Herbert W Armstrong

   Well, greetings friends. This is Herbert W. Armstrong with the good news of the World Tomorrow. What does prophecy say of the immediate future ahead in the world today? Is Russia going to plunge us into World War III? Is the second coming of Christ the next prophesied event? What about this great tribulation you have heard prophesied? Where does Armageddon come in? Is there going to be a rapture? Is the church going to be taken out of the world and up to heaven before the great tribulation, or is the second coming of Christ the immediate thing after the great tribulation? When is the second coming of Christ to occur, before or after the great tribulation? Just what is the time order of things that are going to happen? You, my friends, are going to live through all of these events, whether or not you realize it.

   You can play the ostrich. You can hide your head from these things now. You can say, "Well, we're getting along pretty good now, and the present idea is that war is a little farther off with Russia now than we thought it was a year or two or three years ago." And that's true. And Russia is pretty busy over in Asia right now. And you may think, "Well, the outlook is for an upturn in business now, and we've had a slight readjustment for about a year, and it looks like things are going to get better. So why should we worry about the future?"

   Let me tell you, my friends, that we're in the time of the end of the very period that has been allotted by God Almighty. In working out His purpose here below, He has allotted a period, a duration of 6000 years for mankind to have the free moral agency of deciding for himself whether he will accept the government of God or whether he will reject God's government and set up his own. And God has left us free to do that exact thing. God has made us free to accept His government, to put ourselves voluntarily under his rule, and to have all of the benefits of that rule and all of its blessings, its prosperity, its peace, its happiness, and everything that we all want. Or to reject his government and to do as we please, and to follow our own inclinations and ideas, and to set up human government on this earth, and to reap the sorrows and the retribution and the fears and the frustrations and the unhappiness and the pains and the sufferings that are besetting this unhappy world now.

   Now, you can go your own way. God allows you to do that now, but that time is going to end, and it's going to end in our generation because we are at the very end of this world. This world is the world that man has built in defiance of God by rejecting God Almighty, by rejecting God's laws. God gave our first parent in the garden of Eden the opportunity to obey him. God gave him commandments, but he didn't enforce those commandments on the man. He didn't rule a man with a rod of iron. Now, Jesus Christ is coming in our lifetime, and when he comes, he's going to rule all the nations of all this earth with a rod of iron. They're going to be forced this time to carry out the will of God, and to yield to it and to obey it. But up until now, God has never forced mankind to do that.

   Now, perhaps a lot of people don't understand that. The thing is, my friends, some people do vaguely begin to see that there is a purpose being worked out here below. We're down at the climax of the period God has allotted for mankind to accept or reject the rule of God as he pleases. And the rule of God is the whole story in your Bible. The trouble is most of you have never read your Bible. You don't know what it says.

   Why did we need a savior? Why did Jesus Christ ever go to the cross? He did it voluntarily. Why, they tried to catch Jesus Christ time after time and to crucify him long before they finally did. But his time hadn't come, and he just slipped right out from under their clutches and would escape through the crowd or something. They couldn't have touched him if he hadn't been willing. He went of his own free will to the cross to pay your penalty and mine. We have crucified him. It is our sins that did it.

   And what is sin? The Bible says that sin is the transgression of the law, the law of God. You see, we don't want any of God's law. We want our own laws, our own ideas. And that's a very popular thing, to try to find some other way, to find some ideas where we can constitute something that Jesus said as a commandment, and make a whole group of commands of Jesus, anything to do away with the commands of God. Don't they realize that Jesus is the Eternal, the Yahweh, if you please, for the Old Testament that did the speaking of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai? How many people realize that?

   They seem to think that that was the Father. Like a relative of mine who is in society and who for years and years never attended church until there was a very passable church built by the millionaires in her particular city so that she could fraternize along with the wives of the millionaires. And it was a very social type of a church where they had a very intellectual minister with a good many degrees after his name, of course, Doctor of Philosophy degree, among other things, and who would preach very intellectual sermons of the type that the people like to hear. I attended that church once, and I noticed that the preacher didn't say anything except things that would flatter his congregation and show them how good they are, that they were the cream of the crop, they were the successful people that had the big money and lived in the fine homes in their particular city. And he preached just what they wanted to hear, and they were very proud of him as long as he would flatter them. He never told them their sins, and he could have told them plenty.

   You know, I remember that one time I was invited into a very wealthy home where a good many such women, I don't know whether they were socialites to the same extent this other woman was, but nevertheless, most of them I noticed were driven to this particular religious meeting that I was asked to conduct one afternoon. And most of the ladies who were driven there were driven by their private chauffeurs in their large eight or nine-passenger chauffeur-driven automobiles. And I had a group of, I took it, rather wealthy women before me, and I said a few things about money and about wealth.

   You know, God doesn't wish us to be poor as far as that's concerned. And there is no evil in having money provided you know how to use it. But money is good or bad, depending on how it's used, just like everything else. But I gave them a little of the very teaching of God from the Bible about it, and they didn't like it. They even tried to stop the service and what I was saying in the middle before I was through. But I was in charge of that service, and as long as I was, I kept charge and they kept silent, and they sat there and listened until I got through.

   Now, the lady in whose home I was speaking had been a contributor to this broadcast, and the contributions, I noticed, stopped at least at the time. I think perhaps there have been one or two since, but nevertheless, the regular contribution stopped immediately. Well, I wasn't there to make money for this broadcast or anything else. You know, this broadcast is a work of faith. God Almighty has set me here, and I rely on God and depend on him and not on people any place, and we won't give any quarter to people because they have money, and we won't show any respect to persons because they have money under any circumstances whatsoever.

   Listen, God Almighty, whom I serve, has all the money, all the silver and the gold in this world. He says it's all his. Now, he's allowing people to do what they want with it, but you know, God does work through human agencies. He works through his people whose hearts are yielded to him and that he can use.

   Herbert W. Armstrong will return in a moment, but first, this offer concerning literature of related interest.

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   Well, God's purpose is that we come into his government and then that we can be born by His Spirit into his family. And that's something this world doesn't grasp. They don't seem to know anything about it. Now, God has mapped out a 7000-year period for doing it, the first 6000 years of which he is allowing mankind to go his own way.

   And listen, just before Jesus Christ comes with the dawn of the new world, the World Tomorrow, to bring us world peace and to bring us happiness, universal prosperity, yes, we're going to have universal prosperity. But before that time, Jesus Christ is going to rebuke strong nations that are far away from Jerusalem, where he will be at the capital of the world ruling the whole world.

   I wonder if you realize Jerusalem, Palestine, is the geographical center of the land surface of the earth. Jerusalem will be the center of the capital of the world, and Christ Jesus is going to be ruling the whole world from there very soon. And after nations are forced by physical force and power to obey God and to carry out the laws of God, then we're going to have peace on this earth.

   I suppose a lot of people have thought that just the very split second Christ comes, there will be automatic prosperity that will just blossom out, and everybody will find that all of a sudden they have lots of money in their pockets, and that we have all this peace, and that just the second Christ comes all nations, including the Chinese and the Russians and the Egyptians and all of the people of India and of all the foreign religions, will open up their, they'll spread out their arms openly up to the sky under Christ and accept him overwhelmingly just the second he comes. Is that what you thought?

   You know, I think a lot of people that have studied the Bible to some extent and think they know something of prophecy believe that's the way it's going to happen at the second coming of Christ. Well, my friends, that is not the way it's going to happen. But there are going to be armies there in Palestine actually, and there will be a World War on, and they'll be fighting against Christ when he comes. And there's even going to be another war and another attack after that to come up and try to upset all of the saints that are at Jerusalem, Palestine, ruling with Christ, and to take the government of the world away from them. They're going to be supernaturally driven back, of course.

   You know, in ancient times, when the kings of Judah had no army whatsoever, and they were invaded, in one case in Judah, with three allied armies, and they had no army, and they relied on God, and God acted. You know what happened? Those three allied armies were all destroyed before the men and the women of Judah, singing their songs and with their songs of praise, marching down towards them before they even reached where the armies were that were marching towards Jerusalem to invade them. The invading armies were all destroyed. God did that. He just acted. As a matter of fact, in that case, he turned them one against the other and started them fighting themselves. But God has many ways of doing it.

   Well now, what is going to happen from now on? We were going into that a few days ago. Let's get back into it. And I think we were starting here in Matthew 24 when Jesus was on the Mount of Olives. His disciples had come to him privately, and they asked him two things. They said, "What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world or end of this age?"

   Now, Jesus had gone on to show that there would be false teaching all over the world, deceiving people, that there would finally come war, and it would finally rise up into World War down at the time of the end, and then that there was to be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in different places. Now, all of those, he said, would finally be the very beginning of a great time of trouble or tribulation, of a great tribulation. That is the beginning and only the beginning.

   Now he said, "When this tribulation comes, then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you." But before this, and it is before it, as you read in Luke's account, I believe it is, or Mark's account, it's in Mark 13 and in Luke 21, I believe it's in Luke's account if I'll turn to it here just a moment, where Jesus intervenes to say that before this, before this great tribulation, before these things, certain other things will take place.

   Now, among the other things that happen just before the great tribulation, this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end of the age come. Now, just before we come down to this very end, the very end time, when the end events, the last events of this world, of the government of man on this earth, the gospel of Jesus proclaimed is to go to all the world. And it has not been going to the world for 18 and one-half centuries, and now it is going around the world. But it is not yet going to all nations, and it isn't going as thoroughly and as intensely as we know God is going to shout it and thunder this message to the whole world. But it is starting.

   And then he shows that the people of God that are really having a part in the very work of God, because the church, my friends, is the body of Christ. It is the body that the same Spirit is working in doing the work of God and the work of Christ that was done in the physical individual body, the personal body of Jesus when he was here 1900 years ago. He went to heaven. He was taken bodily to heaven, and his resurrected body, a body composed of spirit, it was a body of flesh and bone, but it was composed of spirit, and he went bodily to heaven. But then he sent the Holy Spirit to enter into the collective body of all of his disciples, and all who are his true disciples are that body through whom the Spirit of God works in doing the work of God.

   Now, the work of God for this time is the spreading of this gospel to the whole world, the gospel of Jesus preached, the gospel that God sent by Jesus Christ, and it is going around the world. Now, the real people of God that are surrendered to God, that have voluntarily put themselves under his law, and sin is the transgression of that law, and the only reason we need a savior is because we've broken that law, and he came to pay the penalty in our stead to reconcile us to God, that we can have a connection with God, that we can receive his Spirit, which is the Spirit of the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, that will fulfill the law of God.

   Now, that body is a body that is filled with the Spirit of God, and that's the same power of God that was working in the physical individual body of Jesus Christ. It was a single body of Christ in those days. Now, it's the collective body of all of us who have the Spirit of God and are doing the work of God. Actually, we aren't doing it. God is using us as instruments and doing it in and through us. They are the people of God. They are the elect that no man can deceive.

   And Jesus said to them to pray that your flight, they're going to take a flight to a place of safety, pray that your flight will not be in winter, neither on the Sabbath day. They're going to flee to a place of safety.

   Now then, where are we now? The gospel is going to the world. We are in the time of World War. We're between the second and the third rounds of World War. The gospel is going to the world, now. The very next thing to happen will be the coming of the famine that will result in pestilence. And one-third of the people on this earth are going to be killed, or at least in our land, one-third of the people in America, one-third of the people in Canada and Great Britain are going to die by the famine and the epidemic of disease that will follow in its wake. One-third of us. And with a third of our people dead, with that terrible famine and the disease epidemic striking us down and striking people dead, every third person, till the physicians and the doctors, the hospitals, the medical profession will not be able to even begin to cope with it at that time, then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you, and you shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

   And then, as you take it over here in Luke's account, in Luke 21, let me read you how it is there in the slightly different language. It's the same identical prophecy of Jesus. They, speaking of our people, Israel, because in verse 22 (Luke 21:22), it says these be the days of vengeance that all things which are written shall be fulfilled. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations. And then Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the fullness of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

   Now, a lot of people have been misapplying that. A lot of people have applied that to the fall of Jerusalem back in 70 A.D. And so, in a sense, in a typical sense, it did apply to that time. But there is a duality of meaning in the fulfillment of all of the prophecies. And until you get that key, the very veritable key of understanding the prophecies, that there is a duality in the fulfillment of them, there is a duality of principle in all of the working of God's ways. And until you understand that, you cannot understand the message of God for our time. No wonder these words have been sealed and closed up until the time of the end. But now the wise can understand, but none of the wicked will understand. And so, these things are going to come on them because they will not understand. They will not heed the warning as it is now going out.

   And what is going to come before God must send Jesus Christ to deliver us before all human life is wiped off from the face of the earth? Now we read that, speaking of our people back here in Ezekiel, in Ezekiel's prophecy. And Ezekiel, by the way, is a prophet to the kingdom of Israel. Ezekiel was not a prophet to Judah or the Jewish people, but to the house of Israel. And the house of Israel had gone into its only captivity that it has ever had up to this time. The house of Israel had gone into that captivity over 100 years before Ezekiel wrote his prophecy. I've given it to you many times how he was among the captives of Judah 130 years after Israel's captivity.

   And God says here that he is sent to the house of Israel. You find it in chapter 2 and you find it again in chapter 3. Moreover, he said unto me, "Son of Man, go speak unto the house of Israel." The people of Judah in the land of Judea and around Jerusalem were never called the house of Israel. The house of Israel had been invaded 130 years before by Shalmaneser of Assyria. They had been taken out of their land. Gentiles had been put into their homes and their cities and on their farms up around the land of Samaria where the house of Israel had lived. And now they had migrated Northwest toward, as a matter of fact, the advanced vanguards, the great majority of them by this time were in Northwestern Europe and in the British Isles. And here is the message to the prophet Ezekiel. He said, "Son of man, go get thee unto the house of Israel and speak my words unto them." But he says, "The house of Israel won't hearken to me. They won't listen to you, for they will not hearken unto me," God said, "for all the house of Israel are impudent and hard-hearted." He is a messenger to the house of Israel. It's in chapter 4. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel and so on.

   Now, in chapter five and verse 12 (Ezekiel 5:12), here's what he says: "And we, my friends, are the house of Israel." There is another key. Where is the United States mentioned in prophecy? How do you know this applies to the United States? But here's what God says of our people. And you will see how you can identify that this, speaking of the United States of America in this 20th century and also of Britain, and also of Denmark, of Sweden, of Holland, of Belgium, and all of those nations that we call the democracies.

   A third part of thee shall die with a pestilence, church of those that God can use, the church of which Jesus Christ is the living head, and we in that church are merely the instruments, the human instruments being used through the power of the Holy Spirit by God Almighty, through Jesus Christ, that flight. And this pestilence and famine is the very next thing to strike.

   A third part of thee shall die with a pestilence and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee. And a third part. Now here's the next thing, the great tribulation and the great tribulation. It is a time of martyrdom of saints that have not been accounted worthy to escape, that have not been taken in this flight to a place of safety. Many of the saints will be left behind. Many of them will not be accounted worthy to be taken to this place of safety, and the great tribulation will be on them. Many of them will be martyred. They will have to give up the word of God and the truth of Jesus Christ and turn from the Bible and turn to a pagan religion that will then dominate the world, or else they will be tortured unto death.

   Now, that is one phase of the great tribulation. And another phase is that our land is to be invaded by an invader. And it's another invader that's going to jump the gun on Russia even, and will strike even quicker than Russia does. And the third part shall fall by the sword, the sword of invasion. This is the word of God. And I tell you, my friends, the people don't see it. They say, "Oh, that's that man's interpretation." They say, as Jeremiah 23 says, the preachers will say, "Oh, that won't happen. You shall have peace." God doesn't say we'll have peace. When they say peace and safety, what? Then sudden destruction cometh upon them.

   But you, brethren in the church, are not in darkness that that day may overtake you as a thief, as you read in I Thessalonians, the fifth chapter. Now listen, a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee, and God says, "I will scatter the third part under the winds, and I'll draw out a sword after them." Those that remain, the third only remaining of our people, are to be taken as slaves and as captives into other nations. If we don't wake up and cry out to God for deliverance, now those who do can go to a place of safety. It need not happen to you. But if you don't heed this warning, it's coming.

   Now, we've got that much. We'll have to pick up there tomorrow. First, this gospel to the world, it's going now. Then the flight, perhaps at or just before or during the time of this great famine and all of that thing, and the pestilence. And then will come the famine and pestilence to be followed by an invasion of our land and the great tribulation that is going to be the most terrible time of trouble that has ever happened to any nation. And it's coming to our democracies that we pride ourselves. We're Christians, we say we're so great, and yet we're accepting Christ. We are believing on Christ, but we're not believing Christ. We are denying his message, the government of God, which is the whole thing. We're sinning against God, and it's time for us to wake up. When can we get our eyes opened?

   I say, if this is the truth, you can prove it. You can prove it in your Bible. You can prove it in your encyclopedias and your histories. The things that I give you, you can prove. You don't have to take my word for it. I'm not looking for followers. I'm just proclaiming the truth as a witness. And let me tell you, dear listener, right now, you listening to me, what you are hearing is going to witness against you in the judgment day. And you're going to be there, and you're going to bow your knees before Jesus Christ. If you don't want to bow them, he may have to break the bones, but they'll bow. I'll tell you that because Christ and God Almighty have said it. And when you're there, he's going to say, "Why didn't you check up and find out whether this was the truth?" Just because your friends didn't do it, just because you've been brought up in a different belief. Why didn't you check and find out? You have a mind to use, you have eyes to see with, you have 24 hours every day of time. You are without excuse if you don't find this knowledge.

   And let me tell you something else. Once you get this knowledge and know the truth and realize how this world has strayed so far from God, it's mighty dangerous knowledge because God is going to hold you accountable for it.

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   Send your request to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 111, Pasadena, California, 91123. You have hear the World Tomorrow with Herbert W. Armstrong.