Why Can't We Achieve World Peace?
83-08
Telecast Date: October 5, 1983
QR Code

   A staggering turn in world events is soon going to erupt that will astound the whole world. As a matter of fact, two absolutely unthinkable world events are going to occur in the approximate future.

   First, the unthinkable nuclear World War III that could wipe every man, woman, and child off the face of this earth, annihilate all civilization, is definitely going to come, but it will be stopped before any such fate finally happens. And then just as unthinkable is world peace, an absolute utopia on earth. And that too is definitely going to happen in the approximate future.

   The World Tomorrow. The Worldwide Church of God presents Herbert W. Armstrong, 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.

   The world is asleep. The world doesn't know what is about to strike. The world is going on as if things are going to continue just as they are, and I am warning you, they will not. There is only one authority that can tell us what is going to happen, that can give us the cause of what has happened and what will happen so far as that is concerned. And that is the book we call the Holy Bible and its prophecies.

   The world has tried everything that man can conceive of for world peace. They have worked for world peace, they have fought for world peace, they have striven for world peace. Now we had some time back, there was the League of Nations, and then also the Pact of Paris. And then after World War II, there was the United Nations, and then also the World Court of International Justice. But nothing has brought World Peace.

   World War I was supposed to be the war that would end all wars, but that didn't end wars. Then came World War II, and it was labeled as the war to end all wars. But as a matter of fact, more than 140 wars have occurred since the end of World War II. This book, the Holy Bible, says that the way of peace, they know not.

   Now, I have been often called an Ambassador for World Peace, and I speak to heads of nations all over the world, and I speak to them about their troubles, about all of the conditions in the world, and about world peace. But men do not know the way to world peace. There has to be a cause for everything that has happened.

   Here, we live in a world of awesome progress. I say that so many, many times, the progress in this world, the advancement, especially of this 20th century, is awesome. And yet, at the same time, we are in a world of appalling evils, evils that are almost beyond your imagination, every kind of violence and trouble and human suffering. Why must people go on suffering? Why must we have so many troubles, and the troubles seem to be without a solution?

   Men cannot find a way to solve the world's troubles and to find world peace. So, let's just be irrational for a while. You know, a lot of people in higher education think that you can't be rational if you look at such a thing as the Bible. I want to tell you the Holy Bible is the most rational, the most common sense book ever written on the face of this earth. And if we look at it, we'll find the real causes for the condition that we have now and the cause that is going to ultimately bring world peace and an absolute utopia.

   You look in the dictionary for the word utopia, and you'll find it is an imaginary visionary. Something that is impossible that couldn't happen. I say to you on the authority of God Almighty, it is not impossible, and it is going to happen. But man is going to have to learn a lesson first, and they're going to have to learn that lesson after a nuclear World War III because it definitely is coming, and don't kid yourself it won't.

   This book I have mentioned, the Bible, says that two people can't walk together except they be agreed. Why is it that we have such remarkable progress and advancement in the world? And so, we're going backward in all of our troubles that we can't solve, suffering, everything wrong in the world. It's because our advancement is all material. We're dealing with things, and man has had the ability to deal with matter with things out of the earth. But man can't deal with other men. People can't deal with other people. Minds don't get along with other minds. And that's where your trouble really is. And that is a spiritual matter if people are working on a certain project and a number of people are working on it. If you have one dissenting person that is causing trouble, the project is not going to go ahead successfully.

   You take a professional basketball team carrying 12 men, only five playing at a time, and often there's been one sore head, but the team can't function unless they unanimously have the spirit of teamwork and cooperation. It has to be unanimous, and I wonder if you ever stop to think that it has to be that way if we have peace in society. Just the same as in sports or games. It's the same thing.

   Now, we look at God himself. Where did all things begin? You know, I was talking just yesterday to two historians. One was our historian here at Ambassador College in Pasadena, and the other was a historian from Oxford University in England. And I mentioned to them, I said, "You gentlemen are concerned with the history of events that have happened in this world."

   Now, I am concerned, and you're concerned with history and origins. I'm concerned with origins of what happened even before that. I'm concerned with the history that goes back way before this world and of origins and how it all got started.

   We near the end of the 6000 years that have been allotted to this world. We're near the end of the world, and we see the world as it is now, but we don't know how it got that way. We don't know what caused all of it. And if you can't go back to the original cause and see what started it and what caused it and brought it up to this condition, you don't understand what's going on right now in the world and why and why it's going on. And otherwise, we can't understand what's going to happen and why and how we are going to have final world peace and what will cause that and why there has to be a reason for all of these things.

   Now, if we begin going back as a historian to the oldest history, we begin with the creator God because all things were brought into existence by God, the creator. And before any other being or any other life occurred, there was God. Now, it's an axiom of science. It's the basic law of science that life can only come from life. So, the original life was God. And so, we find in the Bible, the account of God in the most ancient history, it's found in the New Testament in the book of John, in the New Testament, the first chapter in verse one (John 1:1), In the beginning was the Word. It says the Word was made flesh, that is made human, and dwelled among us and became Jesus Christ. So, the Word was simply Jesus Christ before He was born human. And he had always existed. And in the book of Hebrews, you find that He had always existed. He was without father, without mother, without beginning of days or end of life without dissent, but always existing.

   Now, it says the Word was with God. Now the Word is one person, but the Word was with another person, God. And the Word was God. Now there were two, I said a while ago, two can't walk together except they be agreed. Now they seem to walk together very well because everything that has been created in all life has come from them. Their business was creating. You find in verse four or five there that in them was the life they lived. And if they lived, they had action, and they had motion and they had to be doing something. Now, what did they do? And how did they do it? And how did they live? Well, they were creators. That is what they did. But how did they do it? They had to work together to do it. They lived in the way of cooperation and love.

   When Jesus was born and baptized, God spoke from heaven saying, "You are my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased." He loved the son. Jesus loved God the father. And He said that he obeyed God, the father. He said he had kept his father's Commandments, and there was no disharmony, no disagreement whatsoever. There was absolute unity in the same way of life, and that way of life, the way they lived was the way of love.

   Now, love is a way of life and that way became a law, the law of God, and the law of God is love. Now, what do we mean law? What does law mean? Law is merely the rules of human conduct or performance or behavior? It is merely the rules that define how humans ought to conduct themselves or ought to live one toward another. That's all.

   Now, you can't have a law without a penalty. We read in the Bible that sin is the transgression of the law and it is the law of God. And in the seventh chapter of the book of Romans, you will read that the law is spiritual. Now there are laws like gravity and inertia that have to do with matter and living matter perhaps, but matter, not people, not human minds. Well, the law of gravity seems to be absolutely certain. And also, the law of inertia, but the spiritual law has nothing to do with dealing with things or matter, it has only to do with people dealing with one another, with human relationships, relationships of minds, one with another.

   Now, God had a mind, and the Word who became Christ had a mind and a very great mind. But their minds were in total harmony. And so, they got along and they succeeded in all that they did. Now, when two are walking together, two cannot walk together either unless they be agreed. And also, one of the two has to be the leader. You have to have direction and leadership. Otherwise, you've got chaos, one pulling one direction and another another. And that's the only way you can have an uh uh have agreement because Jesus agreed with his father when he was on earth. He said, "I have spoken only as the father told me to speak." There was complete harmony in every way. And so that is also necessary. Now a leader over others with the rules of conduct simply means government.

   Now, that brings us into the faculty of government, and without government, you can't accomplish anything. There has to be some kind of government in any project. There has to be a head, there has to be a leader, and God is the great leader over everything in the whole universe. Just carry this same thing on out all the way to world peace. As long as you have some dissenting people, some believing one way and others believing another, you do not have any basis for peace. And that's why all the world's efforts at peace have failed. There hasn't been unanimous agreement, there just simply has not been, and so everything has failed.

   Now, God is a creator, but God has a method of creating. There is a duality principle in his method of creating, and He didn't create the human family all at once. He started with a man, with one man, and He had to add a woman. But also, that man was not complete in his mind. He had a human spirit, but he had to make a decision when he also received the spirit of God. You read in Genesis 1:26, God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," that meant after the God kind. But in the second chapter of Genesis and the seventh verse, you read that God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man, simply the dust of the ground, became a soul, a living soul, and the soul that sinneth shall die says the Bible, is not immortal. And to that soul, God said, "If you make the wrong choice now, the wrong way of life, you will surely die." Now, he did not have eternal life. He only had a temporary physical chemical existence, but God wanted to give him life.

   Now, God has life, inherent self-containing life. God is immortal, and he wanted to give this man immortality and eternal everlasting life. So, he offered in that, in the tree of life. But with that, that meant injecting the life of God into him and injecting the life of God meant also injecting the mind of God. And God's mind is that of peace and of agreement with God's law. Now, there was another tree in that garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that meant taking to himself the knowledge of good and evil. Now, the knowledge of good and evil has nothing to do with building an airplane, a typewriter, or an automobile or something physical and mechanical. It has only to do with relationships with other minds. And man decided for himself what kind of relationship he's going to have with other people. And he decided selfishly. And there was Satan, the devil, there influencing him. And so, he obeyed Satan, he disobeyed God, he rejected what God offered him, eternal life. And that was the rulership over the whole earth.

   Now, there had been a throne set on earth, and God had put a super archangel on that throne, and his name was Lucifer, but he rebelled against the government of God and God's way of life. He had a spirit of contention. He had an attitude of rebellion, and that attitude was on earth. And he got that attitude into Adam and Eve, the first man, and the first woman. And that has continued on ever since. And so, this world started with Adam, that was the foundation of this world, and it was influenced from beginning through this one Satan in self-centeredness in the way of get instead of give.

   Now, the way of love is outflowing love toward others. That's the way of give. God is the great giver. He so loved the world, He gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting life. Jesus came on earth with the same attitude of love. And He so loved this world that while we were yet sinners, He gave His life to pay the penalty of our sin in our instead. Now, as Adam was the one with whom this world was founded. And it was really founded by Satan and Satan's way and man has ever been since been led by that way and that way came from Satan the devil.

   So, the second Adam was Jesus Christ, and God sent Jesus to earth as the second Adam to start God's world. This world you'll find described in the Bible as Satan's world. And Satan has deceived all nations, all religions, they're all deceived by Satan. You'll read that in the 12th chapter of Revelation and verse nine (Revelation 12:9), and in II Corinthians 4, Satan is the God of this world. He is the God of this world.

   Jesus came to start God's world, and he started by calling 12 men, and they had to agree. Now of the 12, he chose just like a, well, a basketball team of 12 people. There was one dissenter. His name was Judas Iscariot, and Jesus knew what he planned to do, and He said, " That thou doest do it quickly." And He dismissed him, and He left the 12. Jesus had to have him put out, and there couldn't be peace and harmony until that one who objected was put out. And so, the church was started from the 11 that were left, and there was an alternate going with them. It took the place of Judas. You will read in the first chapter of I Corinthians verse 10 (I Corinthians 1:10). Paul says to the church, "Now I beseech you brethren, that's to the church by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment."

   In the church, there cannot be a dissenting voice, or you wouldn't have peace. Now, I turn back a page into Romans, the 16th chapter in verse 17 (Romans 16:17). And here again, it is written, "Now, I beseech you brethren, mark them that cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have received, and avoid them." In other words, disfellowship, those that are contentious and will not accept the truth and the doctrines of Jesus Christ and the law of God, they have to be of one mind. The church is merely God's world in embryo that will come. I wish I had time to finish this, and I'll have to continue this in another program.

   But the church is the world of God. This is the world of Satan. This is Satan's world. The church is the world of God in embryo, and it is coming, and you cannot have world peace until the last dissenter is out. And everyone is in harmony with God's law, and God's law is the way of love. It's the way of obedience to God and of love and cooperation and serving and helping and sharing with other people. That's the only way a team can win games. That's the only way we can have peace on earth.

   And one of the most important things in the church, and churches don't seem to know that, is the dissenters if necessary have to be put out, they should be dealt with if they will show a right attitude, if they will repent fine, if they don't, if they're obstinate and their attitude continues to be hostile, put them out. That's the only way the church ultimately is going to reign and rule with Christ, and Christ at His second coming is coming as the King of kings, the Lord of lords, He's going to rule over every nation, Satan and the devil will be put away, and the whole world will be ruled, and everyone will agree with God's law, which is the way of love, and that my friends is the way to peace.

   Yes, I've been called an Ambassador for World Peace, and I proclaim the only way that is the way to peace, and that is agreement and its agreement with God and Christ and in God's way and Christ's way.

   Now, I have a book that I want to announce again. Many of them already written in for it. It's one of the most important booklets I ever wrote. It is titled "Never Before Understood." The world has not understood it. Why humanity cannot solve its evils? Why can't the world have peace? Why can't they solve their evils? What is wrong, and what is the way to peace? "Never Before Understood." Please write in for that book that there's no charge, no follow-up, no request for money. We don't beg for money over the air, brethren. I hope you noticed that.

   And then we'll send you also with it a year subscription to the world's most important mass circulation magazine, "The Plain Truth." It's utterly unique. There's no other magazine like it. Now, over 6 million circulation read by all 20 or 25 million people that look eagerly forward to it every month. First, there's an editorial by me. "Here's Your Best Assurance of Holding a Job", and that might be important right now for a lot of people to know.

   Then here is an article "Behind the Pope's SPIRITUAL OFFENSIVE In Eastern Europe". Now, that's on world affairs and what is happening over there, and you need to know what is going on. "The Plain Truth" analyzes today's world news and gives you the meaning and where it's leading and what is going to happen in the light of biblical prophecy.

   Here's another article, "What Teachers Wish Parents Knew About School," and there's something decidedly wrong in our public schools and teaching young people coming on. Then "The Mark Of A Great Mind" is another article, and then here is a continued series on "Charlemagne and The New Europe." And, "The Greatest Gift You Can Give Your Children". Here's another article, "Why Must Men Suffer?" And here's a very important article, "A Foretaste of Disaster." That is an article about the weather and what's happening in the weather. You read a lot, you get a lot about the weather in your daily newscasts in the newspapers, but they don't give you the background of what the cause is and where it's going to lead in this article. Will you need to have that?

   There's no subscription price. We don't ask for money. We don't ask you to join anything. We're not soliciting anything; we just want to give. That's God's way, and we serve God, and we are his instrument. Write in for these booklets.

   Just send your request to me, Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena California. That's all address you need. Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena California. And the zip is 91123 or better yet. Just go to the telephone and dial toll-free, no charge, whatever. Dial 800-423-4444, 800-423-4444. Now, if you live in California, Hawaii or Alaska, call another number collect and we'll pay for the call. Area code 213-304-6111. That's area code 213-304-6111. And so, until next time, Herbert W Armstrong, Goodbye friends.

   For the free literature offered on this program, write, Herbert W Armstrong in 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.

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

Telecast Date: October 5, 1983
Back To Top