Herbert W Armstrong

   The whole world soon will be stunned by the announcement or the news of a new amalgamated nation appearing suddenly in Europe, possibly more powerful than either the Soviet Union or the United States. Now, recently I addressed the very prestigious Rotary Club of Athens, Greece, concerning this very situation that is rising over there, this very new development.

   And now I want to give you a very brief commentary on the ancient city of Athens, narrated by Art Gilmore and followed by my address before the Rotary Club of Athens in Greece.

   Athens the ancient cultural center of the world is considered to be the birthplace of Western civilization. At its peak during the 400s B.C., Athens was the world's most powerful and most highly civilized city. From it sprang works of drama, history, poetry, and philosophy that have greatly influenced literature and thought throughout the centuries, Athenian architects built masterpieces of classical beauty. The ruins of many of these structures still stand as monuments to that age.

   The large flat hill called the Acropolis is surmounted by the Parthenon, the finest building constructed in ancient Greece. Its white marble columns seem to define classical Greek architecture. Across from the Acropolis stands Mars Hill, where the Apostle Paul revealed to the Athenians of his day the identity of the unknown God to which they had erected an altar. Paul also traveled to Corinth directly west of Athens and established a thriving church. Intriguing ruins of temples, roadways, markets, fountains, and theaters still stand today.

   East of the Acropolis, the first of the modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896 in the Panathenaic Stadium, constructed of marble. It can hold 70,000 spectators. Today, Athens is the cultural as well as the financial center of Greece. Athens' Alexis Bay reflects the importance of Greece in the world's shipping and petrochemical industry. The influential Greek Orthodox Church numbers among its membership the great majority of the population of Athens. Into this great city rich in history, culture, and religion came Herbert W. Armstrong, bearing a message which had not been heard in Athens since the days of the Apostle Paul.

   Mr. Armstrong was invited to address the Athens Rotary Club. Its membership consists of many of the leading businessmen and financiers of Greece, including the Head of Olympic Airlines, the National Airline of Greece, George Vos, a leading member of Greece's parliament, and Constantine Ring, President of Hellenic Mediterranean Shipping Line.

   Dear Mr. Armstrong, it's a great pleasure for me, and I could even say an honor for me, to welcome you to our city and to our club, which is a senior Rotary Club of Greece. But I'm passing over to my language in Greek because I would like that all people would partake of this welcome, we are going to be giving you, thank you.

   Our gathering today, dear friends, is devoted to world understanding and peace. A very highly respected and distinguished citizen of the United States of America is to honor tonight the rostrum of our club, Mr. Herbert Armstrong. For the Greek Rotarians, your presence as an Ambassador of World Peace at this rostrum is indeed a joy and a satisfaction because your efforts coincide with this year's theme of the International Rotary Club: 'Humanity as a whole, building bridges of friendship around the world.'

   I wish to welcome you to our club and would like now to request the ex-minister and current member of parliament, Mr. George Vo Azis, to briefly introduce you.

   Mr. President, I would like, first of all, to thank most warmly the Rotary Club for giving the possibility to our honored guest, Mr. Armstrong, who is only staying for a short while here, to speak to you tonight. Because this man, whom I had the opportunity to meet personally on my trip to America when I visited the college he has founded in Pasadena, is one of the very few people in the world who both proclaims and applies the theme and the idea of peace without any personal incentives whatsoever.

   The mere fact that a magazine is being published at Ambassador College by Mr. Armstrong, which is entitled 'The Plain Truth' and which is distributed throughout the world with a circulation of 5 1/2 million copies, a magazine that declares, proclaims, and supports the ideas of world peace and the love of fellow man. This mere fact makes Mr. Armstrong a man unique in the world, a pioneer in his field. So, I will say no more because I am sure that we are waiting to listen to Mr. Armstrong and to the message he has to bring to us.

   Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. It certainly is a great honor to be able to speak to the Rotary Club here in Athens, Greece, one of the most ancient cities in the world and the home of education, scholarship, and culture.

   I come to you as an unofficial ambassador for peace. Millions of men have given their lives in the interest of peace and wars. World War I was supposed to have been the war to end all wars, but it didn't end war. World War II didn't end war. There have been dozens and scores of wars since that time; war and threats of war are continuing to go on.

   The reason we do not have peace is because people do not know the way to peace. But we live in a world today of awesome progress, especially in this 20th century. The progress has been absolutely awesome. At the same time, we are living in a world of appalling evils, troubles, heartaches, suffering, starvation. One half of this world is in absolute ignorance, uneducated. One half of this world is in abject poverty, living in filth and squalor and such a condition ought not to be. Right now, we are in escalating troubles, crime, and violence, disagreement between nations, and never has the world been as unrighteous as it is now in its living and in the dealings of people back and forth with one another or with nations.

   Armies do not bring peace to a country. We have not learned the way to peace. In November of 1919, that's quite a while ago, November 1919, I was a member of the Association of Commerce in Chicago, the Chicago Association of Commerce. And at a noonday luncheon of the members, the businessmen, members of that association, Roger Babson, the great statistician, was our main speaker. Roger Babson said, 'In one year, we are going to be in the throes of the greatest depression this generation has ever known.'

   Present were many officials of great banks, presidents and board chairmen of great industrial corporations. They shook their heads; they didn't agree with him. One year later, November 1920, Roger Babson was the speaker before the Chicago Association of Commerce again. He said, 'The year has gone by. I am back, and the depression I foretold is here with me.'

   Mr. Babson said, 'There has to be a cause for everything that happens. I want to tell you how I knew this depression was going to come and why you didn't know. I was looking at the cause of conditions. You were not. When I want to know what the temperature is in this room in the winter, I look at the thermometer on the wall.'

   Mr. Babson said, 'You bankers and you business executives were looking at the thermometers on the wall. They only recorded what was happening up to that time, not what was going to happen. You were looking at bank clearings; you were looking at stock car loadings; you were looking at wholesale prices and consumer price indexes. But,' he said, 'I was looking at the cause of conditions. I have found that when 51% of the whole population is unrighteous in its dealings with one another, we are going to have an economic depression.'

   There are two basic principles I would like to bring to your attention in life, in our dealings with one another, how we live. One is, two people cannot walk together and get along together unless they agree. The other is, one of the two must lead; there must be leadership if you're going to agree and have peace.

   Now, regarding European unification, yesterday I was having a meeting with some of the officials of your country, and there was considerable discussion about the plans for the unification of Europe. As one of your officials said, world peace depends upon European unification. We not only have language barriers between the nations and nationalism, different aspirations, and differences which have to be overcome, but many of the political leaders feel that they do not want to be church dominated, and yet they're not going to be able to get together without the cohesiveness of church domination and the church bringing them all together.

   You see, now even the church is divided between East and West. I can tell you, however, that I fully believe that that rift is going to be healed. And I fully believe that unification will be unexpectedly and suddenly achieved, and the whole world is going to be stunned and astounded when it is announced that there is, in the continent of Europe, a new political unification, a nation as great or greater than the Soviet Union or the United States of America.

   Up to now, the principle of two walking together in agreement has not occurred. The churches have not walked together; the nations have not walked together. Different nations have their different aspirations, and they go to war over their ideas and to settle their disputes.

   Now, how did this spirit of antagonisms between individuals, between families, between nations, how did it all arise? How did it start? We look back to origins, and it had to be one of two origins. It either had to be evolution or it had to be special creation by the great creator God.

   The theory of evolution, which has become the very basis of all education today, especially in the latter half of the 19th century and through this 20th century, as the accepted idea of origins, it has not produced any peace. It does not give us any idea of why we're in the troubles we are. It gives us no solution, and it gives us no hope for the future.

   The Christian religion actually started; you might say almost here in this country. All of the New Testament is written in the Greek language. Much of the early fathers of the Christian religion were living and working here in Greece. Now, in the religion of your country here, you will read in the New Testament in John, the first chapter in the first five verses (John 1:1-5), that In the beginning before anything else was, a great personage called the Word. And the Word was with another great personage named God. And yet, they were both God because it says, 'and the Word was God.' In verse 14 of that same chapter, you will read that the Word later was born as Jesus Christ. Christ always loved the Father and said, 'I have obeyed my Father and kept his commandments.' In other words, two can't walk together except they be agreed. God and the Word were completely in agreement; they agreed completely. And also, one had to be the leader. God has always been the leader. Christ had said, 'I have obeyed my Father.' He is the leader. So, they had perfect peace.

   Now, the way they lived together and cooperated together was love, Agape you call it in Greek. And that became a law. Now, a law is merely the directions of how you're going to live. Like the rules in a sports game of some kind that regulates how you perform the sport or how you live. And God's way of life is outflowing love or concern for the good and welfare of others. In due time, God created man.

   Now, God had explained to the first man, Adam, his way, his law of love, of cooperation, of getting along together, of agreeing. But he gave him his choice. And man took, as you read in the incident of the forbidden fruit, he took of the knowledge of good and evil to decide for himself what is right or what is wrong. In other words, he took to himself the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. It's the way of 'get' instead of the way of cooperation and give.

   And man has been living that way ever since. This first man, Adam, taught his children that way. His oldest son, Cain, killed his brother Abel, and then he lied to God about it. And people have not been getting along ever since. Even today, we're all antagonistic one against another, and selfishness seems to rule mankind, and has ever since. Now, we call it human nature. The result is the world has become all divided, and we do lack leadership.

   Now, I said a while ago that the unification of Europe is going to occur, and the whole world will be stunned when it does. Also, now we have the weapons of mass destruction. For the first time, 29 to 30 years ago, when the hydrogen bomb was finally perfected, that can annihilate every human being, every human life on the face of the earth.

   And now it is recorded in the Book of Matthew that a time of trouble is going to follow the unification of Europe, and that the trouble will be so great. And the Bible says that nuclear World War III is going to come, definitely. Now, that should shock you, but it is true, it is going to happen. And in our lifetime, that same passage talking about this terrible time of World War III also says that except God supernaturally intervened to stop it, there would not be a human life left alive on the face of this earth. But God will intervene, the world will be spared. Christ will come. He is going to rule all nations on the earth. He's going to rule Greece, he's going to rule Germany, he's going to rule Russia, he's going to rule the United States, Japan, and China. Every nation, and he is going to bring peace, and they're going to beat the weapons of war into the weapons of production, and people are going to learn to get along with one another. People are going to learn to cooperate, instead of trying to fight one another. We're going to learn that two can't walk together except they be agreed, but we're going to have to have leadership, and that leadership will be Jesus Christ. Now, coming as a great supernatural God in the full power of God.

   Now, in a sense, the unification of Europe may trigger this whole thing that will result in final world peace. So, perhaps the official who said yesterday morning that world peace depends upon it, perhaps he was right after all.

   But just before this passage in Matthew 24 that I told you about, verse 14 (Matthew 24:14) says that when this Gospel of the Kingdom is proclaimed all over the world, to all nations, then will these things shortly come? I am proclaiming that message, and it's the first time in over 1900 years that that message has been proclaimed to the world. It's the same message that Jesus Christ proclaimed. But people have been preaching a gospel of men about Christ, about the person of Christ and his gospel, with what I've just told you, and that has not been preached. You have heard that fulfillment in your ears here this evening. I ask you, if you have ears to hear, please heed. Thank you very much.

   And now I would like to, send you gratis a book I've offered once or twice before on this program. "Are We Living In The Last Days?" Can you prove it? Are we actually living in the last days of this present world, of this present civilization? It's a very shocking situation. You need to know the time in which you're living. You know, Jesus Christ said one time you can tell by the weather signs whether it's going to rain or whether you're going to have sunshine. But do you know the signs of the times? Do you know what is going on in the world? We need to know the condition of the world in which we live. This booklet is 'Are We Living in the Last Days?'

   Now, there's no charge, no request for money. I would like to send it to you absolutely free, and I would like to send you also if you're not already a subscriber, a year's subscription to The Plain Truth, with a circulation of more than 5 million, 500,000 copies every month, published in six different languages. The Plain Truth, a Magazine of Understanding.

   Let me give you a sample of some of the articles in a recent number: 'Europe In Ferment.' You need to read that about the situation in Europe. The Plain Truth analyzes today's world news in the light of biblical prophecy and tells you what it means, what is going to happen? Another one: 'Evolutionists and Creationists Are at It Again.' Another one: 'Will Century 21 Be the Japanese Century?' The Japanese are coming up. Why? Another article: 'Will Mankind Conquer Pollution?' The pollution all over the world? You need The Plain Truth, and there's no subscription price. It is unique in every way. Illustrated in full color, a very handsome, beautiful magazine. There's no subscription price, no request for money. I would like to enter your name on the subscription list.

   Now, all you do is send your name and address to me, Herbert W Armstrong, Pasadena, California. That's Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena California 91123. Or why don't you just go to the telephone right away? That is much quicker and telephone a free call 800 then 423-4444, call now there is no charge. You call 800-423-4444. Now, if you live in California, Hawaii or Alaska, then call a different number, collect, we'll pay for the call. You call area code 213, then 304-6111. That's area code 213-304-6111. So, until next time, this is Herbert W Armstrong, goodbye friends.

   For the free literature offered on this program, write Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena, California 91123 in Canada Box 44, Vancouver BC or in the continental United States, you may call this toll-free number 800-423-4444 in California, Alaska and Hawaii call, collect 213-304-6111. If the lines are busy, please try again. The preceding program and all literature were produced and sponsored by the Worldwide Church of God.