is brain, just like an animal brain and an animal's brain, believe it or not is as good as your brain. You ought to write for our special booklet about the, Human Mind which no psychologist can make explain. It's in God's secret code and they can't decipher it and they don't understand it. But through the power of the Holy Spirit, it can be understood. If you will yield and surrender to God, if you will receive God's spirit, to open your mind, to comprehension and to understanding. So, let's turn over for just a moment.

   Now, the II Corinthians or I Corinthians, I should say the second chapter, I Corinthians, the second chapter, Paul was talking to people in the letter he was writing to the people in the church up at Corinth at the time. And he explained that he was not using big words, scholarly words, the language of scholarship. He was speaking in plain simple words, but he said that even the princes of the world didn't understand what he was saying because he was speaking the things of God. And it was in a sense in God's secret code.

   Then he continued in verse nine, I Corinthians, the second chapter and verse nine (I Corinthians 2:9), as it is written, Eye has not seen, your sense of sight won't see, neither ear heard, your sense of hearing, won't, won't tell you nor has entered into the heart or that is the mind of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. In other words, the things that God has prepared are spiritual things and they are in the Bible. And without the spirit of God, you can't unlock the Bible, you can't decipher, it's God's secret code, so to speak and you cannot understand it.

   But then he goes on to say here, but God has revealed them unto us. The us, here is the people in the church, the people who have repented, who have admitted how wrong they were, who are beginning to believe Jesus Christ, the Word of God and believe the truth when it is opened up and revealed to them, God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit. For the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

   Then he says in the very next verse, for what man believeth or what man knoweth can even have the knowledge of the things of a man that is the knowledge that human can understand knowledge of, say physics and chemistry, knowledge of astronomy, knowledge of mathematics and things that kind. You know, a cow can't understand any of those things, neither a dog nor an elephant. And they have a brain as good as you do, but they can't understand because there is a spirit in man that does not exist in the animal.

   Now, when God created man, he didn't complete his creation, he didn't finish it physically. He needed a woman physically, another person so he could reproduce. But he didn't make him complete mentally either. He gave him mind power with a spirit, a human spirit. And that human spirit would give him physical knowledge, materialistic knowledge. It also would give him a power depending on how he would himself like to choose it of either love and cooperation and concern for the good of others and of peace and of joy and of happiness or one of rebellion and one of competition and one of envy and jealousy against others. One of strife and violence.

   Now Adam chose the latter, he chose the way of strife and violence and just human knowledge, materialistic knowledge and an attitude toward others that clashes the spirit in him, clashed with the spirit in other people. But now the mind of Adam was still not complete, just like the woman's cake that is not complete until the icing is put on. Adam needed another spirit to go with his human spirit. And that spirit that he needs is the spirit of God. And when the spirit of God comes into you, it joins with your spirit and the two become one and you ultimately will become one with God.

   The spirit of God impregnates you as a child of God. I don't know any religion. I don't know any church but one, the true church of God that understands that they preach a gospel, the gospel of men about the person of Christ, but they don't preach Christ's gospel. The gospel is the message Christ brought. The gospel is a message that God sent by Christ. Christ was the messenger. They preach the messenger, but they don't preach His message. And his message is the kingdom of God.

   And his message shows that you can receive the spirit of God that impregnates you until you are begotten of God, just like you were begotten of your father and your mother's womb before you were born, but you weren't born yet. Oh, no, you were only begotten. And so, we're not born yet in spite of the fact that there are many preachers that talk about being born again and don't know what they're talking about. Oh, if God could only open their minds to understand, but this is a secret code and they can't seem to understand God's word. When you receive the spirit of God, it takes absolute surrender to him to believe what he says.

   And how few people there are that are willing to do that. Are you? Are you willing? I know that most of you looking at me right now on your television screen, most of you listening are not. I hope you are, but most of the others are not. And I hope I don't mean you because that is the way it is. This is a human, rebellious race, rebellious against God. And the natural mind of man is hostile against God and is not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can be. You read that in Romans seven, Romans eight rather in verse seven, Romans verse seven and chapter eight (Romans 8:7).

   Now, what man could know the things of a man saved by the spirit of man. That's a human spirit that is in him. But in the same manner, even so, the things of God or spiritual knowledge knows no man, but by the spirit of God and no man can know it. But by the spirit of God, and you can't have the spirit of God until you have admitted how wrong you are until you have repented of the way you believed and repented of the way you have lived. And all of the troubles in the world today are the result of the way we live. They're the result of the way we think. They're the result of our attitudes and our state of mind instead of love and peace to others.

   It's a state of well get instead of give, I want to get from me. I want to take away from you. I love me. I don't love you. That is the attitude of most people and it's so wrong my friends, this whole world has been so wrong so long and it's causing us all of these troubles. That's why we have troubles. The mind of man can understand materialistic things and mechanically and in a material world, we're making marvelous progress in this 20th century, awesome progress.

   But all the appalling evils, the appalling evils that you're reading about in your newspapers right along. And it is the wrong attitude of mind. And because there is a Satan now and if I just have to get time to get to it. God created that man and God gave him his law and his commandments. But back in the third chapter of Genesis, now notice in verse one (Genesis 3:1), now the serpent because Satan now is called a serpent. Satan the devil. You read that in Revelation 12 and verse nine (Revelation 12:9).

   Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. In other words, he tempted her and said, didn't God hold some of it back for himself. Wasn't God stingy, wasn't he selfish? He didn't give you everything, did he? Well, the women said, well, we can eat everything except the one tree. But he said, we'd surely die if we take of it.

   Satan answered, oh, you won't surely die. Oh no, you're an immortal soul. How about you? Don't you still believe that lie? That's the first lie I ever told the Satan the devil. You're not an immortal soul. You are a mortal soul. Soul came out of the dust of the ground. God made man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man, made from the dust of the ground became a soul. Genesis two and verse seven (Genesis 2:7), the soul that sinnith shall die twice in the Bible.

   God said to the living man, you shall surely die if you take of that wrong tree. Satan said, no, you won't. But the woman followed Satan and she took of that tree and led her husband. She started the ERA movement, Eve rules Adam. That's the ERA and they're still trying to get it through today and God didn't intend it to be that way my friends, but he intended a man to love his wife more than most men do.

   Now, then people see some of these things in the Bible, but they can't admit they're wrong. They can't understand the Bible and it seemed just like so much foolishness to them. Jesus Christ came to start another civilization. Now there was a civilization started in this Adam and Satan, the devil influenced him. And from there on Satan simply deceived him. Satan deceived his son Cain and caused Cain to rise up and kill, murder, his brother Abel.

   So, the first born child, human being ever born on earth became a murderer. And then he lied to God about it. And that is what has happened oh if you could just understand these things. But we're living now in a time when God is going to come and take over all the nations of this earth and Satan is going to be deposed and God is going to rule. I wanted to tell you how Christ came to start a whole different civilization, but I haven't time to go on to that now. I've mentioned it in other programs, and if you get some of the literature and books that I have written and things, you will come to understand these things.

   Now, Did God Create A DEVIL? I have a booklet here that I'd like to send you. You don't have to give an offering. I don't beg for money on the air. We don't ask for anything we want to give. Did God Create A DEVIL? Is there a devil? Does the devil really exist? Or is it only fiction like Santa Claus? You need to read that, that booklet is free, there is no charge.

   Here's another book that I want you to have. This is very important. Never Before Understood. It will open your eyes to something you never understood before. Why humanity cannot solve its evils? Why is it that the greatest men in the world can't understand or solve all these troubles? This will explain that to you. Never Before Understood. Just request that booklet.

   And then I'd like to send you a year's subscription to I think the greatest magazine on this earth in one of the great mass circulation magazines. Now, the circulation of more than 5 million subscribers and certainly about 20 million or more people are reading it. The Plain Truth, a magazine that I started myself. How many years ago back in 1934 you figured. Now here in the latest issue, WORLD LEADERS PREDICT A Divorce Between America and Europe!, analyzing today's news and what is happening and what it means in Bible prophecy and what is going to happen.

   Now all you do to receive them is send your name and address to me, Herbert W Armstrong, Pasadena, California. Just request them to me, Herbert W Armstrong, Pasadena, California 91123. And so, until next time, this is Herbert W Armstrong, goodbye, friends.