Herbert W Armstrong

   What has brought on the type of conditions that we're facing today? Where are we going, and why? And what is going to happen? The world does not know. And I ask you, why does not the world know? It could know. It should know. I'm going to tell you tonight, and some of you, most of you perhaps, will not believe what I say until it happens, and sometimes that will be too late.

   And now, with a continuation of the last program in this series, here once again is Herbert W. Armstrong.

   All right. Now, I turn over a little bit to the second chapter in Genesis and with verse eight, or verse seven first (Genesis 2:7-8). And the Eternal God formed man of the dust of the ground. Now get that. He formed man of the dust that, you came right out of the earth. An oak tree comes right out made of the dust of the ground, became a living soul. The soul came from the ground, and it is not spirit, it is matter. And your Bible says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Ezekiel 18 verse 20 (Ezekiel 18:20). That sort of stumped me when I first read it after I had been taught something else for a good many years as a boy growing up.

   All right, now, notice the next verse. And the Eternal God planted a garden eastward in Eden. We call it the Garden of Eden. God planted that garden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Eternal God to grow every plant or every tree that is pleasant to the sight and that is good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, there were two trees there, one was the tree of life. The other was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I want to come to that again in just a moment.

   Now, let's skip right on down to the 15th verse (Genesis 2:15). And the Eternal God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. You know, I learned something right there. He didn't put him in there to let it go down to weeds. He didn't put him in there to just lounge around and be slovenly and not do anything and not do any work. He put him there to dress it and keep it and maintain it and make it look good.

   Now, I built a college in Pasadena, California. Then I built a college over in England. And then I built another college in Texas. And the parent college that I built in Pasadena has three times now received the award, the National Award, of being the most beautiful, the best landscaped, and the best maintained college or university campus in all the United States of America. You know, I'm just a little proud of that. We dress it and keep it. We don't let it run down to weeds. It is beautiful. If you ever have the chance to come to California, come and visit Ambassador College and you'll see a very beautiful place. All of the sightseeing buses stop there and leave people there because it is so beautiful.

   And the Eternal God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but, but just one now he can't eat one, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."

   Now, he said, man will die. Do you believe that? You know, Satan came along and said, "Oh, now, look, God knows better than that. You can't die. You're an immortal soul; you won't die. Maybe you're going into another kind of life, but you don't really die." And you know, people have been believing that ever since. Have you? Have you been believing that? That's what Satan said.

   In the second verse here, Satan was talking to the woman, his old mother Eve, and the serpent said unto the woman, "You shall not surely die, for God knows better than that. See, God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened. You will be as God, knowing good and evil."

   So, it says in the next verse, and when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, that appealed to her intellectual vanity. She began to realize she had a human mind. These dumb animals, they didn't have minds like that. And it made her think, "Oh, how great I am. I can be like God. I can think. I can reason. I can think creatively." And it appealed to her vanity and her desire, and she took of the fruit thereof and she did eat and gave one to her husband also, and he did eat.

   Now, she was deceived. She didn't know any better. If you're deceived, you don't know it, or you wouldn't be deceived if you knew it. But Adam wasn't deceived. He knew better.

   Now, let me explain those two trees. The tree of life they never took of, that represents the Holy Spirit of God that you could have received. They could have received the Holy Spirit of God. They were free to take it. Adam didn't have to repent of anything. He didn't need the blood of Christ in order to do it. He had never sinned yet. When God told him that here you, you can have everything but that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of life meant that God would impart immortal, eternal God-life to him, but he never got it because he followed his wife.

   That was the first of the woman's feminine movement starting right then, and she led her husband into that, but she was deceived and didn't know any better. When they took to the knowledge of good and evil, they took to themselves the knowledge of what is good and what is not good, to decide themselves what is right and what is wrong. And ever since, man has been trying to decide for himself what is sin and what is right, what is good and what is wrong.

   How do you know what is good and what is wrong? Do you just believe what you find other people think is right and what they think is wrong? Well, people can be very, very wrong. Adam and Eve were wrong, and other people have been all the time ever since.

   Now, the fruit of the tree of life simply meant receiving the spirit of God, and God had given them a law. And God said, "If you take the wrong tree and disobey me, and you take to yourself the knowledge of what is right and wrong instead of believing what I tell you is right and wrong, you are going to die." That's the penalty. In other words, he told them the law, and the tree of life represented a law, and I call that law the law of give. But they took to themselves the knowledge of good and evil. They were out to get.

   So, there are the two ways of life, and only two, and they were out there. Adam and Eve had to decide which way they would go. One way of life, one way of life is the way of out flowing love, of giving, of cooperating, of helping with others. Some people will say, "What did you come to the Philippines for? What do you hope to get from us? What are you trying to take away from us?"

   My dear friends, we didn't come here to get anything from you at all. We came here to give. I don't expect to get anything at all. We didn't come for that purpose. We don't have anything to sell.

   Now, a lot of you subscribe to a magazine that I founded and that I published called The Plain Truth. Let me just see a show of hands. How many of you are subscribers? And how many of you read The Plain Truth magazine? May I see your hands?

   Ah, I see a lot of you here do. Well, let me just say it's, I think it's a marvelous magazine. There's no magazine on earth like it. And it does make the truth plain. And it explains to you the meaning of today's news and what is going on in the world today.

   And if any others of you want to subscribe to the Plain Truth, all you have to do is leave your name and address. Print it so we can read it and we will send you the Plain Truth. And there's no subscription price. We're not going to charge you anything at all. We're not trying to get anything from you at all. We want to give.

   There is a law that says to give, cooperate, to help others, to serve others, to share with others. I learned of that long, nearly 50, well, over 50 years ago, about 53 or 4 years ago. And for the last, over half a century, I have tried to live that way.

   And, you know, God has given me enough so that I can give even to your government and your people and help the labor department here and help the laborers of your country. And I'm giving to the king of Thailand every year. We're giving to the people over in Jerusalem and Israel. We're giving to the people in Egypt and to the people in Jordan, Arab nations. We're giving to people down in South Africa and in other parts of Africa. We're trying to bring about friendly relations between nations. We want to cooperate, we want to help. There is a law, and that is the way of sharing and giving.

   Now, the opposite way of life which transgresses and breaks that law is the way of vanity, the way of selfishness, of self-centeredness. In other words, "I love me and I don't care a thing about you. I'd rather see you get something and you work hard and produce something out of the ground. I'll come and take it away from you." That's the way things are. People want to get the best of everybody and every bargain.

   That's why stores have sales sometimes, you think that you're getting the best of them and you're getting something cheaper, and they know that people will do that, and so they have sales. Well, sometimes, you know, these sales are, there often really honest too because it's getting to the place where a lot of their merchandise hadn't sold, and they have to move it, and they'd rather take a smaller profit and give you a chance and get it moving than they would to hold it. So sometimes their sales are honest. I don't say they're always dishonest, but I do say that people like to get the best of the bargain.

   And so coveting, trying to get from others, an attitude of envy and jealousy toward others, people, and an attitude of competition and strife that leads to strife and finally to warfare. That is the other way of life. And that is the way that Adam and Eve chose. They took to what looked great to them, and it looked better to them to try to get and try to take than it did to give and to help and to share. And all the world has been going that way ever since, the way of get.

   That is a law. Look, I lift this book. I have to push to hold it up there. If I let loose, what happens? I didn't shove it down there. Something pulled it down there. We call it the law of gravity. There is a law. It's the law of outflowing love toward other people. Of course, it's love toward God too. Love to God, love toward your neighbor. That is a law. It is as inexorable. It is automatic. It's invisible, you can't see it, but it's like the law of gravity. You jump off the top of a high building, and gravity will pull you right down there just like it pulled that Bible down when I dropped it. Then there's another law we call inertia. It'll wallop you when you hit the bottom, and it will kill you too. If you jump off a building high enough, you won't live when you hit the ground. That is a law.

   And Adam and Eve started out breaking that law and going the way, not of love toward others, not of giving, not of sharing, not of helping, but the law of taking.

   Now, things got so bad, we read in the very sixth chapter of Genesis that things were so bad on the earth at that time that you know what God did. Do you think God was very mean and wanted to hurt people when he sent a flood and all of the people all over the earth, all of the people on earth drowned except just Noah and his family, eight of them? No, God did that in love for the people. They were going the way that was hurting themselves. They were hurting one another, they were making one another suffer, and the suffering was getting so great that the only way God could stop it was to let them drown.

   But God is going, in the next second of their consciousness, to bring them back in a resurrection. That will be 1,000 years from now yet. That hasn't happened yet. In the meantime, they've been unconscious. They don't know anything. You've been told something else. You ought to read what God says. This is what God says. I believe what God says. I believe God. A lot of people believe in God, but they don't believe God. They don't believe what he says. That's the difference. This is his word. This is what he says. He says that, now, mankind ever since has been living that way of getting.

   Now, what happened? The way of get is to take material things, things made out of matter, and everyone wants more and more of that. But people went along on this world and it didn't change very much, you know, for 5,800 years up to about 200 years ago. It began to change in a way about 400 or 500 years ago. It began to change when the printing press was invented. But most of our modern machinery and things have been invented in the last 100 years, most of them, because, as I say, we're gaining speed all the time going the wrong way and we're making extra fast time, and we are going somewhere. All right, we're going to our own destruction if we're not stopped. Believe me.

   Now, I'm coming to some of that. Today, the God I serve has provided me with an airplane. I fly over here in a very short time. What was it about an hour and a half or so from Hong Kong? I tell you, when I was a boy, anyone at that time, the ablest grown men, would have thought it was the biggest lie I ever heard if I said that I would someday be flying in about an hour and a half or less than two hours from Hong Kong and over here to Manila. But I did do it a week ago Thursday.

   Until the printing press came, science didn't develop and none of these modern things came to us that we have now. It's all come all of a sudden, and education now has become diffused until millions of people are educated now. And that did not happen back 400 years ago. Now, we came to the age of modern science, and most development has come in the 20th century since I've been alive. I told you about that a while ago.

   Now we're living in a very complex, a very complicated world, a fast-moving world. We go places in a hurry, we talk to anybody, any place, and yet we're having more troubles than anybody ever had at any time before. And we've come now to where our number one problem and all of our troubles, our number one problem is human survival. Can we keep alive even, or are the weapons of mass destruction going to be used, which will wipe us all off the face of the earth? That's the kind of time we have come to. It is now our number one problem.

   You know, we're at a time when a husband can't get along with his wife. I think you're not as bad about that as we are in America and as they are in Europe. Maybe you'll get along better here. But homes are breaking up over there. We're more advanced than you are. Put quotes around that word "advanced." We're advanced in the wrong direction, in the wrong way. So, husband and wife break up, and the home is broken up, and that is the very foundation of a stable society, is the family and the home.

   Now, one thing I'm doing, I'm trying to do all over the United States and in other countries, all I can to promote family and home life. We're at the place where we're falling apart at the seams in this world because our foreparents started in the way of "I want to get, I will decide for myself what is right and wrong, and I think what's right is that I take everything away from everybody else." Look at our competitive sports. Everything is trying to get the best of the other.

   Well, I was trying to get dress to come over here tonight. I noticed television was on in our suite, and there was a prize fight getting on. They were pummeling away, trying to knock one another's brains out. Why do we do that sort of thing? We try to hurt one another, we try to take from one another. We don't get along. All of our troubles and all of our problems are spiritual in nature. In other words, we're breaking that law of love, and that's a spiritual law. It's a spiritual law that is as much in motion. It is, as I said, as inexorable as the law of gravity. You break it, it's going to break you. You don't need a policeman around to catch you and take you to jail or take you before a judge in court either. The whole world has been breaking it, and the world is suffering, and all of our sufferings and all of our troubles are caused by breaking that law of give and by following the law of get. Everything, that is the basis of everything and the basis of all our trouble, and that is the law of the living God.

   And let me tell you, when Jesus Christ came, and he came to preach a gospel. And that was the good news of the Kingdom of God that is coming, and that's what we proclaim. And he came preaching the gospel of the good news of the Kingdom of God and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, ye, repent of going the wrong way, repent of living the way of get and take and of selfishness, and believe the gospel." The gospel of the world tomorrow, the gospel of the time of the world when God is going to send Christ back to this earth, and he's going to take over every nation on the face of the earth, and the law of the whole world and of every nation will be the law of give and of love and not the law of hate and the law of get and the law of take. And we're going to learn to live a different way, and we're going to begin to be happy all over the world.

   You people here are happier than our people are in the United States. Do you know that? Our people in the United States have more of this world's material goods than you people. On average, the average income in the United States is bigger than the average income here. But they're not as happy as you are, and the more you get the material goods, the less happy you are, and the more you want, and the less satisfied you are with what you have.

   Now, there is a great time coming, and a time of terrible trouble, but before we come to the time where man would blast all human life off the face of this earth, before we come to that time, the Eternal God is going to send Jesus Christ glorified as the great God in supreme power and glory. And he's going to come and rule all nations with divine power and force, and he's going to force us to be happy and force us to enjoy life and force us to have universal abundance, and everybody will live better, and everybody will have more, even the material goods. But you've got to live right spiritually before you can live right even physically and materially. And that is what is going to happen.

   Now, where are we now? What is going to happen in these next few years? There's a time of trouble coming, and then there's a great time of peace. You need to know what is going to happen. I want to go into the Bible prophecies. One-third of this book, the Bible, is prophecy, approximately a third. I never counted it all up to see that it's exactly a third, but it's approximate. And about 90% of all of those prophecies are telling of things that are going to happen, beginning to happen now and are going to happen in the next one year, two years, five years, maybe 10 years, and maybe sooner than 10 years. It's going to happen maybe before I can come back to the Philippines again.

   And tomorrow night, I'm going to open up this book, and I'm going to show you just what those prophecies are and what you can expect maybe in the next year, certainly in the next few years. And I can't set the date, I can't tell how soon it will come, but we're in the time. We're down into the approximate time.

   So, I'm going to leave you tonight with that. I'm going to have an astounding message for you tomorrow night. I'm going to open up the prophecies of this Bible with just what it says of our time that we're living in now for you tomorrow night. So, I hope that you'll be back, and I'll see you tomorrow afternoon. It is not tomorrow night. Thank you all very, very much.

   Because of the importance of this subject and other related topics, we are pleased to offer the following free literature: "The White Horse of Religion," "The Red Horse of War," "The Black Horse of Famine," "The Pale Horse of Disease." Like ghostly specters, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse appeared to the Apostle John in a vision. Were they merely a vivid nightmare of John's imagination, or are they a living prophecy for our generation? These prophetic horsemen from the Book of Revelation are too important to ignore. Our free booklet, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," explains the meaning of what Jesus Christ revealed to John. Be sure to request your free copy of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." Send your request to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 111, Pasadena, California.