Herbert W Armstrong

   Why did the United States and the Allies win World War II? You know, Adolf Hitler never would have started World War II if he had not felt absolutely certain in his own mind that he was going to win. He knew what he had. And one of the things that he had and depended on was what he felt was an absolutely unbreakable secret code for his intelligence officers. Now, it has recently been revealed and come into the world news that General Eisenhower has said that a decisive factor in winning the war was the Allies' breaking of that supposed unbreakable secret German code. It was a complicated—very complicated—machine called the Enigma. The English got hold of it. They managed to put a machine together and to solve it, so that they understood all of the secret information that was being transmitted from headquarters in Germany out to their various generals.

   Now, they knew where the Germans thought the big invasion would be on D-Day, the invasion across the channel. And so, they managed to have the invasion take place where the Germans least expected it. And that, of course, had a great deal to do with the Allies winning the war. Anyway, all nations have their intelligence departments and sort of secret services, you might call it, and their secret codes by which they transmit information. Enemies may even say it, but they can't understand it. They can't decipher it, they can't read it.

   All secret codes are inferior to the one great secret code that it seems has never been broken except to those it was intended for. And that is God's secret code. I think you've never heard of that. Now, we say that the Bible is God's message to mankind, and so it is, but what very few seem to realize is that God's message is a message to those of mankind that He has chosen to understand it. You know, everybody doesn't understand it. Why do we have in Christianity, and the Bible is the book of Christianity, so many different denominations? Every one of them seeming to think that the Bible says something different than that which everyone else thinks it says. The Bible is God's secret code, and only those for whom it was intended can understand.

   Now, in John 6 and verse 44 (John 6:44), here's something very few people realize where Jesus said, 'No man can come to Me except the Father which sent Me draws him.' Now, the only way any man can come to have eternal life, to have salvation, is through Jesus Christ. There is no other way except through Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ did not come seeking volunteers. He did not come seeking to just convert everybody. Rather, He called His own disciples. He didn't ask for volunteers. They were, you might say, conscripted and they were drafted. He called them. For example, here in John, the 15th chapter and verse 16 (John 15:16), Jesus said to His disciples, 'You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you.' They did not choose Him. He chose them. They were not volunteers. They were drafted, you might say.

   Now, Peter and Andrew, his brother—and incidentally, Peter's name was Simon. Peter was merely a surname that Jesus gave him, which was a title meaning he was—it's a title of a religious leader. A lot of people don't understand that too. That Peter was merely a surname or a title. You'll find that in the Book of John and elsewhere in the Bible. It's very plain for those who can decipher the secret code, shall I say, and can understand it? But it is there. Now, He had called them, and I want you to notice He spoke to the general public in parables. Why did He speak in parables? Well, His disciples asked Him that, and you probably have thought, what they did, that He spoke in parables to make the meaning more clear so they would understand. Just a parables you think, it's an illustration that made it more clear. Oh no, just the opposite, my friends, just the opposite.

   The disciples didn't understand when He first gave some of His parables. In the eighth chapter of Luke, and in verse nine (Luke 8:9), His disciples asked Him, saying, 'What might this parable mean?' And He said unto you, 'It is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.'

   Now, the Kingdom of God was his message that He brought from God—the Father. The gospel is a message, and the gospel He preached was the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Mark one, verse one (Mark 1:1): 'The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.' Verses 14 and 15 (Mark 1:14-15) 'After John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel—what gospel?—of the Kingdom of God, and saying that time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the gospel.' Repentance and belief, the two twin conditions to receiving God's spirit.

   If the spirit of God is in us, by then we know that we have been begotten as Children of God. But now He explained unto you. He had called them, now to open their eyes and to you, 'it is given to know the mysteries—now, mystery', something that is mysterious that people don't understand, and people don't understand about the Kingdom of God—understand the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. But to others, in parables, He spoke in parables 'that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand'.

   It was like a secret code. They would see, and you can see a secret code, but you can't read it, and you can't understand it, and you don't know what it's saying. And every government in the world has its own secret code.

   You know, on the day of Pentecost, when the church first started, the very day that the church first started, Peter preached a sermon that day and many were pricked in their hearts by what he said. And they cried out and said, 'Well, what shall we do?' And Peter then said the same thing Jesus has said, 'Repent and believe.' He said, 'Repent every one of you and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is to you and to your Children, to those afar off. As many as the Lord, our God, shall call'—not to everybody, 'but as many as God shall call.' You have to understand the doctrine of predestination, which is in two different places in the New Testament: in the eighth chapter of Romans, in the first chapter of Ephesians, to understand it.

   And people don't understand predestination. It has nothing to do with the decision you're going to make or whether you will be saved or lost, whether you'll be converted or whether you will not be. It has to do with the fact that God chooses those he is calling now. Now, ultimately, God is going to call every human being that ever lived. But there have been many that have lived and died and have never been called and never had a chance. The chance has not come yet. It will. And that's another mystery that people just simply don't understand.

   You know, a lot of people can't understand why in the Bible, when people die, it says they're asleep, and it calls death a sleep in many places in the Bible. And a lot of people don't understand that. Well, it is exactly like a sleep—a real sleep. There's no dream in it at all, but you wake up and your consciousness is like the next fraction of a second, and you're in another life. It's appointed to men once to die. But after this, the judgment. And in I Corinthians 15:22, the resurrection chapter, it says, 'As in Adam, all die'—everyone who ever lived dies in Adam. Adam died, and we're all the Children of Adam, and all people die. 'So, in Christ shall all—the same—all who died be made alive'.

   You wonder what has happened to your loved ones who died. I'm gonna preach on that some of these days. They're coming back to life; they're going to be alive again. And when I do preach on them, maybe it will give you a lot of hope that you haven't had before. So, keep listening anyway. Predestination simply has to do with the time of your being called. And there's a purpose why some are called now.

   They have a Satan to contend with, and others called later are not going to have that. They're going to have a better time than those being called now. And a lot of people are not being called now. Now, the Apostle Paul preached to people in a very plain language. He didn't speak what I would call today, the language of scholarship. The language of scholarship seems to be like a secret code too. It's, it's a very intellectual language and, most people, who have a Ph.D. after their name would speak more or less the language of scholarship, and especially in university circles. And, faculty members love to speak in that language of scholarship. And, I remember the United States Senator who had been president of, San Francisco University, I believe, said that, uh, in politics, the language of scholarship wouldn't do. And he had to leave that, behind and speak the language that people could understand.

   Well, in the Bible, God is speaking a language that very few people can seem to understand. Now, let me turn to the second chapter of I Corinthians, beginning in verse one (I Corinthians 2:1-11). He says, 'And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you, the testimony of God.' But he says in my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom. He didn't use, you might say, the language of scholarship or the type of, big words and the type of language that the common and ordinary people could not understand. And then verse seven (I Corinthians 2:7), he said, 'But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery'—in a mystery. A lot of people can't understand it.

   You know, Jesus said, 'I thank the Lord God of heaven and earth that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent but have revealed them unto babes.' And you know, the Bible is in a language that the most highly educated cannot understand. Why, why cannot they understand? And yet many people of lesser education and very little education can understand it. Now, here is Paul speaking to people that were not so highly educated. Now, Paul himself was an educated man. He was a highly educated man, but he didn't use his more learned words, which he was able to use, but he did not use in speaking to the people. He said, 'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world'—that is the leaders of the world—knew. 'For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory'.

   But he said, 'As it is written, I have not seen nor ear heard. Neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him.' For them that love God, spiritual knowledge has been hidden, and their eyes can't see it. Their ears can't understand it when you speak words. Their ears are the words, but they don't understand. But he says, 'But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit,' the Enigma machine that God has is something in your mind that will open up the secret code so you can understand it. And here it says, 'God has revealed them unto us'. The common, simple people, as a matter of fact. And you have to become as a child before you can understand the Word of God. In all your intellectualism, in all of the mighty wisdom of the world, you will not understand the Bible. You have to become as a little child. You have to be conquered by God. You have to receive the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God. That is the key that unlocks—you might say—the machine, the Enigma machine to open up the code so you can understand.

   So, it says here that God has revealed these things to us. But how? By His Spirit. It's not some machine but by His Spirit, 'for the Spirit searcheth all things—yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him? What man can know what man can come to the knowledge of human knowledge? For example, knowledge of chemistry, knowledge of astronomy, knowledge of certain sciences and things of that sort.

   How do you gain knowledge of physical things? You gain all of that knowledge through the eye, through the ear, through the sense of smell, taste, and feel. You have no other way of gaining knowledge, and all of the knowledge of mathematics, of chemistry, of physics, of astronomy that you might have has come to the eye or the ear. Practically all of it—a cow could not understand. You can talk to a cow, you can explain it. You can let a cow see, has ears to hear with, he has eyes to see with the same as you have. He has a brain the same as you have. You probably didn't know that. But the brain of an animal is the same as the brain of a human. Now, they vary in size, but they're virtually the same in composition. And the human brain is not better, it is not in any sense significantly better, but the human mind is significantly—in well—is so extremely better than that of an animal that there is no comparison whatsoever. An animal does what he does by instinct. An animal does not have the reasoning process. He can't think, he can't know the things a human can know. An animal doesn't have what a human has, the psyche or the sense of love or of hate, the attitude, the reasoning powers, and all of the things of the human mind.

   An elephant has a brain. Well, what I believe is about three times larger than yours and just as good, but an elephant can't comprehend the things that you can comprehend. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in Him? Even so, in the same way, now, the things of God or spiritual knowledge, knoweth no man. No man knows the things of spiritual knowledge, save the spirit of God. And no man can know the things of God or the spiritual things, spiritual knowledge, except by the spirit of God.

   This human, every human has a spirit with his brain. What is the human mind? Do you know that even psychologists do not know? And they teach psychology and they teach many things in the universities, but they don't know the structure, the composition of the human mind. A human mind is brain plus human spirit. I mention that to one person and that person says, 'Oh, you mean soul?' No, I don't mean soul. Back in Genesis two and verse seven (Genesis 2:7), God formed man of the dust of the ground. That's what we're formed out of. That's what we're composed of. And breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life and man, the dust of the ground, now became a living soul. The dust of the ground became a soul. And the word soul is translated from the word that Moses used, which was Nephesh. Now, that is a Hebrew word, and the Hebrew word Nephesh was also used for animals.

   I want you to notice Genesis, one verse 20 (Genesis 1:20). God said, 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature.' And then He was speaking of fish in the water. The next verse, 'And God created great whales and every living creature.' Every living Nephesh, there again was the word Nephesh, same is used for a man. Now in verse 24 and God said (Genesis 1:24), 'Let the earth bring forth the living creature.' Then He's talking about land animals. Now we go back to Genesis two and verse seven (Genesis 2:7). God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life and man-made of the dust of the ground became a soul', the dust of the ground became a soul. A soul is made from the dust of the ground. It is not spirit, but there is a spirit in man, spirit essence. And there is an amount of spirit essence in every one of you. And it comes from your first breath. When you're born will remain in you as long as you live. When you die, the spirit returns to the God that gave it. The body returns to the earth from where it came. That's what your Bible says. A lot of people don't understand it, but now you won't learn this in the universities. You can learn it in the Word of God. If your mind is simple enough to believe God. But no, you know, the hardest thing for any person to do is to admit he is wrong, that he has been wrong, that he's wrong and what he has done deliberately wrong.

   I don't mean that they just made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. And I think almost everybody He's made mistakes, but not very many will admit they are wrong and they've been wrong. That's a hard thing. And the next hardest thing is to believe God, believe what He says. Very few do, you have to be willing to believe it before you can understand it. Now you have to have the spirit of God to understand spiritual knowledge. You have to have the spirit of man to understand human knowledge, the kind of knowledge that a human can understand.

   Now, we come down to verse 14 in the second chapter of I Corinthians (I Corinthians 2:14). 'But the natural man', that's when you're naturally born, 'the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God' or spiritual knowledge, 'for they are foolishness unto Him'. The things that the Bible reveals are simply regarded as foolishness to the learned with the PhDs and other doctor's degrees after their names in the universities, in higher education. And they don't realize that the greatest knowledge of all is in this book, which is not used as a textbook in many colleges and universities. It is just not used because it is not understood. They can't comprehend it. They just don't understand that when God first created man, He put two trees in front of that man and one was the tree of life.

   Man was not created with life in him. He only has breath and a temporary knowledge. In Job 32 and verse eight (Job 32:8), it says, 'There is a spirit in man'. And in verse 18 (Job 32:18), it says, 'The spirit in me, constrain me'. It constrains you, that is, it leads you, it has something to do with the way your mind goes. The first man rejected the spirit of God. The tree of life was simply a symbol for the Holy Spirit of God. He rejected it. And then God shut off the Holy Spirit and it has been shut off from mankind ever since. And it is only to those whom God calls.

   Jesus chose his disciples. They didn't volunteer. And He said, 'No man can come to Me except the Father who sent Me draws him.' And well, more on that later. And if you write in for The Plain Truth magazine and some of the booklets that I'd like to offer you, you will begin to understand things you never did understand before. Now, I have a new booklet just coming off the press. 'What Science Cannot Discover About the Human Mind.' Here is some knowledge about the human mind, about the mind and you, the mind and your little babies and your children that even a psychologist and a psychiatrist cannot understand. The most learned minds on earth cannot understand. This is a new book. There's no cost, it's free. I want to send it to you. I'd like to give it to you. It's gratis, no charge, no request for money.

   And also, I want to give you a year's subscription to the world's mass circulation magazine, The Plain Truth. We have just this week gone over the 5 million mark in subscribers, over 5 million copies circulation going out. 'Can the United States bring Peace In Lebanon?' is on the cover and the new Secretary of State of the United States, it's handsomely illustrated. It analyzes world news and gives you the meaning of world news, what it really means. And it looks at world news as God looks at it from the standpoint of the Bible and the Bible prophecy.

   Here's an article on Lebanon's Future. It's meant so much in the news recently, 'Lebanon's Future as Foretold in the Bible' and 'Good News Beyond Today's Bad News'. Another article, here's another one, 'United States Farmers Face a New Crisis', all just full of articles. Another one, 'When the Kissing Begins to Stop.' That is in married life, that when the kissing begins to stop, then the troubles usually do begin. 'Should We Use the Old Testament' of the Bible or only the New? There are even a few articles about religious and biblical subjects, but also about family living, about world news and analyzing it, and many things of that sort.

   Now, you don't have enough money to buy an issue. There's no subscription price and you just send your name to me, Herbert W Armstrong at Pasadena California, Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena California 91123 is the zip code or go to the telephone and call a free call. Dial 800-423-4444. Now this is a free call. You just dial 800-423-4444. So easy to remember, the lines are going to be busy if they are try five minutes later, keep trying until you get through or now if you live in California, Hawaii or Alaska, then call collect and we pay for the call, call collect area code 213-577-5555. That's area code 213 collect 577-5555. So, until next time, this is Herbert W Armstrong, 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 in California, Alaska and Hawaii call collect 213-577-5555. If the lines are busy, please try again. The preceding program and all literature were produced and sponsored by the Worldwide Church of God.