Herbert W Armstrong

   The World Tomorrow, the Worldwide Church of God presents the World Tomorrow with Herbert W Armstrong, ladies and gentlemen, Herbert W Armstrong.

   In our Western world, the largest religion, of course, is Christianity, but it's in very great confusion. Now, the largest of all religions and the largest church in Christianity is the Roman Catholic Church. They're having their troubles within right now. Then, of course, the Protestant movement is very great, and there are more than 250 denominations and sects in Protestant Christianity, and many other smaller groups beside, all divided, no, two believing the same thing. One believes one thing; they may have certain things in common, but they all have something else they don't have in common that they do not agree with others. They don't agree except, to a certain extent.

   Then you take the other religions over the world—all is confusion. There is Buddhism, there is Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, the Muslim religion which covers the whole Arab world and a great deal of Africa beside. Different religions believe whatever their religion is. The people in Thailand, practically all of them believe in Buddhism.

   Now, why do they all believe in Buddhism? Why is it nearly all Arabs believe in the Muslim religion? Why is it that nearly everybody in France is a Catholic, though most of them are just nominal Catholics, they're not really, not deep down, Catholics, but that's, what they would claim they are. And, but, but why, and how did you come to believe the things you believed? Well, most people never asked themselves that in retrospect, how they came to believe what they do.

   Do you ever stop to think how you came to believe what you believe? How did it get into your mind? You've got absolute beliefs, you've got convictions, and you're sure of it, but someone else is just as sure of the opposite of something entirely different. Now, how did you come to be so sure? And are you so sure after all, or do you just think you are? Well, let me answer that question.

   Most people believe what they have been brought up to believe, especially in religion. They believe the religion that those people around them believe and what they were taught to believe and what their neighbors and everybody they know believes, what their peers believe and those around them. A lot of people believe what they want to believe, even though they might know it's not the truth, they believe it anyway. And, a lot of people believe, refuse to believe what they don't want to believe. And even if you prove it to them, they won't accept it. And there's an old saying that a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. And he certainly is, a man convinced against his will.

   Well, how did I come to believe what I believe? Now? I want to tell you a little bit about my own experience because I was put through an experience 51 years ago. In fact, it's getting almost 52 years. I was given a great jolt, a mind-disturbing dual challenge. All of a sudden, to my dismay, I learned that my wife had taken up with what I regarded as religious fanaticism. Now, I had left, church and Sunday school and religious interest after about age 18. I was reared in it, of course, I was reared to believe in God and, and to believe in Christ. I didn't know much about God, didn't know much about Christ, but I just knew I believed in them. Why? I didn't know that. And that's because I've been taught it, I guess, and because all everybody else did that I was with. But, I didn't know much about it. Of course, I also believe that I was an immortal soul and I believe that I would go to heaven or to hell when I died, depending on how good I was. And I had some beliefs like that but here and my wife had now taken up with the religious fanaticism, and I had almost lost interest in religion.

   And this was a good many years after I was 18. And as a matter of fact, I was 34 and my wife had taken up with the seventh day Sabbath.

   Now, to me, that was just about the very height of religious fanaticism. And I began to think I had business associates. I had been making in the advertising business, what would be an income today or a salary equivalent of what today's dollar will buy, of about $150,000 a year. And I don't think you'd say that that's exactly the kind of evidence of failure.

   Now, I was really disturbed and about the same time a sister-in-law of mine who just fresh out of college and newly married to my wife's brother, came to me, and she had learned something in school, and I don't know how it came, but I had studied so many things, and I had gotten books in the library, and I had bought books, and I had read and studied books, and I had not neglected education by any means.

   But my sister-in-law said to me because she knew I didn't believe in evolution, one time, she said, Herbert Armstrong, you are just downright ignorant. Well, I said, I don't think I am. Of course, I was quite proud at that time. And she says, anyone who has any knowledge and any sense at all knows evolution is true. Well, I said, I don't know it. And she said, well, you're ignorant. I said Eartha, I'm gonna make you swallow those words. I'm gonna make you eat those words. I said I have never gone into an in-depth study of evolution. I've read a great deal about it. And from what I have seen, I don't believe in it, but I said, no, I'll go into it deeply. I'm not going to be called ignorant. Yes, I was proud.

   So, the next six months was a night and day study, and it happened to be a six-month time when I had time on my hands. My wife used to say to me about 1 a.m. Herbert, when are you coming to bed? Because I was studying, and often I was at the public library at nine o'clock waiting for it to open its doors in the morning, and I was still there when they closed the doors at 10 o'clock at night, and then I'd go home and study until one.

   And I went in-depth. I began my study by getting the works of Darwin and the account of his trip around the world and the Good Ship Beagle and all of that. And then I got the writings of those that have been his the chief pushers of his theory, Hegel and Huxley and the modern one, Chamberlain who was the Professor Emeritus in the University of Chicago and others, I delved into what Lamarche had to say about use and disuse, which was a discarded theory and had come up before Darwin's time and and Lyell and all, all of the old evolutionists.

   And I began some of the study in the Bible, but I tell you, as I began to study the writings of these evolutionists, they were very, very convincing. Now, you admit they have to be to have sold practically all higher education on the theory. It's almost universally accepted, and it is considered that you're ignorant. If you don't believe it.

   Herbert W Armstrong will return right after this message.

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   How did I ever come to believe in God? Well, I've just brought up to believe in God. Well, had I ever seen it proved and I ever really looked into it.

   No, I never had. I took it for granted. Most people believe what they have read or heard, and they carelessly take it for granted. They just assume it. They haven't proved it. And I began to realize I have never proved whether there is a God. And I said, well, now before I go into the Bible about the Sabbath or anything like that I want to know whether God exists because if there isn't any God, then you got to throw the Bible out. So, I studied it, but I did study the Bible along with it, to make a long story short, I proved before that six months was over that God does exist, that God is the first cause and the creator of matter and of all of us, even of spirit bodies, spirit beings called angels, of everything that is. I came to learn who and what God is, and not one religion in the world believes that or understands it. You know, that's, that's just, it makes me stand aghast when I think of that. I prove that evolution was false.

   Now, we were living in Portland, Oregon at the time. And in Portland, they have a very fine public library there, and they had a woman in charge of that department who was very highly educated. I finally wrote, and I, I didn't waste too many pages on it. I had just come right down. I always had a tendency to want to get to the trunk of the tree. If the trunk of the tree is false, every branch on it is false. You chop down the trunk of a tree, and you're chopping down every branch with it, aren't you? I have always been one that will stand right for the trunk of the tree. And so, I did, and I simply proved that there is only one possible thing that the evolution has put forward that could be a real proof. Now, comparative anatomy and selective breeding and all that kind of thing might extend to well, sort of back up your belief of something already proved, but it's not, they're not in themselves proofs a lot of those things will confuse people, but they are not really proofs. They don't prove it at all. And I disproved evolution.

   I took this paper to this woman and asked her if she would read it. I came back a couple of days later and she said, yes, I read it and she says, I have to admit you are right. She says, you have proved that you have an uncanny knack of getting right down to the one crux of the thing, the trunk of the tree. And she said, I've never seen it presented that way before, but she said, Mr. Armstrong, I have to go on believing it. You don't understand. I have been in higher education all my life. I have done graduate work for higher PhD degrees and other degrees at the University of Chicago and at Columbia University and at other great universities. And I have been in science and among scientists who believe evolution all of my life and it's part of me to take that out of my mind would be like taking both of my arms and cutting them off. You brought this to me too late. I can't give it up even though I admit you prove I am wrong. You know, it's too bad that anyone can get to that kind of a position.

   Now I prove then after that the authority and the divine inspiration of the Bible. And once I had that proved I had solid ground to stand on. Now, something else happened along. I found to my great and shocked surprise that no religion. Of course, I don't know that any, but the Christian religion claim they get their religion out of the Bible, but no religion and no Christian sect and denomination. But the one, as I say, the one Christ called The Little Flock that was the church he founded in 31 A.D. and no other church really got their religion out of this book. They simply didn't, it was not derived from the Bible, but rather it was derived from man. And they tried to make it sort of read into the Bible and make people believe that they got it out of the Bible. But they didn't.

   Now, for example, I looked at Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin." Now, wages is what you get paid for what you do, the wages of sin and what you do is sin and the wages you get paid for it. It says here is death. And I looked at that and I said, well, that can't be. I said, I've been taught all my life that the wages of sin is eternal life, not death, just the opposite. Of course, it's eternal life in hell fire. But you'll be roasting and roasting and roasting forever and ever, but never burn up. You just be burning, burning all the flame and burning but never burn up. Then I noticed the second part of this sentence, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

   Now that that hit me also. I said, well, I've already got eternal life. I'm an immortal soul. Why do I need to go to God and get it for as a gift and have him give it to me? I already have it. I was born with it. So, I began to look. Now I learned about that time if I didn't already know, I might have already known that much. But I was in the libraries where I had access to every kind of book. I went to the Bible, Concordances that will give you a word and show you every place that word is used in the Bible, and you can just turn to it in a minute and anything you can find it.

   So, I looked up the word soul and I found the word soul used twice back here in the book of Ezekiel. And in the 18th chapter Ezekiel 18 and verse four (Ezekiel 18:4), "the soul that sinneth, it shall die". Now that I've been taught just the opposite of that. You see the church I was raised in was a highly respected church, but they weren't preaching what this says, this says a soul will die. Now, I look clear away on the next page. And I find it again in verse 20 (Ezekiel 18:20) "the soul that sins, it shall die". Well, then I got to looking back here into Genesis, as I say, that was the starting point for both the evolution and the, and, and the Sabbath question. And I looked back here and I found that God said in Genesis 2:15, "And the eternal God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the eternal God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it for in the day that thou eats thereof, thou shalt surely die." Now, that was God saying you will die. Now, was that man a soul? Well, in the same chapter in verse seven (Genesis 2:7), it says "the eternal God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul". Man is a soul. And he says that soul will die.

   Well, I'll tell you, you can see why my head was swimming. I looked at evolution and what they were saying, it made this all look ridiculous. It made God look ridiculous. And finally, I found out that they are ridiculous and that God is true.

   Herbert W Armstrong will return right after this message.

   Well, life's been pretty good summer home, yacht, vacation when I wanted. Mhm. Some little kids sure spend a lot of time with that. Too bad they never last. Yeah, a lot of things are like that. The kids are grown now, mhm and sandy and I aren't getting any younger. Mhm. Is this all there is? You can know the answer to this age-old question. Why Were You Born? To request your free copy dial direct 800-423-4444. That's 800-423-4444.

   Then I looked up this matter of soul. I just had to had to run this down just to show you a little bit of how I started out. At that time, I realized I had taken it for granted. Did God exist? Is the Bible true? I had to know I wanted proof. This is the way I was going at it take in Genesis one beginning with verse 20 (Genesis 1:20). "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature." Now, I found that that word creature in English was originally written in the Hebrew language by Moses, Moses wrote nephesh. But translators have changed it into the English word creature. And then the next verse, God created great whales and every living creature. And it says the original of it that Moses wrote was nephesh that moveth in the waters bring forth abundantly after his kind. Every winged fowl after his kind. And so, and then again, in verse 24 and God said (Genesis 1:24), "Let the earth bring forth the living creature." Again, it was nephesh. I found Moses wrote the word nephesh, the living nephesh after his kind, cattle and the creeping thing and the beast of the earth after his kind. And it was so. All after their kind. Now, when we come to man over here in Genesis, two verse seven (Genesis 2:7), man became a living nephesh. But why did they change it and call it soul? They call it soul when it comes to man. And Moses wrote the same thing. Man is the same thing as an animal. So far as that part of it is concerned. Now, the great difference is expressed in other words, there's a great difference between man and animal and that's mostly the spirit that is in man. And these scriptures right here, don't explain that, other scriptures do in the Bible.

   Now, it took me a little while to learn some of these things. I give these things to you, and you don't have to work them out through all the years and all the hours and multiple hundreds of hours of study that I did.

   Let's read right on verse 25 (Genesis 1:25), "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind and cattle after their kind and everything that crept upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image."

   Now, I learned that the word God originally was written by Moses in the Hebrew language as Elohim, and Elohim is a uniplural like the word family or like the word church. Many people but one church, many people can compose a family. But yet it's only one family, one group, a group may have many component parts.

   And now God said, "Let us" see, God is more than one person but one God. Now, in John one and verse one (John 1:1), you read that there "was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God". And there are two beings and that each of them is God. But we find later in other scriptures that God is a family and the one we think of as God, the father, the one that Jesus Christ prayed to when he was on earth is the father of that family. And we, if we are converted, are his begotten Children and we are to go on and become born of Him. And when we're born of Him, we'll be like He is and we'll be no longer flesh and blood, we'll be no longer human. We will be divine. We will be very God. And I don't know any religion that believes that but this Bible does. That's where I got it. I didn't make that up in my own imagination by any matter of means.

   And so you see God made the cattle after the cattle kind animals after their kind, then he made man after the God kind man was made after the God kind. And we find later, you see that God had said, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness," man was made to look like God, only man is made out of matter and God is composed of spirit. That's the great difference.

   Now, God has a head, he has arms and he has legs and he has hands and he has feet and he has 10 fingers and he has 10 toes. He has a nose, he has a mouth, he has eyes and all mentioned in the Bible, all of those things just like a human being. The disciples asked Jesus show us the Father, what is God like, God the Father? Jesus said, "Well, have you been such a long time with me? And you asked me that if you've seen me, you've seen the Father because he looks just like I do." Except at that time, Jesus was mortal in the human flesh and the Father was up in heaven, composed of spirit, at that time. Man was made after the image of God; a man was made to have a very special relationship with God. Man may be born of God as God is God. And as in the God family, even as Jesus Christ is now very God by a resurrection from the dead.

   And I'd like to go on from there and show you man's ultimate, ultimate goal, the ultimate purpose for which we were put on earth. No religion on earth can tell you, no government can tell you, no science can tell you, education can't tell you, what you are, why you are and how you came to be here and why, how did humanity come to be on this earth? Science gets all confused trying to work that out, but they don't know the answer and the answer is pure and clean.

   I'll try to come to that next time, but I'm gonna break off there now and I'll see you all next time as this program continues on. Goodbye. This Herbert W Armstrong saying 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. That's 800-423-4444 in California Dial direct 213-577-5225. The preceding program and all literature were produced by the Worldwide Church of God.