Mr. Armstrong Address SEP, Orr Minnesota - July 1979 Why Are We Here A Different World Today Church Expenditures Why The Creation Of Man God Prepares His Servants God's Way Rejected Ambassador College And Accreditation Right Approach Vital God's Master Plan Knowledge Still Being Revealed A New Age Coming
Most of you kids that are here were too small and too young to come last time when I was here. And you know — you grow up, you become adult, you go into middle age, finally you get older and some day you die. And that's been going on, and one generation comes and another goes, again and again and again. And that's been going on now for 6,000 years.
I wonder if you realize it? It would not seem to your parents — I'm speaking to you young people — it would not seem to your parents that it has been very long since they were no older than you are. And let me tell you this — every year it seems like time whips by a little bit faster than it did the year before. It seems like January 1st now was certainly not over five or six weeks ago, and here we're in the seventh month already. And it doesn't seem possible to me!
And while I was sitting there I was just wondering. I gave to my stepson the other day who is now just graduated from high school and is just about eighteen — I gave him a copy of my autobiography and I asked him to read the first two chapters. Well, it just occurred to me that perhaps a lot of you would like to read those same — that is the preliminary introduction and the first chapters about what it really is. In other words, that carries through my lifetime and the events that happened in my life when I was the age you are and up to about age twenty.
And I wonder if I were to have that done as a special booklet — just that portion of it, I wonder how many of you, shall we say, you kids — how many of you would like to have it and would you like to read it? Well, I think that's just about everybody. There must be a lot more like you that are not here, and I understand there's another group coming anyway after you leave, and I think that we will do that. I'm going to try, by sometime this year if I can ever get the time. I have all the time there is, and I remember a high school teacher told me one time when I hadn't had time to get a lesson and she said "Well, you've had all the time there is! There just isn't any more time!" She said "You just didn't use the time that way". Well, I've never forgotten that and that was quite a while ago, that was when I was about your age, I was in high school.
BUT WHY ARE WE HERE? Are we here just for fun? I've often said that the happiest period in life that anyone can enjoy is a boy eleven years old. I've often said that a girl never can understand the joys that a boy can have at age eleven because a girl never experiences quite the same thing. At age eleven — now of course you are all just a little past that age — it's too bad you are not still there — or is it?
At age eleven a boy has no responsibilities whatever. He has no worries — nothing to worry about — Dad's going to take care of everything, or Mom will. And he has only one thing to think about and that's fun. Just having fun. And no responsibilities. Of course, he may get a bad mark if he doesn't keep his grades up in school, or something like that, and maybe Mom or Dad will scold him or Dad might even give him a little bit of a spanking or whipping of some kind, once in a great while, but generally speaking it's a carefree life — no responsibilities, no worries. And he's never going to have it quite like that again.
Well, maybe you would like to read something about my life as I remember it when I was that age and the things that I was going through. Well, I want to say that it is — seems like it's very wonderful for me to be here, and I didn't realize it had been nine years since I'd been here. We didn't have this building, it wasn't here at all then, and we met in the dining room over there, and we filled it. It was rather difficult to crowd so many people in it but we didn't have this many people! We couldn't have gotten them in! Just simply couldn't have gotten — I don't think we could've gotten half of you or over half of you into it. Things have grown, things have changed, things have developed. Things have changed on the campus at Pasadena, and here two other campuses have come and gone.
I've never been called to be in the college business. We needed a college because we needed to train ministers to take care of the flocks and other people to help with the work at headquarters, and so we had to have a college to train them our way. But finally it got to the place where the three campuses were turning out a whole lot more than we could employ, more than we could use, more than we had need of. And there was just simply no need of carrying them on. So we closed the campus in England first. Now that has been sold. We have the money but it's in English pounds and we can't get it out of England and over to the United States! So it isn't helping us very much because we can't get our hands on the money. I guess I could get it and spend some of it from over there, but I never do when I'm there, and I'm not there much any more.
Then finally came the Texas campus. Now the college is still going at Pasadena because we still do need a certain number of people — about the amount we are graduating every year at Pasadena. But we simply do not have positions for as many as have been graduating from all three campuses every year.
Now when I was a boy in high school, a very small percentage of boys that had graduated from eighth grade even went on through high school. And of those that went through high school, I suppose that not even one out of ten went on to college. That was something, to go onto college. Not very many did. Today almost everybody goes on through high school and 90-95% of all who graduate from high school go onto college. Unless some of them are unable to gain entrance. But most of them want to go onto college.
It's a different world. The printing press is what has changed our world entirely. Because it has made possible the distribution and diversification of education. So there's not been much change for a great many years. Today though, I have seen age after age come in my lifetime. I've seen the machine age come, the age of modern science, I have seen the air age — first by prop plane and then by jet plane and to think that I had never even been on a jet up till the time my wife died of 50 years — we'd been married for 50 years. And yet now I have a jet of my own. It's owned of course by the Church, not by me, but it's primarily for my use. And it's a wonderful thing and makes it possible for me to do things I never could have done.
First of all, the most expensive where the biggest amount of money went was in salaries that we paid to people that are employed in the Work. And second was television and radio. Third was publishing and printing — and the magazines — the 'Plain Truth,' the 'Good News,' all the other magazines that we get out. There's the Pastor's Report, there's all of the booklets, there's the Bible Correspondence Course and all of that printing costs a lot of money. Then there was the Mail Processing Department to receive what runs up into the thousands of letters every day. And to open all of those letters — do you know how long it would take you to open the letters? Well, we have a special machine, they just, they just rip you... RRRRRRRRRRRRR like that! Faster than your eye can see them, and opens the envelopes and then all you have to do is to pull out whatever is inside. We have to have machinery like that or we couldn't operate the way we do.
Then there are other expenditures but the least of all is getting the gospel to the world by the personal evangelism that I have been using and that is what the State of California accused us of. Now they have all of the facts and they have no facts of any money being misappropriated in any manner, shape or form whatsoever. This is a case of where GOVERNMENT is the villain and is doing the wrong thing.
And we're not going to let them get away with it — we're not — they would like to get off the hook right now. They realize that they attacked the wrong people. They know now they made a great mistake and they'd like to get off the hook, so to speak, but we're not going to let them off the hook. And they are going to rue the day they ever started trying to destroy the Work and the Church of the Living God. Because that is what they did. (audience applause)
Now they had mature minds, but their minds did not have any knowledge in them. They had ability to think, they had ability to reason, they had ability to make decisions, but they didn't have any knowledge. So the first thing God did, God began to talk to them. And those two people — it's a man and a woman — Adam and Eve, they had the wonderful privilege of just sitting down and talking with God Himself, think of that. Now God told them why they had been created. He told them what His plan was for them. And now for just a moment getting back to our sermonette, and having fun. WHY did God create those two people? WHY WERE YOU BORN? WHY? What is the real purpose of the Eternal God? God is a creator, but the most important thing He is trying to create, and is succeeding in creating, is holy, righteous, perfect character in other beings that are actually separate entities from God Himself.
Now that's something that even God can't do Himself. Did you know that? God cannot just put perfect character in you — it wouldn't be character, because character is the ability of a SEPARATE entity, a separate being of some kind, having his own mind, that he can have knowledge, he can think, he can make decisions. And it is the ability of one to come to the knowledge of what is right as opposed to what is wrong, to decide to do the right even though he wants to do what is wrong, and even though he has to resist himself, but to have the willpower to do the right whether he wants to or not because he knows it's right, and then to do it. Now that is what God has — that kind of character. And we're put here to build that kind of character.
Now I tell you one thing, the young son of the two sons of this man of the parable who went away and wasted his whole inheritance in riotous living — he was not really building much character, was he, in that kind of a life. That is another reason that I thought that perhaps it would be good if I get out in booklet form, of just the boyhood years of my own autobiography and let you have it. If you, that are in the upper grade school and high school years would like to read it. Because in all those times — I didn't know it then, but God was preparing me to become His apostle.
And God had put him through other experiences. He had to flee away after the deed he did that was wrong and got him in bad and all of that, and finally when he was, not forty years, it was eighty years. He was eighty years of age. And he was walking along one day and he came to — up ahead of him was a burning bush. Well, he kept walking and got up with it and walked on past it, but there wasn't much wood or anything there to burn yet it was all burning and it never burned up! (Exodus 3:1-3)
Well now, you know they talk about hell fire where you burn and burn and burn forever and never burn up.If you can give me any fuel that will burn without ever burning up, I'll give you a million dollars, because I'll make billions of dollars out of it — if I could just have something like that.
But, that was something so unusual Moses turned back to see what it was and then God spoke to him out of the bush. And God said "Moses take your shoes off your feet. You're standing on holy ground because I'm here. [And wherever God is even the ground is holy, because God is so holy. And then God said] Moses, I am calling you and I'm going to have you lead the children of Israel over to a land I have promised to Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, their forefathers. (Exodus 3:5-10 paraphrased)
"Oh well," he said "No, I, I, I don't want to do it," he said "You know I stutter and have an impediment of speech and I, I don't speak very well, so count me out, Lord. No, don't let me do it — get someone else." (Exodus 4:10 paraphrased)
The Lord said, "YOU WILL DO WHAT I TELL YOU! Yes, I know about your impediment of speech — and I've appointed your brother Aaron to be your spokesman. He'll speak for you. So you will do what I am calling you do." (Exodus 4:14-16 paraphrased)
You know if God calls anyone to do something, God makes him do it, whether he wants to or not. You know, a little bit later, God called Jeremiah to be a prophet, and Jeremiah said "Oh no, Lord, count me out — I'm too young, I'm not old enough yet." And God said "You'll do what I am calling you to do". And he said. "But, but, but Lord, you'll have me go before a king or someone and I'll just be overawed by their stern faces," and God said "Don't be afraid of their faces, because I will be with you. But you will do what I have called you to do." (Jeremiah 1:6-8 paraphrased)
Then God called Isaiah, and Isaiah said "Oh no Lord, count me out, I don't want to do what you want me to do, because I'm a man of unclean lips." So God had an angel take tongs in a coal fire and touched to his lips and his lips were cleansed. And then Isaiah said "Well, here I am, send me." (Isaiah 6:5-8 paraphrased)
God called Jonah and wanted him to go and warn Nineveh. Jonah ran away — he tried to get away in a boat! He tried to run away from God! God had him thrown overboard and had him swallowed up by a big special fish that God had created just for that purpose. A certain kind of whale. And there's more than one kind of whale. And finally, in the belly of the fish Jonah repented and said " I will do what you want me to do if you let me out of here". (Jonah 2)
So, he was vomited up and that was a type of resurrection of Christ. He'd been in that belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
You know, the Apostle Paul didn't want to do what God wanted him to do. He was going along trying to slaughter Christians! He was against Christianity and he was getting all the Christians he could and delivering them to be killed. Then God struck him down. His name was originally Saul, and God said "Saul" and he said "Well, well who is it? Who's doing all this?" And He said "I am Jesus that you have been persecuting. Why are you persecuting Me? Now, Saul, you WILL DO what I tell you!" (Acts 9:4-6 paraphrased)
And so his name was changed to Paul and he became a great apostle and he finally did it.
Now there were a couple of young men, their names, they were brothers, they were Peter and Andrew. And they wanted to be fishermen. So they were in a boat and they were fishing in the Sea of Galilee. I've been all the way; I guess I've been just about all the way around the Sea of Galilee, I've been over there a number of times and I'm not the only one here that's been there. In fact one young man who was up here, I think lived there for a little while even — in Jerusalem, that is.
And, so it goes. Jesus said to them "Follow me." Well, it was a little different. You know, Peter and Andrew, it says they forsook all and they followed Christ (Luke 5:11). That's so unusual. Very few people want to do what God wants them to do. They want to do just the opposite. They think the opposite is fun. Now what people call fun is always going to wind up being painful and causing pain and trouble — trouble of all kinds.
They said "I rebel against you and I reject you as God." Now this is after Satan got to Eve. In the meantime, God did not allow Satan to get near them until after God talked to them. But God talked to them first and then He allowed Satan to get to them. Satan did it through Eve, and Eve was deceived but Adam went along with her, and rejected God as his religious head and being God, and rejected Him as his ruler and king and rejected Him as a revealer of knowledge. So God threw them out of the Garden of Eden as you'll find at the tail end of the third chapter of Genesis, and God said to them — I'll put it in modern language; I'll just paraphrase it in the language of today. He said, "OK, " that's a word we use a great deal today. He said, "You have made your decision, so you go and build your own fund of knowledge".
Now what we have in the high schools, the colleges, the universities of this world is the fund of knowledge that men have built without any help from God. But with an awful lot of help from Satan the devil.
"You go and form your own religions! Create your own ideas of who you think God is, and what God is and make your own gods out of wood or stone or marble or something. You go and form your own governments." And they have.
Now, we have the governments of this world and I know the heads of them and they have problems that are way over their hands and heads, and much greater problems than they have any ability to solve at all. I talk to them about their problems, and I tell them there are two ways of life and one is the 'give' way and one is the 'get' way.
There are just two ways. You either give or you get. Get is coming this way and give is going that way. And, really a better word for give is 'love,' if you understand that it means outgoing concern, not incoming lust. The love way then, is concern for others and for their good, wanting to help others, wanting to cooperate, wanting to do good, wanting to benefit others and being concerned as much about their welfare and whatever they have and possess as you are about your own.
The get way is the way of vanity, first of all. It's the way of self. "I love me and I don't care about anyone else." Do you remember the song? No, it would be before most of you kids were ever born. It was 1924 and most of you weren't born yet in 1924, but some of your parents might have been and we went out to Oregon at that time and there was a song that was very popular at that time and was called "Oh, I love me".
"Oh, I love me, I love myself
I'm wild about myself
I put my arms around myself and give myself a squeeze
Oh, I love me."
But I don't love you. I'm going to take anything I can from you and I'm going to do all the harm against you I can. That is the way of 'get'. That is the way this world has been living all these years.
God said to Adam. "You have rejected Me" — He drove man and woman out of the Garden of Eden, shut them off from going back and receiving His Holy Spirit — which would have given them God's knowledge. Shut them off from God's knowledge, shut them off from God's government. And so what do we have? We have the governments that men have formed, but men have been influenced by SATAN! God did not shut Satan off. He left Satan and He fixed it for 6,000 years.
Now I said a while ago the six days that are called creation back in the first chapter of Genesis are only typical of the 6,000 years that God made it out for man to go his own way, influenced of course by Satan. And look where we are — governments are fighting against one another all the time. Knowledge? It's as far away from God's truth as you can get.
Let me tell you the main reason you can't. To get accreditation they began to bring in professors from other universities because accreditation will frown on any college having your own alumni on your faculty. They don't want those you have taught to do the teaching. They want those that have had the teaching of this world from other universities to come in and do the teaching. And they wanted to come from various universities here and there. So we began to get people on the faculty that had degrees from the University of Southern California. Some from Sanford, some from UCLA, some from John Hopkins University in the east, some maybe from the University of Iowa or Indiana. That's the way they want it. So that the heads cannot control what is being taught and in that way they keep the same thing being taught in all of the colleges and universities.
That's what accreditation is and you parents who are here today will understand that better than the younger people will. But that is what is wrong, and that is what I've had to change in Ambassador College. I've had to put Ambassador College back to a one freshman year virtually. We did have a few graduated, but very few this year, it was mostly freshman. Now we're going to have a new freshman class next year and the ones who were freshmen will become sophomores, and gradually we're going to build back in but it will be God's College and I hope all you kids who are here will look forward to coming to Ambassador College because it's going to be God's College once again. That I'm going to see to.
Thank you for that applause, I expected it. [Mr. Armstrong laughs] Thank you very much.
Now I had to send back yesterday an article. It had been all set to type, ready for the 'Plain Truth.' But it was written by a man who has a degree from an outside university. And it was on parental discipline and care of children. It started out by saying in Sweden now, they have made a law that it is a crime for any parent to even spank or even to be cross and talk crossly to his own child. No parent dare spank his own little son or daughter, in Sweden. Now he said that's going too far, but he said "on the other hand let's get one thing straight right here — children do have their quote 'rights,' unquote."
Now I canceled it. Do you know what is wrong with that? That's teaching he got from some other university! "Kids have their rights"! What does that mean? When you talk about having your rights? That means they have their rights against and as opposed to their parents. Now the Supreme Court of the United States has just recently handed down the decision that children do not have rights. But the teaching in the modern university is that they do. And children are not being trained or taught very much, or disciplined or punished. And you know, God punishes every son that He loves. But do you know that God's punishment is never revenge. It is never a desire to hurt or to harm. God's punishment is always corrective, it is always to try to help us and it's always done in love for us! To help us overcome what is harming us and get into the things that are good for us. God wants us to have EVERY good thing! Talk about having fun and going the way of riotous living instead of the way of God — the riotous living way is not the way of real lasting pleasure or anything of the kind. If it were good for you — if it were really good for you, God would want you to do it! God only forbids those things that are harmful to you! Oh, if we could ever understand that.
But this writer — I don't what's going to happen. Maybe he'll resign his job, since I killed the article. I don't know and frankly I don't care, because we're not going to have too many at Ambassador College that got their teaching and their training — they get a wrong slant. Let me tell you something, and I put this in a little letter that I sent to him. I don't know if we have a professional photographer here today or not. I'm sure we have some amateur photographers, but the most necessary thing a professional photographer needs to know is not how to operate his camera. He can learn that pretty quick. It doesn't take very many hours to learn how to operate even a complicated camera. The most necessary thing takes a lot longer to learn and that is where to set the camera! Where to set the camera!
Now if I set a camera here and I set it there I'm seeing just a part of you but my eyes are seeing all of you, but the camera isn't going to see all of you and if it does, I'll make you so small no one can make you out who you are. In other words, the camera is set at a point of view. And you need to have the right approach and the right point of view.
Now very few people have that — they don't get their camera set in the right place. The man who wrote this article had his camera set on the idea that kids have their rights against their parents. And there's this going on between children and their parents all the time. God's teaching is that parents love their children and one of the Ten Commandments is "thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother." (Exodus 20:12)
Today they want to change that and say "parents, you must deserve the honor until the child is the judge and decides that you are deserving of that honor." That's not the way God set it at all.
It seems like one age comes and then it goes, and then a new age comes and it goes and then another new age. And here we see it going that way year after year right here in this camp.
God is going to soon produce a new world. Now remember, the present world has been cut off from God. Absolutely cut off — God put angels so no one could get in there to receive God's Holy Spirit, except those that God Himself would call. Now God has called a few. I showed you a while ago how God called Moses, and then how He called Isaiah and how He called Jeremiah, the Apostle Paul and He finally called me — last of all I guess. I'm the tail-ender — I've never thought of myself as being any more than that. But we're getting down to the end of that 6,000 years. God didn't intend this to go on forever. God put a time limit on it. MAN IS CUT OFF FROM GOD! JESUS SAID "NO MAN CAN COME TO ME, except the Father which sent me draw him." (John 6:44)
It's right here in the Bible. NO MAN CAN COME TO ME! Now if anyone tries to get to God anyway but through Christ, he's a thief and a robber (John 10:1)! You can't get salvation except from Christ, but you can't come to Christ unless the Father draws him! Now God is not calling but a very few. Billy Graham thinks that there's a great battle going on between God and Satan. God is trying to get everybody saved, but Satan has everybody lost and if God can't get them saved, they die lost.
Do you believe that? When God shut mankind off from Him, God simply, well, He ceased judging the men that He shut off! Then God wasn't judging them one way or the other. Those that God has called, God judges. God called Noah. God called Moses. He called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now if they had refused — they were being judged when they were called. You read in the Bible that judgment has already began now at the house of God — at God's own church (I Peter 4:17). Judgment is on us, brethren — we are those whom God has called. I'm speaking to you adults when I say that and you children, you know that in the Church of God we are the ones, and the only ones that are called. And you're coming along as a new generation, about the third generation. We're in the third or fourth generation since God used me to start raising up this church back in 1933.
But God is not letting it go on for ever and ever and ever that Satan is influencing man and this has become Satan's world. Now II Corinthians 4:4 you read that Satan is the god of this world. This world worships a god and the god it worships is Satan and the world doesn't know that. If I tell you that Baptists, that Methodists, that Presbyterians worship the wrong god, you would think I'm wrong, because you've been led to think they're right. They all think that everyone is lost unless they get saved, and that is the most universal misconception that exists today. That is the most believed misconception and lie of any, by far. Those that are not called cannot come to Christ — no man can come to Christ, except the Father draw him. But what about those the Father does not draw? Well, they are just not being judged. However, whatever they do, the record is there and in their judgment it's going to come up.
Now Jesus Christ talked about "in the judgment." He spoke about the judgment that it would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah than for those hypocrites that were so opposed to Him (Matthew 10:15, Mark 6:11). They were in the government by the way, and it was a case of the government against the church there too. It's always been that way; government has always been against God, because the government is the government of man and not the government of God. In this church it's the government of God and the government of man is absolutely against it, completely against it in every way.
But others are not yet being judged, but in the judgment whatever they did in this life is going to come up and then it's going to be judged. And what they do about it then, and whether they repent of it or not — but they will be given a chance to repent of it, and to be saved, and that is the Great White Throne Judgment more than a 1,000 years off from now. And others that live on to, well, past the first resurrection and into the Millennium, they will be judged then. Everyone will be, after Christ comes, but Satan will then be gone. And remember this, that those now called have Satan to overcome. Those that will be called in the Millennium will not have to overcome Satan. Notice the difference! On the other hand, those that are called now — if we do overcome — we will sit with Christ in His throne RULING and those saved later will not. We have Satan to overcome but we have a greater thing waiting for us.
Then God revealed about the Feast of Tabernacles and that we should leave home and that it was a type of the Millennium and so on, and do you know, that practically none of those people would do it? No, they wouldn't accept any new truth! Whatever they accepted when they were converted they stayed right there! Brethren, don't be like that. "[We] must GROW in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (II Peter 3:18). Those are the last words in second Peter, the last words that the Apostle Peter wrote for us. We must grow in grace and knowledge.
You may think I'm a little older than most of you, and I am, but a lot of what I've been giving you today God has revealed to me within the last year! I'M STILL LEARNING! When I was preaching at a schoolhouse called Alvedore — and this goes clear back to 1934 — there was a man who came every night. He was 84 years of age. I would shake hands with everybody as they left on the way out and he would say "Well, I learnt something new tonight". Well, I thought that was wonderful. Here was a man, 84 years old and every night he was learning something new. And I was glad that I was able to be the instrument of giving him something new he had not known before.
Now "Christ loved the church and He gave Himself for it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it might be a holy church without blemish." (Ephesians 5:25-27 paraphrased)
This church is not without blemish! We have got spots and wrinkles! Let's not kid ourselves, and you young people coming on, I hope that you will be coming right into the church, and remember that God is going to give us everything that is good for us, everything and every kind of fun that really is real fun, that is lasting and not harmful — God is for it, but He's not for these things that are in the world. Pot, dope, all of the kinds of things that are going around with young people today, those are things that Satan is using. You need to be careful and know whether it's of Satan and whether it's a deception or whether it is true and whether it is of God. But the things of God are right, and we just need to realize that. We're living in this age — it's not going to to on this way much longer and you young people are going to live on into this Millennium. I wonder if you realize it? It's a wonderful time to be alive if you know it and if you know these things you can be very, very happy.
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