Herbert W Armstrong

   I was in London recently at the time of the Economic Summit of the most powerful nations, and I had meetings there with some of the heads of government. And I can tell you that they were even holding back a lot of the seriousness of the economic situation at this present time. What is happening can suddenly force a unification in Europe, a United States of Europe that will produce a new world power - a world power colossus, perhaps larger than either the Soviet Union or the United States and formed for the very purpose of destroying the United States of America. And that very fact is foretold in your Bible, in the prophecies of the Bible. Believe it or not.

   The World Tomorrow. The Worldwide Church of God presents Herbert W. Armstrong, an internationally recognized ambassador for World Peace, visiting prominent leaders around the globe, discussing the cause of world problems, and proclaiming the good news of the world tomorrow. Ladies and gentlemen, Herbert W. Armstrong.

   Now, why could that bring a crisis that might threaten even human civilization as we know it on this earth? And that is just the seriousness of the economic situation at this present time.

   Let me make this whole thing simple. Actually, it is very complex and complicated. We're living in a time when human beings have made everything in life as complex as they possibly can. It's hard to understand. But let me make it all simple.

   We're now at a crisis at the end of 6000 years of human civilization. God Almighty formed man from the dust of the ground. The first man was named Adam, and you find that in the Bible, and I can prove that that biblical account can be absolutely substantiated and can account for all of the conditions that have happened on the earth. The present situation in the world today, the economic crisis, everything. And there is no other explanation, believe me.

   As I said, the first human was made from the dust of the ground. He had to produce his own food from the ground, his own shelter, his own clothing, and all of his own needs. Now, as the population grew, specialization developed. After years and scores of years, then hundreds of years, and then even thousands of years, finally, one man began to specialize, and others began to specialize. But one man, for example, began to make shoes, and he would trade shoes to another man who was specializing in agriculture for food; he would trade his shoes for food. And so, they began to trade goods that each was producing.

   Now, in time, money began to be used as a medium of exchange instead of just exchanging goods or services, and money came to represent goods or services. And so, they exchanged money instead of just trading the goods themselves. Now, civilization kept on developing. And finally, the banking system entered in because in order to transmit money from one place to another, the banks became a medium of that exchange of transmitting money. People began borrowing then from the banks because the banks kept money, and a system of charging interest then developed, and people began to borrow from the banks and have the use of money to build a new business, maybe a new industry, to buy a new farm, to buy equipment.

   Now, the banking structure has become very intricate and very complex, and the United States government began to regulate banks and the banking system. And of course, it was government money that was being used for the exchange of goods and services. And finally, those in the United States began to exchange goods and money with people in other nations. And so, banking became an international system, and it became quite complicated. And so, one government is concerned with another government in its financial system and the financial structure.

   Now, as we come down to today, our largest banks have been loaning money, and the United States government also loaning money to other nations. And so, nations borrow money from other nations. And in this case, they have not nations or developing nations, as they're called, have been borrowing from the developed nations. And of course, among the developed nations, the United States is number one, others of the nations of Europe, and of course, Japan, and so the United States. Some of the banks, notably the Continental Illinois Bank, a bank that I have even had a personal connection with in years gone by, had made some very large loans to South American nations. And the government also had become involved in those loans.

   Now we've come to the place where the South American nations can't pay, can't even pay back the interest, and the 2% jump recently in the interest rates by the United States hit the Latin American nations so hard that it made their repayments, even the interest repayments, up to $13 billion a year. The South American nations think that's a greater burden than they can bear. But now the United States has been giving a great deal of foreign aid to many other smaller nations all over the world. We've been most generous in that sort of thing. And we always come to the aid of other nations when there is some great disaster or something that is hurting millions of their people, and the United States people and the United States government have always been very liberal on things of that sort.

   But in South America, they think it's reversing the idea of the big nations giving aid to the smaller nations. Instead, they say it is the poor nations giving to the rich instead of the rich helping the poor. And so, some of the South American nations now are threatening to default and not pay the debt back at all. And if they do, that threatens the very existence of many of our banks, and it will hit the government, and the government is going to have to go to the United States government will have to have financial aid from the European nations because the whole banking system is so interlocked and intertwined between nations that one nation is more or less interdependent on other nations. And the European nations are beginning to feel that the United States cannot be depended upon to be the umbrella over them to protect them from communist aggression of the Soviet Union. And they're beginning to wonder if they are not going to have to organize and to become one United States of Europe, a nation of their own, a super colossus, a great world power politically, militarily, and to fight their own battles instead of relying on the United States as they have been doing ever since World War II to protect them from the Soviet Union.

   So, all of this can plunge Europe into reunification. There's been a great movement to try to unite them. Biblical prophecy says it will happen, and that they will come against the United States when it happens. Now, that is dynamite. I know to say that, but it's in the Bible, it is prophesized, and Bible prophecies have been coming to pass, and this will come to pass.

   Now, how can a financial crisis threaten the entire world civilization to make it very, very simple? I put it in this language. There are two ways that travel in opposite directions, two ways of life. One is the way of give, of cooperating, of help, of concern for the good of another. The other is just the opposite, the way of get, of taking from the other, of get the best of everyone else. The way of competition and strife and violence, the way of destruction, the way of resentment of authority, the way of jealousy and envy toward other people instead of love and helping and sharing and cooperating. This world is on the basis of "get," it is a self-centered and selfish world, and that has been the way of life. It's a way of life all the way through.

   Now, what do people really want to get? People are bent in their whole life for most people is just on getting, it's on doing their own thing, it's on having what they can have. I've known many people whose whole ambition is to succeed in life. You know, I've written a booklet on the Seven Laws of Success. I have known men who are considered very successful in the United States - the heads of great corporations and the heads of the Great Banks of New York and Chicago. Yes, they're considered successful. But have they been successful? They made money, but their lives weren't happy. They never had enough. They made money, but when they had it, they wanted more. It was never enough. It never satisfied.

   There was a man that I knew, well, his name was A.R. Erskine. He was president of a great corporation. His corporation went into Receivership. He lost all of his personal money that was invested in the company, and his life was not so successful after all, he put a bullet through his brain, and I don't consider that being a success. There's something more than just making money but making money has been the whole thing in this world when we live the way of "get," that means get money because money is the medium of exchange used in everything people want to get. It all gets back to money, and money is involved in the whole banking structure. So, when we come to a banking crisis, a financial crisis, you're getting down to the crisis of the way we live and the very root of people. That's why, my friends, that the love of money is the root of all evil. And that is a law. It is the root of all evil. The other way, of course, would be generosity and love and cooperation and helping. There isn't much of that in this world, not much of that in the world, all world troubles, and all of our nuclear affairs and the fear of blowing up the whole world in war. It comes over possession of goods and things and the power of controlling areas of this earth and the wealth that comes out of the earth. That is what is back of everything. And that's why this financial crisis is such a crisis and it's a thing that people have not understood, and they have not realized.

   Now, let me give you some of the biblical prophecies on this very thing. Many times, I've gone through this in Matthew 24, and let me go to it once again in this light, and maybe you'll see it from a little different point of view this time. Matthew 24 and beginning with the third verse (Matthew 24:3), Jesus himself was setting up on the mount of Olives and four of the disciples came to him privately. They said to him, "Tell us, when shall these things be?" Now, he had just been explaining to them that the temple of Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, now that was going to happen in their lifetime. And so, they said, "Tell us, when shall these things be?" And they added, "What shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?" Now, at the end of this world, he was going to come to start another world, and he had taught them that they understood that they believed that. So now they thought that the coming of Christ back to earth and the beginning of the next world and the end of this world would happen at the same time as the destruction of the temple.

   Now, in actual fact, the temple was destroyed in their lifetime in 70 A.D., but the second coming of Christ is expected in our generation. Now it hasn't even happened yet after 1900 years, and they didn't know that, but Jesus did. So, they asked him the two questions, really? Because they thought they would both happen at the same time. Jesus answered them, in verse 14 (Matthew 24:14), he said, "This gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end, that's the end of this world, come.

   Now, the gospel of the Kingdom is the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed. That is the gospel He had been proclaiming to them. You'll find the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ is recorded in the book of Mark. In the first chapter, the first verse, it says, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ." Coming down to verse 14 (Mark 1:14), it says, "Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel, of what? the Kingdom of God and saying, 'The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand, and told them, repent and believe the gospel.'"

   Now, the word gospel means good news. The gospel is the Kingdom of God, that is the government of God, a new government to take place on the earth and replace the present government. And that means also the present economic system, that means the present way of living. That means that the whole world in the world to come, when we will have peace, will be a world of cooperation, a world of giving, a world of sharing, and cooperating instead of a world of getting and competition and strife and warfare, as we have at the present time. After the gospel of the Kingdom is finally preached in our time, then He said, "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this same time, known or ever shall be, a time of trouble, of world trouble greater than had ever happened before or ever will again," (Mathew 24:21). Now, he's talking about something that is just before us now.

   Now, the gospel of the Kingdom was not proclaimed to the world in a few years after Jesus' ministry was finished and after he had ascended to heaven. There was a great controversy as to whether the gospel to be preached by the church was the gospel of Christ, which was the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, or a man's gospel about Christ, just about Christ that he was the Messiah. And they began to preach that and to say that the Kingdom of God was just something in our hearts. They did away with it by sort of spiritualizing it, as a sort of an ethereal, superstitious nothing, and did away with all of his message of the Kingdom of God altogether. For 1900 years, the gospel of the Kingdom of God was not proclaimed to this world. After 1900 years, God Almighty opened up the largest radio station in the world to me, and the gospel of the Kingdom began going to the world, exactly 100 or a century of time cycles from the time it was suppressed. Now, this is actual fact, and it's something that has actually happened. We have come down to this time. The gospel of the Kingdom is now proclaimed to the world once again, and we're getting close to the time of the end of this world. This has been a world that is finally come to its final crisis.

   Everything does center into money. When you get down to it, our way of living is "get," and "get" is all handled through money, and it involves the banking system. And now we have banks going broke, and the government having to bail out the Continental Illinois Bank as they had to do and take over 80% of the stock recently. You know, when I was a boy in my mid-twenties, just a young boy in my twenties, as a young advertising man in the city of Chicago, I used to go to the president of that bank, Arthur Reynolds. I had known him because he had been president of the Des Moines National. I was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. Now he was president of the Continental. At that time, it was called the Continental and Commercial National Bank of Chicago. I went to him at least once in six months for counsel and advice, and he was one who helped steer my life and advised me on what to do next. It was the largest bank outside of New York and perhaps about the third largest bank in the United States at that time. It was a very large bank.

   Well, anyway, getting back to this prophecy and except those days, this great tribulation be shortened, there should no flesh be saved alive. But for the elect's sake, that is those in the church, those days shall be shortened, they shall be shortened. We have come to that time. Now, verse 29 (Matthew 24:29-30), immediately after the tribulation of those days, now tribulation will come. It would annihilate all human beings, and nothing but nuclear war could do that. Just the nuclear war, my friends, is definitely going to come, and it would destroy all humanity unless God Almighty stepped in to stop it. And you're betting your life that there is a God who is going to stop it before it does destroy all human life on the face of this earth. Believe me, people don't realize the seriousness of the time we're living in right now.

   But now immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the powers of the heaven shall be shaken, and then shall appear the sign of the son of man. That's the sign of Jesus Christ in the heavens, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they, the people on the earth, shall see the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. He's coming to end this world that is built on the "get" philosophy, built on competition and strife and violence and warfare and unsolvable problems and troubles harming so many human lives. And then will come the second coming of Christ and a happy and a peaceful world tomorrow.

   The gospel of the kingdom is the good news of that coming of Christ, the good news of the coming of that government and that way of life on this earth, and it is coming. But humanity is going to let things get a lot worse in the meantime, until God intervenes and stops it, and then comes down and sets up a different way of life and rules these nations himself.

   Now, I want to ask, I want to mention in closing a book on this very thing and what is going to happen to the United States? And the last chapter gets down to what is going to happen to us. But where is the United States mentioned in the Bible prophecies? They do mention the United States and Britain. And here is a booklet, "The United States and Britain in Prophecy." More than three and one-half million people have requested this book. I won't call it a booklet. It's a book of over 200 pages. It profusely illustrated and it tells you things about the Bible you never knew before and shows you where the United States is mentioned in the Bible and gives you the prophecies of what is going to happen to the United States in the very next few years now. And you need to know it. That last chapter in this book is very significant and it tells you precisely what biblical prophecy says is going to happen to us in the comparatively near future.

   Now, I mentioned this book of the "Seven Laws of Success". I happen to have a copy of it right here. And let me see, right here is a picture of Arthur Reynolds, who was the president of this bank that is now called the Continental Illinois Bank, and also of John McHugh, who's the president of, in fact, he became two steps higher than the president of the Chase National Bank in New York when it became the largest bank in the world some few years ago. Another man that I knew very well.

   This is a booklet that many corporations are using for their employees and consider the best thing on for young people to see on what, what is the way to success. How do men climb the ladder of success? What are the laws of success? And then again, let me tell you, there's a new edition of The Plain Truth out. It's in its 50th year. The Plain Truth is one of the largest mass circulation magazines in the world. And I think by far the finest magazine in the world, it has no subscription price. It's just loaded with material about conditions in the world, about biblical prophecy, what the prophecies say about world conditions that they're happening now. And this very financial condition that I told you about is all illustrated in the current number of The Plain Truth magazine. It has no subscription price. We have nothing to sell. We don't beg the public for money and I do wish you would notice that, but I would like to send these to you.

   Now, you just send your request to me, Herbert W Armstrong at Pasadena California. That's all the address you need. Just Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena California. The zip code is 91123. But why don't you just save time and a lot easier and a lot quicker just go to the telephone and call in a free call. You dial 1-800 then 423-4444, 1-800-423-4444. And if the lines are busy, please call again because we have hundreds of people waiting to take your call. Thousands of people are calling in. So, if you don't get through the first time, please call again. So, until next time, Herbert W Armstrong. Goodbye friends.

   For the free literature offered on this program writes Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena, California 91123, in Canada Box 44, Vancouver BC or in the Continental United States including California. You may call this toll free number 1-800-234-444 in Alaska and Hawaii only call, collect 1-818-304-6111. If the lines are busy, please try again in 10 to 15 minutes. The preceding program and all literature were produced and sponsored by the worldwide church of God.