Herbert W Armstrong

   God urges people not to have feelings of racism but to understand that God is the designer of all of human flesh. And he says in his word, he has made mankind all of one blood that a white person in desperate need of a blood transfusion could adjust very easily utilize if it's the same type, type O the most common, whatever it might be, blood type from a black person and vice versa. And if people could merely get rid of the racism, that would solve the problem. It might also answer questions such as this when people simply can't really understand because the feelings of inferiority or superiority or racist hostility where all the racial colors came from, it would be a pretty dull world without them, wouldn't it? If everybody looked exactly the same?

   And to me, the very perfect thing that I think everybody is aware of where you see the race is getting along together with a seeming absolute ignorance of any difference is just like the opening scene where you see little children, preschoolers, and 1st and 2nd graders and so on who seem to be so completely unconscious of one another's differences in color and in sex and they just play together like one happy family. Well, it's too bad that even adults and members of different races can't be the same way.

   The second question, I don't know if you've done it before. Wrote to Mrs. Wigfall of Bronze is at New York. But would you please do a broadcast or a telecast on who or what is God? Well, yes, I will sometime, but that's going to take a full telecast or a broadcast to do it. Briefly, I can answer it this way. The Bible shows that God is a spirit. It says that God is a spirit or spirit and they worship Him, must worship Him in spirit. And in truth, I back in the original word for God in Genesis 1:1, it says Elohim and that's a Hebrew word that is a plural ending. It means more than one God said, let us make man in our image. That isn't the forgetful professor talking to himself. It was more than one person. It shows all the way through the Bible that there are two in the Godhead. Jesus Christ said he came to reveal the Father, the Bible talks of God as being a specific person, but a family of persons, of two beings made up of beings that have the exact form and shape and similitude of a human being. Adam is called the first man and Christ is called the second man, Adam or the second Adam. It says in the Bible that Jesus Christ was the exact character or the stamped impress of God, the Father. And you see Jesus Christ as a human being, the Bible reveals in the Old Testament that Moses was allowed to look upon the retreating back of the one who's poking him in the cloud. It shows in the Bible that God's face is toward them that pray to him and so on that his arm is not shortened that it cannot help. It talks about the hand of God, it talks about the feet of God. It shows in the first chapter of the book of Revelation, for example, that Jesus Christ of Nazareth who is pictured there in glorified state has arms, legs, a head, torso, feet and so on. So it shows that God is a person but composed of spirit. And the Jesus Christ is a person also now reborn born because he was first as you well know if you study the Bible and especially the Old Testament very much with God from the beginning. It says in the first chapter of John and the first chapter of Hebrews that he was with God and was God. And the Word, capital letter W, was used by Gospel of John that came among us. And became human flesh was the very one that did the creating. So here is the very creator himself manifested in human flesh.

   People have ideas that God is the essence of good that God is everywhere God is love. They say they take this Bible scripture. So, then that means that God is just like a force that God is an emotion. That God is a kind of a life principle. And in this way, people can kind of get a little household idea of God. They can manufacture or imagine a God more to their own liking. They can have a God that is suitable for them, that doesn't bother them with all sorts of rules and regulations that doesn't lay down laws that doesn't tell them what to do and what life is all about and ought to be living in. But instead, they can have a God of convenience. So, questions about, well, what is God? Show, usually that people simply do not read the Bible. They don't study it and find out what the Bible says about God. If they had, they would know that God is a family of spirit beings into which even human beings may eventually be born.

   Jesus Christ, millions know his name, but he's still a man nobody knows, how could a dead Jesus hanging on a cross ever do anything for mankind? These artists' conceptions are not the dynamic, masculine, powerful Christ described by your Bible, a man from Galilee is shrouded in mystery. Millions disagree on the manner of his birth, his message, his family, why and if he died the resurrection and where he is now, the Christian world is confused about the true Jesus. Now discover the real Jesus, prove what he taught, how he lived and who he is from the pages of your Bible, for your free copy of, The Real Jesus, write to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney.

   And this one comes from a lady in Menden, Louisiana who says, "My husband and I listen to your program each morning. It is the shortest 30 minutes in the day. But I notice I've never heard you pray. Why?" Well, it would be facetious because I don't pray to people in the television audience and maybe to be more technically correct because this is not a church service. I see no reason whatsoever to pray in public when Jesus himself commanded that we do not do it. He told his true followers that the Pharisees love to make long prayers kind of like oratory in public places so they can be heard and be thought of especially and extra righteous and so on. But he said you, when you pray, enter into your closet and when you have prayed in secret, your Father in heaven, which sees in secret will reward you openly. So, the Bible shows that the individual Christian is not to pray in public.

   Now, I have been asked to pray at dedications. At, for instance, there was a very fine program that was put on by a Broadcasting Association of Oklahoma City some time ago, to which Red Skelton was an invited guest and a lot of other famous people were there. And I was very greatly honored to be asked to give the invocation at the beginning of that program, which had to do with a kind of an up with America thing, salute to the flag on the fourth of July, a very patriotic program. I was asked to pray on that program and I very gladly accepted that request. I don't pray on this program because it's not a religious service, but I certainly will pray at a church service as an introductory and an opening thing. If I'm asked to at a meal of some sort or it is a civic club or a gathering, I will do it but not on this program. And it's just because of the nature of the program that it is not a religious program 100% of the time and sometimes not even 60% of the time though it is, I think much of the time or about half of the time.

   Incidentally, when I was asked to pray by the Association of Broadcasters in Oklahoma City, it was interesting that one lady wrote in a letter to the radio station and said, you better check up on that Garner Ted Armstrong and seem to imply, it would be a very dangerous thing if they allowed me to pray on that platform. And I had to write back to the lady and say, I don't really believe that the United States Army, Marine Corps, and Navy are all going to resign wholesale immediately if I get up there in front of the American flag and ask God to bless the proceedings. But I wish the lady would have done exactly what she urged the radio station to do. And that is find out about that. Garner Ted Armstrong. That's what I'm trying to do in answering some of these questions because sometimes the questions get rather personal.

   Well, here's another one, I recently sent in for your booklet. This comes from Mary Anne Miska of Shakopee, Minnesota. It says she wrote the book called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I received it not long ago and read the part through the book through and came to the part where it suggested talking to a qualified, dedicated servant of God. I'm in Shakopee women's reformatory at the moment and would sincerely like to reform myself inside out. I am 19 years old and have considered myself saved for three years up until now. I've been looking all my life, how could I arrange for someone to talk to? We honestly do not get a lot of letters where people say I want to contact somebody personally. And I explained last time that we are involved in a worldwide ministry which also has to do with local church assemblies, with local representatives of Ambassador Colleges who are ordained ministers or ministerial assistants who would be happy to get in touch with anybody at their request. Never at our insistence or urging.

   In this case, the lady who wrote is probably by the time she sees or hears this program going to tell anybody that she's already had a visit because there might be some time delay. But the minister of the Worldwide Church of God will go to visit the ladies and she asked for that visit. So, if anybody does want that kind of personal contact or telephone contact, we even have an 800 toll-free number which people can call in and they can be put in touch with the local representative and get whatever personalized kind of contact they desire, not that we desire, but that they desire.

   The next question comes from a lady in New Rose, Louisiana. This is Catherine Wilson. She asks a question concerning the Bible. I received the booklet title, Read The Book, and I begun reading the Bible, beginning at Genesis. Mr. Armstrong, I would like to know if I can write in questions concerning the Bible and receive the answers by mail. The answer is this, we recently have begun to stylize far more our personal correspondence department. We have a tremendous amount of backlog of literature in the form of thousands of past articles and dozens and even hundreds of booklets and so on, over 300 separate pieces of literature which can answer in the form of books, booklets, reprint articles and special form letters to answer almost any conceivable question you can imagine. If we don't have something in that vast array of literature to answer a specific question, that question will be answered nevertheless. And we will find a way to answer it either by personal correspondence or by a personal response from a person near you.

   This one from someone in Decatur, Michigan James Cole says, "Do you have anything on the word fulfill the laws?" Well, this comes from a question about Matthew 5:17 where Jesus said that we're not to think something which most people do think he said, "Think not, I am come to destroy the law or the prophets." Of course, almost everybody thinks that he did come to destroy the law and the prophets that he came to do away with the Old Testament that he came to do away with the requirement to obey God's 10 commandments or God's laws. And so, they think that the word fulfill means to do away with. They don't really technically think that, but somehow that's the way it kind of comes out in the wash after people jaw around a while about whether or not the Christian under the New Testament is required to obey God. And really people don't even put it that way because that kind of backs people into a corner. If you ask someone, the question is a Christian supposed to obey God. It's an embarrassing way to put it because it's just too direct. It's too straight from the shoulder. You'd rather have it put like should a Christian in good conscience want to show God that he loves him by doing God's will? Now that's more comfortable because you don't come right out and say, obey God. Just like most American women want the word obey taken out of the wedding ceremony. And you might comment, why not leave it in? Nobody's paid attention to it anyhow, besides that, most husbands aren't worth obeying.

   So, I'll go on to comment on the word fulfill. If you fulfill an obligation, you live it up to the full, you know, fulfill. If you fill full a glass, it means to fill it up to the full. And that's exactly what the word means in the English language that Jesus Christ fulfilled that is that he performed. He did. He obeyed every last tenet of the law of God. He went on in that same chapter to magnify every single one of the 10 commandments. If he didn't mention the last one of the 10, he mentioned the broad principles of most of them. And he covered the principles of the first four and the last six when he said that the great commandments are beloved God with all your heart your soul and your mind and beloved your neighbor as yourself. And he said on these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets, he did not come to do away but to fill full, to magnify the law and to make it honorable. And then he went on and on with a lot of lesser you would think commandments, one of which almost nobody obeys in which he said, swear, not at all. And then he concluded the Sermon on the Mount by saying, that whosoever will do and perform these least of these commandments is going to be called great in the Kingdom of God. But whoever will not do and perform them, whoever teaches against even the least of these will be called the least in the kingdom of God doesn't even say he'll be there. Maybe it is, he'll be called least by those who are there. But the point is that he came to bring the law to its fullest application and to make it far more binding, it's 100 times more binding to say that when previously it was a sin punishable by death, spiritually speaking to kill. But now it is that same sin punishable by that same penalty for even hating someone in your heart. Which of the two is the most binding, which of the two is the strictest of the laws, the letter of the law or the spiritual application of the law or the spiritual application because it's far more meaningful. The 10 commandments of God in the New Testament are magnified and made hundreds of times more binding. And what you ought to begin to do is to look into the Bible for yourself and start like this one person said the last question or so to read the book.

   The Bible is the most widely distributed and misunderstood book in the world. Can you imagine the following discussion taking place over the literary classic, "Gone With The Wind"? "I say it's pretty good." "It looks awfully dull to me." "I never read it and I don't like books about foreign countries." "I wonder what it's all about?" "Well, I saw the movie, hey, hey, wait a minute, read the book." That's all it would take to understand Gone With the Wind. The same solution works equally well with the Bible. If you just read the book, we can't send you a Bible, but we can help you understand it with the keys explained in this free booklet, Read The Book. For your free copy of Read The Book , write to Ambassador College Box 345 GP Sydney.

   Good advice to go right ahead and read that book and find out what is really in there. And that is the essence of where a lot of these questions come from. And that is this thing of biblical illiteracy, of having a lot of ideas about the Bible, of always having had traditions handed down to you in stories from family and past acquaintances and churches where you go and Sunday school and whatnot and not really know the answer yourself.

   Here's another question: Is the Trinity anywhere in the Bible? And the lady Muriel somebody in Dover, Delaware. The answer is why not read the book and look it up. I'll challenge you all with something. She asks a very good question. I pointed one and one right to the point in the heart and the core of the doctrine of many major churches. No, the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, period. You can take a look at it at a concordance, an exhaustive concordance. In other words, a Bible index and you cannot find the word Trinity rather you find in the Old Testament that there was a duality and you find in the New Testament that Jesus prayed to his Father.

   Well, what about this thing then of the Holy Spirit? He, he the comforter shall come. People ask about a Greek word which is ekeinos. It can mean that one, that thing, he, or it, it can be neuter or masculine, never feminine, but it's an impersonal kind of a pronoun that can mean believe it or not even it. Now to some people, those are really fighten words.

   Well, let's look at it this way. In Matthew, the first chapter, it plainly says that Mary a virgin was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Now, let's draw an analogy of the neighborhood where you live. If such and such a young girl is found with child of George, then we might say bye George, that's his kid, right? You might say the kid is by George. If you like to do it that way, I draw the analogy to point out something very important. People who believe in the Trinity say there are three members of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Bible now where it says this and I'm going to comment on one scripture that people are a little confused about in just a moment.

   Let's take the plain statement by analogy that I just mentioned in Matthew the first chapter where Mary was found with child of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is a person of the Godhead, then the Holy Spirit is Jesus' Father and through the entirety of Jesus ministry and as a boy and in the entirety of the New Testament, Jesus is speaking of talking about revealing, preaching about and praying to the wrong Father because nobody says that the Father and the Holy Spirit are the same personage if they believe in the Trinity. Yet the Bible says that Jesus was begotten of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a person, it's God's mind. God, I don't even know how to express it, but God's power, God's energy. It is that force and power and energy by which God projects his will, his mind by which he begets his children, by which he performs his will and performs miracles on this earth.

   How can I, a human being with limited mind? Look into the Bible and do any more than draw analogies which the Bible itself does. That was one of the best analogies Jesus used to explain to people what the Holy Spirit was. Why it was an analogy in which he was talking to a leader of the Jews whose name was Nicodemus talking about being born again. And he said, Nicodemus marvel not that I told you, you must be born again. He said that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. And then he went on to talk about, you hear the wind whistling around the ease of the building. You hear the sound of it. You can't tell where it's coming from and where it goes. He said, so is everyone who is born of the Holy Spirit? So, Jesus likened the force of wind that you can't see but which is like a power and energy. You certainly, if you study aerodynamics, know what a fantastic power and energy there is. A force in wind and hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes and the sustaining force and power when flowing over an air soil to keep great giant metal aircraft up there in the air by providing lift, over drag and creating that force that is their inherent in wind.

   There's another analogy to draw, it's like an electrical current. Let's say that you are like a light bulb. And unless you have a connection with God, which you'd have to say the light bulb source of energy would be, then you don't, you don't have any current, which is God's power and energy flowing through you. He says you let your light shine. So let's draw that analogy. A Christian is like a light bulb, but he's, he's like a light bulb lying out there that he gets stepped on just a human being. He isn't plugged in. And the only way to get plugged in is to be in contact with God through Jesus Christ. And if he is, then he's plugged in and he's shining brightly because there is a flowing current and electricity flows in a current. And that's exactly the way it is with the Holy Spirit of God.

   You have to keep going to God to get more power of the Holy Spirit to flow through you. And Jesus himself said, "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters," talking about the flowing of love in deed as well as in word, in the life of a Christian. It's a vast subject. I agree.

   But in I John 5:7, there is a scripture which seems to imply a Trinity but does not say the word Trinity, but believe it or not, you can check me on this. I will, I will challenge anybody to do so. In biblical research, that verse was inserted deliberately by copyists after the invention of printing, after the invention of printing for all of those centuries, when faithful copies of the original codices were handed down, the text was carefully transmitted and translated from one language to another, from the original Hebrew and Aramaic into the Greek. And then the Septum under the 70 which did the Old Testament in the Greek language. And the later Latin versions that came on down to the time of the breachers or the great or the Chain Bible that preceded that translation of the King James time from the Ras Dali and the Latin on to the English language of 1611. By the time of the Gutenberg Bible or the invention of printing, it was deliberately inserted in an attempt to try to demonstrate the Trinity by those who believed in the Trinity. But the Trinity itself is not taught in the Bible and the word trinity is nowhere in the Bible.

   Here's a question. Did you say that Jesus was here on earth before he was born to Marry? No, I didn't but Jesus did. Here's where he said it in John 8:56 to 58. He said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad," he also said a little bit later on when they challenged him. The Jews said you are barely or not yet 50 years old. And have you seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them verily verily, I say unto you before Abraham was I am. It is very plainly stated in the Old Testament. But the figure, the person, the personality who dealt with Israel who came down and wrestled in the dust of the earth with Jacob, the person who parted the red seas, the person who dealt with Elijah and the prophets, the person who gave those messages to the prophets was the same member of the God family who as it says in the Bible emptied himself or became of no import and came down to this earth and was born of the Virgin Mary in human form.

   I'm sorry. It sounds technical. It sounds impossible. All things are possible with God and it's of the spiritual nature. But that's what the Bible does say that the Old Testament personality of the God with whom David and all the others dealt. He is the same person who became Jesus Christ in the New Testament. No, I didn't say that. But the Bible says it read the first chapter of the Gospel of John sometime and also the first chapter of Hebrews. You don't need me there to interpret that for you. It means exactly what it says. If you write for these two booklets, I believe you will be able to open up your Bible, which we feel is the most ancient and the most accurate record after all and look into it for yourself free of charge. Until next time. Go and Ted Armstrong, goodbye friends.

   All literature offered on the Garner Ted Armstrong program is sent free of cost to anyone requesting it. For your free copy of these booklets, Read The Book and The Real Jesus, write to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney. Be sure to watch Garner Ted Armstrong again next week at this time, brought to you by Ambassador College and the Worldwide Church of God.