Herbert W Armstrong

   And greeting friends around the world. You today are living in a shocking world, a frightening world, a different world than the one your parents knew. Suddenly it seems everything at every extreme is occurring and almost daily. Well, what is the meaning of these seemingly unrelated different events from the level of personal experience of some of you in an acquaintance with some horrible personal tragedy such as the shocking crash of a big jet aircraft to a crime that is committed in your block to a divorce that strikes in your own home or family to great history making and history breaking events on the political level high among world governments? Just what is occurring today, the most history-breaking time in all of man's experience? But what is the meaning of it all? Is there any relationship? Is there any real overall meaning? Is there any rhyme or reason, any sense to what is going on in the world today? Where are we headed? Where are we going? What will happen in the future?

   You see the predictions in magazines, certain mathematical curves and trends that are occurring. Well, just what is the meaning of it all now? As shocking as it may sound to you, the future is revealed already. The future is laid out in advance. I don't mean individual acts that individual people are going to do. I mean the overall major events, the course of major powers and nations, your nation where you live, it's all laid out in advance. Now, that sounds very shocking when people hear about prophecy. When they hear about predictions of the future. I have no crystal ball. I have not been having a presidential breakfast and telling leaders high in government what's going to happen. I'm not trying to be sensational to make a lot of weird predictions that can't be backed up and proved.

   You may not realize that one full third of the Bible, that prophecies which were listed by prophets who did not know each other at different times in different parts of the earth, yet writing of the very same events and then absolutely coming to pass just as they had predicted. This booklet on The Proof of the Bible is free of charge. There's another article that will come along entitled "Seven Proofs God Exists," and they are unanswerable. They are absolute, they're factual, you need to prove it to yourself. Now, if the Bible is true, if Christ is alive, then prophecies of your Bible are right now being fulfilled.

   People ask, is prophecy for us today? They say, well, I thought all prophecy was fulfilled long ago. Or they say, well, I thought the Bible was a first-century religion. I didn't see that the Bible is in relationship to our lives today. No, most people don't. Because how much Bible prophecy have you ever read? How much of it have you ever heard? How often have you listened to a sermon about Bible prophecy? How many times have you seen one prophecy then another and had it related to a direct, distinct, absolute, definitive event among human beings in major nations? Seeing the exact occurrence come along in the newspapers, read about it, see it happen right before your eyes?

   Very few people ever have because very few people have paid much attention to Bible prophecy. You can prove whether or not Bible prophecy is for us today by proving whether or not the Bible is true and whether Christ is alive. Because if the Bible is true and if Jesus Christ of Nazareth is alive today, then Bible prophecy is true and the one can prove the other. Write for these books and find out.

   The gospel meant good news of the coming kingdom of God. Why is it, my friends, that so many millions of people, while professing Christ, while having some type or another of the Christian religion, do not want to look into the prophecies that Jesus spoke, do not want to pay a bit of attention to some of these major parts of the Bible which talk about the great powers of our day right now and what is ahead for them in the future? Christ was a prophet. He was asked on the Mount of Olives prior to His crucifixion what would be those major world-shaking, history-making events which would lead up to the time He claimed in which He was going to return.

   I'm not talking for the moment about the arguments of people. Let's get off that old song that's entirely overworked. People can argue about what people say back and forth all day long. Forget all that and look just exactly at what Jesus said for a moment. Jesus did say certain things, which you can prove. The only thing you have to solve in your own mind is whether or not you can prove they are true and whether or not you want to believe them. Now that's still up to you. You're still a free moral agent. But it is a fact that Jesus did make great predictions that had to do with our age, our day. These prophecies could not have happened then. They were not entirely fulfilled in 70 A.D. Yet true to the former type of these predictions Jesus made concerning Jerusalem, that city was destroyed.

   How? Why did it happen? How did it come to be that just exactly as Christ said, it was destroyed? And then how did it come to be that in the Olivet prophecy, Jesus made such great claims as could not have been fulfilled back in 70 A.D.? He didn't return, for example. The sun didn't grow dark and the moon didn't grow dark and great signs didn't occur in the heavens, for example. All of these great events that were predicted in this 24th chapter of the book of Matthew did not occur then. That was not the greatest tribulation from that time to this or in all world history, for example. Certainly, some of the wars since far transcended that one siege of one city—World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the present struggles in Vietnam. So, you're left with just one, one question: if Jesus meant what he said in Matthew 24, either these prophecies have not all been fulfilled or else Christ made a great and a horrible mistake. Was it just a good guess that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and not one stone left on top of another one?

   Let's turn to that 24th chapter of Matthew and see what Jesus Christ said. It's in your Bible in Matthew 24. The first of the New Testament, the 24th chapter. He had been teaching, he went out of that temple building in Ancient Jerusalem and he told them there would not be one stone on another that would not be thrown down. And he said privately to his three disciples (Matthew 24:3), "Tell us, when shall these things be and what shall be the sign of your coming and the end of the world?"

   Now, you can see somebody walking up and down the street with a beard and a placard that says, "Flee, the end of the world is coming," and think to imply that the entirety of the world is going to blow up, that the world itself will cease to be, that the earth, the very rocks and the rivers, the hills, the valleys and the seas are going to explode and be totally destroyed. This is not what Christ meant because he went on to talk about a happier world, a different world, a new era, a new age transcending every age of the past for productivity, for sheer magnificence, for everything from vast agrarian reforms to construction, to modern technology. He talked about a glittering, fantastic future for mankind. He was not talking about the world blasting itself out of existence. There is no prediction in the entirety of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation of the total annihilation of the world. The total annihilation of mankind is nowhere predicted. Christ never said it. The Bible doesn't say it. Rather, the Bible predicts the salvation of mankind. It predicts the right outcome. It predicts a happy world tomorrow, but it also predicts a lot of very major world-shaking events leading up to that time.

   It's only because people don't read it and then they get an opinion concerning it that there's so much disagreement among human individuals here and there that people simply do not know what Christ said. They think he said this or the other and then they argue about what they think he said. Well, that's a pretty poor way to argue. Don't argue about the Bible. It's one of the worst mistakes you can make. The Bible was not written for you to argue over. The Bible was not a book written to cause disagreement. The Bible is a book written to understand, to believe, to prove, to obey, to become a guide for your everyday way of life and to lay out for you in advance what you can expect to occur in the future.

   Did Jesus just make a good guess when He said you would be living in a time unparalleled in the history of all mankind, a time he called "great tribulation," when He talked of worsening famines, pestilences, earthquakes in different places, when He talked about nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, wars and rumors of wars, when He talked about history-making events in religious circles? Did He just make a good guess?

   Let's notice how this prophecy is for us today. Let's take it, first of all, in its entirety, at least through these major events He predicted up to this moment, and then go back and take them one by one. His disciples said, "When shall these things be? What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?" The margin says "the consummation of the age," and that's what the word meant in the Greek language in which they were talking. It meant the end of the cosmos, the society, that system, this present system today, because this is the time for which Jesus spoke. This is that moment in history which Jesus Christ described. He said, verse 4, chapter 24 of Matthew (Matthew 24:4), "Take heed that no man deceive you, for many shall come in my name, saying I am the Christ, and shall deceive many."

   In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said (Matthew 7:13), "Broad is the way, wide is the gate that leads to destruction." And He said, "Many there be that go in thereat." And He described his flock as a few, the little flock who knew his voice and followed Him and obeyed what He said. He went on to say in verse 11 of the same chapter (Matthew 24:11), "And many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." Now you want to figure, did He mean what he said? Yes, he did, and you can prove it. Well, then Jesus seems to imply the majority is not always right. He seems to imply the majority might believe in His name, might say he's the Christ, but they would also deceive many. He's not saying just a few. He's saying many.

   The prophecies of the Bible are rather shocking when you look into what it says about the entirety of this world today being deceived. How about in Revelation, the 12th chapter, in the ninth verse (Revelation 12:9), there is a great being of a brilliant intellectual mind, but a perverted mind who is deceiving, who is literally blinding and pulling the wool over people's eyes, who has them thinking they know the truth or has them convinced they can't know the truth. He's called Satan the devil. And you can prove whether or not he exists. He's a great quoter of scripture. He quoted it to Christ, but he perverted it and misquoted it. He's called as being a leader of even ministers in II Corinthians, the 11th chapter, 11 through about 15 there (II Corinthians 11:11-15), where the Apostle Paul says, "Now, don't be surprised if people appear to be white and righteous and sound like they have the voice of angels. Why, even Satan, the devil himself, is transformed into an angel of light. It's no great thing," he said, "if his ministers appear as the ministers of righteousness."

   Settle one thing in your minds, my friends, the major prophecies of your Bible include chapter after chapter of very succinct, straight-from-the-shoulder predictions. You would be living in a time absolutely filled with false messages, false religions, false prophecies. That's what the Bible says. If you disagree with that, you disagree with the Bible. That is what the Bible says. Therefore, it remains your responsibility to prove what is right and what is wrong, what is false and what is true. What are the true prophecies and how can you identify them? And what are the false prophecies? Let's find out if in this one prophecy, Jesus just made a mistake. What does the rest of the Bible say about it?

   You might turn, for example, to the 23rd chapter of the book of Jeremiah right quickly and notice what that prophet said about it, because every single one of the major prophecies in the Bible has a great deal to say about false prophets, chapter after chapter. I can quote for you the entirety of Ezekiel 13. We could go back to Isaiah 30, which perhaps it would be a good thing if we did. We could go to what the Apostle Paul said to the young Evangelist Timothy. We could read the book of Jude. We could see II Peter 2. In the 23rd chapter of the book of Jeremiah, and verse 1 (Jeremiah 23:1), Jeremiah was inspired to write, "Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, says the Eternal. Therefore, thus says the Eternal God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people, you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not visited them. Behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings." A little later on, He went on to say in verse 11 (Jeremiah 23:11), "For both prophet and priest are profane. Yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, says the Eternal."

   He said in verse 16 (Jeremiah 23:16), "Thus says the Eternal of hosts, don't listen to the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you that make you vain. They speak a vision of their own hearts and not out of the mouth of the Eternal." Why? Why would they do that? What would be their message? How could you identify who is who? He went on to say, "They say still unto them that despise me," quote, here would be their message, "God has said, the Eternal has said, or the Bible has said, you shall have peace, and they say that everyone that walks after the imagination of his own heart, no evil shall come upon you." End quote. My friends, I just read from the Bible. Do you want to check it? It's in Jeremiah 23:17. The message would be peace and you won't have to pay the penalty. No evil will come upon you.

   We won't have to pay the piper for our worsening, deepening sociological problems. We won't have to reap the results of our crimes, of our hatred and defiance toward authority. We won't have to reap the rewards of our total and complete lack of patriotism, our lack of respect and love toward God and the great blessings, liberties, and freedoms, the privileges of living in a free country. We won't have to reap the rewards of all of the miseducation and mistraining, the permissiveness that we're surrounding our children with that make so many of them grow up to become completely irresponsible, completely rebellious and defiant against any and all authorities of any agency, whether the home, the church, the school, or the policeman. We think we're not penalty. Why, I see things that absolutely dumbfound me in the news. People claiming God is dead, saying the Bible is of no use to people, saying you can believe what you want, and if that satisfies you, that's the truth. Ridiculousness. And the Bible condemns it as such.

   Back in the 30th chapter of Isaiah, the message that you would be hearing, the message Jesus said would be extant today, he said, and I did, and he said there would be many deceiving many and using the name of Christ. Now, he said their message would be one of peace, claiming you will have peace and we won't have to pay the penalty. You'll have no problems, no troubles, everything will work out all right. In chapter 30 of the book of Isaiah, he said in verse 1 (Isaiah 30:1), "Woe to the rebellious children, says the Eternal, that take counsel but not of me. And they weave a web, or they make the treaty," as the margin has, "they cover themselves with a covering but not of my spirit that they may add sin to sin." He said, "Now go and proceed to that chapter and write it before them in a table and note it in a book." This was Isaiah being commanded to put this down to writing so we would be reading it today. "That it may be for the time to come forever and ever." Then these words were to be perennially important. They were to be important today.

   That He said in verse 9 (Isaiah 30:9), "This is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Eternal, which say to the seers, don't see." That means prophets. "That say to the prophets, or the preachers, the inspired preachers, prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits." That's what we want to hear. I have people tell me they don't want to hear about our crimes and sins. I have people write and say, why do you speak so plainly? Why can't you ease off? Why can't you just knock a few corners off here and there? Why do you have to hit us hard? I want to tell you why. Because I am commanded by the great God in heaven that gives you every breath of air you breathe, "Cry aloud, spare not, and show my people their sins." If you want to read that, it's in Isaiah 58:1. I am ordered to do this, not to compromise with the word of God, nor to compromise with the actions and the attitudes of people, but to tell the truth and nothing short of the truth.

   People don't want to hear the truth. We have our excuses and our arguments today. People say, oh, well, come on. I know all the problems. I know the troubles. I know how much crime there is. No, you don't. No, you don't either. People say they know the problems. No, it isn't that they know the problems. They don't have the statistics, they don't have the facts. They don't know how bad it really is. They just plain don't want to hear about it.

   Is this an accurate prophecy? Do people tell other people, don't tell me the evil, don't tell me what the penalties are going to be, I don't want to hear about it? You bet they do. He said in verse 12 (Isaiah 30:12), "Therefore, thus says the Holy One of Israel, because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and you rely on it, you stay thereon. Therefore, this iniquity shall be unto you as a breach, ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly at an instant, just like a big bulge in a retaining wall that falls all of a sudden." He says that's what's going to happen to us as a people. God says so.

   Now these predictions are true. You can go all the way through these prophecies that God caused to be put in the Bible about what would be the major message of this day. Jesus said it. He said there would be plenty of false prophecies. Now that's your responsibility. How are you going to find who is who, what is a right prophecy and what is a false prophecy? According to Christ, certain major events were going to occur prior to His return. I am going to stick with what Christ said. But I can find in newspapers, magazines, publications, I can hear it and listen to it. I can hear what people say that just what Christ said is not going to occur, that we're not going to have all the problems that Christ predicted, that we're not going to live on over into the age that He predicted, that something else is going to occur. No, I'll stick with what Christ said.

   In the 13th chapter of the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel was also commissioned (Ezekiel 13:2), "Son of man," verse 2 of chapter 13, "prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy and say to them that prophesy out of their own minds, out of their own ideas, their own hearts, hear you the word of the Eternal, thus says the Lord, Eternal woe unto the foolish prophets that follow their own spirit and have seen nothing." What is it they try to tell people? What is it? What would be the message? How can you identify them? In verse 10 (Ezekiel 13:10), He tells you. He says, "Because even because they have seduced my people, saying peace when there was no peace, one built up a wall and lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar." That's obvious. It means one constructs an idea or a doctrine, so it gets the framework of a certain idea going, and somebody else comes along and adds to it and whitewashes it. "Say unto them which daub it with untempered mortar, that it shall fall, there shall be an overflowing shower, and you O great hailstones shall fall, and a stormy wind shall rend it." In verse 16 (Ezekiel 13:16), He said to "it the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem and which see visions of peace for her, and there is no peace, says the Lord Eternal."

   Yes, people want to hear all of the nice, smooth, sweet things and not hear about our problems. We're not going to solve our problems until we hear about them. We're not going to solve our problems until we get so sick of them, so fed up with them, so tired of them, we begin to discover what is the cause of them. We're not going to begin to really rear our children with a sense of decency, of honesty and respect for authority until we get so sick of hearing about all the indecency and the perversion, the crime in every facet of our society that we get so fed up, we're going to begin to do something about it instead of just sighing and saying, well, that's too bad and then forget about our own situation and go right on living in exactly the same way we've been living.

   We're not going to solve the problems in our marriages and homes until we get so sick about our marriages and homes and the conditions inside of them that we decide to do something about it with God's help in our own private homes. No, we're not going to solve our problems so long as we want to refuse to listen to them and hear them and find out what the penalties are going to be. We're just not. Now, you can, you can start to change any time. You're good and ready in your own private circumstance. You can begin to change. But it takes an awful lot of courage to go against the mainstream of society when the average person around you is willing to listen to this one song of no absolutes, of a dead god, of an inapplicable religion that isn't for us today and it is just some vague faint hope that, well, maybe it will all work out somehow. You know, people talk about a problem and say, what are we going to do about that? Somebody else says, well, I frankly don't know. So, let's talk about the marketing, you know, the market, how to survey the territory, how to get ahead. We even write plays about it, how to succeed in business without really trying. That's our old adage today, how to succeed without working, how to get something for nothing.

   What is success? Do you know, what is it you want out of life? Jesus Christ of Nazareth predicted some awfully important things. He said following this time of great deception, a time of a great message that would begin to delude and darken the minds of people and confuse them, make them think there aren't any major calamities ahead. Following rapidly on the heels of that would come those calamities, wars and rumors of wars, famines and pestilences. That's disease, epidemics and earthquakes in diverse places. If you want to check with your almanac, you will find in about the past decade, we have been in a series of some of the worst natural calamities since men have kept records. You will find we have been experiencing more earthquakes, worse earthquakes in places unexpected heretofore, and that we are living in a time where history is being made almost daily.

   What does it mean you're living in a shocking world? Jesus Christ described it. Why is it one third of the Bible is prophecy? Why did Jeremiah write a whole book about a people which had disappeared long before he wrote about them? Why did Ezekiel write the way he did to Israel? Why did these prophets of God predict things that talk about a resurrection, talk about the end of the age, talk about a time right around the corner from us? Why prophecy? What is it for? To whom is it written? Can you identify the people that are mentioned in Bible prophecy? Write for this article, "Why Prophecy? What's It All About?" It will explain it. It will show you how you can really rely on Bible prophecy. It is provable by history. And this booklet on The Proof of the Bible uses a number of fulfilled prophecies, graphically illustrated even by maps and showing you exactly what is happening today.

   All of humankind needs to know exactly where it is going, why we are on this earth, what is the ultimate purpose of human life, whether we plant rice every day or whether we harvest in the fields or whether we drive a truck or a taxicab or whether we just exist in a displaced refugee camp. We need to know why we are alive. We need to know the purpose in our being, and we need to know what is the ultimate solution for the frustrations of mankind. And we need to have the answer to the question, will this world survive? Is total ultimate war and virtual cosmicide with struggling, dwindling human beings clinging to the few remaining means for survival, remaining like animals to fight among themselves and to emerge millennia later in yet some new culture which may well repeat the sins of our own?

   Some sociologists say that is where we're headed, for holocaust, for Armageddon, for a virtual nuclear extinction. That, my friends, is not true.

   You have heard The World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong. For 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.