Herbert W Armstrong

   Hello, how are you? My name is Mr. Smith.

   How do you do, sir? How are you?

   I'm fine, thank you. What's the next logical question you ask someone? It's usually, what do you do?

   Now, you've met hundreds of people in your life, and so have I. Every time you meet someone, you first are finding out a few of the principal points about them, such as their name. You've already seen with the eye their height, their general weight, shape, characteristics, texture of skin and hair, what they're wearing, and maybe the fact that their necktie is a little askew, as mine is from time to time. You've already decided almost instantly whether you really like them, whether you're attracted to them or not, whether there is some sort of a magnetic personality or something that repels you. But the next logical question you ask is, uh, what do you do?

   After that, if you really converse with someone a little longer, you're going to find out what they are like. What are their likes and dislikes? What are their opinions about things? And this is the way we come to know one another.

   Now, every time we meet someone, we're able to start over all for the first time, brand new, best foot forward, say all the right things, only the best and the nicest things about ourselves. We have a chance to really make a hit with people. That's why seniors date freshmen in college. They can con a freshman a lot easier than they can a senior girl. Every time we meet someone for the first time, we have an opportunity, if they haven't read a lot of things about us in the past, to present ourselves as we would like to present ourselves.

   Now, your life revolves around one most important person in your life: you. Even when you sleep, you don't stare at someone else. You stare at your own brains when you're asleep in bed.

   Have you ever stood or been inside, maybe a department store or a restaurant, with the sun shining just right where you're inside? Maybe it's kind of dark and passersby on the street are going by. And in effect, and of course, this is true with a lot of the darkened stained windows these days anyway, in effect, the window of the store creates a mirror. You ever watch? You know, you think they're looking at you, but they're not. These people walk by and women are tugging at their skirts and are unaware of the fact you're sitting in a restaurant eating your soup, and there's a woman going by tugging at her girdle, or a man will stop and adjust his tie, or people will go by and touch up their hair and things like this.

   Now, this morning, you looked into the mirror. I don't know what your opinion was of what you saw there, but you did look into the mirror and you adjusted your face. The face you woke up with is not the face you're sitting here with now. It was a completely different arrangement at that time. Mine was, and so was yours. Some of you reached over to other places to put on part of what you wear, either on your face or about your face. Others of you kind of pummeled it, pushed it, shaped it, sprayed it, combed it, dried it, and whatnot, you know, in various shapes and molds. That is you. It's the way you are.

   Now, we do this really from the skin out, and in many ways, we do it from the skin in when we meet other people because we like to impress people with our very best. You ever think about the words of that song about the games people play? I've sung that a lot of times in sing-alongs. "Oh, the games people play now, every night and every day now, never mean what we say now, never say what we mean." And we while away the hours in our ivory towers till we're covered up with flowers in the back of a black limousine. We hear of these songs like this that are called protest songs. "Oh, we make one another cry, break a heart and say goodbye, cross our hearts and we hope to die that the other was to blame." And then they go on and on with the songs about the rip-offs and the little games that people play. We do really play these games in life.

   What is it that drives you? What is it that makes you what you are? What is this indefinable element we call personality? What are you? You ever analyze yourself? And now I know a lot of people would wish they could literally step outside and watch themselves walk by for the pleasure it would give them, for the sheer enjoyment of being able to watch themselves perform, which is why people really get excited when they have an opportunity to see themselves on television or to see themselves in a movie. People just about walk off in four directions at the same time and fly apart at the seams when they get an opportunity to be before a camera. I've seen that happen many, many times to many, many people.

   I knew years ago that many human beings would do practically anything to the point of having every one of their teeth removed, their hair shaved off and a wig put in its place, cosmetic surgery, walk 1000 miles to take off 50 pounds, go through language courses, do any kind of training, do practically anything if they could land a movie contract, if they could become a movie star by whatever means, including the physical alteration of their exterior. They would do it to be able to have the experience of watching themselves perform.

   Now, actually, if we could see our inside more clearly, and if we could see deeply inside our personality and inside ourselves as often as we see our outside, we would probably be just about as busily arranging and rearranging and changing what we are inside as we daily are changing, altering, and trying to pretty up and to shape up and make presentable our outside. But most of us don't look inside very often at all. What are we?

   You know that we, meaning the human race, mankind, with all of his so-called intelligence, with all the inventiveness and ingenuity of science and technology, with our ability to put men on the moon and soft landings and probes on Mars, still don't know what we are. The argument from a religious point of view about whether we are a body that is going to decay, which merely has a spiritual entity called a soul inside, what happens when we die, but more than that, what is man? What is human personality? What is this thing we call human nature?

   Now, God says in the Bible that a human being is a pretty horrible creature all by himself. The Bible points out that human beings are lower than worms. David prayed, "I am not a man, I'm lower than a worm." When David was offered the opportunity to marry the daughter of the king, he said, "Who am I in my father's house that I could be exalted in such station in life?" He was a humble man.

   When Jesus came, he was humble. Even Jesus Christ, as great as we know he was as a material, physical human being before being born again by a resurrection to become the very son of God spiritually, to become a spiritual essence. Jesus said in the human flesh, when a young man came and said, "Good master, what good thing may I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Jesus said, "Why do you call me good?" Thus acknowledging that even in his human shape and form as a fleshly being, he didn't want the word good attached to what he was at that time. You and I would very readily attach the word good to it, but he wasn't going to appropriate it to himself.

   What is this thing we call human nature? In Jeremiah 17 and verse 9 (Jeremiah 17:9), an old hackneyed scripture for old Bible fans that have read it many, many times, it tells us something about human nature. And one of the most difficult things for a human being to ever admit to himself is that he really does fit this scripture. Jeremiah 17 and verse 9 says, "The heart," and God does look on the heart according to the lesson we learn in Samuel. The lesson that was the choosing of David as king over Israel, where his brothers were bigger, handsomer, far more, perhaps versatile and dexterous, far more athletic in build. They were more attractive, and so logically, the father brought them one by one in front of Samuel to see which one of them was the king. He knew one of them had to be, but surely David couldn't be. And that was when God said that he looks on the heart and not on the outward appearance. The heart, that's the internal man, the real you, the inside is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, or evil as the margin has it. Who can know it? It's so deceitful that it doesn't know itself.

   Now, it's not too terribly difficult to deceive another person a little bit, perhaps to some degree. Practically every day, we are all indulged and engaged in various little petty deceits. We deceive other people, we con other people, we put our best foot forward. We tell it in the cocktail conversation. "Then I said, and she said, and he said, and wasn't that awful?" From our point of view, if you could tape record the opposite point of view, the other story being told by the other participant at the other cocktail party and put the two together, you would have a collection of lies, neither one of which would be exactly accurate. If the real truth were known, it would be somewhere between the two grossly distorted stories as each tried to present themselves in the best possible light.

   But you know, we even deceive ourselves. You know, people have had that experience, maybe they woke up and agreed to it and admitted it and said they were sorry later on. But people have begun to tell lies about exploits when they were teenagers, things that happened, stories about the military, various sexual conquests, or what have you. And they will do these locker room stories or these tete-a-tete pink tea parlor stories when the gals get together to let their hair down, and they will tell the story endlessly. The years go by, and finally, you know, they begin to believe that that's the way it really happened. When actually, when they began to tell the story, they had embellished it, taken away from it, added to it, distorted it, pushed it all out of shape, maybe lied about it, and had a completely different story than the way it really happened. But years downstream, that becomes so fixed in their minds that here they are telling a gross lie later on in life, and they don't even know it's a lie. They completely believe every word they are saying. That, in their mind, is the way it exactly happened.

   Oh, we can deceive ourselves. Our minds are quite capable, believe it or not, of deceiving our own selves. We can make ourselves believe a lie. The Bible talks about those who are willingly believing a lie. They recognize it as a lie, but they begin to cuddle up to it and begin to believe it. "The heart is deceitful above all things." Do you believe military leaders, politicians, preachers, lawyers, laborers, truck drivers, labor unionists, doctors, dentists, housewives, students say to themselves that their heart, the internal being that is the deepest consciousness, the deepest awareness of what they are, of all that they want in life, is deceitful and by its own nature desperately wicked above all things and so obscure and so devious that they can't even really know themselves?

   Now, vanity and the ultimate ego trip was the way of the Pharisees. I want you to turn to the eighth chapter of the book of John and look at a confrontation that is quite instructive. Jesus constantly ran across problems with these egotists who, I believe, are the epitomizing of all that is evil in organized religion. And it always has been down through the ages as far as you can tell in history. The Pharisees were the epitomizing of ultra-reactionary religionists during the day of Jesus. While the Essenes might have been more the liberal kind of teaching, the Pharisees were the restrictive reactionary teachers. I'll break into the middle of it because remember these were Jews who apparently had believed on Jesus. It says in verse 31 (John 8:31-40), "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him." A very important point. They believed on him. He had said some things that they had accepted, and they said immediately, a lot of them believed on him. It says so in verse 30. Now he is speaking to those who believe on him. "If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

   But that implied to them they didn't yet know all the truth, and that pierced their vanity. That was an ego problem. And so, they answered him. Listen to this egotistical statement. But first get the background. These are Pharisees, these are Pharisees' religious teachers in a nation which is a Roman puppet state. These are men who walk the streets in which they rub shoulders with Roman soldiers in arms. These are men who live in a nation that has been subjugated by the Roman Empire, which pays tribute, which pays heavy taxes, where a citizen could be demanded to walk and to carry a Roman soldier's burden. These are people in an occupied country making the following statement: "We be Abraham's seed and were never in bondage to any man. How then can you say you shall be made free?"

   How's that for vanity and the ultimate ego trip? Jesus answered, "Verily, I say unto you, whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abides not in the house forever, but the son abides forever. If the son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham's seed, but you seek to kill me."

   You notice that Jesus just threw to the ground all of the niceties that the etiquette books would teach? He really did go a long way to step on people's corn-laden toes, and it hurt. Now, instead of Jesus taking them at their false face value, the face they got up and put on that day, the broad phylacteries, the flowing robes, the holier-than-thou expression, the little bit part that they were playing, the posture of life, he just took the little stiletto of the word of God, which is a sharp two-edged sword that divides asunder even the marrow of the bone, and he just put it all the way in there and twisted it right in the marrow of the bone. They hadn't said anything about killing. He discerned it, he knew it, he knew what their real heart was. And he's saying this to people who believed on him. He is saying, "You seek to kill me." Now, wouldn't that be some conversation? You come by a street corner, there are about four or five religious types. You can tell by the robes, red, scarlet, vermilion, all kinds of beautiful. These are religious colors, you know, purple and so on, and white and funny-looking colors. And there's a man standing in the middle of it, and he's talking to them. He's saying to these religious types, "You guys are trying to kill me." Wouldn't that be the strangest conversation you've ever heard? You'd think the last person in the world to try to kill somebody would be somebody standing there with a religious robe on.

   I do understand the Israelis still have that one guy in jail who was smuggling machine guns underneath his skirts in and out of Israel, and apparently they're going to leave him there. But then that's another case. But these fellows back then were religious types, and they had the appropriate dress, so you could tell even from a distance that they were a religious type. And Jesus said, "You seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father, and you do that which you have seen of your father." Now, we can look in retrospect, nearly 2000 years later, we know which Father he was talking about because you can read ahead, you can skip ahead, then you can flash back, you can get the whole story and then read it with a comfortable assurance you know what he was talking about. But the thing is those Jews of that day knew exactly what he meant too. He was talking about their father, Satan the devil, the father of their nature, the father of their doctrine, the father of their personality, the guiding, motivating, driving force behind their attitude.

   Your father gives you your nature and your characteristics. It will always be magical somehow, and I guess nearly miraculous for science. They'll never be able to really understand how in the world a minutely microscopic spermatozoon in uniting with a little ovum, which is smaller than taking the sharpest needle and making the sharpest of pinprick on a piece of paper, you still couldn't see it with the naked eye at all. It takes a microscope. And how in the world, in that lowly beginning—and that's what all you people started out as, remember. I don't want to embarrass you, but there was a time when you didn't exist, and you came from the body of your father and your mother. And that's how you started by that uniting of a male and female cell. Well, actually many, many cells, of course, far more than one cell in that little form. So, it will always remain miraculous, I suppose, how in the world the father can transmit virtual personality characteristics. This argument between heredity and environment, I guess, will never cease. There are exhausting studies on it, book after book on it, psychology books, books on personality and human nature, heredity and the impact of heredity, the impact of environment, whether or not you can take a savage out of the jungle in one generation, having gone to Harvard and teaching other people law or not, and so on. There are exhaustive studies on it, but there will always be an absolute miraculous area as to how personality, basic shape and weight, whether or not a person tends to grow fat or not, whether or not a person tends to remain slim all of their life, even perhaps timbre and tenor of voice, aptitudes, characteristics, that thing that we call personality can be transmuted or transmitted, can be indelibly stamped just like a spiritual pattern of some kind by that miraculous little uniting of a tiny microscopic grouping of cells. How does that happen?

   Later on in life, up into the thirties and forties, people are still exhibiting similar characteristics of the father. Here is Jesus acknowledging and stating very plainly that the spirit which gave the driving, motivating force, which gave the attitude, which fueled the point of view, which caused the thought process, that spiritual driving force that was the real father of these Pharisees or religious fanatics was Satan the devil. Jesus said that if they had been Abraham's father, they wouldn't be trying to kill him, but they were trying to kill him because his word had no place in them. And he said, "I speak that which I have seen with my Father," verse 38, "and you do that which you have seen with your father." And they answered and said, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said, "If you're Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth which I have heard of God. This did not Abraham. You do the deeds of your father." Now they answered back and they said, "We be not born of fornication." You see, that was a story that Mary had to put up with all of her life. Aren't you glad you've got the true account? You ever stop to think of how you would be floundering around if all you had as a matter of literature to find out about Jesus Christ was what Mary's neighbors said and what the Pharisees said and what the Herodian and the Essenes said, and what the Romans said? Remember when Jesus asked his disciples, "Whom do men say that I the son of man am?" They said, "Well, some claim you're Jeremiah, and others Elijah, or maybe Jonah, or Moses, or one of the prophets." And he said, "Well, who do you say that I am?" And Peter said, "Well, we say that you are Jesus Christ, the son of God." And he said, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed that unto you but my Father, which is in heaven." Jesus wanted to know what his press was. He wanted to check up on what the wild rumors were. He wanted to find out what other people were saying in advance of his arrival into the city. Aren't we grateful that we have not only what they said, but the real truth in addition, the actual eyewitness account of the people who lived and ate and slept and walked and talked, suffered with Jesus, who watched him die, who watched him walk through a wall, who watched him walk on water, who listened to him by the dozens of hours after he was alive and back on this earth, who actually saw him ascending into heaven, that we have their eyewitness testimony and not just the literature of the persecutors of that day.

   He said, "You seek to kill me." They turned around and accused him of being illegitimate. But that's what Mary had to put up with all of her life. The rumors, the innuendos, the sidelong glances. She knew that when she accepted the job, when an angel came and said what was going to happen to her. I imagine Mary had some possible part to play in the sense that she had to be willing. She said, "Behold the handmaiden of the Eternal." She was willing to be burdened with that kind of a life and to accept that possible risk because of the incredible honor that it was to have conceived inside the body of a human female, the very Son of God.

   In Jesus' case, he became flesh. What had been the very creating being of the Godhead became a tiny microscopic collection of human cells, and it, in this sense, gave that indelible stamp. It says in the book of Hebrews that he is the stamped impress of the Father. And so, the changing of that divine creating life into a tiny little germ of life actually began the same process of the formation of a fetal growth and development toward the birth of a human baby that was just as helpless, that was just as, as absolutely unknowing, was just as utterly dependent upon its mother as were you before the umbilical cord of your own birth was ever severed. Jesus was born exactly as you were, exactly as every other human being that is ever born was born. But in Jesus' case, the hereditary characteristics, the nature, the personality, the ability, the mental capacity was that of his Father, and he was very God changed into human flesh.

   Now, maybe you don't really know very much. Very few people do because it's not a scientific study about sixth sense, about spirit beings, about the capacity of spirit beings to communicate with human beings, about demons, about angels, about various spiritual creations, which are not seen with our human physical eye. But there is another dimension. There is another world which we do not see. There are living beings and creatures which can perform miracles, have the power to interfere in the physical universe with regard to wind, water, storm, fire, electricity. They can have the power to move physical objects. They can have the power to make noises. They can have the power to actually possess a human mind. They can have the power to twist the human body. Jesus said so time and time again. He was confronted with people who were possessed of a demon or who were molested of a demon. In one case, the father brought him very distraught because he said his young son was once in a while seized and torn. And even as Jesus was there confronting the boy, he was seized and torn as it said, meaning that he fell into a violent convulsion. The father said that oftentimes a demon would throw him into a fire or throw him into a lake and try to drown him. And so, we realize the Bible does show us that there are spirit beings.

   The Bible says there is a devil, that there is a great fallen archangel who was once called Lucifer, who rebelled against God and became completely twisted and perverted, and that he has the power to communicate in the human spirit, that he has the power to whisper in the human ear, that he has the power to put a thought into a human mind, that he has uncounted, who knows how many millions of henchmen, of demons, of spirit beings who are alive, who do exist, who have far more power than any number of human beings. Maybe read the book of Acts of the seven sons of Sceva who thought they would take it upon themselves to overcome a demon-possessed individual. And they tried to rebuke the spirit when they didn't have the authority to do so. And that one human being, because of spiritual power added to his normal physical muscular strength, was able to beat the living daylights out of seven grown men, rip off every shred of their clothing, and leave them fleeing, bleeding from many wounds without a shred of clothing left on them.

   It just so happens that when Jesus said what he did, he was not lying. He was telling the truth. They were doing the deeds of their father because their spiritual father, the one who whispered in their ear, the one who put thoughts in their mind, was a being Jesus knew. Jesus remembered because he'd had a hand in creating him. He'd seen his earlier beauty. And he said in the book of Luke, it's recorded, "I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven." The book of Revelation says his tail, just like the tail of a comet in the skies, drew a third part of the stars of heaven. The Bible only mentions three angels, archangels by name: Lucifer, Gabriel, and Michael. Those great archangels are spoken of in one of the longest prophecies in all the Bible at a time when Bible prophecy was hinging upon the actions of one king that had to do with a decree to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. That 10th chapter, the 11th, then later the longest prophecy in all the book of Daniel, and even the 12th is quite a little bit of insight into the actions of archangels. Did you know the 11th chapter of Daniel was given by an archangel? Did you know that that is Michael's writing? He said to Daniel, "I am Michael your prince." And then he said, "I'll tell you what's going to happen." And what follows is a narrative between Michael and Daniel. The longest prophecy in the Bible is one Michael brought from heaven.

   There are only three mentioned, and when it says a third part of the stars of heaven, it indicated that each one of those three were given authority over one-third of the angelic beings that God had created originally, of which there are uncounted millions or billions who knows.

   This topic will be continued on the next edition in the series of The World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong. You're invited to learn more about these important issues through the pages of Good News magazine. In addition to his many speaking engagements, Garner Ted Armstrong also serves as editor of Good News magazine. This full-color monthly publication underscores the importance of biblical understanding in modern 20th-century living. The Good News magazine. Your subscription is free of charge. There is no cost or obligation. The Good News.

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