Herbert W Armstrong

   Since society is founded on lies, what are our chances for world peace in your time and mine? Since society is founded not on ideals but on the nature of man, what are our chances for world peace in the next few years? What are the chances of escaping nuclear annihilation as a result of the present situation of the world with the capability of destroying more than 50 worlds like ours? With a society that is founded basically upon lies, how can you define human nature?

   Well, the fundamental tendencies and feelings of mankind. When you take a look around the world, is it an error to say that human nature is basically vanity, jealousy, lust, and greed? Or is it a truism that human nature, with its pride, its vanity, its exclusivism, its group instincts, and its tribalism, is at the very root cause of the deepest ills of humankind today? And how far have we come to a real change in human nature in all these thousands of years of human experience?

   Of one empire after another, one city-state after another, one great new ideal or great new religion after another, if you can call them great, one war after another. And now the threat of Armageddon, the threat of that final great war which could obliterate all of humankind. You know, it's not so much the religion of the Western World even. And certainly the basis of the book for that religion, even though there are more than 400 differing and disagreeing organizations that claim to get the truth out of that same book. And this is a little bit confusing to anyone.

   It isn't necessarily the religion, at least the book, the origin, the source of that religion, that is in error. It is the cause of many of the wars of humankind. But the complete bullish obstinacy, the determination of so many adherents to religions not to live by what their own religion purports or teaches. It isn't so much the religion itself as it is the bullishness and the bullheadedness of humankind who will not live by their own religions.

   Now, most religions, all religions except one, and that is in the Bible called the true religion. All religions then, except that one, are man-made. Now, there are thousands, I guess you could say millions of religions really because you can't even count the number of tribal religions and various abstract ideas on other religions that may exist in India and places such as Africa. And we're always discovering in National Geographic some as yet new unfound small segment of the human race that had been isolated by its own particular jungle cover. Or they're down in the islands of Indonesia or in the Philippines or perhaps in the Amazon. And you will discover a religion there.

   In nearly all those religions, it is against the law to kill one's own brother in that society, but it's perfectly legal in all those religions to kill one's neighbor that is not a part of that society. Of course, that was true even in the Old Testament. A lot of people misunderstand the Ten Commandments. The one that says, "Thou shalt not kill," the Hebrew word is "rawtash," rawtash which means "Thou shalt do no murder." So, they think that this was some kind of a contradiction of God that is in the Bible, that God, on the one hand, told a human physical nation, Israel, "Thou shalt not kill," but on the other hand, said, "Go out and destroy your enemies."

   Well, it wasn't until the time of Jesus Christ who said, "Turn the other cheek," and that you're to love even your enemies, that the Christian concept of doing no murder, even to neighbor or to an enemy or to someone outside your country or your race or your religion, came to be the truth. In the Old Testament, they were allowed to kill an enemy, but they were commanded not to do murder within that society. And that's precisely what you find even in jungle societies of headhunters and cannibals. It's against the law for them to kill within their society.

   But in most, all these religions, even the major ones of the world, there are very great teachings about how to treat one another, how to act as one human being to another. The concept of brotherhood is to be found, at least to some degree, in practically every religion. From the simplest animism and tribal forms to the most highly developed and sophisticated forms of scientific, that it's called Christianity. The idea of treatment of another human being is always to be found there.

   Now, why the simple teachings of Jesus Christ, the carpenter from Nazareth, who gave us the statements in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 called the Sermon on the Mount, just why those need to be elaborated upon, enlarged upon, twisted, or distorted is a little bit obscure since it is all but absolutely impossible, without the help from some divine source, for any human being to really live by what it says in Matthew 5.

   Take Matthew 5 and apply it to a political leader, to a military general, to a college professor, or the leader of a great religion and ask how well their personalities and characters fit with what Jesus himself taught. He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Now, unfortunately, as you look around organized religion, you don't find an awful lot of people who are really just cast down, meek, and humble, and poor in spirit. I don't, as I look around the world, I see an enormous amount of pride and vanity.

   Now, maybe I'm just analyzing it wrongly. Maybe you wouldn't normally see that type of thing, but it's quite evident, quite visible. And of course, this is the type of stuff of which those who like to attack organized, or disorganized as the case may be, religions make great hay over in newspapers and magazines and whatnot.

   He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of..." It doesn't say "in," and that's a slight misunderstanding that many people have with the English language. The Kingdom of Heaven, and that kingdom is made up of four parts: king, territory, subjects, and laws, which any kingdom must have in order to be a kingdom. And it plainly states in the Bible that flesh and blood cannot inherit that kingdom. But you know, why bother with what the Bible says as long as you're gonna make up a manmade religion? Believe whatever you want to. Anyhow, the Bible does say, however, that the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, will be on the earth and that human beings will be governed by a ruling kingdom, a beneficent, benevolent, altruistic, magnanimous, all-giving, and yet powerful and ruling kingdom.

   Jesus said, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." I have never in all of my life seen a meek politician. I've never seen one. I've never even heard of one. There may be such a person who would hang his head and say, "Gentlemen, ladies, I'm not worthy of this job. I'm probably the least worthy of any human being around. I'm probably gonna make an awful lot of mistakes, and you're probably gonna make a mistake if you vote for me. But if by some fortuitous accident of Divine Providence, I am shooed into that office, I'll at least give it the old college try. I'll do my best knowing the enormous problems that I will face, knowing the fact that most politicians seem to be swept along by forces beyond their control. I'm a clad and I don't have the qualifications for any political office. I've always figured," he might say, "that anybody smart enough to be the president of the United States would be too smart to take the job. But," he might say, "if I do for some reason end up accidentally after this political speech of mine in that office, well, I'll just guarantee you I'll try to serve, but whatever you do, don't trust me because the Bible says, 'Don't trust any man.' Don't follow me. You ought to follow Christ."

   Now, I don't think you'd really believe you'd ever hear a politician get away with making a speech like that. Well in the first place, if he were that kind of a man, he would never be in some political organization in the first place. But if he ever did conceal his deepest Christian thoughts and got to the point where he was going to campaign for political office, no, he'd have to be busily muckraking and mudslinging and smearing the other person. He'd have to wonder carefully picking his way like a guide through a jungle, wondering just which trail to take, which issue to ignore, and which one to pound over the head. And he'd want to get a lot of advice.

   And if he had had in his personal past life certain scandal, if he had been known to award certain contracts when he was on the county road department or something like that to a brother-in-law, well, he'd better research real carefully to find out whether or not there is any possible potential for that to leak out because, you know, for a politician to ever admit that he really made a mistake and that he is human, that he was a dirty, uh, kind of a jackass in times past, let's face it, or that he was less than an A student in college or less than a hero during the time of his service. This tarnishes the old image, and you can't have that because politicians dare not have clay feet.

   Well, thankfully, Christ was not a politician. So, when he made the statements he did about himself—the Son of Man is meek and lowly and comes riding on the foal of a donkey—when he made statements about the kind of attitude his servants ought to have, he wasn't angling for a political office and prestige. He wasn't asking for a large following. He wasn't asking for people's support.

   When people came to him and said, "By what authority do you speak?" he said, "Well, I speak just on the authority of my Father, which is in heaven. If I did come with man's credentials, you would receive me," he said. "But because I come directly from God and speak on his authority, you will not receive me even if you won't receive him."

   Oh, he showed them that if he had documentation from the "respected" organizations of his day, the human beings of his day would have received him. But the Bible says he came unto his own and his own received him not. And of course, his own—all of humankind, not only the Jewish race of that day—still basically do not receive him. They receive their own private interpretations, their own watered-down, self-created image, their own choice little idols, their ideas of what they think a Christ might be if they had the chance to remold and reshape and reorder him in their own mind.

   Sure, man creates gods by the millions. But what about receiving into your mind and heart the attitude, the way of life, the lifestyle, the very approach and the thought processes of the Jesus Christ of the New Testament? How many people do you know who really do that?

   He said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the wrong place." They're going to have to stay where no Christian wants to be found when they're all tuned in to Radio Station Blood and hear the private call to get whisked away when Christ makes that near miss.

   Now, I'm not responsible for the rapture theory. I didn't create it. The fact that it isn't in the Bible doesn't bother me any. It ought to bother the people who believe in it that you cannot find the word "rapture" from Genesis to Revelation. That the play on Greek words of "epiphan" and "parousia" and "apocalypsis," the "parousia" being the one from the Greek word which they render "coming" as well as "appearance," and that's supposed to be a kind of a coming for his saints.

   I can't help it, but that Greek word "parousia" is used in Matthew 24 and many other scriptures in which it talks about his coming with a loud shout and the voice of an archangel. If that's a secret coming and the archangel is splitting the heavens with a voice that is going to rend the rocks, well, that's what the Bible says.

   But you know what it says in Matthew 5:5? That's an easy number for even people driving trucks and cars in the rush hour to memorize. Go home and look it up. I dare you, in good spirits, good humor, and fun. Of course, I dare you. Look it up. It says, "The meek shall inherit the earth." And what do pastors of churches who believe the meek are going to heaven do with that?

   I never really have asked anybody because I don't want to get into religious fights and arguments. And I've always been of the opinion that all you've got to do is embarrass a preacher, and that's about the same thing as cornering a bear robbed of her cubs. You had better flee in terror. And if he does really have the power to call down fire from heaven, as some seem to think they have, you are going to be minus your eyelashes.

   You don't want to embarrass a preacher by inferring that some scripture you have there may contradict something that he's been preaching or teaching. Because you better look out, you're going to get yourself fried to a burnt little Spanish peanut crisp, all delectable and ready for salt. It says, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

   Now, when you start to think of what that means, that means New Zealand and Tasmania and Australia, the broad reaches of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the entire North American continent, and all the vastness of South America, Africa, and Europe. Think of the beautiful places you know of on the earth: North and South Island, New Zealand; the Alps of Austria; or the area around Garmisch, which is particularly beautiful; Switzerland. Think of the American Rockies. Think of the Brooks Range up in Alaska. They're going to Marianna and Islands of the Pacific.

   How about that for being meek, he says, and becoming a part of the family of God and inheriting what he called the Kingdom of God, which is to rule on this earth? You inherit this earth instead of some fanciful idea about being on a bunch of gold bricks, surrounded by gold buildings, walking around, comparing wings, and listening to music, plucking on harps, and doing whatever it is people do in this blissful ethereal retirement that stretches on for billions of years.

   Now, I've done some research into this. We've had our television crews go out and talk to senior citizens and retired people, and I have never seen such futility and so many bored expressions and people who are just feeling kind of bored with life and not knowing what to do as you find among the retired. It's difficult for such people, especially if they had a really active life before. And if their jobs were really interesting or rewarding to them, which I admit is rare. But if it had been so, then somebody saying rather pathetically, he's up in his fifties, he's decided to retire, or maybe his sixties. Oh, I don't know. He'll say, "I think I'll do a little fishing and a little travel maybe. And, I don't know, maybe try to make a few new friends and, well, what else are you gonna do? Well, that's probably about it. Mostly just little fishing and looking around." And the poor fellow is so bored, he's just beside himself.

   Now, you know, after you've done that for 20 years, you'd be bored too. I enjoy getting out in the mountains. I enjoy hunting. I really do, but I only like it in small doses. I wouldn't want to be on a hunt for a month. That would absolutely drive me up the wall, up the mountain in this case. I'd go nuts, I think, if I had to be in that environment for one solid month. Now, if I had something to do, like a chainsaw and a log cabin in mind, and maybe some seed to put in the ground, that'd be something else again. But, I mean, just out there in a tent environment, looking around, chasing over the mountains, hunting deer or elk for a solid month would about drive me up a tree.

   I need variety. Not just me; I think everybody does. I think the idea of an 8-to-5 job for a lot of people, doing nothing but tightening bolts and nuts, is something that does drive them a little nutty. And this idea then of Christian retirement, which basically is the whole backbone, the heart and the core of the so-called Western Christian religion, is to go through all kinds of agonizing things. In some cases, that means black hats, square-toed shoes, and high collars. In other cases, it means other weird or strange, bizarre forms of dress. In still other cases, and they still call it Christian, it means marrying a man—a man marrying a man.

   There is such a church. They were going to bake mince pie and have a mint thin. Oh, they were called happy. No, that's not it. They were happy, uh, uh, frivolous. No, gay, that was it. Yeah, gay. So it just depends. I mean, people hang the label "Christian" on anything, any kind of a man-made religion that suits their fancy, and they call it Christian, which is interesting. It's at least a commentary on human nature and the fact that society is indeed founded on ideas of man rather than ideals—that it's founded on lies instead of truths.

   Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And that's the truth according to the Bible. Isn't it strange that most people who claim to believe the Bible don't believe that simple statement in Matthew 5 and verse 6?

   Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. What is righteousness? A lot of people are pretty mixed up on that. Most people would say righteousness is pretty much a self-appraisal of one's own righteous worth. Drawing yourself up to your full height with all your flatter is your garments, which is the same thing to a Christian that medals on the chest are to a military general—all the good deeds of yesteryear glittering in the sun.

   Righteousness is pretty much a person's self-image, self-appraisal of how well he measures up to all the real ultra-sanctimonious ideas of other people.

   Now, Christ was righteous, completely and totally righteous, but you know, his feet got just as muddy and dirty as anybody's, and his clothing was just as commonplace and everyday as anybody's, and his beard was probably just about the same size as most of the people during that day. He didn't have long hair. The Bible proves that, but that doesn't mean that if somebody did, Christ was going to spit on him, curse him, call down fire from heaven, or even sit on his chest and grab the sheep shears and take care of the problem.

   Because, you see, Samson and the Nazirites who took a Nazirite vow, which was one way to become a priest actually by a vow of abstinence in that day—if one was not normally born of the tribe of Levi—it was still an avenue to become a servant of God and therefore a member of a priesthood as a result of a Nazirite vow. Now, if you saw a man walk by in the Christian era that had shaved his head bald, I don't know, maybe you're a good Christian professing person. You probably go to church. You'd say, "My, look at that horrible egghead over there. Well, that looks weird. Who does he think he is? Yul Brynner?" I don't know if you'd allow him in the front seat in church or not.

   But now, Paul took Aquila, and the commentaries aren't quite sure whether it was Paul or Aquila who did it. But because there were others there who might have felt a little weird if he didn't, he was willing to shave his head bald just like an egg or like a cue ball in order not to appear as if he were putting down the rather narrow-minded Pharisaical ideas of some of those people. Yes, and this was in the early Christian era. It was several years after the crucifixion of Christ. But because those around the temple in Jerusalem were still pretty narrow-minded and Pharisaical in their traditions and their beliefs, the Apostle Paul or Aquila—whichever one of the two, either one, take your pick, they were both Christian leaders—were willing to take a vow which in this case involved the absence of hair.

   All of which goes to show you there's nothing all that holy about human hair, and that is not a giant issue in the Bible. But it's made an issue by many, many religions. It was made an issue clear back in ancient Egypt. It is an issue today. Many of the people who like to think of themselves as good folk, Bible Belt, middle America, would look down their noses in absolute scorn, mixed shame, pity, and disgust at a youngster who would allow himself to grow long hair.

   Now, I know the Bible does not allow, does not say, and certainly does not teach that a person ought to have long hair in society today, and Christ did not. And if a person is going to tell me, "I'm wearing long hair because Jesus did," then I'm going to prove to him he's not either. But if he says, "I'm wearing long hair because I'm rebelling," I can say, "Well, that's your business. If you want to be a rebel and you want to wear it, I suppose you can do anything you want. You can let dirt accumulate under your fingernails, you can grow hair out of your ears if you have that as a potential. You could shave your head. You could wear one strip of hair right down the middle like they did when I was in high school and they called it a Cherokee or something like that. Mohawk. I beg your pardon? Haircut. That looked kind of weird. That didn't last very long, but a lot of college kids did that.

   But they used to make hair length a religious matter way back in ancient days. And you know, people just get so righteous when they begin to compare and to make those comparisons. So many people who would call themselves good folk, Bible-believing, Christian-professing folk would draw themselves up to their full height and say, 'dirty hippie,' when a youngster walks by who, after all, is nothing more than a product of his society in precisely the same way that a kid with a crew cut was a product of his society in 1942. Why did most youngsters back in the war years begin to wear crew cuts?"

   Well, first the military began, but it became a popularized style even in high school. So, everybody started to swing that direction. In the early colonial days, I suppose many young men who rebelled against the big, longer white wigs and hair began to close crop their hair. After all, when you're running from Indians through the trees, you didn't want long hair. I mean, even Absalom could prove that for you. He got tangled up in an oak thicket.

   I suppose that when first men took off the long hair and rebelled against the Benjamin Franklin appearance and that type of thing, and George Washington, some of the early leaders of the country, and began gathering it up in a little knot, later on, they began just cutting it off altogether. They were probably looked upon as a bunch of young rebels. I haven't researched to find out what early American Presbyterians and Episcopalians and Lutherans and Baptists and Methodists and others. I don't really know to what extent hair was a big issue with them then, but I know that it has been down through the ages.

   "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness," Jesus said. And what is righteousness? The keeping of God's Ten Commandments. And that is summarized by the two great commandments that Christ said: love toward God and love toward your neighbor. And he defines your neighbor as any other human being on earth. And love is defined in the Bible as an outgoing concern, a desire to serve, to help, to share, to give—not a power struggle, not comparisons, not status consciousness.

   Jesus said, "Let him who is least among you be your leader and your minister to serve you. Take the least seat at the banquet." The teachings of Jesus Christ, if applied, would revolutionize the world, but they do not fit in contemporary society. They don't fit in business. A man who would, he could argue, follow the real teachings of Jesus Christ, who would be merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, who would say, "I'm blessed when they persecute me. I am blessed when they take advantage of me. I'm blessed when they cheat me." That when somebody comes and tries to take advantage of me or to wreck his business, he just thanks God for the trial. He turns his cheek when he gets hit; he doesn't hate anybody. No, not even the communists. He can look at them and realize they've been victimized, that they're just poor trapped souls who don't know any better. He can have mixed love and pity and everything else toward them, but he will not hate them.

   The dirtiest harlot that he could ever discover in the red light district of New Orleans or Memphis or someplace else, he wouldn't hate but love and pity and hope maybe someday she could be straightened out and get out of that. But he would argue, "Huh? You're never gonna get ahead in this society if you want to live like that." And you know, you have to agree with him if there is no God. And depending upon what you mean by "get ahead," first, if there is no God who can bless him, but that's a mistake because there is. Then his argument might be valid, but it's not valid because there is a God. And secondly, it depends on what you mean by "get ahead."

   Society in the Western world has gotten ahead. America is ahead. It's number one in a lot of areas, and look what the hazards are for the benefits we've reaped. Look what society and modernization and technology and scientific invention have done to us today. Now, that very pursuit of material goods threatens to exterminate us. So instead of the good life, we used to talk about the good old days and the simple life a lot.

   Well, instead of the real good life, it may be altogether too late to even go back to what we might like to call the simple life today because there isn't enough available real estate and there are too many of us. So, in our headlong rush toward materialism, often if not the blessing of various organized religions, we have succeeded now in trampling up and down, scarring, besmirching, polluting, ruining, destroying and rendering all the more sullied and ugly practically the entirety of the face of the earth.

   So, you don't want to always blame religions, maybe just people who don't live by them. When will there be a group of people who will live by every word of God and exactly what Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount? When will men learn to live by the teaching of Christ instead of commercially marketing only a portion of them and denying the rest? And where does hatred, vanity, jealousy, competition, strife, grief, power struggles, chew-outs, massive anger, rank and status consciousness fit in the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings in the life of Jesus Christ?

   Think about that. You ought to take a look in the pages of the Plain Truth magazine every single month and get this kind of material. It goes back to appraise and take the pulse of the American spirit and to find whether we are experiencing a character dream. For an American to be offered something free is just like a fish with its mouth wide open, taking a very suspicious look at a little anchovy struggling, wondering whether there's a hook in it.

   I remember one chap who wrote in and said that he'd listened to the program for over 15 years or better and finally decided to write for the Plain Truth magazine. He was amazed when he discovered it was free of charge. After all, your subscription has been paid. All you need to do is to write Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. Remember, there is absolutely no advertising. There is no charge. There is no request for money in the literature. It's yours, gratis, if you will send your letter and tell us the call letters of the radio station over which you've been listening. So, Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye, friends.

   You have been listening to The World Tomorrow. If you would like more information, write to Ambassador College, Box 345, GPO, Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College, Box 345, GPO, Sydney, New South Wales.