Herbert W Armstrong

   The big news is we'll still be here in the world tomorrow. That is if the world finally achieves one world government. Now, you think I mean by that that you have to help bring it about, but I don't. Do you imagine for one minute that all the world's religions are going to finally get together and convert all of humankind, and finally, we will have a wonder, super utopian world of splendacious happiness for everybody?

   If people can just get enough other people to do like they do, dress like they do, walk like they do, hold their bodies in the same posture they do, and go through the same rigmarole, see it away in religious ceremony, and eventually, maybe we can get the governments of the world to go along with religious ideas. And in this, we can find the salvation of mankind.

   Down through the ages, people have had various ideas and theories about how to solve the world's problems. I imagine every afternoon in bars all over the United States and Canada, after about the second or third old-fashioned, a lot of people solve all the world's problems. Back in the thirties, when the most exciting thing in town was going down to the barbershop to watch haircuts, they used to solve the world's problems on the courthouse steps on Sundays. When people sat around in the shade of the sycamore tree, they solved the world's problems.

   Do you and I both agree that very likely in the minds of many a bald-headed monk in the high Himalayas, in the religion of some of those nations such as Nepal, in their minds would be the deepest conviction that if you and I and all the rest of the people in the world would just embrace their religion, the world would surely be saved? At the same time, no doubt in the minds and hearts of people in Mexico City who might believe in a completely different kind of religion, but with some striking similarities, who knows, they might believe that if we would all collectively, nations all over the world, believe in that religion, we would save the world.

   People have the idea one religion would do it. But which religion? A composite of them all? Which religion would save the world? Now, when you look back in the history of the development of religions, they have been as much an evolutionary product as clothing styles, and sometimes the two have gone hand in hand. I have asked the question time and again to people to investigate why they believe the things they do, where they got their religious, their moral, their sociological, ethnic, racial taboos, or beliefs or approaches to life. In politics, they call it the position, you know that they take on things. But where did you get the things that you believed?

   I've had people come up to me and tell me the craziest things, at least they were crazy to me, about their religious beliefs and ideas that people have had about religion that they think is going to make them a better person in God's sight. So here are the great religions of the world that directly influence whole national governments. Communism is basically godless atheism, the idea that religion is the opiate of the public. And in some ways, when you look at some of the nations of the world and the national religions of those nations, and you see that people have been subjected to virtual, call it ethical slavery, spiritual slavery of a sort where they have lived gray, drab, dull, uninteresting, hard-scrabble lives of emptiness and futility, of endless religious ceremony and ritualism. And all the while, the nation gradually goes downhill. There have been many cases such as this where the religion of a people has been more or less directly responsible for the poverty, for the poverty of spirit, the poverty of intellect, as well as the poverty of the pocketbook of a whole nation.

   Well, I ask these questions to get us thinking a little bit about religion, our religion, the religion of the Western World, as well as that of the East, as well as that of the high Himalayas and elsewhere. First, is your religion any good to you if you understand it? No, apparently not. I mean, in some cases, people do claim to understand their religion. But let me put it to you this way. If you are a church-going, church-professing, Bible-believing Christian, as many people claim to be in the Western Hemisphere, do you know what your own church teaches? Now, many pastors all over the United States have bemoaned the idea and the fact that many of their own brethren, many of their own parishioners do not know what their own church teaches.

   For example, in many, many churches of the mainstream of the Judeo-Christian ethic, is the idea that when Jesus was crucified, he was there on the cross. As he was there dying, he turned to a thief and said, "I'm telling you right now, you're going to be with me in paradise." Except that's the way it should be, and they have a different way. They say, "I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you today, you will be with me in paradise." Well, that changes the meaning if he said, "I'm telling you now, I'm telling you today, you will be with me in paradise."

   Now take a look at the Apostles' Creed. It was never pronounced by the apostles. It is not found in the Bible, except by taking Old King James words that gradually came to have a certain meaning by 1611 and then have evolved because of religious preaching and teaching into completely different meanings by this modern space age in which we live. It said that he was buried and descended into hell. Now, the word would be fine if we understood what it really meant because the Greek word Hades. There are three, you see. There is a word that is called tartar or Tartarus, a word that is Gehenna or Gehenna, named really after the sons of Hinnom, a man who bought a piece of property near Jerusalem. It's a long story, but the word Hades that is used in the New Testament of your Bible, most commonly translated into the word hell, is a word which has nothing whatsoever to do with fires, with heat, with light, with energy, with flames, with ever-burning torment or anything of the kind. It is a word that means grave.

   Now, Gehenna is a word translated hell very sparingly, used very, very little in the New Testament, nowhere near so often as the word Hades. And the word Gehenna does most assuredly have to do with fires, but they're a lot hotter than the fires you've heard about because they burn up that which they are feeding upon. So here is what I'm getting at: many people don't know what their own churches believe. So, they go into the church and they recite the Apostles' Creed which says that Jesus died and was buried and descended into hell. Now, that same church teaches that Jesus promised the thief that very same day he and the thief would be in heaven. I don't get it. The Apostles' Creed says he went to hell, and the Bible says he was buried.

   So, if you understand the real meaning of the old word hell, it was used way back in the medieval times and even before and as it was used until corrupted by continued usage by people who just didn't know any better. It might have been as sincere as Aunt Martha when she's picking apples but just didn't know any better. I'm not questioning sincerity, but that word gradually got watered down to mean an ever-burning infernal region, watered down. What am I saying? It didn't get watered down. It got heated up. Anyhow, that word in most people's minds today means an ever-burning fire, and the Greek word Hades does not mean anything of the kind.

   So, when I say people don't even know what their own churches teach, I really do mean it. I think many pastors would agree with me on that, and they would want their people to open the Bible and to study and to look into these things, then go ask the pastor and say, "Pastor, I find all sorts of things in here that I want to ask you about." I know that the ministry of the United States of America, of all these churches, would dearly love it. They would love it. A lot of them don't have enough to do. A lot of them don't get to teach the Bible like they wish they could. A lot of them have to hold back. They feel they don't want to get too strong. They've got to be pretty gentle with people. If they have dozens and hundreds of people coming to them and saying, "Please show me in the Bible how I can understand this and how I can understand that," they would welcome this. We know that they would.

   So why don't you think about that for a while and ask yourself, how can that be if Jesus promised that very day he and the thief would be in heaven together, and how can the Apostles' Creed that millions have been reciting every single Sunday morning be true when it says Jesus went to hell?

   There's a time to be born, a time of youth with its lessons to be learned and its carefree moments, a time for raise a family, to watch your children grow and teach them of life, a time for work, for productivity and doing your part for mankind. There's a time to grow old and enjoy your grandchildren, and there's a time for death, the end of a full, exciting life. Then what? Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Limbo? What is the answer to this question that has long bothered man? You need to know. Read this free booklet, "What is the Reward of the Saved?" It answers this question in a unique and surprising manner. The Bible nowhere promises what you've always assumed. Be sure to read this informative booklet, "What is the Reward of the Saved?" Send your request to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 44, Vancouver, BC. That's Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 44, Vancouver, BC.

   Is your religion then any good if you understand it? Well, apparently not too many people around the world. It seems to me that the more mysterious, the more ritualistic, the more unclear, the more vague and ethereal is your religion, then the better it's likely to be in the sight of whichever god it is or gods that you are trying to please. I have traveled the world over pretty extensively, and I have seen with my own eyes ritualistic type religions and libertine religions, religions of kind of happy-go-lucky so-called free thinkers that conjure up their own religions in their own minds, religions of absolutism, mysterious rites, ways of doing things that had to do with just a day in day out ceremony of going to this temple and the other and praying to all these idols with six or eight or ten arms. And I've never seen one with seven or five, but they always seem to have even numbers, maybe jewels in their navels and so on.

   And so I have to answer, apparently if your religion makes sense—I'm talking to the whole world in general now, I'm not trying to hurt anybody's feelings—I'm just saying that if your religion is practical, if your religion is the reason for you being the kind of person you are, going where you go and doing what you do, and it's your whole approach and it's practical, it's something you can sink your teeth into and understand, it makes sense to you. It is a clear way of life to you. Now, this isn't the way most people want their religions to be.

   The next question: Is your religion any good to you if it makes you happy? Well, you'd have to answer sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think in this modern age with young people especially looking for something new in the field of religion, but they're certainly looking for happiness. So, I can go along with that in the sense that at least Jesus did say, "I come not only that they might have life, but that they might have life more abundantly." The religion, the true religion of God should make us happy. We're told to rejoice even in times of tribulation, though that's difficult. Eventually, of course, there could be sorrow because the Bible even predicts religious martyrdom. But Jesus said, "Blessed are they that mourn, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The kingdom of God that he talked about—Luke, Mark, John, all call it the kingdom of God. Matthew calls it the kingdom of Heaven. But in each case, it is the rule of God. And from heaven, Christ described what that kingdom is all about, which I've covered on this program time and again. And you can have that booklet on Just what you mean by the Kingdom of God? which we're not advertising right now. It's free of charge just like all the rest, though. If you write for it, you can have it by return mail. But that's another subject.

   Sometimes yes, religion is good for you if it makes you happy. Sometimes no. For example, I've never seen in the New Testament a mention of a happy Pharisee. Oh, happy Pharisee going along laughing to himself. You know, Jesus just didn't meet very many happy Pharisees. Mostly they were filled with rancor and with bitterness, hatred, strife. They wanted to argue and to fight.

   I ask the next question: Is your religion a good religion if you must live a life of restrictions? And most people would say, well, yeah, now you're really getting right down to a real workable religion when you don't do this and don't do the other, and you have a whole list of thou shalt nots. A lot of people assume the Ten Commandments to be mostly a negative law, but it is not. For instance, thou shalt honor your father and your mother, except it doesn't say thou shalt, it just says honor your father and your mother. It's a positive command. Well, you know, the whole thing includes that fathers and mothers ought to be honorable and that they ought to be honored by their children. But for every one of those negatives, you shall not kill. It goes on to show that you are to love your neighbor as yourself. And the majority of that is positive. Jesus epitomized and summarized the entirety of the Ten Commandments by saying, "Love God with all of your heart, your soul, your body, your mind, your being, and love your neighbor as yourself." And the first four of the Ten Commandments tell you how to love God in a positive way, and the last six tell you how in an active, positive way to love your neighbor. In some cases, you avoid hurting your neighbor. But that's not negativism. That's a positive action of helping your neighbor, sharing, giving, serving, working with your neighbor. There's a difference between that and trying to take him for all he's got.

   So, people falsely assume that the Old Testament is a religion that was revealed to people of don'ts of restrictions, of all sorts of terrible, stifling, restrictive acts which you enforce upon yourself. And this makes God happy in some way or another. Many falsely assume Christ's grace is license to sin, not that they say it that way, but grace to a lot of people means, "I'm under God's grace," you know, and that means that they're able to do just about pretty much as they please, that there are no laws to be obeyed. You know, when Jesus ran across some of these restrictive teachings, he really took issue with it.

   There was a case I think is very exemplary of what I'm talking about right here in the book of John, about the fifth chapter, where there was a man who had been lying on a pallet like a sleeping bag, just a little old pallet there, for 38 solid years. This man had dragged himself out lying down. They had a kind of a superstition about a certain pool, and if they could get down into that water, it would make them well. But every time it came time to get down into the water, everybody else would rush down there. They were better able to get there than he. So, he lay there, and he was 38 solid years absolutely infirm, lying there all withered up and tormented and tortured, lying on one side and then the other. No doubt, scrawny, no doubt, with bedsores and everything. Jesus came along, saw the man, took pity on him, and said in verse eight of the fifth chapter of John—it's recorded, this account—"Rise, take up your bed and walk." Now it wasn't a great big iron bedstead. Remember it was just a little thin pallet. So, here's this man who is miraculously healed, who gets up, looks at, he can't believe it. He's standing and walking for the first time in 38 solid years. People were dumbfounded and amazed at these miracles of Christ. "Rise, take up your bed and walk." And immediately the man was made whole and took up his bed—a little pallet rolled up—and walked. He probably just tucked it under his arm. And the same day was the Sabbath day.

   The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, "It is the Sabbath day. It is not lawful for you to carry your bed." Not one word here about, "Look at that! That's that guy that was crippled for 38 solid years. He was lying there in agony for 38 years. The poor man has been healed! What happened? Where on earth is the human being that might have been used to help you achieve such a fantastic thing? Who is the man who had the power to work such a miracle?" No question about that. Just, "What are you doing breaking the law carrying that little straw, as it likely was—a kind of tick mattress there? Why are you carrying your bed?" And you know, they got so many restrictions. Jesus said there were so many dos and don'ts added to the original religion of Judaism. A lot of people think that the Judaism of Jesus' day was Moses' religion, but the Bible itself and Christ himself tell you that by that time there had been many added restrictions that had been imposed upon people. He said of the Pharisees of that day, "They sit in Moses' seat. Therefore, whatsoever they tell you, that do. But don't do after their example." You know, it got so bad, I'm not kidding you. Now, a person could be sitting in a synagogue—and this has nothing to do with the race, it is a few people who lived back there, and that was a pretty irreligious society, and the religious leaders were definitely in the minority—but in that one religion, the Pharisaic religion, he could be sitting there in the synagogue and somebody could say, "Hey, a flea is crawling on you." "I know it. I've been watching him. I'm watching it. And if he bites me, it's ok to kill it." Now, I'm not kidding you. You can look it up. You can go back and research it. There was a law. It got broken down so finely—now you're talking about restrictive, repressive religion—it got broken down so finely, the only way you could kill a flea on the Sabbath Day was if bit you first. Is your religion as cleanly defined for you as that one?

   For 40 years, the Plain Truth magazine has been supplying the missing dimensions in education. The Plain Truth is published monthly as a facet of Ambassador Colleges in the home educational service. It maintains an editorial policy that incorporates this missing dimension in education—biblical understanding. Its timely, informative articles deal with subjects covering success in business, recreation, politics, religion, and farming. Each issue not only documents the state of today's society but offers hope for a better world tomorrow. To serve its more than 6 million readers, the Plain Truth is published in five languages and is available without price or obligation to all who request it. Join the growing worldwide readership. Request your subscription to the magazine with a 40-year history of educational service to mankind, the Plain Truth. Send your request to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 44, Vancouver, BC. That's Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 44, Vancouver, BC.

   What kind of an attitude can you imagine gripped the minds of people back during that day where they could stand right there? Now, this is a shameful, pitiful thing when you see people that are sort of smitten with attitudes like that today in society once in a while. Here was a poor man who had been lying there for 38 years. And you'd think that any religion would have at least enough compassion, enough well, thanksgiving or thankfulness or gratitude as a part of its makeup and of appreciation of such a quality as mercy, that certainly the religious leaders could at least rejoice a little bit when they saw a man who had been lying there for 38 years walking. But no, that wasn't a big thing they saw, the big thing they saw was the man was carrying a tiny little straw pallet. He probably weighed a few ounces or a few pounds at the most. So, they said, "It is not lawful for you to carry your bed." And he said, "Well, he that made me whole, the same said unto me, 'Take up your bed and walk.'" You know, you'd think that if somebody came along and you were lying in a hospital bed and he had the power to tell you you're lying there, ridden with cancer, to rise, get up, and walk and fold up your clothes and carry them home, then maybe you better do what he said. If he's got the power to tell you something like that, he must be a man of some authority.

   So, then they said, "What man is that which said unto you..." They didn't say, "What man is that that healed you?" They said, "What man is that that said unto you, 'Take up your bed and walk?'" You can read this in your own Bible in John the fifth chapter, 12th-13th verses (John 5:12-13). And he that was healed did not know who it was because Jesus had conveyed himself away. And that's surprising too, isn't it? It goes against the grain with what we've always thought because Jesus Christ of Nazareth time and again escaped out of the midst of crowds. He was not known by his appearance. He did not waltz around in a white robe with a halo. He was not a person you could pick out of the Rams game at the Coliseum. He was not a person you could see 10 miles off because of the shocking rays of light and so on, the way they depict him in the painting, the artistry, the religious art of the times that has come down. And it doesn't go clear back to the time of Jesus. Remember, there is no picture extant of the way Jesus looked. People have all sorts of paganized ideas of what Jesus looked like. Here's a man who was healed by him, couldn't spot him in the crowd, didn't know who he was.

   Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple. The man no doubt went to the temple to pray and to give thanks for his healing. And Jesus said, "Behold, you are made whole. Sin no more." Now, there's a lot said there. I don't want to take away from my remaining four or five minutes here, but it's not a separate subject. He was showing that sin, breaking of God's laws—in this case, probably the laws of health—had brought about that physical debility. So, Jesus Christ of Nazareth himself said that there are such sins that are other than just spiritual sins against God, but sins against your own body, which can bring about physical sickness, disease, disability. He said, "Sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you." So, the man left and he told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole. And verse 16 (John 5:16), "Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to kill him." Not all Jews. I'm not talking about the Jewish race. I'm not talking about Jews of today. I am on a personal first-name basis with many leaders of the nation of Israel, and I shouldn't make those apologies, but you know, oftentimes people misunderstand. I'm just reading the Bible now. And this was one tiny segment of that population, a narrow-minded, pinch-faced, absolutely miserable segment of a religious minority who believed religion is measured by a yardstick, a pack of absolute fools and hypocrites completely blind spiritually who believed the way to find out whether or not somebody is right in God's sight is to run around with a tape measure, who believed that the way to find out whether or not they were spiritual was with weights, to find out whether something was heavy and a burden that should not be borne on the Sabbath. And Jesus set himself against that kind of repressive teaching every single time he got the chance.

   Here it says, notice in verse 18 (John 5:18), "Therefore the Jews," and these are the Pharisees, the minority leaders of a minority religion, "sought the more to kill him because he had not only broken the Sabbath according to what they thought—he hadn't really—but said also that God was his Father, thus making himself equal with God." Oh, now anybody that would say that God is your Father, and that appears to make you equal with God, a member of the same family, that made them so mad back then. Of course, that makes people pretty mad even today, doesn't it?

   So, I ask again, is your religion any good if you understand it? But didn't Jesus say, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free?" Didn't he call the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit that would reveal unto you all things? Didn't he tell his own disciples that the spirit of understanding would come to open their minds? Doesn't the Bible tell you to ask for wisdom? Doesn't it say that you need to understand these things? If you don't know who you are, what you are, why you're on the earth, where you're going, if you don't know the purpose in your life and you can't understand it, then you're really not what you could call an educated person, are you? How can we be educated if we don't know what we are, where we came from, and where we're going? The true religion of God's word is a religion that ought to tell us the answer to those questions.

   I ask again, is a religion a good religion if you must live a life of hard-to-be-borne restrictions? Jesus answers when he said in the 23rd chapter of the book of Matthew, he was talking to a group of people, he said in verse two (Matthew 23:2), "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do, having to do with the custom. But do not after their works, for they say and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne and lay them upon men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."

   How many societies, how many races, how many nations of people have had religious leaders come along and concoct a complete man-made religion, evolved through an evolutionary process just like the development of language, art, literature, or music, a religion and impose all sorts of grievous restrictions upon other human beings, preaching a fear religion and scaring the daylights out of them about the idea that they may go either to the surface of the sun, to the bowels of the earth, to outer space, or someplace and cry forever if they don't do what this religious, you know, sky pilot tells them. And so here are all these little tykes around the world.

   I'll never forget one—well, I don't have time to finish it now—that example of a person whose life has been wasted out in this coffin. And I thought, what kind of a life, a restricted life, this person has lived and thought, what a dirty shame that religion can so waste so many hundreds of thousands of human lives. Look at some of the oriental religions and what they do, prayer wheels and all this type of thing, incense going up. Well, it's time we understood the true religion that Jesus brought. I'll take this up right where I left off here. Be sure to catch the next one. We'll be asking some of these basic questions.

   Meantime, write for "The Real Jesus." "The Real Jesus" booklet goes into the question of what Jesus looked like, whether or not he had long hair, what were his personal tastes, likes, dislikes, and habits. Did he live in a home, or did he always camp out of doors? Was he an average Jew of his day? What tribe was he? What color was he? Everything is all here in this one booklet. It's a very controversial booklet, a much-needed booklet in this day and age when Christ himself said the one major message you would be hearing about him is merely the story that he is the Christ, that Jesus is the Christ. And he said, even preaching that message, they shall deceive many. So that booklet, "The Real Jesus," it's free of charge. There is no price. If you write to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 44, that's Post Office Box 44, Vancouver, BC. Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye, friends.

   You have heard the World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong brought to you by the Worldwide Church of God. For literature offered on this program, send your request along with the call letters of this station to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 44, Vancouver, BC. For listeners in the U.S. write to Post Office Box 111 Pasadena, California. The World Tomorrow is heard daily at 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Cheer Radio.