Does God exist? Is the Bible the authentic word of God? Does it carry authority? Is it actually the creator God of supreme mind and purpose? Who created everything? Is it that God speaking to mankind? Unless there is some such authority, no one can determine the difference between right and wrong. And legislators could tell you that members of Congress can tell you that lawyers ought to tell you that they've been struggling for a long time to know the difference between right and wrong, and they don't know it yet.
Well, those questions troubled me very greatly back in 1926, in the spring of 1927. At that time, I discovered in the Bible not only the origin and the purpose of all mankind and why mankind had to, came to be upon the earth, where we're going, what is the real purpose? Why are things like they are? Why are we living in a time of awesome progress? And at the same time of appalling evils, and the evils are multiplying even faster than the progress. And all of that was explained at that time. Also, I found the roots of the American and the British people. You know, our American and British people don't know who we are.
Now, the Jewish people know who they are. They trace their roots and they trace it through the Bible all the way back to the first created man, Adam. The Arab people and the Arab nations, they trace their roots, they know that they are descended from Ishmael, and Ishmael is mentioned in the historic pages of the Bible, and they trace their origin all the way back to the first created man. Other nations know who they are. And yet our people don't know who we are. We don't know where we came from. What are our roots?
Well, it was the most astounding truth I had ever found in my life, and I found it absolutely proved. And I found that it was an absolute proof of the existence of God and an absolute proof of the authenticity of the Bible because unless there is a God speaking in those pages written up to 3500 years ago and has brought all these events to pass, no man could have done it. There is no way; it is absolute proof. It's the most astounding thing that I had ever gotten into and proof of the very existence of God and the authority of the Bible.
Now go back to the time prior to World War II, between World War I and World War II, the American and the British people had come to a place of world dominance in which we possessed between us, between two-thirds and three-fourths of all the cultivated wealth of this entire earth, of all the nations on the earth. Now, we had been small by comparison to such nations as China and Russia. And yet by that time, we did possess more than two-thirds and almost three- fourths, and all the other nations combined possessed just a little over one- fourths of all of the wealth.
Now, prior to the year of 1800, we were comparatively small. We were not then the greatest economical countries in the world and the greatest financial powers. Where did we come by all of that wealth? How? How did it all happen?
Now, let me tell you something I've discovered about the Bible. The Bible is a book of a certain nation. It is the book of Israel, and it's concerned about Israel and only concerned about other nations when they come into contact with Israel.
Now, a lot of people didn't realize that, but if you study the Bible, you'll find that's absolutely true. It's concerned about that nation, and other nations only as they come into contact with Israel. Now, I found in the Bible some astonishing promises made to Abraham. I think it's well known among so-called biblical scholars that God had promised to Abraham one seed, Jesus Christ, who was to become the Messiah. Now, the promise of the Messiah was merely a promise of grace, but I had discovered that Abraham had received promises from God according to the Bible. If the Bible is true, promises entirely of race. In the 12th chapter of Genesis, in verse one (Genesis 12:1), we read, "Now the eternal had said, 'Get thee out of thy country unto a land that I will show thee. And if you do that, I will make of thee a great nation.'" Now, that was conditional; they were to become a great nation. Now, the Jewish people have not become a great nation. They never were, they are not now, they're one of the small nations of the world, the Jewish people.
Now in Genesis 15 and verse 18 (Genesis 15:18), Abraham's descendants were to possess the land from the Nile River in Africa all the way over to the Euphrates, and the Jewish people never did. And yet, the descendants of Abraham were to inherit all of that land. Now in Genesis 17, when Abraham was 90 years old, God said, if he would obey God, that God would make a covenant with him and would multiply his children exceedingly and would become many nations. Now, that is rather startling because the Jewish people never became many nations, and yet there was an absolute promise and later on, it was confirmed as a covenant that they should become many nations. The Jews never did.
Now in Genesis 28 and verse 14 (Genesis 28:14), Abraham's descendants were to become as the dust of the earth. They'd be so numerous. The Jews never became quite that numerous, and they were to spread abroad, to the west, to the east, to the north, and to the south until they encompassed the whole world. Now they were to spread abroad, expand. The Jewish people were scattered abroad, but they never enlarged, and they never expanded to a worldwide, and yet the descendants of Abraham were to do just that, and that promise was never fulfilled in the Jews.
Now coming on a little further in Genesis 22, verses 16 and 17 (Genesis 22:16-17), God said finally to Abraham because he had obeyed God, God now made these promises absolutely unconditional, and God was bound. He said that his descendants would be expanded to worldwide proportions, that they would possess the gates of enemy nations. Now just look back until the most recent times of, say, air travel, all commerce between nations was carried on by the sea lanes and by shipping, and to possess the gate of enemy nations meant to possess certain sea gates such as Singapore, such as the Cape of Good Hope, the Suez Canal, such as Gibraltar where they can stop any enemy nation from going through if they possessed it, Cape Horn, the Panama Canal gates of enemy nations. The Jews never possessed anything like that. And yet, if God is true, if the Bible is true, Abraham's descendants were to do just that. And Abraham's descendants were called the Israelites. You know, this became sort of a mystery as I went along and studied these things.
Genesis 26 and verse four (Genesis 26:4), the descendants of Abraham were to be multiplied as the stars in the sky. Now, the Jews never multiplied like that. In fact, the modern nation, Israel, is only just a few million today. And yet the descendants of Abraham were to become as numerous as the stars of heaven so that you couldn't even count them. And the same promise that I just read was made to Isaac. And now we come finally to Jacob, whose name had been changed, incidentally, to Israel. That's why the Children of Israel were all called Israel. And to Jacob, the same promises were made, and this additional thing was added that the descendants would become a great nation, that they would become very great, perhaps the greatest in the world, and a company of nations, that is, a group of nations, or you might call it a commonwealth of nations.
Now, these things have to occur or God is not true and the Bible is not true. The Jews never inherited any of those things. Alright now, we come to the 48th chapter of Genesis, speaking of Jacob again, the grandson of Abraham, and Jacob, or Israel before he died, he was blind and he called for Joseph to bring his two sons before him, that he could pass the blessing of this birthright promise onto them. Now, this was not a promise of Christ. Christ is the one seed. This was a promise of multiple seed in their generations, as expressed two or three times in these scriptures. And with those two lads, the sons of Joseph before him, he said, "Let my name be named on them." The name Israel was to be named on the sons of Joseph. Now, they had nothing to do with the Jews, I'm gonna show you later, and the name Israel then was not conferred on the Jews. Now, that is something to make you stop to think.
The first place in all of the Bible where the word Jews is mentioned is in II Kings, 16 verses five and six (II Kings 16:5-6). And there you will find that the nation Israel was allied with Syria, and they were at war with the Jews. Israel was at war with the Jews, and the Jews were at war against Israel. That's the first place where the word Jews is ever mentioned in the Bible.
Now, I want to explain something else that has been sadly overlooked, and yet it's so plain in the Bible, and two whole books in the Bible are more or less devoted to this truth. The books, well, you might say four books, 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles in the Old Testament, which are historic books, and they contain history that most people never bothered to read and don't understand.
Solomon was the son of David, and he lived in the most gorgeous splendor of any king who had ever lived. He was also called the wisest man who ever lived. He wrote the book of Proverbs. When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam ascended the throne of Israel. And, then people came and sent a man who had been Solomon's chief executive, and they sent him to Rehoboam, the king, and said, "If you will lessen our taxes, we will serve you. If you don't, we're going to elect someone else as king and reject you."
Well, he consulted first the old men, and they said, "You better take their advice and change it. They mean business." Then he consulted the young men, he was still quite a young man himself, and they said, "Oh, tell them where to go to." And so, he told them that he was going to punish them with taxes worse than his father ever thought of. So, then they elected this Jeroboam as their king and they rejected Rehoboam as their king. When that happened, the tribe of Judah, one tribe because Rehoboam was of the one tribe of Judah, Judah's seceded from Israel and became a separate nation. Now, Benjamin had always been right with Judah. And so, Benjamin went along, and they were then called the Kingdom of Judah, no longer the kingdom of Israel. And they were then called the Jews, a separate nation from Israel.
Now, the first thing that this Jeroboam did when he was made king was to change the feast days of the seventh month to the eighth month. And he also changed the seventh day Sabbath to the eighth day, which would be the first day of the week or Sunday. Now, at the same time, he rejected all of the priestly tribe, which is the tribe of Levi because they were the best educated, and he was afraid that they would lead the people back to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, and the grandson of David. And so, the Levites went in with Judah and became part of the tribe of Judah or of the Kingdom of Judah.
Now, for example, in the New Testament, you read a great deal about the Apostle Paul, but he was a Benjamin, and yet he called himself a Jew and he was called a Jew, but the rest were not called Jews, and they were at war against the Jews, and they were called Israel, and they had made their capital in Samaria to the north of Jerusalem. The kingdom of Assyria now invaded Israel. Now, Israel went into captivity from 721 to 718 B.C., and they were removed them from their homes, from their farms, from their cities, and carried them as captives up to the southern shores of the Caspian Sea in the land of Assyria. And then they moved Babylonians from Babylon, who believed in the Babylonian Mystery Religion, incidentally, back into the land of Samaria to the north of Jerusalem.
Now, in the days of Christ, the Samaritans were looked on by the Jews as dogs, and they wouldn't have anything to do with them. They had been of the Babylonian Mystery Religion. Well, that's just a little sideline of history. Now, in the meantime, Judah had not sinned, but later they did. And over 100 years later, Judah was taken out and made captives, but a colony of them went back to rebuild the temple later, and Jews were there for quite a long time after that. But by that time, the Assyrians with the Israelites whom they had taken captive started moving west by northwest, and they had moved westward with the Assyrian stopping in the land we now call Germany. And the people of Germany today are descendants of the ancient Assyrians. But the Israelites moved on farther west, and they began to expand in population as God had promised Abraham, and they were Israel, and they occupied Western Europe and the British Isles.
Now, let's go a little further. I want to read you a prophecy that God had given to ancient Israel before all this happened back in the days of Moses. It's in Leviticus, the 26th chapter, beginning with verse two, (Leviticus 26:2), where God said, "You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Eternal. If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and do them, then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase." They would become very prosperous just as God had promised Abraham. "But if you will not listen to me and will not do all of these commandments, and if you will not yet for all of this harken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins."
Now, that is after He had said He first would punish them. And if they didn't even then listen, He would punish them seven times. Now, seven times are used as a period of time in the Bible. There are two different places, I won't have time just now on the air to go into it, but two different places that show that a time was a lunar year of 360 days, and each day would be a year being fulfilled. So, it actually meant 2520 years. In other words, God would then withhold these promises from Israel, and remember, they were made now to Israel. Jacob, the dying Jacob, had said, "Let my name be named on them." They were made to Israel. They could have had them in their lifetime, but they would be withheld for 2520 years. But then God would deliver them, the promises, because He had promised Abraham unconditionally.
Now, that 2520 years, beginning with 721 B.C., brought us down to the year 1880, not too far back from our time. And so, the promises were taken away from them. Now, the dying Jacob had set Ephraim ahead of Manasseh, and he had said that Manasseh would become a great nation. And you think you could assume from that the greatest nation on earth. But Ephraim would become greater and become a commonwealth or a group of nations. And today, it's been called a commonwealth, a commonwealth of a number of different nations.
And so, we trace the history right down to the place where different tribes settled in western Europe. For example, I think we have proof that the French, especially the Northern French, are descended from the tribe of Reuben. Others in western Europe are from other tribes of the 10 tribes. And they were called the lost 10 tribes. They lost that when they lost the identifying sign, the Sabbath, they lost their own identity, they lost their language, they lost all idea of their roots and who they are. That's why we don't know who we are today because the prophecy was of Ephraim that she would lose her first colony and she would be a colonizing nation. The first colony that she lost was the 13 colonies that became the United States of America. Other colonies came later, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. And even to some extent, South Africa, and the promises that God made to Abraham have been fulfilled in Israel, but they never were fulfilled in the Jews. And that's something that the world has never quite understood.
Now, I don't have time to give you all of that in this program. I would need about four or five full hour programs to really give you the details. But I will give you the details in the book, and we've sent out, I don't know, I'd have to check to find how many, but I'm sure it's many more than a million copies already. It's been, we've been sending this out for the last 15 years, a booklet, "The United States and Britain in Prophecy." Where are our roots? Where did we come from? What does the Bible say about the United States? Where are we mentioned in the Bible? This explains it. This will go into detail. This will give you many facts I haven't had time to give you on this program. It's the most astounding thing I ever discovered. And I think that you will find it the most astonishing thing you ever saw in the Bible. It is a proof of the authenticity of the Bible. It is a proof of the very existence of God. It's an absolute proof.
Now, at the same time, I'd like to send you also a booklet. Does God exist? Does God exist? Can you prove the existence of God? Most people say, well, I believe in God. Well, you believe in God. Can you prove it? Why don't you get the proof and be sure if anyone ever questioned you, you'd be able to give him an answer. Now, those two booklets, if you would wish to write in for them or call in by telephone, that's the quickest way and there is no charge and there's no request for money and there is not going to be any. We don't beg for money over the air. I'm sure you've noticed that. Now also, you may have a full year subscription to the finest, the greatest magazine on the face of the Earth and certainly one of the largest in circulation. And with the recent number out, it has finally reached 7 million copies per month. The Plain Truth, the finest magazine on the face of the Earth today, is published in seven different languages.
The Plain Truth magazine, here's an editorial by me in the beginning. "An Overview from Higher Up". Here's another article, "The Olympic Games a Mirror of Mankind". Here's another article, "More Than A Monarch" about a certain king and something quite interesting. It's a king that I happen to know personally. Pretty well. Here's another article, "Where Is The True Church?" Many false churches have risen up, but where is the true church? Here's another one, "Tomorrow's News Today". You'll find it in the Bible. Here is another one on, "Good Sportsmanship". There's so much, I don't have time to give you anymore, but it analyzes world news today and gives you the meaning behind it. Where are we going from here? This will give you more understanding from the biblical prophecies then any magazine I know. And there is no subscription price.
It's the only magazine that in 50 years and it's in its 51st year now has never raised its subscription price because its subscription price is zero. You don't have enough money to buy it, but you may have a full year subscription if you just call by telephone. So, you just send your request to me, Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena, California. That's all the address you need. Herbert W Armstrong Pasadena California. And the zip code is 91123 or go to the telephone right away and call a toll-free number. There's no charge, you dial 1-800 then 423-4444 jot that number down so if you need to, you can call again. That's 800-423-4444. So until next time, 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 including California. You may call this toll-free number 1-800-423-4444 in Alaska and Hawaii only call collect 1-818-304-6111. If the lines are busy, please try again. The preceding program and all literature were produced and sponsored by the worldwide Church of God.