Herbert W Armstrong

   And greeting friends around the world, this is Garner Ted Armstrong with the good news of the World Tomorrow. Tomorrow's world will be a world of plenty, a world of increased brotherly love. In fact, infinitely richer and better than any world that ever existed.

   Exclaimed the science editor of a well-known New York magazine. And you know, he's right, he's absolutely right. But you know, the way in which this science editor and the way in which most of you might think that world of joy, of peace, that infinitely richer and better world is going to come about is totally different than most of you have even remotely imagined.

   Well, to go on, speaking before a woman's club in Minneapolis, he said, as it was reported in a major Eastern newspaper in the United States, that the greatest hope and faith he could share with the club is that there will be a next 100 years. That hope and faith, he added, is largely a result of the atomic age and the benefits it offers and will offer the world. And some reason for this faith that there will be time going on the next millennium or the next 100 years or so, he said, are these, and I want you to listen to them and analyze them thoroughly. Perhaps you've never done this before.

   The United States has, he says, sufficient atomic weapons to keep communist nations at bay. We could destroy both Russia and China in a few hours and they know it. The communist nations themselves, he predicted, will disappear as all tyrannies have done in the past.

   Well, now, there's a lot to that, but let's analyze that statement for a moment and see what hope and what real planning for the future it gives us, what real sense of security, what peace of mind. The only trouble with that statement, is true as it appears to be on the surface, that just as fast as one tyranny disappeared, another two took its place. And just as sure as history has gone along from the time Cain slew Abel, clear back in biblical history, there has always been some new tyranny, and we still don't have peace today.

   So, the communist nations are going to disappear. That's true. But if there were not some major, some overall powerful, some supernatural, some great gigantic worldwide governing authority, which would be able to ensure and to guarantee that no new tyranny could take the place of communism, then you could not have any faith, you could not have any hope that history does not allow, and history does not allow you to have the faith or the hope that there will not be another tyranny to take its place.

   It will give you the hope that this particular brand and this particular type of tyranny may finally, of course, pass away or fade from the scene. At least you could have that hope. But my friends, I'm afraid that the communists could perhaps hurl back into the teeth of this individual that, well, you know, as tyrannies have disappeared, so have other countries and so have other governmental ideologies which have not been thought of basically as tyrannies. Because the weaker countries, perhaps, who have been instead of tyrannical, more along the line of some Republican or Democratic form of government, have also gone the way of all flesh. Haven't they?

   Take a look at the life that people were enjoying under the heyday of Ancient Rome. It seemed to be the good day, Pax Romana. They called it the peace that Rome gave to the world. And yet, even in spite of that label, the whole thing came tottering and collapsed into an absolute hodgepodge of rubble, and the world lost sight of it and plunged the world into a so-called dark age, the medieval times, out of which it finally labored and struggled through the time of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution.

   So anyway, you want to slice it, instead of rushing off here and there and attaching our hopes and dreams to each new pronouncement by each new bright young man who has a new particular slant on things. Let's come down to earth and let's take a look at history as it really is. And let's take a look at the present as it really is. And then that will equip us to take a look at the future the way it really is going to be.

   Now, the way history really is, is simply this: that today's present is the result and the sum total of all that is going on in history. And all of the potential wars, and the threat of war, and the fear of war, and all of the present-day tyranny, all of the malnutrition and the crime, all the various problems that are going on around the world right now today, are the sum total and the result of men doing that which comes naturally from time immemorial.

   All you need to do is to realize that men have been striving fervently in all history to achieve peace. But you see, different nations want to achieve peace in different ways. And so the communists claim they're after peace, and Red China says she wants peace, and Japan wanted peace, and Germany wanted peace during World War II. And all people claim to want peace today. But you see, it seems that some people can't have peace as long as other people are still free.

   And the only way they can have peace of mind is if they can subjugate and completely put in abject slavery and servitude another nation somewhere. They can't seem to have peace unless they can get their hands on the territory, and the people, and the material, and the money, and the natural resources, and the strategic military locations, and so on, of another nation.

   Well, all we need to do is to look at history logically and really realistically, and then come down to earth and realize a basic truth that is revealed in your Bible. And that is that men do not know the way to peace. They simply don't know that way. Yet, there is a way to peace, and peace is going to come, and we're going to have a world of plenty that they talk about, a world of increased brotherly love, a world infinitely richer and better than any world that has ever existed.

   Yes, we're going to have it—the richer, better life—but we're not going to have it as a result of communist tyranny just gradually disappearing. We're going to have it rather as a direct result of those events which Jesus Christ of Nazareth prophesied, as a direct result of something you read of in the Bible that Jesus Christ himself predicted. And it's going to come about exactly the way he said it would.

   In your Bible is a great deal of prophecy. Bible prophecy gives you the real explanation of the meaning of present-day world events and tells you what the future is going to bring. Bible prophecy must be understood if you're to come to know the future and to come to know what you're going to be doing in the next few years.

   What's going to happen to your area of the world? What's going to happen to you people down in Australia? What's going to be the outcome of the present-day claims, territorial claims, and warlike rumblings of the Indonesians? What's going to happen over Formosa? What do you people, perhaps living in the Mayan Peninsula in the areas around Vietnam and Laos, and you people in Pakistan and India, what are you going to be doing in the next 5, 10, 15 years?

   What about you in Africa? What is going to happen there with the constant retreats of colonialism and the constant problems, it seems from time to time, of racism and violence erupting? And what is going to be the outcome of all the brand new nations as they emerge on the world scene? And what will occur to Africa in the future?

   What's going to happen in Central Europe and Great Britain? What's going to happen here in the Western Hemisphere with the Cuban crisis? What's going to occur over Jerusalem between the Jews and the Arabs? What's going to happen in Berlin?

   You can know, you people all around the world living in these different areas with these different crises, right on your doorstep and right where you live, because the Bible tells you and the Bible predicts there will be the next 100 years. There will be peace, there will be security, there will be a world of plenty infinitely richer and better than any we have ever seen before. But it's not going to come in the way that we think. It's not going to come by the methods we think.

   Now, this article went on to say, as the science editor spoke before the women's club, that researchers will find methods not only to control the population explosion in the world, but also to produce enough fuel and food for the world so that there will be no have and no have-not nations.

   Now, that's a very nice, wonderful, altruistic-sounding term. It's a very wonderful thing to believe in, but is it going to actually occur that way? Are all of the tremendous, gigantic, awesome, unbelievable, overwhelming problems of today going to be solved by researchers in the next few decades? You need to think about it because you need to have something you can really pin your hopes on. You need to have something you either believe or not believe, and you need to know exactly where you're going.

   And you know, to go charging off after this, and that, and the other idea is not going to solve our problems. We've got to know. It's too dangerous not to know. The time has come now where we simply cannot afford to be swept about with every wind of doctrine, whether religious, whether political, whether ideological in any manner, shape, or form. We simply cannot pin our hopes and faith on something which is vague and unrealistic. We've got to know. We've got to be able to pin it down. We've got to have the concrete facts at our disposal.

   Well, he said that finally, with all peoples in the "have" category, the promises of communist nations and others like them will have no appeal. He predicted that both the food and fuel developments will come within 20 years. And then he said for the first time, man will have entered an age of plenty, and in a society of plenty, he said there could be no war.

   Well, my friend, we need to analyze that statement. We need to take a look at those of us, for example, in the United States. We need to take a look at Western Europe today. We need to take a look at Homes. Now, can we learn a lesson from human experience? Can we learn a lesson from history, which is merely his story, human experience as it's been put to writing?

   You mean to say that plenty gives you peace of mind, that prosperity, the acquisition, and accumulation of material goods gives you the absence of war, that happiness comes through having? Oh my, the laudatory ideas of men, and yet the emptiness of some of them as they're pronounced. When you begin to look behind the scenes and you begin to get a little bit practical, it seems that sometimes the bubble in the balloon must be burst, and we must come back down to earth and look at the hard, cold facts and the way of things.

   No, your Bible reveals in the writings of Solomon, in the statements of the Apostle Paul, in the teachings of Jesus Christ, that there is no peace of mind, there is no happiness just through having material goods. And that if all human beings on this earth had a wonderful mansion, every home a wonderful rambling...

   Let's just dream for a while. Let's assume that this could be true: that every family in China, India, Nepal, in Mali, Mauritania, Basutoland, Swaziland, South Africa, Madagascar, down in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, everywhere on the face of the earth—you know, obscure nations like those—and then also, not all of them of course, Australia is anything but obscure, but then also nations such as Germany and Great Britain, the United States.

   And let's assume that you take a certain select wonderful-looking area of one of the fabulous cities of the United States with its rambling one-story ranch-style home, its beautiful heated swimming pool, its two or three-car garage, its wonderful landscaping, its modern electronic kitchen with its double ovens and all of its gadgetry, dispose-all and automatic mixers, and every modern convenience that any housewife could ever desire, a home big enough for servants' quarters.

   And let's just magnify that and give it to everybody on earth. Let's have the African people with those facilities and good, steady jobs and fine, fabulous modern shopping centers with all the modern conveniences of the big glittering supermarkets and the one-stop shopping center area. Let's put in a great big stream of modern, unbelievable public transportation with adequate safety measures. Let's get ourselves a worldwide, brilliantly uniformed police force to keep order. Let's have worldwide freeways and maybe interplanetary commutation back and forth. Let's have everything that your heart could desire and dream of as a magnificent, gleaming world tomorrow—a world of real, wonderful scientific achievement, a world where every race in every nation is sharing mutually in the unbelievable abundance of a modern, science-fiction world of plenty and wonderment.

   Now that we've got that world firmly in our minds and we're thinking about the people over in Nepal and the Pakistanis and the rest of them, let's come back down to earth for a moment and wonder what you're going to be doing with all of it and what it's going to give us if that, of course, could come about.

   Now, like one person on the street in India said recently, there's no need to worry, nothing's going to come out all right. We're surrounded by enemies, and we have no allies. In other words, here are the Hindus on the one hand in East and West Pakistan where Mohammedans are on the other side, and the Nepalese and the people up in Sing Tang. So, there are disappointments, aren't there? Because here are different religious ideologies. Now, how are you going to solve them?

   Here are the Hindus and the Mohammedans, and then there's Catholic, Protestant, and Jew, of course, we think of. Then here are all the Oriental religions such as Hinduism, Daoism as it's called, Confucianism, Buddhism, and all the other ISMs. There's fetishism, and here is Protestantism with maybe 400 differences of opinion. And then even Catholicism varies from country to country in its beliefs and practices as far as the populaces are concerned. So, even though you've got all the world living in the same kind of a house, they wouldn't use it in the same way, they wouldn't believe the same way, they wouldn't think the same way.

   So, you've got to go a step further. You've got to give them the same color, the same type of hair, the same method and way of thinking, the same religion, and the same general features. Or else you're still going to have problems. Well, now let's even go that far. Let's give them all, all of them, a uniform color so that there wouldn't be any race problems and everyone would be an olive drab. Then let's give them all the same basic religion.

   Now, once you get that, then let's go back in history where people actually had it that way. Let's go clear back to where there was a little beginning community of people who had just exactly that. They were Adam and Eve and their children. Now, Adam and Eve started out with an amazing, tremendous, wonderful blessing. Everything they could possibly ask for.

   Just look what this young man had going for him. Yes, Adam, of whom you read in the Bible, here was a young man who had absolute security. You take a look at all that he had and just magnify it into a condition. It could be extant worldwide, or could be extant among the nations, or could be extant in any given country on earth. He had absolute security, didn't he? Because he was put in the Garden of Eden and God was his Father.

   He had come from the earth. Now, in one way, there was nothing to get all enlarged and elated over that because God named Adam what he was. What was Adam? Adam was dirt. God said so. He looked at him and said, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." In other words, you looked at him and he named him red mud, red clay. God very plainly told Adam, "Look Adam don't get excited about your genealogy. You're a clod. You're just a clod of dirt, you're just a piece of the earth." There was no reason for Adam to get elated.

   Now, take a look at all that Adam had going for him in his marriage, in his home, and his future. He had all these things that science says they'd like to give to the entirety of the world. He had security, didn't he? He had a very great and friendly personal relationship with his employer, to the point that his employer spent long hours walking and talking with him in the garden. He was so concerned and interested in Adam's future that he even went way out of his way to give him special clues and inside information and tips on what to do and what not to do and just how to get ahead. He was very concerned with this young man's future.

   Now, also, Adam had what most of you don't have. He had perfect physical health. He was an absolutely perfect physical specimen. God took a rib, but he closed it up so firmly and so perfectly there wasn't even a scar remaining. Adam had good lungs and a good, sound heart. He was solidly muscled. He was the handiwork of God. He had a balanced, stable, perhaps about a 30-year-old mind. He was mature.

   Now, look at his job. He had the best job he could see anywhere. He had a job that was not only fun and had a beautiful environment and had absolutely wonderful working conditions, but he had unlimited opportunity for advancement. There was no end to where he could go. He was the executive head over everything he could see, every living creature around him. He couldn't see with his eyes. There wasn't one human being from horizon to horizon that he wasn't over. Do you realize that? There wasn't anybody he had to call boss except God himself. There wasn't a human being around then that was his rival. There was nobody trying to pull the rug out from under him and no one was trying to get his job. Nobody had his number and the people weren't going to vote him in like many of our politicians, that are sweating it out and worry from time to time because there are a lot of disappointed people on election day. There are a lot of happy people and there are a lot of disappointed people, and there's not too much security in that because they're wondering how the people are going to choose one way or the other.

   Well, Adam didn't have to face that. He just had it made, so to speak. There was nobody that could disqualify him or put him out of his job but he himself. There was no aspiring young man coming along with a great deal of promise with new ideas. There was no young blood being put into the corporation with brand-new designs that was going to jerk the rug out from under him. No one was trying to backstab him with the boss. There just wasn't anybody as a rival around. So, he had all that security in addition.

   Now, look at his wife. He had the most lovely, gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful, scintillating, voluptuous, yet lissome and athletic, perfectly formed and developed wife who was completely compatible with him in every way, designed perfectly just for him. And what's more, there wasn't any chance of anybody taking her away from him because there was no other living human being around to do it. Now what's more, there wasn't any mother-in-law trouble. Why, when Adam got married, when God gave Eve to Adam, he didn't have to worry about what the mother-in-law was going to do. He didn't have any in-law troubles. There wasn't any problem of mutual compatibility with regard to race, religion, background, heredity, environment or anything else. All of those problems that had become such deep sociological problems that have to be sometimes solved question mark by a marital counselor today just simply didn't exist with Adam and Eve.

   Now, look at their home. The temperature was so even it might be called just like one of these modern homes they're talking about with a big, huge plexiglass air bubble where the temperature would be just like outdoors all year around. Well, the temperature was so mild, the climate was so wonderful, they didn't even have to wear clothes, and they didn't get cold on the one hand and they didn't get too hot on the other hand. Everything was wonderful. It was just perfect, just so.

   Now, what about work? Well, he had to dress and keep it, but the thing about it is that would have been fun. There was so much to do and it was all so pleasant and nothing but beauty and accomplishment and joy to be had as a result of all that work that Adam could have accomplished.

   Now, you take a look at that. You have everything that a person could possibly want: a fabulous place to live, a wonderful job with unlimited chance for advancement, a beautiful, wonderful wife. Nobody on the face of the earth could vie with her for top honors as the beauty queen. There simply wasn't anybody else. Yet, in spite of all of this, they had what people think they would like to have today, and they think that would bring them peace. But now, that was the one basic thing they were missing.

   Well, now, marriage, you know, is all give, and Adam and Eve were all get. And your Bible says in Romans eight and verse seven (Romans 8:7), the carnal mind, the fleshly physical mind, your character, your nature, your personality, is somehow just automatically a mixture of good and evil, and evil tends to come and predominate and it sort of leads you to be hostile toward the authority of God, God's laws. Now, God's laws are designed to bring us peace. So, we, by our very nature, are hostile toward peace.

   Now, stop to think about it for a moment. In a very short time, this young man failed in his job, incurred the ire of his employer, got his wife completely upset at him because he let her wear the pants and he followed her along in something. And your Bible says he was not deceived, but his wife, being deceived, was in the transgression, and he listened to her to what it says. And in a very short time, he lost his home, he lost his business, he lost his security, he lost his job, he lost the favor with his boss. He was driven out of it. And from an executive over a fabulous place of living, from all of these wonderful benefits, he became a hard and scrabble dirt farmer living out in some area where he could get nothing but weeds and thorns and briers. He and his wife reared the first juvenile delinquents. They had to live to see their own children kill each other. They had to live to see the world become so absolutely filled with violence. There were tribes who were their own progeny engaged in cannibalism. They saw human beings from their own bodies, their own children, degenerate to be slavishly lower than bestial-like animals. And they saw the world and its culture completely degenerate into such a sump of filth that Almighty God had to come along and blow it out and establish a brand new and a different society.

   Now, let's face it and let's take a lesson from history. Almighty God says, in effect, in his word, there's no reason whatsoever to put down one word of what happened yesterday if you can't learn the lesson for tomorrow. Now, listen, Adam is an absolute example. It is usual and so are the patriarchs and so is Noah. There are good examples and bad examples. People stumbled and fell, and others walked uprightly.

   Now, can we learn from biblical, which is absolutely God-breathed and inspired history? And can we come down to earth and realize that if the entirety of this earth had every wonderful benefit that certain select areas of certain fabulous, wonderful landscape, beautiful 50 to $100,000 homes perhaps in the United States has, and if you could sprinkle that out and have every person in all these nations I mentioned anywhere from Somaliland to Saudi Arabia, to Australia and Tunisian background of the Western hemisphere, and have every one of them enjoying all these benefits, if you didn't have the Spirit in the mind of God, if you didn't have what Adam was lacking, if you didn't have repentance and conversion, if you didn't have the peace of God, the peace of mind that passes all understanding, if you didn't have that basic hostility, that animosity toward God removed and replaced with the Spirit of God, which is giving, which is service, which is long-suffering, which is charity, which is love, you wouldn't have the chance of the proverbial snowball in, you know where, of the hoot and the whirlwind to succeed or to be given prosperity, plenty, happiness or anything else. You simply would not have a chance. You'd be whipped before you start. You'd be standing at the plate with a full count and the world's most wicked pitcher in front of you and you were a splintered bat. You simply wouldn't have a chance. That's all there is to it, for success, for peace, for happiness, or for a future.

   So, let's realize that, let's get the lesson from history. You don't need to go galloping off after the pronouncements of this and that and the other scientist who says, well, we'll have this and that and the other thing. No, you better come back to earth and read what your Bible says. Your Bible says, men do not know the way to peace, but God does. And God has revealed that way. Men are not of themselves going to accept it. But your Bible says Jesus Christ of Nazareth is going to return to this earth and he's going to bring it. He is going to not because of men, but in spite of men set up the kingdom and the government of God on this earth. He's going to give us everything Adam had and more because he's going to add the main ingredient that Adam was lacking. And that is the Spirit of God, the mind of God, the very Spirit and the mind of peace and of cooperation of brotherly love of harmony, of everything that we think we really want and we do want and ought to have, but we don't know the way to get it today. That's what your Bible says.

   Now, Jesus came preaching that message of that wonderful, scintillating, brilliant, interesting happy world tomorrow telling you exactly how it's going to come about who's going to be in it, where it's going to be, how you can have a part to share in it. And just about when it's going to come by prophetic sequence of events and you can understand what that kingdom is. He said it wasn't of his time, but he said you can get into it and it's not just something of thought inside of your heart. It's an actual real literal state that is going to come through this earth, a richer better life, not through science, but through Almighty God and his kingdom. It's going to come to this earth. You need to know how to share in it.

   So, you need to write for this article, a series of articles on, Just what do you mean the Kingdom of God, what is it? And also write for this book that entitled, The Book of Revelation Unveiled at Last, and understand that time sequence of events leading up to that happy world tomorrow, that time of productivity, that time of plenty, a world of increased brotherly love, a world infinitely richer and better than any you could envision in your wildest dreams. It's all there.

   And also write for this gripping booklet entitled The United States and the British Commonwealth in Prophecy and find where our people are identified in the page of Bible prophecy in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others. And then write for another book that we have several of them for you and they're absolutely free of charge. There's no price for them entitled, Why were you BORN? What is the purpose in human life? Why does God allow suffering, poverty? Why does he permit war? If there is a God? That's I'll explain in that book that if there is a God, he's peace, he's loved and he wants us to be happy. Why does he allow wars? That booklet entitled, Why were you BORN? Explains it and it's free of charge.

   And request also, the current number of the Plain Truth magazine with these articles, German War Crimes - Who Was to Blame? Another article entitled, Is Tithing Jewish? An article, The Era of the All-Powerful Pill. Another article on your job and your business, What's Keeping You From Real Success? An article, Ambassador Colleges Teach Students To Think. And another one entitled, What is The Best Age for Marriage? These and other features and articles in the current number of the Plain Truth.

   Now, all the booklets, the magazine and the articles are free of charge. If you send your letter to Herbert W Armstrong Box 111 Pasadena, California. That's Herbert W Armstrong Post Office Box 111 Pasadena, California. Be sure to list the call letters at your station and they're free of charge. If you send your letter to Herbert W Armstrong Box 111 Pasadena, California, remember there is no obligation, no follow-up, no request for money for any of this free literature. And so, until next time in this series, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye, friends.

   You have heard the World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong or literature offered on this program, send your request along with the call letters of this station to Herbert W Armstrong Post Office Box 111 Pasadena, California 91123. Or you may dial this toll-free number 800-423-4444.