Herbert W Armstrong

   Is Christ really divided into more than 400 different conflicting religious ideologies in Protestantism in the Western world alone? And can you get to the very same place, the same goal, whether you adhere to an Oriental religion of Maoism? And that is a religion these days of Taoism, of Confucianism, of Shintoism, of Soka Gakkai, the nationalistic Buddhism of Japan, or of the Western religions of the world. Is Jesus Christ really divided, and is modern-day religion true, or is it, much of it, a counterfeit?

   Do all of the Western religions come out of the Bible? One-third of the Bible is prophecy, and much of the New Testament is prophecy. Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a prophet. One of the main pivotal points in all of the New Testament is Matthew, the 24th chapter, where Jesus gave a step-by-step series of events exactly as he said they would unfold and develop toward what he called the end of an age, not the end of the orb or the sphere on which we live, but the end of an age in the transition into a new and a different kind of a world.

   But why is it that in the Western professing world of Christianity, people either are all confused with differing, conflicting ideas about prophecy, ignore it altogether, or use all sorts of symbols, signs, chronologies, quaint little interpretations about what these prophecies mean? And you cannot find any really cohesive pattern, whether you look at the mainstream churches and find, do they agree on Matthew 24 or the Book of Revelation? The Book of Daniel, as the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel go together. You can't find if you look into one book on prophecy, the very same explanation that you will in another book on prophecy.

   One thing you will find, though, you'll find it in the Bible. And I'm speaking now of the authorized KJV, as they call it, King James Version, and in its original, in which you can research back and find out that there are certain problems here and there and various marginal references that will lead you on a research into the original Greek and the Hebrew meanings of words. But I'm speaking now of this rather than some of the very highly interpreted modern versions of the English New Testaments.

   But you'll find one thing is for sure. When you pick up the Book of Revelation in one Bible, it will look just about exactly like it does in another Bible. And if you let the Bible interpret the Bible, you can come to agree on what it says. The Book of Revelation, a closed hidden sealed cryptic book of mysterious many-headed beasts, a book which by its very name conjures up ideas of dramatic chaotic specters of waste and of destruction. A vision of chaos.

   The Book of Revelation actually does not mean a book of concealing but a book of revealing. The Apocalypse means the unfolding or the revealing of what was to happen. Now about the turn of the first century A.D., a man, one of the original disciples of Jesus Christ, now up in his nineties perhaps, was on the island of Patmos. He was given a series of strange vision dreams just like a Technicolor nightmare of some sort. And he wrote a book called the Apocalypse, a series of events including the Word of God, the testimony of Jesus Christ.

   And what he, John, saw, this that follows could be something like what John saw when he wrote the sixth chapter of that book (Revelation 6):

   And I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. Behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

   And the scripture says that John wrote what he saw and what he heard. John didn't understand it. Neither did Daniel because Daniel in writing his prophecies wanted to know the meaning of some of these things, and he was told, "Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed and sealed until," until which means after that time lapse, they were the opened closed until, the time of the end.

   Now, in that mysterious dream of four horsemen of the apocalypse, John saw first one race like specter atop a horse, and then another, and he only wrote what he saw and what he heard. But your Bible in the first chapter of the Book of Revelation reveals that Jesus Christ himself is the revelator, that it's the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants those things which must shortly come to pass. Not the Revelation of John, the Revelation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Christ was a prophet, but he's also the Revelator, the one who is qualified to reveal the secrets of the Bible.

   I am not, I am utterly disqualified, and believe it or not, though it might hurt some of these feelings. So, are you, we are neither qualified nor privileged nor allowed according to the scriptures themselves to interpret what the Bible says. I have no biblical interpretation. The Bible does though. The Bible itself says that no scripture is a private interpretation. It says the prophets of old, holy men of God, were writing, they spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit of God. And the New Testament of your Bible also says that the word of God is truth. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness. It says line upon, line, here and there a little in the other place. Something else here there, a little precept upon precept. It says to the law and the testimony is they, that is any other prophet and you preach to every minister that might come along telling you something. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

   The Bible itself presents itself to you as a cohesive book. One which does not contradict itself where the Bible meshes and fits together in intervals and pattern of historical and pathetic events as well as doctrinal truth. And that if you can believe one part of it, you can believe the rest of it and that if you cannot believe one part, how can you believe the rest? Either Jesus meant what he said and it's absolutely accurate or else you can't trust any of the Bible.

   Now, in the 24th chapter of the Book of Matthew, you find Jesus giving his disciples a series of events he said would take place of global consequence, political, social, economic, ethnic, military, scientific, technological events, not religious ceremonies. There's nothing religious about wars and rumors of wars, about drought, about famine pestilence and earthquakes. What is religious about something like that? Managua, Nicaragua didn't go through a religious ceremony when it got wiped off the face of the earth by a gigantic earthquake. But because Jesus Christ of Nazareth said in the 24th chapter of Matthew, there would be earthquakes in diverse places. I don't see why people insist on making that theological and all kind of buggy and nutty and like people had a lunar tick of some sort, which is where we get the word lunatic.

   You know, people thought they'd been struck by a moonbeam. And when I hear some of the nutty aberrant, ding-a-ling ideas that come at you from all sides that people are usually so hung up on when it comes to religion, ideas about spiritism and occultism and witchcraft and demons and various interpretations of the Bible. I'm telling you, I have looked at enough scrolls and charts. I've had people send stuff in by the ton. There was one little old fellow and you can say blessed hard if you want to make sure everybody thinks you're real spiritual. He used to come creeping along the Ambassador College library steps, and he would leave a scroll every week or so and he went away smugly convicted in his own mind that he was secretly guiding the broadcast.

   And what I was saying, I unrolled the first one and took a look at all these brain waves and all these spots and these stars and circles and stuff, little bits of hair and a pop bottle, piece of a beer can, piece of a stick or a shingle or something on it and all these lines drawn that this means this, pieces of match covers and lids, clippings out of newspapers. It was mindless. It looked like some poor kid in kindergarten was having a spastic attack in the middle of a junkyard and it got the stuff, stuff on there with a go bottle or something. And so the rest of them, they got left on the doorstep, they promptly went in the round file. You know, the circular file, the wastebasket, never looked at another one because now maybe you'll take issue and say Garner Ted that was cruel.

   Well, who do you think, why that man was sincere? Why? Sure, he was sincere, but I just thought he was sincerely wrong. So from that time on, they all went in the round file, but that fellow probably in his own mind was convinced that he was really running the program that I was telling people on the air what he wanted me to tell them. And so, as I say, real weird, weird. That's what I think they are ideas about all kinds of chronologies and secret, hidden little meanings and special interpretations of the Bible do exist in people's minds. There are thousands of them. I am not talking about any such thing. I'm talking about the plain open, honest, objective, comparative, simple, straightforward truth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth who himself retained the prerogative to interpret the Bible to us.

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   I believe the Bible interprets the Bible and it doesn't need me or you or anybody with a lot of degrees after his name that went to some divinity school and there's nothing divine about a divinity school or some other kind of a school who read books by men about books, about men who wrote books, about men who wrote about the Bible. And I know some have written in and said that I talk fast and they're a little slow and they're trying to write down these scriptures. But I'm repeating these now briefly as I went through them very carefully last time to show you how the Bible. And I mean, really Christ, because Christ is the one who in the first person said these things of Matthew, the 24th chapter, which is the pivotal point of all biblical prophecy, which in turn interprets these things, which is the vision John saw of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

   Now in Matthew 24 Jesus is giving a series of events, one after the other. These are four separate events, each one overlapping and therefore becoming far greater in consequence with the other. And he is that what will be the sign of his coming and at the end of the world? And the answer to the very first thing he said was, Take heed that no man deceives you for many shall come in my name saying I am the Christ and shall deceive many. And what is the very first of the seals? It is one of these four horsemen appearing with a crown on his head with a bow in his hand, riding a white horse who rode forth, conquering and to conquer we covered these in great detail last time following along in that sequence, Jesus said, wars and rumors of wars and what is the second horse? A red horse and power is given to him to take peace from the earth that they should kill one another and it was given to him a great sword.

   The third thing Jesus said, and there shall be famines. And the third seal, a black horse, a pair of balances to weigh and to measure, a voice that says the measure of wheat for a penny, three measures of barley for a penny and see that you hurt not the oil and the wine. Be careful with those staples of light. The fourth thing Jesus said and pestilences and what does it say in verse seven of the four of these horsemen? It shows a pale horse and him at that on him was named death and hell of the Greek word of hades, the grave followed him and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with the sword, with hunger, with death and with the beasts of the earth. So here is a logical development of the time sequence. The Bible interpreting the Bible, not Garner Ted chapter one verse two, but Jesus Christ of Nazareth interpreting the book of which it says inside the Book of Revelation. He alone is capable to unfold and to develop to your mind and to your eyes.

   Now, let's take a look at Revelation 6:1 and 2. And let's zero in on the very first of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. He said, "I saw a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow and a crown, a crown, a single crown was given on him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer." Now, let's read a little further on in Revelation of the 19th chapter where we will see that Jesus is always pictured while he is pictured as being on a white horse, he is pictured as having a sharp sword both symbolically as if it goes out of his mouth, which is the word of God. And the Bible does say the word of God is like a sharp two-edged sword dividing asunder even at the very marrow of the bone and that it pierces in and is a discerning of the thoughts and intents of man's heart. That's what the Bible describes it as. So it draws the analogy of the way a sword might split right into the marrow of a bone, a horrible thought in one sense. And yet the word of God as we look into it can pierce right down to the very marrow of our bones, so to speak and convict us of what we are.

   So let's just notice this biblical interpretation of the Bible, not mine but Bible interpreting Bible. It shows a picture of Jesus Christ verse 11 Revelation 19 (Revelation 19:11), "I saw heaven opened John again in vision writing and behold a white horse and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true and in righteousness, he does judge and make war." No possibility of escaping who that means, his eyes were as a flame of fire and on his head were many crowns, not one but many crowns. And he had a name written that no man knew but he himself and he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood. And his name is called the Word of God, which is right in John, the first chapter of the gospel of John and the armies which were in heaven followed upon white horses clothed in fine linen, white and clean and out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, not a bow, a sharp sword. And with it, he should smite the nations and he shall rule them with a rod of iron. And the rest of the scripture defines again about the power of God and treading the winepress of the wrath of the Eternal God.

   Now again, a comparison, if you had just read the description of the first horseman, you'd say, "Oh, well, that means the second coming of Christ," then you would have established in your mind a logical chronological event you would have said, "Well, that's Christ arriving to the earth. So then the second horseman must be one of the plagues of God or something." And you would say, "Well, yeah, it's war and rumors of war," and you could convince yourself this is true if you set yourself up as the one to interpret the Bible, instead of letting the Bible interpret itself. But if you let the Bible interpret itself and you get other scriptures on the meaning of this first horse that has a bow, not a sword and one crown, not many. And it goes out to conquer. Now, there are some similarities and there are some differences.

   But Jesus says in the 24th chapter of Matthew, that the very first thing in chronological sequence for which his true disciples should watch is the advent on this earth. The explosive creation of many different false religious ideas, false Christs and false prophets, false ministers, false preachers with false doctrines. I've never yet seen that church. The one that says false church come in here to learn about the false Christ and the wrong Jesus come in here to be deceived. First, a deceived person doesn't know he is deceived. And the Bible does show that the basic majority of all nations are under a kind of a deception anyhow, that their minds are closed, that God Almighty has allowed that to occur. So God is in a sense holding people accountable for what they don't know, they don't really know and they don't know that they don't know it.

   And a person who is ignorant of what he doesn't know is a person who can be very sincere, completely wholehearted and basically conscience-free about what he might believe, but he can still be deceived. And you need to take a good long look into your own mind and ask yourself where did I get the things I believe in? And what do I think about these scriptures as I see them? And I have a chance to check up at home and follow along and prove whether or not they are true because you see, you need to be careful lest I am a false prophet and I'm deceiving you. The Bible says that there are false ministers, false Christs and false prophets. And this to me is the fairest thing I can possibly say. Don't believe me, believe what you see in your own Bible, and I might even kid you. I might even put in. I'm not going to, I'll guarantee you, but you might convince yourself that I might even have these words twisted around and kind of try to make them say what I want them to say instead of what they really say. So the fairest thing I can say to you is this, Jesus says there will be false Christs and false prophets. How do you know I'm not one? You don't unless you don't believe me and don't believe your own preacher either. You believe what you prove to yourself in your own Bible.

   One of the enigmas of all time has been understanding the Book of Revelation. For instance, the phrase "the four horsemen of the apocalypse" is common in our language. But few know the true meaning of these symbolic horsemen. The Ambassador College booklet, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," brings you that understanding. If you dare to know, with biblical proofs, each of the horsemen is described, and their meaning made clear: religious confusion and misdirection, war and upheaval, drought and famine, disease epidemics. You can now understand what the four horsemen of the apocalypse mean and how you can escape their destructive forces. For this vital information, request your free copy of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." Send your request to Ambassador College, Box 345, GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College, Box 345, GPO Sydney, New South Wales.

   One thing is sure, the world is full of all kinds of religious noises, and I get a kick out of the way some of them sound because I know somewhere there's got to be a college which has a course which is called "Groanings and Wailing 101." There's another one called "Introductory Weeping." There's another one called "Model'n or Advanced Model'n Sentimentality." There's another called "Crass Formalism 303" or something. I haven't been to that college, so I don't quite know how, except by mimicking other people, to make noises like a minister.

   I had a lot of people tell me I look like anything but a minister. I remember one radio station guy one time, pretty beefy sort of guy and he said, "Boy, you sure don't look like a minister." And I said, "Well, you don't look like anything but a professional wrestler yourself." And so we got along real well together. But to me, somewhere there's got to be a college where people learn these sounds to sound like the minister, to get real holy sounding, what they think is holy. I'm not really sure that that is holy.

   The Bible says that God's voice sounds like the roaring in the foot of Niagara Falls, like a million tons of rumbling thunder coming across the rock. So, like, he sounds like many thunderous roars, you know, in a cloud, like lightning struck somewhere, like the voice of a multitude of waters, etc. That's what the Bible depicts God as sounding like, and it tells his ministers to cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet and show my people their sins. It doesn't say to whine, wheedle, cajole, agonize, beg, and cry a lot.

   So back to the point at hand, there are going to be lots of false ministers. The Bible says so, and as I said, it's up to you. You know the old slogan, even the FTC is trying to get people to believe in. And I think one of the, who is it, one of the ladies that advertises products? But anyway, this article came out and says, "Let the buyer beware." Well, let me tell you, you want to write that right in black when I come on the air. Let the reader, let the viewer, let the hearer beware. Unless you prove it, check-up and find out. I like honesty in advertising, and that's why, well, there's little of that, but let's say I like honesty in advertising as well as in the media and certainly in explaining something from the Bible. If I'm wrong, I want to know about it because I like to get it right. So if you find me making a mistake and you think you've got something which is right and that something I'm saying here is wrong, then you write and let me know about it. But in the meantime, I accept my challenge with you. Don't just sit there and say, "Oh, who does he think he is?" That's a tired, chop-worn old idea. Not look at this and then go your way smugly thinking, well I know, because this is the word of God. And this is what it says.

   Now here in II Thessalonians 2:3-4 and 8-9, it says, "Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first." What is the very first thing then that Jesus said would happen? He said first, in the order that we read in Matthew 24, you will hear of all these false Christs and false prophets, that there will be false ministers, and many will come in my name saying I'm the Christ and shall deceive many, first he said a great deception. The first thing in order. Does that square with what the Apostle Paul wrote in II Thessalonians? You bet it does, first a great falling away from the truth into false religions and ideas.

   Then it says that, the man of sin will be revealed, the son of perdition of destruction who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped so that he, is god, as if he were god, sits in the temple of God showing himself that he is god. So there is going to be a great individual of such prestigious power in the religious field that he's going to rise up and pretend to appropriate to himself the very powers of God. And you know that it says a little bit later on that he is even going to have the power to produce great miracles in the sight of people so that they will bow down and worship a great economic and military combine called a beast or a creature like a giant animal of some sort in the Bible.

   It says in II Corinthians 11:13-15, "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ, and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed, you know, into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works."

   So, Satan the devil, it says in your Bible, has ministers, and I don't think there's a one of them who even knows that's where their paycheck comes from. I've never yet met a minister who says hi. And he makes a lot of funny signs with his hands. "I'm the devil's apostle," never met one. But at any rate, your Bible does say there are going to be false Christs, false apostles, that the devil does have ministers. It's up to you. The burden of proof is to prove it because God's word says, "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." You need to prove it to yourself one way or the other.

   The very first thing that your Bible warns about then in our day is false Christs and false apostles, false religious ideas. What do you believe? What is your attitude about prophecy, about the Christian way of life, about baptism, repentance, laying on of hands, God's Holy Spirit, overcoming, the reward of the saved, judgment, the resurrection? These subjects, write for these booklets on, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and "Is This the End of Time?" This booklet "Is This the End of Time?" goes right down the on the subject as I have been doing and shows you from the Bible, as well as some current conditions that are extent on the earth, that we are living in the time of the end. But it's a quote from a different point of view than you might think, a completely objective point of view, asking the Bible to prove it to us one way or the other.

   The Bible characterizes the end time as being a time when certain great global trends, certain discernible conditions would be expanse. Are these conditions just exactly as the Bible lays them out, conditions that concern you and me right now today? Are they right now on the earth? Are they a living part of your day-to-day news?

   The approach that is taken in this booklet "Is This the End of Time?" is to take the challenging prophecies of your Bible and put them to the test, to superpose over these prophetic statements of the old as well as The New Testament, the conditions that are expanse upon this earth right now at this present time.

   What about Daniel's statement that knowledge would be increased and then he would run to and fro? What about the statement that the prophecies of the book of Daniel would be concealed and cloked and would be hidden from human understanding until the time of the end? What about knowledge doubling, the knowledge explosion? Is that really happening? Or is it just some pet theory of ours?

   I've shown recently that man's output of knowledge is doubling at the rate of every two and one-half years. Now a prospect like that is rather mind-boggling, rather confusing. But let's take a look at just one field right quickly, the field of medical science. What about medical science itself? On the shelves of any large medical school library, you can find up to 6,000 different journals, the average journal containing more than 50,000 words. That means every month, over 300 million words of new scientific fact being published in just the biological and medical sciences alone.

   Knowledge output in such special fields as medicine, as the space area, as well, transportation, communication, and so on, is doubling at such a fantastic rate that those fields are of their very nature forced to become more and more highly specialized, and knowledge really is doubling. We're in the midst of the knowledge explosion, and the Bible itself said we would be in the midst of the knowledge explosion.

   These and other proofs are going to be found in this booklet "Is This the End of Time?" and all you need to do is to request it by sending your 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 to which you've been listening, the call letters, and then send your letter to Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. Until next time, this Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye friends.

   You've 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.