The World Tomorrow, Ambassador College presents Garner Ted Armstrong, bringing you the plain truth about today's world news and the prophecies of the World Tomorrow. And greeting friends around the world this is Garner Ted Armstrong with the good news of the World Tomorrow. What is a church? What is it for? What is a Christian? Now, you may feel you know the answers, but you know, a composite of over 1000 typical American Protestant families were questioned to their religious attitudes in a complete four-year nationwide survey initiated by a major denomination in the United States recently. And the people covered by this survey were not casual members on the fringe of parish life. They were unusually faithful and active in church. They were willing workers in all kinds of congregational activities. Many were even church officers or Sunday school teachers, and they were asked these questions: What is a Christian and what is a church? What is it for? Why is it, what is it? Is it supposed to accomplish what to do in the communal life? Now, in such a group, you would expect to find plural knowledge and profound personal commitment to the essential doctrines of state, but, you know, the research has found that in the main, the vast majority of these people, oh, the answer that most of them are vague and confused about the church and its beliefs. The survey went on with moralism or else about the same as communion with nature, whatever that is. Many equated Christians to have faith, but it doesn't matter much in what, and a large majority looked upon the church as, and I quote from this article appearing in UPI releases a building with an employed staff and a scheduled program, engaged in the same basic business as other character-building agencies. Many gave their time and effort to the church and the civic-minded belief that it was a good thing for the community to have like substantial banks, swim clubs, or a city dump. Now, the head of our Ambassador College news girl handed me a note with this clipping that says, you know, this vague and confused idea about the church and its belief is just to be expected. He heard a minister recently answering questions on a religious kind of a party line radio program, and one person had called in and asked this minister about the difficulty, be comprehended doctrine of the Trinity. And the pastor said, well, it's been put this way. If you don't believe in the Trinity, you go to hell. But if you do try to understand it, you'll go out of your mind. Now, where does that leave you? If you, if you do believe it or try to understand it and look at the Bible, you're going to go crazy. Now, maybe you've heard people say that if you read the Bible, if you try to understand the Bible, you will go crazy. I used to hear that. I think as a matter of fact, I probably used to say it and parrot the same statements that a lot of people have used that leaves you sort of up in the air without a place to go for an answer, doesn't it? Now, the question and also asked the minister to explain Christ's statement when he said, before Abraham was, I am. So, the pastor shot back immediately, saying, what are you driving at? Are you trying to resurrect or to bring up that age-old idea about the plurality of God? Again? Is it any wonder than my friends when pastors are asked questions such as these, that the average layman finds himself a little bit vague and cloudy about his religious beliefs? A letter writer to a question and answer columnist asked this, how do modern views compare with traditional views of the purpose of life? And the answer was this in the column in the newspaper? It is man's peculiar misery or glory that he permanently poses a question of his own existence. Does man have an ultimate goal beyond the sphere of his temporal experience? If so, what must he do to attain it? And then he gave several ideas from ancient philosophers and, and then he went on to say, we look out on the world around us and we see nothing but a world of atoms in a meaningless void. Whether we see the physical world as chaotic and shy or as an orderly cosmic. Human life may still seem meaningless and valueless to us. The pattern of material events is no answer to the question, human heart and mind. All of science, he said, remains silent. When man asks, "What am I doing here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the purpose of my life?" Modern thinkers, he said, faith for the urgent and disturbing questions, have rejected the yet traditional theological and philosophical views of the purpose and meaning of human life. They assert that men can and must set their own goals and find meaning in the creation and transformation of their own nature. Now that sounds like so many vague words that you can't apply to very many situations, you know of. And this man finally concluded by saying, "I think we will all agree that the question is urgent and that it demands an answer. That is, what am I doing here? Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the purpose of my life?" He says these are urgent questions and they do demand an answer, and the question requires us to take a comprehensive view of God, of the universe, and man, and understanding of man and his nature is necessary. That is what is so disturbing about the question. It is urgent, it calls for an immediate answer, and yet it demands a patient and careful reflection of a lifetime. But he said rather inanely at the end of it all, "That's why and it's never been easy to a human being." Well, my friends, did you ever wonder that if you too are rather vague about your religion, about the church, about God, about human nature, about who you are, where you're going, and what you're doing here? Did you ever wonder if these things can be proved? Did you ever wonder whether or not you could definitely, positively, tangibly prove there is a God and to find out all about human nature and what mankind is doing on this earth? Now, many who believe no such answers are attainable and yet paradoxically, they hope to find the answers. They believe peace today is unattainable and yet say we must find it if we're going to survive. They believe the law is done away today biblically speaking, or theologically speaking. And yet what a lawful, law-abiding world they believe in the new morality, which is actually immorality and yet they build us a moral world. We say there isn't any word "obey" in the marriage ceremony. Yet we wonder why broken homes and disillusion confuse children and result in juvenile delinquency. We say sexual licentiousness and promiscuity may be allowable under certain situations. And yet we wonder why there are so many marriages on the rocks. Does this make sense? Isn't it time you found out the truth one way or the other? In a series of programs on the World Tomorrow that I have dubbed the Panorama of the Bible, we've come to the first two chapters of the book of Romans where the Apostle Paul explains how the world got this way, what made it this way, where our present society had its root beginnings, how it all happened, and what is the final outcome if there is any segment in all the Bible that tells you exactly what is God? What is man? What is human nature? And. What does God intend to do about human nature? It is the book of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. And yet, of course, the place to begin always is, can you prove there is a God? And is the book of Romans inspired? Is the Bible his word or must you just be the victim of a vague, yes. A sort of a hazy, cloudy, nebulous nothing in your own mind, and you're not sure of anything. Can you settle for the idea in this modern hodgepodge of confusing ideas of the sixties and the space age, the time of the death throes of our society and the threat of annihilation of all mankind in this era, this time? Can you settle for a faith in just anything, a faith in something, you know, not what and still call it faith? Is this going to see you through life's problems, so to speak? Is that going to give you a raise? Is it going to better your business? Is it going to solve your mental problems? Is it going to make your children happier? Is it going to protect you when race violence breaks out in your neighborhood? Isn't it time you began to get some answers for yourself, and you can do it? I've been announcing this book of time and again on the World Tomorrow program, every single broadcast just about, I imagine for several years entitled, "Does God Exist and The Proof of the Bible?" And the proof is there, you can see it. It's in plain simple layman's language. It's easy to understand and yet it is absolutely scientific. So write for it, you'll be glad you did and it's free of charge. There is no price. So we have been feeling that far from abrogating law, far from rescinding obedience to God and to authority, the apostle Paul is all the way through the book of Romans upholding the belief in and obedience to an Almighty creator God who is law giver. We come down to the seventh chapter and we saw in the concluding verse of the sixth chapter in the last program (Romans 6:23), another great opposite among the many opposites we have seen between what the Bible says and what many people have taken for granted all their lives that, the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. It's not something then with which you are born. It isn't something that comes about automatically as a result of a little baby being born. You were not born with eternal life inside of you. The old idea of an inner, pure soul and the wretched outer body, which is merely the temporary dwelling place of that soul comes from a lot of pagan philosophers and does not come as shocking as it might sound out of your Bible. It isn't in the Bible. You can't find it in the Bible. There is no such statement in any part of the Bible as immortal soul. And isn't that rather strange that overall, when you take a broad view of the major, biggest basic doctrines of all that you can call organized Christianity in the Western world, the doctrine of an ever-burning hell, the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. All of these ideas that you cannot find those titles in the Bible, you can't find those labels in the Bible. You cannot even find the word put together in the Bible. You can find a lot of plain statements in the Bible such as Jesus saying, think not, I am come to destroy the law and the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill like Matthew 5:17. But people believe he did come to destroy the law. You can see in Matthew 10:34 how Jesus said, "Think not, I am come to bring peace. I didn't come to bring peace but a sword, and the world parrot every Saturnalia time or Christmas time as we call it. Now in this modern age, the Romans used to call it Saturnalia. They take peace on earth, goodwill toward men taking a biblical mistranslation out of context and the whole world believes in it. But does that back up with what Jesus plainly said, write for our article on the Immortality of the Soul and find out with a shock of surprise when you look into your own Bible that your Bible says the soul that sinneth, it shall die. That God said to Adam, the conscious man, the inner man, whatever it was that was wise and vital about Adam, you are dust and unto dust, will you, not your body, but you return. Read in your own Bible the many, many statements about the temporality of man, about the earth, a flashly transitory temporary existence of a human being on this earth, of how a man and an animal go to the same place. They die in like manner and read the plain truth about the trust and the hope in the resurrection from the dead. Not that you've already been alive and are going to be put back into a body. And that becomes a little confusing. Why so much about the resurrection? Why did Peter base the very first recorded sermon in the entirety of the book of Acts in the entirety of the New Testament after the resurrection of Christ? Why did Peter base the entirety of that sermon about the hope of the resurrection from the dead? Stating as he did, David is both dead and buried and his Sepulcher remains with us to this day. And also saying in the second chapter of the book of Acts that David is not ascended into the heavens. Why did the early apostles give their lives for the hope of the resurrection of the dead? If they believe in the soul? If God has a soul factory down here below, does he even need a savior? Does he need a resurrection? It gets rather confusing when you try to put together all the ideas you've grown up taking for granted and try to insert them into the pages of your Bible, just can't be done and yet look how simple if you believe, what the Bible says. It says in verse 23 of Romans six (Romans 6:23), the wages of sin and sin is according to first John 3:4, the breaking of God's law, the transgression of God's commandments, the wages of sin is death. Death is death, my friend. That's why when people have a severed artery, they try to get a tourniquet between the wound and the heart because the average human being knows deep inside of himself that his life is in his bloodstream, just like it says in your Bible, in Leviticus 17 verse 11 (Leviticus 17:11), the life of all flesh is in the blood thereof. I guess that makes the Bible a rather technical book, but it's a fact and that's where the life of every animal resides. Death is death to you just like it's death for your loved ones than anyone else. And the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God, not something with which you are born, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now, the way you've heard it, it's exactly the opposite. You've heard that the wages of sin is eternal life. Yes, you have. But you've heard that if eternal life in a different condition, a different position, a different geographical location, eternal life in torment. Some people think it's in the middle of the sun. Others think it's deeper than the bowels of the earth. Others think it's often in some nebulous part of the universe and so others think that maybe it's going to happen later all over the earth, uh later on when God does something to it. Others think it's a rather nebulous nothingness. Look at Mr. Nehru's funeral. Look at the beliefs of human beings around the earth. That is if you can call that a funeral where you burn a body and then scatter it over fields, forests, valleys, mountains, and in rivers and then people maul and trample each other, and several drowned and barges Saint Nathan others try to splash around amongst these floating ashes in a river. How, in the Western world of Christianity, we pride ourselves on our emancipation from superstition. You mean to say you don't think it's superstition about leaping around from brick to brick burning but never burning up. About where their worm die us not, write for our article on Immortal Worms and find out about those worms, if there are such things. About where they never rest. The idea being that they torment you forever and you can't even close your eyes and lie down and yet you're so weary. About living for all eternity with the shrieks of the, of the tormented in your ears all eternity. You couldn't say that for 30 seconds, but think about it and this is used to frighten you into giving up drink or card playing or theater-going or dancing or something and that to people becomes religion. You mean we've been emancipated from superstition in the Western world. Well, what is superstition? What's the label of superstition? If, if some of these ideas we've always, we've been accustomed to them. They don't shock us, you hear about these things rather casually. We talk about devil's food cake and angel food cake, and we have our devil's punch bowls along the sea shores. We talk about devils and angels and saints all the time. And people seem to have a superstitious idea that maybe there is a spirit world. They talk about seances and things. They can't understand various appearances, manifestations. But what about the Bible? What about a God? Is there a God? Is the Bible his word? Can you make heads or tails of it? Can you get straightened out and come to see the simple, plain straight from the shoulder truth of Almighty God in your own Bible? Well, let's notice now, in the seventh chapter of the book of Romans verse by verse, go along and cover some of the ground in this program (Romans 7:1). He said, no, you not brethren for I speak to them that know the law, how that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. Now, what kind of a statement is that for the Apostle Paul to make? The law. And he's talking about God's law. He wasn't talking about the law of the Romans in Rome that had to do with keeping out of the Senate during sessions. He was talking about the law of God and he said, don't, you know that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives for the woman which has a husband is bound by the law. What law? Certainly not the civil laws A, she's not bound by that law, she can go and get a quickie divorce as we say in the United States across the border in Mexico. Look at, look at some of the women that are held up as the matinee idol. What, what is it? Number five, number six at getting so the husband ought to sign the guest book. He's not going to be there very long. 5, 6, 8, 10 marriages. So, mankind still we, we think we've been emancipated from the bonds of ignorance and superstition and men used to have a dozen or 20 or 1000 in Solomon's case, wives or concubines. Now today, they just make it legal by divorcing several times. Well, the Apostle Paul upheld the law of God which was magnified and made further binding by Jesus Christ and Nazareth who true to what he promised he was going to do did not destroy or abrogate God's law but fulfilled, meaning filled up to the fullest intent and spiritual purpose of that law made it far more binding. And he said it was a breaking of God's commandment of God's law to even look upon a woman the lust after her in your heart. He said, that's the same thing as breaking the commandment against adultery. That's not like the rescinding of the law or making it far more applicable. He said the woman verse two chapter seven, the book of Romans, which has a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth. But if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if while her husband lives, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law so that she is no more would not be an adulteress though she be married to another man. He is talking about the terms of God's law of how God's law was given for the good of every society, of every home to regulate that home in that society and keep it in the right way. The very basis of a happy marriage and a happy home would be obedient to God's laws regarding a home. Almighty God lays bare in his words in the beginning marriage of all, turn back at the time of Adam and Eve, the principles and the laws that would produce a right and a happy marriage. And it's only when those principles are broken and they are living active spiritual principles, not just civil or communal laws in some state or another. When those laws are broken, they demand the penalty and that penalty is what you see around you today in the facts of life. The way we live it in the United States where nearly every third home in the United States has been broken by divorce. Where in Los Angeles County for some time last summer, the divorces were outnumbering the marriages and at every other home in this county, 50%. Fantastic. Yes, it's fantastic. And we shake our heads and wonder why all the husband and wife, death, murder, suicide. All of the juvenile delinquency and violence and the frustrated, mixed up confused disillusioned children who are cast aside to some foster home or some other parents and of course, broken home are not the only spawning and breeding ground for juvenile delinquency and lawlessness. Many, many juvenile delinquents come from homes where people have been married for 40 years and then living with the same mate. But it's one cause it's not the only cause you need to write for our free booklet on, Divorce and Remarriage and find out what God says about it. The Apostle Paul seems to be upholding the laws of God as magnified by Jesus Christ. When he says an individual, if he's married is responsible to the law, now he's talking of God's law, not man's law and God's law supersedes man's law, wherefore, he said in verse four, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ that you should be married to another, even to him who is raised up from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. But now people assume because you are dead to the law, that means you are no longer obligated to keep the law. No, the wages of sin is death and the law demands that as a penalty for breaking the law, you are as good as dead so far as the law is concerned when you repent of having broken it. And when you ask Jesus Christ to apply his sacrifice, his death in the place of yours. But just as much as if a woman whose husband has died remarries and is now not an adulteress but is married, as he said in three. Nevertheless, she is now just as bound under the law to that new husband as she was the old one. So is the Christian who is dead to the law so far as the life of Jesus Christ being offered in his stead. Now who is in a sense betrothed to Jesus Christ just as much bound to live within the law of God as was Jesus Christ himself who did live within it, who said, I have kept my Father's commandment. And as Peter said, they set us an example that we ought to walk in his steps. And as Jesus said in Matthew 19:17, if you will enter into life, keep the commandments, notice in verse five, then of Romans seven for when we were in the flesh, the motions of the passions of sin which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. Why? Why, because the wages of sin is death. But now we are delivered from the law, meaning from the penalty, not from your obligation to keep it. But from the penalty of the law that being dead wherein we were held that we should serve in newness of spirit, in the great magnified spiritual intent and purpose of the law and not in the oldness of the letter. What shall we say then is the law of sin. Let's ask that question and honestly answer it. Many people have gotten the idea that the law of God is apparently sin, that there's something bad and evil about it. And I imagine many people get far more vehement and far more excited about doing away with God's Ten Commandments than they ever do about doing away with the crimes and sins of the average human being. They will take in this long tooth-grinding sermons against the law of God, not paying anywhere near as much attention to the errors and the evils of man in the light of God's law. Is the law sin? I'm trying to say, yes, God forbid, no. He said, look, it's a mirror. It's a spiritual mirror. He said, listen, I would not have known sin, but by the law. Well, of course not, you wouldn't know you shouldn't park a certain number of feet from a corner or a fireplug or in front of a sign or something except there was some directive, some paint on the curb, some sign or some civil code to tell you so. And he is saying, it's no different in God's law. I would not have known what sin is except the law had told me. I wouldn't have known lust or that is that lust was evil and wrong, except the law had said thou shalt not covet. And that, my friend, is a law you could never discuss in a million years of any types of societies or communities legislating based upon the ideas of whims and the fancies of humankind. You could never come up with a law in a civil communal governmental system that said, thou shalt not covet, because the human heart covets is a part of the basic makeup of human character. The human mind and heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says, is deceitful above all things. And as the book of James has said, don't you know, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusts to envy, the very basic ingredient of all human nature is vanity and greed, selfishness. In other words, the Carnel mind, your Bible says in Romans 8:7 is enmity against the law of God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And the basic root of human nature is vanity. It's pointed inward to self. No human being is going to come to understand that of himself that's got to be revealed to him. That's why God gave us a handbook about what God is and what man is. That's why the Bible is in existence today. That's why you're able to read it if you will, because it gives you a lot of information you couldn't find out from science you couldn't discover in any textbook of man. You couldn't come to understand by sitting down and philosophizing about it. Because the law of God has to be the standard to tell you what is sin and what is not sin. As the Apostle Paul said, I wouldn't have known that I shouldn't lust except the law had said you shall not covet. So that depends upon revealed knowledge, not upon knowledge that man can legislate for himself. But he said in verse eight of Romans seven, but sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence for without the law, sin was dead. Now, let's understand this in modern language. This is the King James English. He means that without the knowledge of God's law, his conscience didn't bother him. There are plenty of people doing plenty of things contrary to God's law, not even knowing they are breaking the law yet suffering the penalty because just like man's law, God says, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Ignorance of the law does not get you off. Many people are ignorant of laws involving their own private finances. They are ignorant of laws involving their own marriage, laws that would lead to mental stability and emotional maturity. They are ignorant of the laws of health that doesn't get them off. Plenty of people are ignorant about the laws of health as sleep, right, diet, and exercise. And so they're obese, or they're filled with disease and sickness. They have every type of physical problem and they wonder why? Because ignorance of law is no excuse. And so, the Apostle Paul said without the law, sin was bad. I didn't understand what sin was. I had no knowledge of it. I was alive, he said in verse nine, without the law once, without the knowledge of the law, without the law coming into his mind. But when the commandment came, that is when it came right up and hit him in the face, it became so obvious. He said sin revived and I died. How did he die? Well, he said in Galatians 3:20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live, I live by the faith of Jesus Christ who loved me and gave himself for me. Yes, he died. But he died because Christ died in his stead and the law was satisfied. But that didn't mean the Apostle Paul was going to live without the law or outside of it or contrary to it or in disobedience to it, as he said in the 25th verse of that same chapter (Romans 7:25), I shall serve the law of God. And he did and he preached about it, write in for these articles on marriage, How to Have a Happy Marriage we've been seeing how the apostles are upheld the laws regarding marriage. In the seventh chapter of the book of Romans, write in for our free article on How to Have a Happy Marriage and find out what God laws speak, about the way the home ought to be established and write for the article on, How to Solve Family Arguments. They're also free of charge, go on, Divorce and Remarriage and find out what God says about it. And also there's a great deal about family relations the way the home ought to be run as God says, not according to man's whims and fancies in this book that's entitled The Plain Truth About Child Rearing. Now, they're all free of charge. There is no price. And in the current number of the Plain Truth magazine, this lead article German War Crimes - Who Was to Blame? Another one entitled, Is Tithing Jewish, an article entitled The Era of the All Powerful Pill. Now they're free of charge. If you send your letter to Herbert W Armstrong Box 111 Pasadena, California, that's Herbert W Armstrong Box 111 Pasadena, California. Be sure to list the call letters of your station. Remember there is no obligation, no follow-up, no request for money for any of this free literature. And so until next time in this series, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye friends. You have heard the World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong or 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.