China - Inside the Wall
80-06
Telecast Date: January 20, 1981
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   The following is a special presentation of the World. Tomorrow with Herbert W. Armstrong.

   One out of four people on earth is a citizen of the People's Republic of China. Geographically from the Western nations, they live half a world away. By any other standard, they are farther away than that. It was here that politics became religion, and a billion worshipers were assured that they could build heaven on earth. It was to the leadership of this nation that God opened the door for His Apostle Herbert W. Armstrong to deliver the message that not even a billion minds and bodies could create utopia. But that it would nevertheless come to pass.

   Some time ago, the editor of a weekly news magazine in the United States said in an editorial that now our number one problem is that of survival of the human race. And he said it would seem now that the only hope that we have in the world would be the sudden intervention of a strong, unseen hand from someplace.

   Now, I have the pleasure to announce to you tonight, not to try to convince you, but to announce to you that what some of the leading scientists say is our only hope is going to happen, and that unseen hand is going to appear, and we are going to have world peace in our time.

   It was to one-fourth of the world's population that Herbert W. Armstrong took the most significant message of our time. This is an account of that historic visit to China Inside The Wall.

   Along China's northern frontier. The garrisons and fortresses began appearing hundreds of years before the time of Christ, gradually joined and expanded over the centuries. They became a monument of the ancient world, a monument to China's fear of and often disdain for foreigners. The Great Wall is a wonder of the ancient world, but its final stone was laid by a modern emperor.

   Mao Zedong saw himself leading a backward feudal land into the modern world, and he imagined China's revolution in the vanguard of a great and irresistible tide that would engulf the world. There are two winds in the world, today, Chairman Mao once said the East wind and the West wind, the East wind, he said, is prevailing. But something went wrong with the revolution, and instead of leading the world into a new era, China withdrew for nearly 30 years inside its wall. Now, Chairman Mao is dead, and a West wind is blowing in China. For the first time in decades, China is looking beyond its walls for ideas and ideals. It is at this time in history that God has granted His servant favor in the eyes of the Chinese leadership.

   Herbert W. Armstrong arrived in Peking last December, the first Western religious leader invited to speak publicly in the People's Republic and to meet privately with Chinese leaders. His private plane was allowed to fly unescorted to Peking, a privilege rarely afforded visitor. An official greeting delegation met Mr. Armstrong and his party at the airport and escorted them to a welcoming dinner given by the Chinese Educational Society.

   To the Western world, China has always been a mystery. Its river valleys cradled a civilization, but a civilization that thrived in isolation from the Middle East and Europe and which had a greatness all its own. For centuries, visitors found the Chinese tolerant of European ways but scarcely interested in them. In the eyes of the Chinese, the world had little to offer the culture that produced paper, gunpowder, and Confucius. The mystery of China has endured to this day. But China's pre-eminent position among nations was forfeited with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

   The decades of turmoil culminating in the triumph of the Communist Party in 1949 instilled a new spirit of change in China. Yet for most of the past 30 years, correct political thought has served one far better in China than rigorous scientific thought. But now Peking seems to accept as possible that a technologically inferior nation can lead a march into a new world. The Chinese have set their sights on the year 2000. It is their goal that by that year, China will, by any standard, be marching at the head of the parade of nations.

   The Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, in accordance with its purpose of promoting understanding among nations, has agreed to aid the Chinese in their pursuit of modernization. Last August, on a separate visit to the People's Republic, AICF Executive Vice President Stanley Rayner solidified an agreement with Chinese educational officials, whereby the AICF will sponsor numerous educational projects.

   At ceremonies held in the Peking Hotel, Mr. Rader presented the Chinese with the foundation's first contribution. The AICF will also be aiding Chinese librarians at the National Library, Peking Teachers University, and University of Peking in expanding their collection. Symbolizing this support, Mr. Rader presented the library with a number of complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

   This comes from the foundation with greetings from Pasadena and Mr. Herbert Armstrong, who although not here today, is here with us spiritually and morally and will be here with us on November 3rd. It gives me great pleasure to present you with volume A as well as the rest of the books, which I'm sure will get tremendous use here at the university.

   The Chinese were most appreciative and took special care to ensure that Mr. Rader and Mr. Armstrong, upon his arrival, saw their country firsthand.

   The People's Square is the heart of Peking; over 1 million people could assemble here and have done so in the past. Government buildings, including the Great Hall of the People, seat of the republic's government, stand to either side of the square. A number of monuments commemorating the Communist Revolution, extolling the revolution as a victory of the Chinese against imperialism and oppression, also stand in the square and nearby the shrine containing the body of the great helmsman, Chairman Mao Zedong, the man who more than any other put his personal stamp on the revolution and on the new China to which it gave birth.

   Just off People's Square stands one wall of the Forbidden City. Inside are the palaces and grounds of the emperors who ruled a China long since gone.

   At a banquet in his honor on the evening of the second day of his visit in Peking, Herbert W. Armstrong spoke to 400 guests at the world-famous Peking Duck Restaurant. The audience included high-ranking government officials and Chinese educators. Although addressing a predominantly Communist audience, Mr. Armstrong announced God's soon-coming intervention in world affairs.

   All of the troubles in this world have come from living the wrong way, having the wrong attitude toward ourselves, toward others, toward one another. And we're going to come to the time of world peace. We're going to have a utopia on earth. People will laugh when I say the word utopia. Why should it be impossible? Why should we not have it? All we have to do is live the way we ought to, and all of us are going to be doing that in our time, in this generation. Well, I am not here to convince anybody of anything. I am merely here to make an announcement and to tell you that that is coming and peace and happiness and joy is coming. We're going to learn the way to live. We're going to begin to live that way, and it is coming in our time. That is the world's only hope. And that's what I am proclaiming around the world.

   China Inside the Wall will return in a moment.

   Kingdoms and nations throughout the ages have proclaimed peace yet waged war. In the last century alone, there have been two world wars to end all wars. Will man ever find peace? Herbert W. Armstrong travels around the world, meeting with heads of state, explaining that man's only hope of survival is the establishment of one world government, foretelling a time of happiness and prosperity for all mankind. He reveals not only the causes but the solutions for human troubles. This message of soon-coming world peace is explained in depth in the free booklet 'Just what do you mean... KINGDOM OF GOD?' Request your free copy of 'Just what do you mean... KINGDOM OF GOD?' Call 800-423-4444. That's 800-423-4444.

   The following evening, the site was Peking's Great Hall of the People, the official nerve center of the Chinese government from which all Communist Party activities are controlled. Mr. Armstrong was introduced by Mr. Yamashita, a senior member of the Japanese diet. Mr. Armstrong powerfully addressed not only Chinese officials but also Ambassadors representing 76 nations. Again, his topic was the good news of the coming Kingdom of God.

   Modern science claimed here some quite a while ago that we could throw away the crutch of superstition and religion now that science was going to be the new Messiah that would save the world. But the principal things that science have contributed, the one perhaps is nuclear power and the weapons of mass destruction that now can erase all human life from off this earth.

   It is said now that the weapons are in existence and at least two nations possess them, and many others. I think this nation here possesses that type of weaponry that could erase human life 50 times over, and once would certainly be quite enough. But many leading scientists in the world have been pointing out that there is only one solution. The greatest world problem right now is the question of survival, human survival. Will human life be living by the beginning of the 21st century? And they say that if we don't explode human life and blast it off the earth by the by the weapons of mass destruction that the population explosion will do it. Many leading scientists say the only hope is of single one-world nation ruling all of the nations of the earth, only one military establishment and no other military power that could attack it. And yet they say that that's utterly impossible. And in the hands of man, it is. But some time ago, the editor of a weekly news magazine in the United States, in an editorial, was saying that it would seem now that the only hope of human survival in this world is the sudden intervention of a powerful unseen hand from someplace. And I'm here to announce that that is going to happen. That's precisely what is going to happen. And in our time, and peace is coming to all nations and to the whole world.

   The Chinese recognized Herbert Armstrong as a prominent religious leader, humanitarian, and educator. They were particularly anxious that Mr. Armstrong, as an educator, would appreciate the tremendous changes now taking place in Chinese education at all levels, changes designed to recapture, at least some of what Mr. Armstrong has long termed the true values in education, including discipline, scholarship, and excellence without which not any nation or people, however great, can achieve lasting success.

   I want to say that there are two general ways of life, whether it is the individual in the home, whether it is in our everyday occupations, wherever we are, or whether it is between governments. I like to simplify it and say it so simply and plainly that a little child could understand. One is the way of give. The other way is the way of get. And I think about every philosophy that you can think of as a way of life will boil down to one of those two ways.

   Now, the way of get is the way the world is going. That is the world of, "I love me. I don't care about anybody else. I only love myself." It is the way of vanity, the way of lust and greed. It is the way of jealousy and envy toward other people. The way of competition that leads to strife and to violence and to war. It is the way of rebellion against authority over one.

   The other way of life is the way of give or perhaps better expressed in the terms of the word love, but love is an outgoing concern, not incoming. It is outgoing toward others. It is the way of wanting to help others, wanting to serve, being kind and gentle to others, having respect toward others.

   It is perhaps true that the most significant changes taking place in China today involve the transformation of Chinese education. That's your book. That's your book. That's your book. That's your book.

   Mao Zedong believed that the key to understanding history and the world was to understand that everything consisted of contradictions, while perhaps not true of either history or the world, contradiction certainly provides the key to understanding Mao, and in no sphere was this more clearly and devastatingly evident than in education. Mao acutely felt China's backwardness, the legacy of centuries of stagnation. Yet he never came to trust China's intellectuals or her educators, and eventually he suppressed them. The most devastating blow was the Cultural Revolution of the mid-1960s. The Cultural Revolution brought an end to scientific research in China, made education a brand of shame, and resulted in virtually all institutions of higher learning being closed for nearly five years. China's present leaders openly acknowledge that the excesses of the 1960s set their nation back technologically a full decade. Today, they are striving to recover from those years of turmoil through a renewed emphasis on learning and excellence.

   Publicly, although somewhat simplistically, the setback is blamed on a group of formerly powerful officials now known as the Gang of Four. Not since before the Communist victory in 1949 has the study of English been so widely pursued in China, evidence of the Chinese anxiousness to cultivate relationships with the scholars and the scholarship of the Western world.

   During his visits to China, Stanley Rader was recognized by his hosts as a prominent American lawyer and legal scholar and invited to lecture at the University of Peking's School of Law.

   The American experience, as you know, is rather recent by comparison to China's long history, and our culture draws very heavily from what we call Western civilization, as it was known in Europe, namely the English and the Roman law.

   It's also important to note that the most significant influence on the American colonies of New England in the 17th century was the Christian religion. The Puritan ethics or the Quaker theology dictated much of what the law should be in the colonies. And it's no surprise to see that clergymen were often entrusted with the responsibility to govern and to control the local settlements.

   China Inside the Wall will return in a moment.

   The recent trip to China by Herbert W. Armstrong was a landmark event. This, the first official visit to China by a religious leader in nearly half a century, was one of many visits by Mr. Armstrong to heads of state around the world. As an ambassador without portfolio, Mr. Armstrong not only points the way to world peace but also, through the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, presently supports humanitarian projects in nations worldwide. These visits by Herbert W. Armstrong and their significance are covered in depth by The Plain Truth magazine. The Plain Truth is a monthly publication free of charge. Plain Truth, request your free copy by calling 800-423-4444. That's 800-423-4444.

   It is an arduous task, Mao Zedong said, to ensure a better life for the several hundred million people of China. To succeed, he added, we must constantly rid ourselves of whatever is wrong. The instability, the disappointments, the setback in China largely stemmed from the zealotry of those who found in Mao's words a justification for never-ending revolution and unceasing purification of political thought.

   In Mao's final years, two opinions contested for the mantle of rulership, both claiming foundation in the chairman's doctrines. One opinion, championed by the Gang of Four, favored the tumultuous legacy of the Cultural Revolution. The other opinion held that China's most pressing need was not constant correction of political attitudes but progress. There has been no new revolution here, no coup per se, no official change in government, and yet without question, one of the world's most significant geopolitical developments in recent years has been the triumph of moderate pro-progress leadership in China.

   The memory of Chairman Mao is still revered, and of all the great Helmsman's legacy, the present leadership is now ridding itself of much it finds wrong.

   Among the highlights of Herbert Armstrong's visit was a conversation with one leader of what might rightly be termed the New China. The two men shared perspectives gained by their long experiences observing world conditions from opposite sides of the globe. Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Tan Zan Lin, heard the message that ultimate solutions to the problems of nations would not emerge through the efforts of human leadership. Symbolizing the friendship and cordiality of the meeting, and of his entire visit, Mr. Armstrong presented a gift of Steuben Crystal to the Vice Chairman.

   China has always been a hard land. Communist revolutionaries won control by bringing vision to a people who had never known vision before. It is a diverse land, for centuries there has been doubt that China's many ethnic groups and languages could comprise a single nation. China is a land of ideology. Although certain religious groups, including Christian ones, are allowed to exist here, the supreme gods are political deities.

   None of this sets China apart. Other nations were forged out of vision. Other nations have blended diverse peoples into one, and all nations have their political demigods, although they may not so strenuously pay homage. What sets China apart is that the Chinese seem too much of one mind, too much in step, too capable of blending into the world's largest crowd. But those are reflections from the surface of a sea of faces.

   The great Helmsman envisioned an era of perpetual peace for mankind. The problem in China, as in all nations, remains the elusiveness of that vision.

   Not one religion, of the saddest religions on earth, knows who or what God is. Now, that is a very shocking statement, but it is true. Not a single religion knows what and why man is. How did man come to be on this earth? What is man? How did he come to be here? What is the purpose? Is there any purpose in life? Are we here for a purpose? Of all the religions on earth, not one knows really what happens in the hereafter. There are so many ideas, there are many superstitions, but not one has the real knowledge of what really is, lies ahead in the hereafter.

   Of all the religions in the world, not one knows what is the true ultimate human potential. Peace is coming to all nations and to the whole world because we're going to have to find another way of life. We are going to find it. We're going to be forced to find it, and it will be a way that will bring peace and happiness and prosperity to all and eternal salvation. Thank you very much.

   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 dial direct 213-577-5225. The preceding program and all literature were produced 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: January 20, 1981
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