Herbert W Armstrong

   And greeting friends around the world, this is Garner Ted Armstrong with the good news of the World Tomorrow. You have never heard of so many atrocities in such a short period of time before in all of your life: mass murders, slayings, assassinations, bombings, riots, looting, arson, rape, murder, gang fights, never into violence. It seems. And nearly every newscast you hear sounds like the latest obituary, and your newspapers are filled with violence.

   It is not the latest statistics of the grinding collisions on the holiday where people worship the goddess of pleasure and kill each other doing it. It's like it's not the assassination of a famous political figure or maybe the latest suicide, murder pact, or mercy killing, suicide. You read of the newspapers. You're living in a very violent age, and violence is increasing in spite of the fact some people insist on believing otherwise.

   I got a letter I told you about in several programs where one person said conditions aren't any worse than they've always been. It's just that radio and TV seem to make it so. Well, if we would take the trouble to get the facts from law enforcement agencies, we would find there is a rise of crime out of proportion actually to population around the world. And that if population runs rampant, so does violence. You're living in a time of unparalleled violence.

   The crime of the century is what they build the mass murder of the nurses in Chicago, and almost before a shocked public which sometimes feels it must be shocked and oftentimes isn't, had ceased being shocked. The newspapers and television started telling about the mass murder on the University of Texas campus, insane murders. And that is a kind of a bizarre backlash to that we began hearing in all parts of the United States and for that matter around the world of mass murders involving many children of homes and families, sometimes a husband and a wife, relatives inside of homes.

   And did you know that in most cases, homicide takes place between members of families that the majority of murders take place between people who ordinarily are supposed to love each other? A husband and a wife, children and their parents. It's a fantastic world you live in, and you've never before witnessed so many horrendous murders and massacres as you have today.

   Your newscasts begin usually with the local weather, perhaps or maybe that comes later, the war in Vietnam. Then the murders and the bank robberies, and then the latest riots. And then after that, perhaps the assassination of another political figure or some person telling you about some investigation by a Senate sub-committee that has uncovered some mariacany in high places in government. And then, like as not, you get the local weather report which is usually not too good.

   Now, where do you go to hear any good news today? You're living in an age of lawlessness. It's about time you came to realize what is the cause of all this violence.

   In the current number of a magazine that I want to tell you about is an article on, Human Nature Is Violent! Tells you why it is violence is running ramped today and what causes violence, why it is you're living in an age of violence, why it is police, sociologists, psychiatrists, and historians, and the public in general, all seek answers and no one seems to know what causes race riots, what caused the bloody massacre in Chicago, why the unbelievable slaughter on the University of Texas campus?

   There is a basic underlying cause to violence, and this article shows you what it is. It is human nature, believe it or not, to be violent. Now, that's kind of a shocking statement, perhaps especially in the light of all the books on psychology that you may have read about human nature, find yourself, discover yourself, the inner you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, philosophy of the better you that is in there somewhere.

   If you can just find him, you need to read this article and find out there is proof for that statement that human nature is violent. Human nature is the cause of violence. When you understand human nature, human nature is the cause of war because human nature is vanity, jealousy, lust, and greed. And when you combine that with ignorance, with poverty, with disillusionment, with prejudice, and you've got a ready-made brew for some of the most fantastic atrocities you've ever seen or heard tell of.

   And it's a pity, isn't it? That ignorance doesn't hurt? Isn't it a pity that adult-headedness, harebrained or idiocy, adultish, stupidity, bigotry, bias, prejudice, closed-mindedness, selfishness doesn't hurt if human dovishness, boobery, and idiocy set up a symptomatic shock in the brain, set up some type of a fever, a symptomatic pain. People would be seeking a cure.

   Now it does cause pain all right. But it doesn't usually pain the person who is adult until some act has resulted from his adultish, and then other people begin to seek a cure by maybe putting him behind bars. But how many millions of cases are there? Of murder of rape and arson of pillaging of looting and burning and robbing because of racial bias or because of religious bigotry, quote unquote, were burnt to the stake. How many so-called Christians were put to death? How many Holy Wars have been started? Because of the shocking bias and bigotry of the human mind, the stupidity and adultish of the average human mind when it is non-objective and when it will not get at the root cause and will not face the facts.

   Now, the greatest weapon of the human mind against facts, it doesn't want to submit to or to accept, of course, is that of simple. Well, you could call it dodging the issue, but it's also a little further than that. It usually results in talking about the personality of the individual who gives you the truth. So it just blame bias or prejudice. And the last weapon that a person has when he is unable to face the truth is the one very pitiful weapon of just plain old hypocrisy and prejudicial bias, resentment and animosity toward the person. So, all he can do is ridicule. It's the only thing left he has to make fun of or ridicule the individual who is the person who gives him that truth.

   Now, if you understood that much about human nature, maybe you can look inside of yourself and begin to understand a little more about yourself. I noticed a series of articles or one article rather and a series of statements from teenagers in a leading weekly magazine recently, I really was bemused by one or two of them. If one little 19-year-old girl was going to go off somewhere and get to know herself better, that did give me a chuckle. Somebody getting to know themselves better. It's real funny, you know, because we all know ourselves. We just don't like to admit what we know about ourselves. That's our problem. We look in the mirror. We like to see somebody different than that fellow staring at us. We like to see something else. We would like to make out of ourselves. It's natural to do a lot of things.

   Let's talk about our human nature in the light of the series of programs I've gone into on the Ten Commandments, the very root source of all law. Now you're living in a lawless age where you're living in a time where people scream for more and better legislation where people want more protection from criminality where they want larger and more effective police forces. But at the same time, are suspicious of police forces and suspicious of stronger central government. So, let's understand a little bit about human nature.

   It is a fact and you can prove it to yourself that human nature is vanity, jealousy, lust, and greed, and the basis of vanity is self. It is self-centeredness, selfishness, self-sufficient, self-confirmed, self-preservation, self-perpetuation, self-worship in its ultimate proportions. It's natural in your mind to be suspicious of things that are a mystery to you. It is natural for a poor man to be suspicious of a rich man. It's natural for an ignorant person to be suspicious of an intelligent, educated person. It is natural for the person of one religion to be suspicious of a person of a different religious belief. It is absolutely natural because it's human to be suspicious.

   Now, another little characteristic of your human nature is that of exaggeration and minimization to make yourself appear in the best light. You ever notice how when a student or a young person in a high school or college, maybe they're learning to swim and they get up on the diving tower when they're standing down below and they see somebody else go off the high board? They say doesn't look so high when they're standing down below looking up, they say that isn't so high. Do you ever watch this kid spend the whole day up there pretending [inaudible] because he's scared to go off and he's ashamed to come back down the ladder. It's really funny when you get up and you look down, it looks infinitely higher than it did when you were standing down below. It, it's the vanity of the human mind when he's standing on one level and looking up, it just doesn't look so far up there when he gets up there and looks down, it looks like an infinite distance. It goes on and on. And that is truthful, sociologically. It's true academically. When a person looks at someone he feels is a little superior to him academically or culturally or athletically. He says, oh, he's not so good.

   Well, he's not so smart. Why I'm about as good as he is. But then if he feels he is a little bit better than somebody else, he feels infinitely better, fantastically advanced and way beyond someone else. So, it's another little factor in human nature that is exaggeration or minimization, belittling through ridicule someone you hope to put below you.

   Now, these are the tools of the carnal mind. These are the tools of the addle-headed brain. These are the tools of bigotry, stupidity, doltishness, prejudice, and human nature. Now, let's just admit to ourselves that this is inside all of us unless we found a cure for it. And there is a cure for that part of human nature. There is a cure for the violence in all of us, but most of us have been ignoring the source of that cure.

   Now, let's take a look at the source of your belief regarding law because I'm coming to one of the commandments here. Right. Quickly. That is going to really be a little bit of a problem perhaps to some few people because they simply hadn't realized it was there. Most people are going to say well, of all things. I hadn't realized that before. And a lot of you have already wondered about it and actually found several places if you've ever read much of the Bible where you literally thought that that's the way it was, but you just had never taken the time to really get the facts and to prove it.

   So, I'm going to give you a new truth, so to speak today on this program. And uh let you just make up your own mind about it. But first of all, how many of your ideas about race, about politics, about religion are carefully thought out, carefully and thoroughly studied and documented, carefully researched, thoroughly proved.

   Now, the average person gets a little angry to even try to answer those questions or to hear those questions asked. Because now, let me put it to you this way. If you are a person of a certain amount of prejudice, you will say, well, who does this guy think he is? And you've already said it a few times as you listen to my voice in the program. Does that make the point clear? Because if your mind rebels that being dragged along certain channels and thinking thoughts in this direction, you will say, who does he think he is? That is the human ridicule that we have the only weapon we have to talk back or to answer back when we simply don't have any other answers?

   But what about the source of your knowledge and your belief? Because remember the source of your knowledge and your belief from it, you derive all that you think, say here and do that determines your action. In other words, that determines whether or not you're going to become a part of a jeering hooting brick bottle and rock throwing mob. Whether or not you yourself would so lose your temper in violence that you might take another human life or several, whether you would go as they say, completely out of your mind or off your rocker and commit some horrible atrocity or whether you would become and say a law-abiding citizen, it might determine this action of yours and that action of yours is based upon your belief and your knowledge and they have a source and your action is going to determine whether you persecute a loved one because of religious bigotry and prejudice, whether or not you have what is called misguided religious zeal and try to persecute somebody because of their belief and misguided religious zeal is only a nice term for again, this thing I call doltishness or vanity and bigotry, but it just cloaked in nicer terminology when you call it misguided religious zeal.

   Actually misguided religious zeal has taken about as many lives as any single cause in the entirety of the history of humankind. There have been plenty of swords that have been slung back and forth and chopped arms heads, legs and bodies into ribbons in what has been called misguided religious zeal, it's about time we realize it. Look back in history and learn the lesson from it.

   Now your knowledge, your belief, your opinions are going to shape the course of your life. They are your motivating factors that guide your marriage, your business, whether or not you cheat on the job or whether or not you shade your income tax a little or perhaps pad your expense account a little. They have to do with your influence on others because what comes out of your mouth has to come from what's in your mind. And what is in your mind is a rather odd-shaped hodgepodge, a homogeneous mass of poorly thought out and unproved hypotheses, guesses and prejudicial opinions based upon an unbelievable amalgamated mass of information you got from several rather dubious sources.

   If much of what even is in your mind is a mystery to you about how it got there, then it is a problem, isn't it?

   Now, when you look at the statements of people who have found themselves in financial difficulty, like school dropouts who are now 35 with the family and they will tell you, you know, I didn't really know what it was going to be like as they say on the outside. That means out in the world in this dog-eat-dog, competitive society of ours and earning a living. If I had known, they say, I would have done better in school. How many millions of people have made a statement like that, if only I had known sooner.

   But the point is they did know they were told and told and told again. And there are millions of people who are being told the same thing today. And this is just in one little minor area of life to prove a point about human nature. But resentment, disillusionment, emotional frustration because of broken homes, poverty and squalor in the area in which they lived, many contributing factors cause school dropout, lack of education.

   So, you will find a broad sort of a class of society today in many a country where there exists almost complete and total ignorance about many of the most important aspects of life. And certainly the biggest question to you is what are you? Why are you alive? Why are you drawing breath? What is the purpose in your human existence? Where are you going? What lies beyond in your path? What is your purpose? What particular goal do you have in life? Is there any sense of direction, any guiding motivating factor somewhere in your thinking that directs what you say, think and do?

   Now this thing of human nature is a vast subject. And yet when you understand human nature had a maker that it was created lacking something, needing something, a missing ingredient that it needs very badly, that there is a direct place, a direct source to which you can go to get that missing ingredient that human nature needs desperately rehabilitation. And that, that violent nature, that suspicious that jealous nature of ours, that nature of vanity of lust, of depraved greed and selfishness can and should be altered. And there is a definite method by which it can be rehabilitated and changed and you will discover the purpose in your being.

   You need to write for this current number of the Plain Truth magazine. Let me tell you about it right quickly before I get on in the series on the 10 Commandments. Also in this current number is this article on, The Obituary of the British Empire. Now, here's a shocking statement when you realize that was prophesized. When you realize the economic problems of Great Britain of Britain, it should be called perhaps today rather than the Great anymore were predicted in the pages of your Bible.

   That one-third of the Bible is prophecy and about 90% of that one-third is even now being fulfilled, is shaping up and pointing toward the climactic close of this age. And it's laid out in a step-by-step sequence of events in your Bible. And you can also write for these booklets that help clarify prophecy. One of them is entitled, The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy. And the other one, 1975 in Prophecy, the one on the United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy shows you how the big powers of today and on the wane, yes, not such a big power anymore, at least in the case of Britain, certainly, nevertheless, how their prosperity, their national growth, the preponderance of power that they possess at the end of World War II were predicted.

   And now the decline of our peoples has been predicted in the Bible. There's a way out there is a way of national escape. There is a way of protection, but whether or not we take it, that is the big question you need to write for the current number of the Plain Truth magazine and get these articles. Here's another one on the same subject, more or less but from a different point of view, Britain, the sick man of Europe.

   Why is Britain now being universally dubbed the Sick Man of Europe, an international charity case that needs loans from almost everybody. Here's an eyewitness account written from our offices in London, England of the actual fulfillment of an astounding prophecy millenniums ago, the prophecy of the rise and fall of Britain and her commonwealth. Another article on Strauss's Secret Visit to Rhodesia, we're looking in one direction and it seems inconceivable for us to believe you could have as many as two enemies at a time.

   Meanwhile, behind the scenes, undercover inside central Europe is occurring, the really big news of today while our people are asleep at the switch.

   And here's an article that shows you the momentous events occurring in Europe almost without notice in the press anywhere. And the revolt of the generals there and the shaky condition of the Earhart government and the fact that Mr. Strauss's Secret Visit To Rhodesia and your Africa are coming new term. The fulfillment of such visionaries as Mackinder and others in a geopolitical philosophy of how the central Heartland in Europe should possess the so-called offshore islands. One of them being that of the vast untapped resources of Africa.

   You need to know the significance of what is happening in central Europe today and what is going to finally grow out of a European common market. Write for this current number, it's in full color, 52 pages, full color throughout, illustrated with pictures always in every issue. The Bible Story for children. Here's another article on, here's how The Desert Shall Blossom as the Rose showing you how deserts are expanding. But what is going to occur in the future, vast reclamation projects, agrarian reform that's predicted too.

   The article I mentioned on human nature is violent and feature, every number on prophecy comes live in today's world news that's in the Plain Truth magazine. You've never read a magazine like it, it's without charge to you. Your subscription has been paid. There is no follow up, no request for money. No one's going to call on you. We're not trying to get you to join something just a straight from the shoulder magazine that pulls no punches and tells you exactly what is happening in the world today in the light of Bible prophecy.

   Now, I've come in a series of programs on the Ten Commandments covering three of them to the fourth. And of course, this is one that many people are vaguely aware of. They've heard about the Sabbath Day. That's not unusual to people after all. There are many people that do keep quote unquote the Sabbath, they're called Sabbatians in the dictionary, if you want to look them up and the orthodox Jews still observe that seventh day of the week today, the average person one time or another if he's ever read the Old Testament, as the least casually wondered.

   Well, I wonder why we have a different day generally today. And he's wondered about that. He saw where the kings of Judah and of Israel kept the seventh day of the week. He sees where Christ did and where the apostles did. He sees where Paul did and taught the Gentiles too if he reads the Bible very much and he sees how it's commanded in the 20th chapter in the book of Exodus and the Ten Commandments, and it was a memorial.

   Now, very quickly, let's cover in the fourth commandment you find in the book of Exodus where the ten commandments are first written codified as they were and given to Israel as a part of the covenant, the legal agreement between God and these people. He said, beginning in verse eight of the 20th chapter of the book of Exodus (Exodus 20:8), remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, six days, shalt thou labor and do all your work.

   Modern versions have it. There are six days in which you may labor and do your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Eternal your God. In it you're not to do any work, you know your son or your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates. Four in six days. It makes the positive statement. The Eternal made heaven and earth to sea and all that in them is and rested the seventh day.

   Now, the Hebrew word is rather revealing because it has to do with remaking or shaping and forming, bringing into orderly sequence out of chaos and has the force in the Hebrew of remaking or rehabilitating, not creating from nothing. And you find the truth of that in the Bible itself in the book of Genesis. And if you want to write for this article on does or the booklet rather on, Does God Exist? and the booklet on, The Proof of the Bible, you'll get a little bit of that there, and rested the seventh day where the Eternal blessed the Sabbath day and hollowed it.

   Now there are several statements made there. First of all, it says, remember, well why remember if it was just now being instituted, many people think that the Sabbath Day was given to the Jews. So how could that be? Adam wasn't a Jew and it was given to him, it was explained to him. It was set aside in the beginning verses of the second chapter of Genesis. How can it be for the Jews.

   When in Mark two and verse 27 (Mark 2:27-28), you read in the words of Christ himself that he himself made the Sabbath day and that the Sabbath was made for man. And that the Lord who is Christ is Lord of the Sabbath day, Mark 2:27 and 28. How can it be for the Jews when Peter and Paul taught Gentiles to keep it and kept it of course, themselves. How can it be for the Jews when Abraham kept it? You read of that in Genesis 26 and verse 5 (Genesis 26:5). How can it be for the Jews when it was known to ancient kings?

   Now, Israel had lost their national identity in Egypt and it had to be revealed all over again at Sinai. But it was revealed before that you look back in the 16th, 17th, and 18th chapters of Exodus before the law was codified and given and they had already had pointed out to them through oration for Moses, which day was the seventh day of the week.

   Now, it says, remember, so it's looking back and it says the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now, if I were to hand you a pitcher of ice water and say, here, keep that hot. You look at me in amazement and say that's impossible. You've got to heat it up first, then it'd be difficult to keep it that way. Well, you know, you can't keep something some way it hasn't been made. Now, it was made holy because God put his presence in it. He wasn't completed with the creation week at the sixth day, at the end of it, he was still creating, but he created by resting, he rested on the seventh day.

   So, it says, and again, let me just interject one point here. If you think this is a biblical argument, you're wrong. This is no biblical argument. I'm going to divorce this entirely from any remote idea about the arguments and opinions of people for a time. I'm just talking about the facts. I'm only telling you what the Bible says, what the facts are. And that means if the Bible is true, then it is true that the Sabbath is a memorial of creation was not given just to the Jews but was made for man that Christ is the Lord of that day.

   Now, there are hundreds of ideas about the Sabbath. Some people think that each day is 1000 years and they're still going on that we haven't reached the seventh, which means there is no such thing as a Sabbath. Well, that's a little weird and kind of buggy when you stop to think that when you look at the Bible here is God Almighty, literally punishing and plaguing people when they were so stiff-necked and hard-hearted they were going to insist on breaking the Sabbath Day through generations of their national experience and how the Sabbath was the very reason why he absolutely plagued people to make them keep it. Why?

   Well, so they wouldn't lose of the great God who gives them every breath of air they breathe of the great benefactor, protector, the all bountiful, all-wise blesser. Who gives them everything they really wanted, who would give them healthy babies, sound minds, healthy bodies, longevity of life. No taxation, no military conscription protection from their enemies from without, great blessings of weather, bountiful crops, good, healthy, strong cattle, no disease, no mildew, no dry rot, no horrible upset weather. No problems are the type and God didn't want them to go off like other Gentile people and get into all kinds of national insanity.

   Offering their children little screaming babies on altars of pitch and fire. So, he forced them to remember that day. So, they wouldn't forget who he was. So, they wouldn't turn their back on the very blessings they all wanted. And how could he do that if no such day existed? That's kind of funny, isn't it? Why would he say, remember the Sabbath Day, unless there had been a Sabbath Day? Well, that's something to prove and look up and we have an article on it if you wanted a booklet, rather called, Which day is the Christian Sabbath? And it answers all the questions. Well, didn't people lose track of time? Well, I suppose some people once in a great while have a lost weekend all right. But the entirety of the human race hasn't lost track of time and you can prove that it's proved in this booklet.

   Well, yeah, but wasn't it just given to the Jews? Well, was Noah a Jew. He was a preacher of righteousness. And it says in Psalms 119 verse 172 all thy commandments are righteousness and that includes the fourth. Was Abraham a Jew? Hardly. You see, he was the father of Isaac, who was the father of Jacob, whose name was Israel, who had a son called Judah and his children are called Jews.

   So, Abraham wasn't a Jew. There wasn't any such thing as a Jew in Abraham's time until after his great grandchildren came along. Of course, people don't seem to know that they think the Old Testament is a Jewish book. Now, I've got nothing against the Jews. Absolutely nothing. No more than any other people. And we're all carnal until we're changed and we need to be converted and changed.

   And you must become a spiritual Jew. If you're ever going to get into God's Kingdom, the Sabbath was in force in effect long before Israel ever left the foot of Mount Sinai. And you might write in for this booklet and find out also the book on the 10 commandments and I'll be going along and showing you expounding every last one of these 10 commandments in a series of programs and showing you how they apply today, the positive side of them and the fact they are not a negative law.

   So, keep listening to every broadcast. In the meantime, remember the booklets I've announced several of them: "The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy," "1975 in Prophecy," "Does God Exist?" and "The Proof of the Bible." This one on "Which Day is the Christian Sabbath?" and the one on "The Ten Commandments" That's a lot to remember. But many of you are regular listeners. You've heard me mention those before and also The Plain Truth magazine, free of charge, no price, no charge for any of it. If you write to Herbert W. Armstrong, Box 111, Pasadena, California. That's Herbert W. Armstrong, Box 111, Pasadena, California. Be sure to tell us the call letters of your station. Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye friends.

   You have heard, The World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong. 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.