I wonder if you realize that the most difficult and the most important, by far, of anything that God can create or ever has, is holy righteous character. And I wonder if you realize that is something that even God himself cannot create. That's something that God instantaneously, by himself, simply cannot create.
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Now, character of that sort is the ability in an independent, separate entity or a living being that has intelligence and mind, the ability to know, to have knowledge, ability to think and reason, ability to come to conclusions and make decisions and one who is independent and who has what we call free moral agency. He can think for himself and one who comes to know the right from the wrong, the true from the false. And even though in his own human nature, it is a pull for the wrong, he will choose and do the right.
It not only takes knowledge, it also takes will and self-discipline to do what you find is correct and true and right, and yet we have so little of that anywhere in the world. However, that is the greatest thing and the most difficult thing to create that God has. And God cannot do that alone. For instance, the real purpose of humanity being on the earth is to create that kind of holy, righteous character. And I might put it in other words, as I've said, time and time again, that God is reproducing himself. He has made us in his image and his form and shape. God looks like we do except that God is composed of spirit and we're composed of flesh. We come in different colors and I don't know what you'd call a color, what God has, but his face shines like the sun itself. And if you ever look right into the sun, you tell me what color it is. You better have a smoked glass to look through when you look at though, it or it will blind you. And that's how bright God's face is, but he made us to become like that someday ourselves. And that is the part of the potential of humanity.
Now, I have shown you the beginning of God. We find a very prehistoric beginning in the New Testament in the book of John, first chapter. And the first verse (John 1:1): In the beginning was the Word. Now the Word 'Word,' and it is the capital 'W,' and it is a name here. It means spokesman, revelatory thought but revealer or spokesman, and the one who speaks. And the Word was with God. The same was in the beginning with God. Now, there you have two persons. All things were made by Him; without Him was not anything made that was made.
Now you read over in verse 14 of the same chapter that the Word (John 1:14), and this was much, much, much later, maybe millions or billions of years. We don't know. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and John bore witness of him. And we come on down to see that speaking of Jesus Christ in Ephesians, the third chapter in verse nine (Ephesians3:9), you will read that God has created all things by Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ was on earth, he said he had spoken nothing of himself, that the Father or God who dwelled in Him in spirit, he did the works and he told him what to speak. But now I'm getting way ahead of myself because in the time that I was mentioning here in the first chapter and first verse of John, there was no universe, there was no matter, there was just empty space.
God planned what to do, and he planned to create angels first, and he also was planning the physical universe. And I think he had it all planned before he even started the creation of the angels. But he created angels first, and there was still no physical universe. They were spirit beings made, created, composed of spirit.
Now we come down to the time when God created matter, and now we turn to Genesis one and verse one (Genesis 1:1): In the beginning, God created the heavens, and that is plural as Moses wrote it in the original Hebrew language. And in most translations into English and the Earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There is a point in how God creates, and science can't tell you this. And there is no church and no religion that will tell you because they gloss over, and they have access to the same book where you can get this knowledge and it's all here, but they have glossed over it all these years and centuries, and you will never hear it from any religious denomination. The method of God in creating God creates by a principle of duality. There is a first stage of creation, but it isn't complete. Then there is a second phase that completes the creation.
Now, I compare that quite often to unfinished furniture. I have a few pieces in my home here in Pasadena and they're very nice, very nice pieces, but they were just plain raw wood when I bought them in an unfinished furniture store.
Now, sometimes you can get very high quality, very fine furniture, but it isn't finished. And consequently, you buy it for a great deal less, but you have to finish it yourself. I didn't finish myself. I had it done; however, I would have done it myself. Only, I'm not skilled in that sort of thing. I'm more skilled in trying to expound the youth and truths that you need to know.
Herbert W. Armstrong will return, right after this message.
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God created the earth. He did not create it in its completeness, but he created it with all the facilities for creating. But he created matter. Now the matter in the earth is consists of so many different components and elements, for example, there is living matter that we would call organic matter, inorganic or dead matter that is not living like rock and stone and so on. But there is a certain life in soil else. How would it be that when you plant seeds, that something springs up and grows when it gets rain or water, and it grows out of the ground, and everything we have comes out of the ground, and it was all put here in the first place.
Now, there are so many things; we even have nuclear energy, and that comes onto was in the earth, but it wasn't formed yet into the form of nuclear fission as science has done at this original creation. So, the creation of the earth and of the other planets of our solar system, like Mars and Jupiter and Saturn and so on in our own comparatively little solar system, it's so vast that you almost break your imagination to try to understand it. They were all unfinished at the beginning, and this earth was not finished.
Now, as I say, God had created angels first, and the creation of angels was not finished. Wherever God creates, it's the principle of duality. Now, the one thing, as I mentioned a while ago, that God is trying to create above all, not try, he's doing it, is holy and righteous character. As I say, that's something that God alone by himself cannot create. And if something cannot be created instantaneously by fiat, simply cannot be. And the angels were not created complete. In other words, that character was not formed in them. And until that character was formed in angels, their creation was not complete. God created them all. But that now he gave them minds. He gave them knowledge; he gave them minds that could contain knowledge that could think and could reason with that knowledge and minds that could come to conclusions and make decisions. God also instructed them and gave them the way of life. That is his law. So, he gave them a government.
Now we read over here. I would like to have you turn to Job 38. So, he says (Job 38:7), 'Where were you, Job, when the morning stars,' and the stars, you will find, are a symbol of angels in the first chapter of the book of Revelation. 'When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' The reason the angels shouted for joy. This was to be their home, their abode, and they were to have the job of completing the finishing touches of this earth, of making it more beautiful. Now, it was beautiful as far as it went, and God beheld all that he had made. You will read back here in Genesis the first chapter. And God saw everything, the last verse (Genesis 1:31), that he had made and behold, it was very good, not very bad. It was perfect as far as it went, but it was not completed. And God intended the angels to complete that creation. And instead of doing that, now, in order to do it though, first, let me explain this: in order to do it, he set over them a government, and that government was based on his law, which is a way of life, and that was to keep them together, to keep them in teamwork, and all working together instead of fighting against one another. And so that they could accomplish it, but it was also a way of life, and it's a way of life based on the principle of love.
Now, love is outflowing. It's not something that's coming in towards you that you're getting or acquiring something. It's, it's giving. It is a an outgoing, loving concern for others and a concern for others of your own kind or other humans for us equal to your concern for your own welfare and your own good.
If you have that love of God, you are just as much concerned for the good, the welfare, and everything that is good for your neighbor as you are for yourself. And whether you know that neighbor or not, any other human being. Now, of course, love to God goes even farther. That is not its adoration of God in worship. But in reverence, because God is the one who gives us life in the first place. He is the creator. He is the one who designed the most marvelous mechanism ever made, the human mind and body.
And God is the one that we owe everything to. We love God by obedience and realizing He is the great giver of all. And that every good thing comes from God, but no evil comes from God.
Herbert W. Armstrong will return right after this message.
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Now then of the angels we find in Ezekiel 28 and in Isaiah 14 something of the one that God set on the throne over these angels and he was a super archangel; his name was Lucifer and he had extreme great knowledge.
So, God set this super archangel Lucifer on as the king over the earth to rule the angels with the government of God. So, they could produce and do what they were to do and working with the materials on this earth to make it more beautiful and really to complete the creation and in so doing to build their own creation and finish their own creation.
Now, the here's your duality principle again. The angels were finishing their own creation of the developing character, either good or evil while they were finishing the creation of the earth. Now, what happened? Second Peter, second chapter in verse four (II Peter 2:4), "For if God spared not the angels that sinned." Now, these angels are not holy angels. Apparently, this is one-third of all the angels; the other two-thirds are holy angel, but these angels sinned, they could have been holy, but they never went on to create that character to make them holy.
They could not be holy until they had the holiness of God within them. And that they had to, had to, had to take of their own knowledge and consent. God spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down to Tartarus. Hell is the wrong translation here. It isn't the kind of hell that most people think of it all and deliver them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment.
Now getting back once again after they had done this, what happened instead of beautifying and improving the earth, they polluted everything in it and on it so that deterioration, decay, and chaos came to the face of the surface of the earth. And you find that described back here in Genesis now because they had done this, God now determined to create man and to reproduce himself because in man, he knew he could reproduce himself into millions and millions and even billions of beings, human beings that will become divine beings that can have his character. And it's the most marvelous thing you ever heard of. Just such a, a program and such a plan as God has made to do it.
Then verse two (Genesis 1:2), And the earth became or was without form and void, it says was here. But the same Hebrew word is translated, became in other places here in this same chapter and darkness. Now that without form and void comes from the Hebrews words of Tou Bou, and it means decayed and empty and in chaos, and the face of the earth had been ruined.
Now, not only that, but I am sure myself from what I see in the Bible, I can't give you a direct scripture for that. But I think that you'll find someday that that God has revealed this to me through what he has revealed. And it is consistent in every way that at the same time, you see the angels, once they had perfected their own character, once they had really beautified and completed the earth and completed their own character, then the angels were to go to other planets all over this solar system and then all over the whole vast universe of outer space and create the billions upon billions of planets that do exist.
Now, this earth was their testing ground to prove whether they could do it or not. This is the one they were practicing on. But then they didn't make the grade. Instead, they destroyed the earth and in the same way, they brought destruction, and they brought decay to other nations now to other planets.
Now man was created and to do what the angels failed to do. And man is supposed to obey the law of God, and God gave it to Adam, and Adam had to overcome Satan and turn away from the way of Satan, which we, it was the way of get in the way of jealousy and envy, the way of, of vanity and greed and lust and the way of competition and strife and the way of violence and the way of resentment against authority, all of those things.
And this is a fraternity angels to the opposite way of resentment of hatred, of destruction, of tearing down instead of building up. God is a creator. He builds up; he doesn't tear down and destroy. And if we're to be God, we must learn to do that.
Now, God in six days remade the face of the earth. I've read that to you many times from the 104th Psalm and verse 30, (Psalm 104:30) "Thou send us forth thy spirit and they are created and thou renews the face of the earth." God has renewed the face of the earth after the angels brought it into a state of decay. And he renewed it now for man. So, once you read of in Genesis the first chapter. And after verse one (Genesis 1:1), beginning with verse two or three (Genesis 1:2-3), you read of renewing a recreation of what had been created but had been destroyed.
Now, man was put here to do the same thing and to build character and what have we been doing? The first man, Adam went the wrong way and humans have been going that way ever since and we have polluted everything that human beings can get their hands on of God's creation.
You tell me one thing that man has been able to touch or to handle of God's earth, that man has not polluted or destroyed or harmed or injured and you can't do it. But man thinks he's progressing and that's just it here we are in the age of the greatest progress. Well, you go back here 500 years ago, and they didn't have a printing press yet. And nearly all inventions and all of the things that we think mean progress have come in the last 150 years and I would say 75 or 80 to 90% of it in this century.
And it, well, more of it in the last 50 years than in the 50 in the 50 before that. It's just as if man had just been created about 100 and 50 years ago and we're just learning a lot of things. But what we're learning is certain physical, mechanical material things. That's why we can go to the moon and back.
But the spiritual reasons, the spiritual knowledge we don't have man is rejected. That's why a man can go to the moon and back and come down here and then divorce his wife. And that's happened. To one of the astronauts, I don't remember which one I would name him if I did. But it's just an example of humanity and how ungrateful we are and how we want to go the wrong way. We don't want to go the right way. We should be building up; we should be improving everything.
Now, the creation of the earth, as I said, was due. Now we come to the creation of man and how does God create man? He's creating man to reproduce himself. And there again is a dual phase and the first is the physical phase. And that began with the physical Adam.
And you read of Him back in the, the 26th verse in the first chapter of Genesis and in Genesis two and three (Genesis 26:1-3), and Adam started off wrong. Adam had the chance to resist the way the angels had been going and to accept God's kingdom. God's government. God talked to Adam and explained, Adam knew it was his own maker, his own creator, talking to him. He no excuse at all. He didn't let Satan get near him until after God had given him all the real knowledge. But also, God intended that Adam must reject Satan's way as well as accept his in order to qualify.
And he could have replaced this Lucifer who became Satan, Lucifer, who was once created as a perfect archangel. Perfect in all of his ways from the day he was created, you read in Ezekiel 28. And but he came to be Satan the devil and that was all his own doing because the characters I say God can't build that alone. You have everything to do yourself. I mean primarily to do with the, the building of your own character.
Now you alone can't do it either. You have to have God's help, but God will give you the help if you want to do it. That's why you were put on earth. The purpose of angel life was to build that character. The purpose of human life is to build that kind of holy and righteous character. And that is simply going the way of the law of God. And the law of God is the foundation and the basis of the government of God.
And because of what the angels had done, the government of God was removed from this earth. And so, the government of God is not on earth. But now we put humans on earth to build that character, and we have the chance just as the angels did, but we're not doing it. We're going the same way they did.
And but I, I said a while ago that God pronounced this sentence of being cut off from him for 6000 years. Now that 6000 years is just about up; it's gonna end in our present living generation. And I would guess that 2/3 to 3/4 of all of you people listening to me now are going to live through this time when this present world is going to be over.
That doesn't mean the destruction of the earth. The world is one thing, and the earth is something else. The earth is a planet we live on; the world is the system of society that man has built on that planet, and that system of society is rotten. It's filthy, it's damnable, and it's going to go.
And so, we're told to pray: 'thy kingdom come,' God's kingdom, God's government. 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' And not until then will we have any peace, any hope, or any truth on earth.
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