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   Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce Garner Ted Armstrong of Ambassador College with the World Tomorrow. In this series of programs, we will tell you something of the problems of the world today, how they will affect you and their solution in the World Tomorrow. Ladies and gentlemen, Garner Ted Armstrong.

   Too many people in the world today want to play at being God. Why is there such a desire in human nature, in human minds and hearts, to live other people's lives for them? Have you ever wondered about the manipulation of power? Have you ever studied into geopolitics? And what makes nations go around and function and look at the heart and the mind of man in the midst of it all at the desire of one human being to exercise power over that is to manipulate and to bend to his own will.

   Another human being in many a profession, people are perhaps tempted to play God to play it, being God in the sense that once feeling themselves somewhat professionally skilled or exalted or lifted above the rabble or the normal mainstream of what they might term laymen, they then sort of develop a kind of an exclusivist attitude and there is a disdainful attitude toward those who are under them.

   This oftentimes takes place in the minds and the spirits of many a politician, of many a big corporation executive, especially of some of those in the professions. And I do not exclude medical doctors, nor architects, nor designers, nor engineers, nor teachers. It's a sort of a disease of human nature, the desire for power, the desire to interfere with the personal lives of other human beings to manipulate them, to get them to bend to your will.

   You ever stop to wonder about why it is? People continually are trying to bend other human beings to their will. You know what the root and core of this is the question, what is a human being? What is human nature? Why do we act the way we do? Why does one nation want to exercise power over another nation? Why does one nation with its music and its costumes and its kinds of automobiles and its habits of driving either on the right or the left in its own form of government, its own national pride and tradition, its own method of brewing beer, think somehow that its culture, its race, its religion, its language is so superior to that of other countries that it would like not only to encourage other countries to adopt its own culture, but would like to by virtue of killing every last man, woman, and child if necessary and force that culture on other people.

   Witness World War II, the almost incredible pomposity to toady, swelling, puffed up ego of a mindless demented Adal Schickel Gruber, who was a paper hanger, all pervert and all Sigel Gruber managed by virtue of that huge swelling egotistical desire to seize the reins of a government trying to struggle out of a great worldwide depression. And that same weird little think Adolf Schickel Gober who changed his name to Hitler while pondering in his fiendish insanity and his hatred toward many members of the human race toward which he absolutely must have felt horribly inferior, plotted and waited for the day as he wrote a book in a cell in Bavaria when he could seize the reins of government and won by virtue of the force of arms and the threat of death, he could finally exert his will and his influence over other human beings. He ran a whole war that way and he lost one that way. That's the reason the Americans were given a little bit of a reprieve in Utah, Omaha. Even though the Canadians and British, a Juno golden sword were well ashore because Sheckel Gruber had one of his tantrums. He was a little man and he knew it. He had a somewhat correct appraisal to himself and must have given him no end of horrible nightmares and sleepless nights. He knew he was some kind of a petty little crook he knew that many men around him were actually bigger men than he was men of superior knowledge, intellect, education, ability experience. And so, his driving ambition in life was to so cut from under anybody around him and to so wield power and authority over those who were around him that even though he might recognize other people had certain qualities and abilities that possibly were even superior to his. He nevertheless, in his screaming rages and tantrums would attempt to bend them to his will.

   In this blind pursuit, this egotistical pursuit of power. It was, I think Mildred Schultz who wrote the book, uh The Germans will try it again, who was asked on one occasion or she was asking, I think it was, it was a private kind of a tea party and she was in Berlin back in the late thirties. And there was a big old um be meddled Hermann Goring who was the head of the Luftwaffe. Now, he had been a World War I fighter ace and he was a man of huge and prodigious physical and sensual appetites, which ended up in a giant belly and as a result of his hugeness and so on, he was a little wheezy and short of breath, but he was known as jovial and affable and so on. But he was also a pretty potent man in the government and pretty big. He had a pretty good-sized head on him, a lot of capacity and Mildred Schultz wrote the book asked Herman Goring right face to face. Why is it you such a big man?

   Well, over 6 ft are in such trembling fear of the Fuhrer. And he looked around almost furtively and told her quietly, you have never seen the Fuhrer in one of his rages. There was some special power that was in the mind of Der Fuhrer above and beyond just human power that gave him a little bit of a head start over other human beings. It might have been ordinarily his superior or his equal. And he was calling upon a power, not inside himself but upon, you know, an outside source. And a lot of people would not know where that source was. I guarantee you it wasn't anything that he got out of any special spiritual aptitude, but it was from a spiritual source, believe it or not.

   So, when you investigate the reasons why different races and different nations have tried to manipulate others, it is because of the sort of a reaction of individuals who basically feel inferior. Every human being has a little bit of inferiority inside of him. But in attempting to rise over that inferiority, they develop a hyper-superiority or an egotistical complex. And sometimes they get to thinking they are the members of a super race and that they alone are really well, not only allowed but privileged and blessed and allowed to tread this earth and breathe it air and drink its water. And really the only ones that have been given license to stay alive and everybody else ought to be totally subservient to them and become their slaves. That no one else is privileged to have the fantastic abilities and the brains and the experience and maybe even the right color of skin that they think is specially blessed of God.

   Now, it's all so much water over the dam. That's a rather simplified way of quickly dispensing the two World Wars. When I talk about these aspects of human nature as applied to races, languages, religions and colors in order to avoid the accusation of hotheads who would accuse me of being a racist. If I talk for a moment about the designs of the Japanese Empire in World War II, I don't want to suddenly get a lot of letters from Japanese people who think I'm against the Japanese people. I'm not, I'm against the hideous egotistical attitude in anybody's skin. I don't care what color it is.

   I'm against murder, hatred, crime, vanity, jealousy, egotism, greed, lust, and every other evil motive of human beings that makes the world pretty much what it is. Yeah, I'm against those things and I don't care whether those things reside in a yellowish skin or a reddish skin or a black skin or a white skin. They, those qualities of human nature are rotten and evil and they don't belong in the human heart and the color of skin. The person with a rotten attitude has really doesn't make any difference. He doesn't have that attitude because he's that color. He's got that attitude because he's human. And because that's part of human nature, the Japanese had the idea. They were the perfect race, but they were the super race. And the Germans did too.

   Inevitably, if they had been able to carve the world up between them, they probably, first of all would have gotten rid of Italy. And I think the Italians realized that that's why they change sides right quickly when it got to looking like that might happen anyhow and was in truth happening. But eventually, if they had won World War II the big struggle would have been between those two former partners because their very basic national and racial policies would have led them on a collision course.

   Now, how does this apply itself to your own daily way of life? I suppose that if you were to talk to the many thousands of mothers who have little armless and legless children and they were those who walked into the doctor's offices anxious with various problems that were the result perhaps of an early marriage or too many bills or a husband out of a job or a drunkard. The result may be of anxieties over just mental aberrations. The result may be of horrible emotional traumas in the family or an accident in an automobile. It led them to have a need for some kind of a prescription to settle their nerves. We live in a kind of a nerve-bending nerve-jangling society with all of its noises and all of its pollutants and all of its fast-moving, rapidly flowing traffic and it's affluent in the affluence of a freely flowing society that screams for more.

   Now, how do you experience people playing it being God in your own private area? Well, if you don't play at it, the congratulations, you're unusual. But to those many mothers of armless and legless children who might have questioned the use of thalidomide. And I said, now doctor, are you sure this isn't going to hurt me?

   Well, the playing it being God is epitomized in the look, you know that, that, that crossed this man's face as he removed his glasses, disdainfully placed them carefully on the ledger book in front of him, which probably had dollar signs after it and told this poor pitiful specimen who really was not entitled to an opinion, who was mindless and faceless and probably so hideously uneducated in his disdainful and professionally skilled opinion as to be practically a waste of time to even bother explaining such an obvious medical fact. But he probably told her my dear child thalidomide is one of a whole host of new modern miracle drugs. It is a very safe tranquilizer. It is recommended by all the big pharmaceutical companies and we're all using it and would you just please calm your fears? Playing it God is when the dentist who is just about to photograph your teeth? It looks in amazement as you say, what are you doing? You're going to photograph my teeth. And he says, well, yes, I want to take a picture in there. You know, he's got his foot in there, a couple of hands and a few instruments hanging out. He's kind of standing in your mouth. You know what I mean?

   And you been in a dentist chair, this is the feeling you have when you go home, you know, and you feel like he's been walking around anyhow, this playing at God attitude is the look, the look on his face. You know, when you ask him, how many roentgens am I gonna get Doc? And he says, what have you been doing? Reading the reader's Digest article again, you found out, did you by the world book who invented the whole system about the measurements of various exposures of the rays that we call X that can bombard right on through tissue and bone. Who wised you up, fella? So, he says, OK, and so the the the playing at God attitude is the disdainful look he gives you as he rather tiredly in his terrifically jammed schedule. Looks to the nurse crooks a finger, she opens a closet and brings out the lead vest. He then puts the lead vest around you and this tired disdainful attitude. Proceeds to try to photograph your teeth. You look at him and you say no doc, sorry. Uh uh I don't want any more X Rays. I've had it doc. You see, I've had the fluoroscope. I used to play with my toes, you know, in the Buster Brown shoe store when they told you, isn't it cute to look in there and see your bones move? It wasn't until two decades later. doc, if they told me this has been killing people, you know, cancer and one thing or other had to saw a few people feet off. Well, they finally discovered that this was causing all kinds of horrible consequences when science finally caught up with its own inventions. And so, they removed all of those things doc.

   Could I tell you that that was deadly dangerous doc? And I tell you why the nurse dodges behind the lead shield when she's busily taking a picture of your boy's little green stick broken thumb for the doctor to set the bone. But you're standing there getting full exposure. Can I tell you about the dentist I know who died of cancer a couple of years ago. And there's strong suspicion, at least in my mind, if not those of his own Doctor, Mortician, and family that he may have died as a result of continual exposure to X Rays doc. But the epitomizing of the God complex of playing it being God of the attitude who do you think you are? I'm the professional is in the look of the guy as he is asked by the layman who doesn't really have all that much right to know how many roentgens am I gonna get doc? Or in the face of the fellow who's being wheeled down a hospital corridor and he sits bolt upright, you know, from underneath the sheet, they're about to take him into the preparation room And he says, where are you going? I'm a big nurse now maybe. And nurses listen, I know a lot of nurses and my mother was a fine lady and my wife is a fine young woman and I love the female species as much as the male. 50% of all population have nothing against women. So if I say that some particular nurses, the lantern jaw, masculine domineering type. It's only because I've had the misfortune run into two or three or four or five or six or eight or something like that in the course of my experience by no means all of them are, but there have been a few that sort of get into that attitude. So I characterize it by the one that, you know, she wheels up a bicep about as big as the front liner, maybe Merlin Olson and pushes this feebly protesting fellow struggling on the sheet back down, whisks him into the operating room and they remove his Appendix.

   It's a week or so later. And he's recovering slowly. They find out that he was only in there for a physical checkup uh because he wanted to get a private pilot's license or they find that he was only asking directions to get a room or the number where a friend of his was laid up as a result of an automobile accident. You say this hasn't happened, I'd be very happy to document it but it has happened. But the look of God, the playing at the look of God, you know, just who do you think you are protesting on the face of the nurse?

   This is, I'm trying to bring it down to the daily type of thing of why is it human beings want to play at being God. Who do they think they are? The little fellow feebly protesting might have also been sitting in front of the doctor's desk and he might have said, do you really think you need to operate? And the doctor probably painfully takes his glasses off and places them on the ledger with all the dollar signs? And he says, you know, this guy is not supposed to have the privilege of being entitled to an opinion. It's only his kidneys, the doctor's gonna cut out. It's only the bottom half of his left lung. It's only his various Appendices or other Appendages the doctor and his studying opinion doesn't feel it really needs all that badly. Is his tonsils, his kneecap, whatever it is, the doctor is going to cut away and, you know, you get a little anxious.

   I mean, I would, I'd get a little bit anxious if a doctor were looking at me and you can kind of see him like the fellow that is drawing lines on the side of the counter. Here's where the hand is and here's where the uh here's where the sirloin is taken from and they kind of look at you professionally diagram you. It's a wonder they don't take your shirt off, get a black pencil and sort of start drawing outlines about what they're going to cut. And you walk in like you're all stamped, approved by the government to be laid on the slab and having started carving, let me tell you doctors, I'm scared to death of you. You scared the daylights out of me and when I go and I suppose we have to contemplate that, boy I hope it's quick and sudden and that nobody gets a hold of me on an operating table with a knife in his hand.

   I think that's altogether one of the most horribly terrifying things that I could contemplate. It really is. So, of course, in order to avoid you guys, I'm just going to try desperately stay healthy and keep away from accidents. Now, I think that there is a very great need, of course for doctors and a very great need for doctors to have less of a need than they have. If you know what I mean, there's a very great need for the world to be able to do away with the services of medical doctors that doesn't look like it's going to happen in the foreseeable future.

   It's too bad, human beings have accidents and sicknesses and diseases. Too bad. There is a need for doctors to go cutting away on people. Sometimes to get a bone that needs repair and to get in there and bind up something or to, to remove some foreign object or body from a human body. That's terrible. But I'm sure that all doctors agree with me. They honestly wish they weren't in that business. They wish they didn't have to be doctors. They wish there weren't a need for them. They are the men in white charging onto the night that have the whole beneficent magnanimous and altruistic love and kindred spirit and humanitarian instincts at heart.

   For the whole human race. They don't want to see human beings suffer. That's why they're doctors. They want to alleviate suffering. They want to bring about a release of human pain and they wish that they didn't have to be a doctor. In other words, they wish there weren't any pain and suffering and that, that's why they are doctors, isn't it?

   Well, I think it is in some cases. I'm sure that there must be an attitude like that. But this playing at God is the attitude that many people now take the architect and if you've been building a new home lately, you're probably tempted to say you can have him. And this is when the people have their own ideas about the way their house ought to look. And they may have looked through all kinds of home magazines, magazines supplements and even architectural plans and drawings. Maybe these people have lived in seven or eight houses, maybe they've known some neighbors who built a new house. You know, it just could be that the fellow himself took some drafting and maybe, you know, proceeded on up to some fairly complicated drafting when he was in high school or college. Maybe he knows a little bit about plans and how to read them.

   But this idea of playing at God, this is the look you get when you quickly take a pencil and you sketch on a piece of paper, you say would this work? You know, this is the way I'd like the room to be. The architect removes his glasses and places them on the plan and the look on his face is the epitomizing of the I'm playing God attitude of human nature. And he says, you poor, hopeless, helpless. Now he doesn't say that audibly. He says Mr. Jones, you know, or madam, he says something pleasantly. But what he really wants to convey is you poor slavering slob. You don't know a thing about architecture. Would you please just shut up and bother me as little as possible. Quit, genius at work. You know, he's got this sign hung out there on his face somewhere. Quiet genius at work. I'll produce exactly the home that it is in my province, in my sort of celestial sphere of operation in my chosen profession that I am positive you need. And when I get it all finished and the key is in your hand and you're ready to walk into the door to see what I've created for you. Then I'll expect your adulation, even tears of joy and little yelps of surprise. But in the meantime, would you please not interfere with my creative genius while it's at work? You bugged me, fella. This is what I mean. When I say that human nature likes to play at being God. People really do, people, you know, they just really do not.

   Now, take the realtor or take the used automobile salesman. When you ask the guy and you're about to try to settle on this or that home, he's got a dozen reasons why you ought to buy it. You always ought to ask him, you know, would you buy this house yourself? Well, and don't trust his answer. You know that he's not in that business to make a sale and to get a commission, don't you? He's in that business because he honestly feels that one of the most urgent needs for all of humankind is to be adequately housed and that fair housing of good quality and in a good district that you can afford, that is completely and totally within the reach of your pocket book that really is located closely enough to the bus lines, the shopping centers, the school and so on. And that is precisely the kind of an area you need for your own peace of mind, your own growing family. And these are the things he's really concentrating on, isn't it? People? No, you say no, you think he's concentrating on the commission? So do I, I do too.

   The used car salesman or let's take the new car salesman. He's got these buckets of bolts that come off. The rate of two out of three of them are accepted by himself. He knows the horrible problems he has with his mechanics and the people back in there in the garage that are clanging away and chewing gum cussing at one another half the time, because of the wretched condition of these automobiles as they come off the assembly line. And sometimes in practical fact, as I've been saying recently, it's very likely that the assembly line automobile unfinished may be moving faster than it will be when you're driving in a lot of big city traffic jams. Every now and then you see one of these guys changing their dealership and that to me is like a Methodist suddenly going to work for the Baptists and you ask him now, wait a minute before that time you said the shortest way to heaven wherever it is you think you're going, was, was by sitting in a pew in that church across the street. What are you doing over here? Preacher? And the guy says, well, what is he going to say? I don't know, but he must have some kind of an answer. Maybe they pay better wages or he just decided to change.

   So, you asked this guy, hey, didn't you used to come on real strong on television commercials and say the best car in the world is a blah, blah, blah, this particular kind of automobile and there was nothing like it. And I walked in there and you tried to sell me this car and you said this is the soundest engineer, the best car, the best engine, best mileage and everything else. But what's he going to answer if you ask a used car salesmen are an automobile salesman?

   Well, what about this other car? Will he objectively and seriously discuss it for very long? Or will he really quickly say well look, why don't we talk about the one right here? Now, here's not a snazzy little model and I can do this and that and another thing for you on that and his only interest is he wants to give you the best buy and only determine that you really need it and is even so concerned about you and your family that he wants to determine whether or not you ought to have it, whether it's good for you and he wants to sell you a safe automobile. And the one that is precisely the right size for you and your family that's going to give you the best mileage, the best service and so on. Is this his attitude? It's not?

   Well, there you go again. You see, you, you're, you're disillusioned with human nature. Now, you see, you're giving all the wrong answers. You tend to think the realtor is just trying to sell you a house to get a commission doesn't really matter that much. The proverbial joke about the place out in the middle of the swamp or a place that's half inundated at high tide. And you've heard all the jokes about that and used cars and doctors' offices and dentists and their X-rays and everything else. But it illustrates on a local and a day-to-day private citizen basis. What I'm talking about when I say that there is something in human nature that makes people want to play at being God.

   And it is epitomized in the attitudes of people who look upon themselves as professionals and to disdainfully look down upon all other human beings as being absolutely ignorant as being absolutely without an opinion and even without a base for an opinion, without any education, knowledge or experience, not even worthy of listening to. And this, of course, is one attitude that so everlastingly bugs and bothers and gripes a lot of the younger generation today about their elders, the, I'll play it God, your opinion isn't even worth listening to.

   And that's one claim they make, they won't listen to me, they won't even listen. People, you have to listen. If you can't listen, how can you ever know what the other person is thinking? It's too bad. Dentists don't listen to their patients and doctors don't listen to their patients and professionals don't listen to their clients. If they would. They'd come to know a whole lot more about their own job and they'd be a whole lot better at it. And it's too bad that adults don't listen to the youngsters and that works both ways, doesn't it? Too bad the youngsters don't listen to the adults.

   You shouldn't be trying to play at God, I don't care what your job is, but there's that tendency we like to impress people with our ability to do what we're doing. We like to continually kid ourselves that we're the only people who can do it and nobody else can do it quite like we do. Is there one architect in the face of the earth that really honestly feels that there are a lot of better architects around. Is there one doctor and a neurosurgeon and honestly feels that their other doctor is a lot better than he is, you know, in my travels around the earth and dealing with human nature.

   I have come to sincerely doubt it. I've come to wonder whether there is such a thing as one professional who honestly feels there is another who is better than he is. Why don't we just quit trying to play at being God and leave that up to the one who is God and recognize we are fallible human beings. Now, if you want a magazine that is totally different than anything else you've ever read before that goes into subjects just like these.

   It's called the Plain Truth magazine. It's free of charge at no price. And also, this book that I've been announcing on, Our Polluted Planet. So, send a request to box 345 Sydney and New South Wales. The address is, Box 345 Sydney New South Wales. Remember there is no price, there was no advertising, any of the literature that I've mentioned. It's free of charge, no cost whatsoever to you, it's sent gratis. The address again is Box 345 Sydney, New South Wales. So, until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye friends.

   You have 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.

Please Note: The FREE literature offered on this program are no longer available through the Address and Phone Number given, please visit www.hwalibrary.com for all FREE literature offered on this program.

Broadcast Date: 1974