Ambassador College and the Worldwide Church of God present Garner Ted Armstrong. All literature offered on this program will be sent free of cost to anyone requesting it.
Surest way to avoid being permitted aboard an airliner these days is to walk up the hallway in the airport with a gun in your hand. I imagine you'd be arrested before you go all the way to the checkpoint where you have to walk through the metal detector before it lets you on board the airplane.
The sure way to get kicked off the airplane after you get on is to have a big Bible out of your briefcase, open it up, get a red pencil, put on your reading specs and begin to read it and underline it and mark it. I don't know if they'd throw you off during the flight, but you'd sure have a lot of people giving you funny stares and the stewardess going by nearly dropping a coffee pot when she says to her, 'What have we got aboard? Some kind of a religious nut or something?' Because reading the Bible in public just isn't done.
You might as well spill that coffee on the guy's lap next to you and haul out a Bible. And I guarantee you one thing, if you will just put this to a test, you go ahead, you board a bus or a train or a plane or even sit in some public place and open up a Bible, one that's well-marked and kind of dog-eared and looks like maybe you'd read it once in a while and appear to be studying it. But with one eye every now and then, if you can't, you can do that with one eye. Take a look at the looks of people around you. You're going to find out that people look upon those who would read a Bible in public places as some kind of a religious nut.
What are you? I mean, not what kind of a job you have or what is your race? But I mean, what are you as a man? What's inside of you? Is there a soul in there that's about to be released at death? So, you go somewhere else when you die for a life after death at interminable reaches of time out in outer space or in one limbo or another. What are we? Are we animal creature? Are we some kind of a spirit within a body? Are we a transitory experience that had its existence first in some other world and is temporarily wandering around the earth with all the problems that come to us and after death, we are released to escape to go back to where we came from.
Are we mosquitoes? Some people, you know, I guess avoid stepping on ants and little creatures that scurry around the earth because they're afraid of killing their long-lost grandmother. What are we? And how are you going to find out? Science can't tell you, science laboratories can't tell us exactly what we are. You don't go to courses in college that tell you what man is 101 or 202 or something. You just don't do it.
As a matter of fact, philosophy classes, psychology classes don't really speculate about what man is. They don't seem to know, but there is one source to which you can go to find out the very same source that everybody says is the ultimate source of knowledge about man's experience on the earth, about life after death, about things such as heaven and hell and judgment.
And is there a God? And does God hear prayer? And does God expect human beings to live according to a certain code? Is there some sort of a standard of behavior, some sort of laws that are set down? And are there punishments for disobeying them and rewards for obeying them? The Bible is the ultimate source for all of that information. And yet you probably haven't read very much of it. If you have, you're a rare individual, you're a unique one possibly, because very few people have. One of the most commonplace diseases of the day is biblical illiteracy.
If it caused us to break out in a rash and have all sorts of blue spots, most of us would look rather terrible like we had walking or galloping leprosy. But since it doesn't, many people can appear in the guise of intellectualism, they can appear to be fairly well-informed and up to date on the political situation, whether it's Watergate or whether it is something in a global sense or about global economics.
But they can be absolutely ignorant of the Bible. Yet they can stand up and make some real vociferous pronouncement about. 'Well, the Bible says this and that,' and everybody else stands in awe and shuts their mouths and doesn't argue with them. You know why? Because they are equally as ignorant about the Bible as the one who makes this far-reaching pronouncement. They don't know what the Bible says either.
Well, it's kind of like the barber cutting the guy's hair, and he was chuckling about what had happened in class the day before to his boy. And he said that boy of mine is really stupid. You know what he's in his class. And the teacher wanted to know. All right, who wrote Hamlet and my little kid everybody was speculating about who wrote Hamlet. And finally my little kid raised his hand, and the guy is chuckling, and Barbara's sniping his hair, and he says, he says, teacher, he says, 'Yes, Johnny says I didn't do it.' And everybody laughed, and the barber kind of chuckled at, he says, 'Oh, that's cute. A little stinker. And I bet he was the one that did it all the way along too, wasn't he?'
Well, this is just about the way most people feel about the Bible. You can ask them to look up the book of Azariah or the book of Amaziah, or maybe the book of Beulah. And they would scurry around through the Bible and try to find it, you know, in the New Testament where you can find contusions, concussions, and abrasions. What are those epistles of Paul or injuries you get when you're thrown about and knocked about by a truck. Biblical illiteracy is not something of which most people are ashamed, something of which most people are rather proud as a matter of fact to admit that you actually studied the Bible that you research it, that it provides for you a daily guide. Not just an inspiration but of an actual set of laws and rules that tell you how to live and work and say and think and do would be tantamount to telling somebody you're a communist and about equally as embarrassing, I guess, except I don't know whether communists are embarrassed by saying that's what they are.
In the last several programs, I've been talking about biblical misconceptions about the fact that if you were to open the Bible practically anywhere and especially, I would say in the teachings of Jesus Christ, in the sermon on the mouth, the writings of the epistles of Paul, the general epistles of as we call them general epistles of James Peter and John. And you were merely to wade through some of those segments of the Bible, just reading it painstakingly and carefully seeing what it says, pondering what it is saying to you asking yourself, 'How does this square with what you always thought?' It says, you would be shocked. I think you would have a series of stunning surprises, and you would find the Bible doesn't say what you thought it did that it says just about diametrically the opposite.
The past several programs have been talking about whether or not there is a real hellfire, whether or not people go to heaven when they die, whether or not there is a life after death and whether or not you are a soul inside of a body. And what is the ultimate source? What is the ultimate authority for which you can answer these questions? The Bible is the ultimate authority and it's the only one. It's the only one that really tells you what humankind is all about, why we were put on the earth, what we are, where we are going, what our goal, purpose and destiny is in this life, whether or not there is a God and if so, how many members of the godhead are there? What is their plan and program, if any, how do we fit into it?
What is the timetable or schedule of events that they have in mind? That's where biblical prophecy or eschatology comes into play. Where do we go from here? What is the meaning of this global space race of the arms race of global pollution of the population explosion of the portent of drought and famine here and there of the terrible problems now in nations such as India and the two were Bangladesh and Pakistan, the nations of Africa, the emerging big power blocks of the world of Europe of Japan of a nuclear-armed red China. What does it all mean? Are we really headed toward a nuclear bomb, World War II? Human extinction is a possibility, maybe even a probability.
But does the Bible say anything about that? Does Bible prophecy mean us today, or is the Bible just a collection of old hymns and songs and sayings in the attempt of a bygone race of Hebrews to aggrandize their own national history, to enlarge tripping lightly over a little kind of a dried-up stream one night out of the nation of Egypt into an Exodus where Moses, presumably, part of the seas to enlarge upon coming to a mud hole and having to boil the water by throwing in branches and saying that God miraculously cleared it up.
People have gotten to the point where they deny every miracle the Bible talks about, where they say there were no miracles. They claim that some of the disciples had hallucinations that Jesus wasn't Jesus but maybe even a mushroom that he made love to Mary Magdalene went racketing across the landscape in a motorcycle with his long hair and beard flying.
Like it's not, as a matter of fact, there's a guy that's going to make a movie on that, as I said a couple of programs ago, and I couldn't believe my eyes or he's claiming he's going to make a kind of a modern Steve McQueen out of Jesus Christ and call it the love life of Jesus or something like that. Well, that's sad. But people can sell books by claiming Jesus wasn't Jesus but a mushroom. They can sell books by calling him a fraud, a cheat, and a liar. And they can get away with it that somebody can come on the air on television, write articles, booklets, magazines and publish them free and give them away and say that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is right at the right hand of the Most High God that he walked out of that tomb 1900 years ago, that he's alive today that he's coming back to this earth. And they think he's an absolute insane kook, a weirdo, and an oddball and possibly a dangerous man.
There's got to be something wrong with our society for on the one hand, we think the person who impugns and ridicules and tries to make either a warmonger or a mushroom of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is to be respected and his books purchased and his movies seen and the person who stands for the Bible and says, 'Christ is very God. And is your coming judge and your soon-coming king? There's something wrong with this guy.'
Well, let me tell you, there's nothing wrong with the Bible, and if you'll blow the dust off of it and look into it for yourself with your own eyes, you'll get the answer to the perplexing questions about life after death. What you really are?
Everyone in town likes Harry Richards. He's a man who always has time for his wife and children. People rely on Harry, in June when his daughter was married, the whole town wanted to come. Last week, Harry Richards died. Now there's a tremendous vacuum left in the lives of his family and friends. They wonder why, why Harry? What is death? Is there life after death? You probably asked yourself these same questions. Now, discover God's answers. Read the free booklet, After Death Then What? For your free copy of this booklet, After Death Then What? Write to Ambassador College, Box 345 GPO, Sydney.
Where did old Harry go? That's the question. The preachers at the gravesite are always going to preach people in heaven, as it were. Make a lot of pious statements about life with the Lord and this and that. And we know that you're right there, Harry, and you're listening in that small comfort for the people, sitting there wringing their hands in grief. Kind of staring at that casket and thinking about the poor withered body that is there, the guy who died in the cancer operation or the heart transplant, the fellow that was killed in an automobile accident, small comfort, indeed, these statements about wanting to depart and be with the Lord.
If heaven is such a wonderful place to go, if it is the Christian retirement plan, if it is just such a delightful place, why in the world do people fight, scratch, struggle, scream and claw their way to the doctors begging for anything from injections to knives, save me doc and struggle not to go there. I mean, if they thought that's what the Lord had in mind all the way along, wouldn't you think they'd be volunteering?
What is that story about the guy that was sitting in the back of the church and the minister was up there preaching around, preaching up and down the length and breadth of the platform there, and really working up a head of steam about going to heaven. And finally, he preached out loud. 'Everybody that wants to go to heaven, stand on your feet,' you know, and everybody stood up, but poor old Harry Richards, I guess it was back there in the back somewhere, kind of looking askance at all these goings-on. And the preacher looked through and he thought, 'Harry, why aren't you on your feet? Don't you want to go to heaven?' And Harry said, 'Yes, sir, Preacher, I sure do. But I thought maybe you were getting up a load to go right now today.'
Well, you know, people aren't that anxious to get there. The question is, are they going there in the first place? Would you like a Bible answer to that? Now, if you were to take the following test, which we will do right quickly. There is such a thing as a Bible Concordance. That's a kind of a listing of all of the words in the Bible. You can take the word heaven and you would inevitably find these scriptures that I have here for you and lots of others. And if you would just read them and read the Bible as you would in the other book and try to solve the problem, the way you might by adding up a mathematics problem that all these numbers added up, add up to thus and such you would come to the same conclusion I have as I have studied the Bible and others. My father before me, Ambassador Colleges and Worldwide Church of God believes this, that the dead when they die, go to the grave, they go in that coffin or they go into that ash urn or wherever they go and that's where they are, where they stay, they can be changed in the form in terms of being cremated, or they can gradually go back to the dust of the earth, which is exactly what the Bible says.
So, let's ask the question. Did Harry go to heaven? But let's go to the Bible because that's the only source to which you can go to find out and see what it says. Here's what Jesus said. 'And no man has ascended up to heaven, but he came down from heaven. Even the Son of Man, which is in heaven.' Peter is preaching Acts the second chapter. I read this to you last time and I didn't have the one verse that I want to show you. Now, 29th verse (Acts 2:29) says that you wanted to freely talk about patriarch David that he is both dead and buried and his sepulcher with us to this day. A little later he said, 'David is not ascended into the heavens, but he says himself, the Eternal said to my Lord, sit thou on my right hand till his enemies be made his footstool.' As he goes on to say, Matthew 5:5 says blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Those are the words of Christ from Psalm 37. Verse 9 says (Psalm 37:9), 'Evil doers shall be cut off. But those that wait upon the Eternal bay shall inherit the earth.' Those poor people are going to have to settle for the earth. They don't get to go to heaven. Those that wait upon the Lord, they inherit the earth. How do you square that with the idea that they're in heaven?
If there are good people that wait upon the Lord, whatever we might think that means in the Bible, it also says in Psalm 37:11, 'But the meek shall inherit the earth,' as the Old Testament saying it and the New Testament saying it says in Psalm 37:22, 'For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth and they to be cursed of him shall be cut off.' It doesn't say go to hell. It says be cut off. Hebrews, the 11th chapter is talking about some of the new, or I should say the Old Testament patriarchs but is speaking of the new covenant and its talking about the promise that was given to those under the terms of the old covenant saying (Hebrews 11:13), 'These all,' and that means, believe it or not, Enoch and Elijah who were listed, 'not having received the promises.' These all died', they died, but they died in faith. But having seen them afar off were persuaded to them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on this earth.
In 2 Timothy 4:6-8, the apostle Paul is talking about the fact that he knows he's about to be martyred. He knows that his death is near. He says, 'I am ready to be offered.' He says, 'I fought a good fight,' and he said in verse 8, 'Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me at that day.' And not to me only, what day?
Well, he says, but unto them also, that love is appearing. The Apostle Paul expected to receive a reward of God, whatever the reward of the saved is. But he expected it to be laid up for him until kept in store as it were or reserved for him until the day of the appearing of Jesus Christ. And he said so repeatedly throughout his entire ministry. He wrote of it in the entire 15th chapter, I Corinthians. He repeated it elsewhere all the way through the writings of the Apostle Paul.
Here's another one in the book of Revelation, five and verse 10 (Revelation 5:10). It talks about where those who are going to reign with Christ as kings and priests will do that ruling. What does it say? What's your Bible say about where they will be? 'has made unto us, unto our God, made us unto our God, kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth.' Revelation 22, verse 12 (Revelation 22:12), the last chapter of the Bible, it says, 'And behold, I come quickly and my reward is with me.' Doesn't precede him. We don't get it when we die. He's bringing it with him to give to every man according as his work shall be.
So there again, it's talking not about going to heaven, but about Christ coming back down out of heaven to the earth, and people who are given what we call the reward of the save are going to inherit rulership, judgment, government positions of responsibility with Jesus Christ to rule on the earth. Now, that's very heavily theological. I know I'm not talking right now about the population explosion. I'm talking about the Bible, about misconceptions about the Bible, about the fact that there are literally millions of people who have assumed all of their lives under the constant pressure of teaching and repetitive statements out of pulpits. What people have taught them in Bible, you might not call them Bible studies as much as say Sunday schools. I think there's a very great difference. If you just look into it between the two sometimes.
I've had letters that have come to me from literally hundreds of ladies mostly who have been Sunday school teachers who have told me they've learned more in a few World Tomorrow broadcasts or a few of the television programs or in reading a few of these booklets and they did maybe 20 or 30 or 40 years of church going and that's not my fault. That's whoever's fault it was, it was in that pulpit that they were going to listen to and maybe a few of those people ought to kind of take he even wonder if they're really giving the people a fair shake, they should too. Why don't you write for this booklet? Is There a Real Hell Fire?, stand by and take a look.
A little tongue in cheek play of what we feel is the way most people have always presented to you the idea of what it means to go to hell.
Guilty. [tongue in cheek presentation.] For your free copy of this booklet. Is There a Real Hell Fire? Write to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sidey. It's all the way down in there, not really, if you write for this booklet, you'll find out the answer is what you think it is.
We're not talking about there isn't any hell fire. We're going to tell you in this booklet exactly what the Bible says. And at home you can page to that if you can find, you know, where it is, it's probably up in the attic, but it's in there somewhere underneath a whole stack of books. Maybe where you stacked a lot of them in the study or the den the lounge or maybe it's underneath the doily with a little rose button, a little vase there or someplace. Maybe it's on the piano with the kids' pictures or it's over there on the mantle behind a lot of things. Maybe you got a whole wall rack of books, you know, and somewhere in there you might even find a kind of a pocketbook or maybe you got the Psalms of The New Testament and that's all you own. But if you don't even have a Bible, they're fairly cheap. As a matter of fact, you can, even for the purposes of what I'm talking about, just take your miss and go for a short trip somewhere in any motel you check into, you'll find one right underneath the ashtray or in the top drawer and you'll probably find a few cocktail stains on it. We print somewhere around 7 million of these things every single year and it's been translated into, I don't know how many thousands of hundreds of different languages and sent to people by the multiple millions all around the world. But practically nobody ever get around, gets around to reading about it. So you can look into it for yourself at home and you can use this as a guide. Not that you have to swallow what this says hook-line-and-sinker this booklet about.
Is There a Real Hell Fire, but that you can use it as a guide to check up on and find out if you can find one single mistake in it. And if you can corroborate what the booklet says with what your Bible says, then you know it's not me you're believing, and it's not something we've written that you believe. It is not even the booklet. It's not what I'm telling on the program, but it's your own Bible that you've got confidence in.
I have to ask the question: What about this thing of going to hell? Is the Bible going to substantiate that belief? There's just a little bit of what you're going to see about a real hellfire. The Bible talks about Romans 6:23 does say that the wages of sin is death, doesn't say eternal life. Remember that going to hell would be like having the wages of sin be eternal life. But eternal life in a different environment, eternal life in torment and torture. It doesn't say that it says death, and the Bible kind of a death is the same kind of death we know of. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. That's the gift of God, not something that is the gift of your parents. It's not something you were born with. It's the gift of God.
Alright, Ecclesiastes 9:5 says, we know something says we all know we're going to die. That's a more of a kind of thought. But it does say that the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything. There's no consciousness in the grave. Neither have they any more a reward for the memory of them is forgotten. And it seems to imply not that we forget them, that we forget someone who has died. But it seems to more strongly imply that their memory is forgotten. There's no recollection on their part because they're dead, they're unconscious, they're in the grave. That's what the Bible consistently says about the state of the dead. Notice Psalm 146 and verse 4 (Psalm 146:4), his breath goes forth, he returns to this earth or to his earth and that very day his thoughts perish.
Malachi 4 and verse 1 (Malachi 4:1), of the most important ones in all the Bible. It says, 'For behold, the day comes that shall burn as an oven and all the proud Yeah, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble and the day that comes shall burn them up.' Aha says someone who thinks I have been saying that there isn't and hell fire. Aha said somebody Garner Ted just trapped himself. Now he is quoting the scripture which is going to knock on the head. Everything he has said. Wait a minute, I want to prove to you that people don't listen very closely. If you thought that's what I was saying. You're mistaken. I've never said that there isn't a real hellfire. I have said there is not an ever-burning one. I have said time and again on the radio program as well as on the telecast that the hellfire the Bible talks about is maybe millions of degrees centigrade hotter than the one you've heard about. The one you saw portrayed in a little animated cartoon.
It says in Malachi 4 and verse 1 (Malachi 4:1) that it shall burn them up. And that means totally consumed. It means destroyed. It doesn't mean singed or blistered or over and over like a hot dog on a spit. Saith the Eternal of hosts or the Lord of hosts that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. That's total destruction.
In Matthew, the third chapter verse 12 (Matthew 3:12), it speaks really of the coming of Jesus Christ whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly purge his floor. And you're just talking of the analogy of someone who is, who is at a threshing floor. A grindstone is there and by the fan is causing the chaff to be blown aside in the grain to remain and gather his wheat into the garner. But he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. What is unquenchable fire? Well, if I had a match, I could start one right here. If I had an ashtray and a match and a piece of paper, I could light it and I could say now, wait a minute, we're not going to quench that. That's unquenchable. We're not going to put it out. We're going to let it burn forever. How long is it gonna burn? Just as long as there is something there upon which it can feed.
The fire the Bible talks about that burns them up and leaves the meter root in a branch that causes the wicked to be ashes under the feet of the righteous that the Bible speaks of in many places. The Valley of Gehinnom or Gehenna or Hinnom as some call it in the New Testament that is talked of in the Hebrew or the Greek language. Excuse me, as Ghena or Gehenna fire is a fire which consumes, which feeds upon that, which is thrown into it and which burns it completely up. It's the same kind of fire you start in your fireplace, the same kind that you start in your, in the old wood-burning kind of a stove that some of you may still have. It burns it up until it becomes ash, but it doesn't burn forever and ever and ever. There is absolute proof to all these scriptures. They corroborate each other. They correlate, they interrelate, they substantiate each other.
The Bible misconceptions of people would tend to negate everything I've told you about the soul, about heaven, and about hell. You need to write for the booklets and prove it to yourself.
One other segment I want to cover quickly before we leave this one portion of the Bible misconceptions is that of whether or not Jesus Christ came to save the world at his first coming, whether or not he came to save the world. Now, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself a little bit, but on purpose because of introducing something I want to cover next time.
One of the most common misconceptions of all is the misconception about Jesus Christ himself. People don't know when he was born. They don't know why he came, how he called his disciples. What was the purpose of his ministry? Why he spoke in parables and clouded the meaning whether he died, the method of his death? Was it a spirit inside? Was it multiple wounds? Was it being lashed and cut and beaten and whipped? Was it finally that spirit that jammed into his side? As the Bible itself says, or was it a broken heart? People don't know; they don't know how he died. They don't know whether it was really death. Was he dead? His life showing you in the scriptures that the Bible says death is death or there was absolutely not one spark of life left in his body, or was he really kind of alive? Was he aware of what was going on? Did he have a soul? Did it go somewhere? No, the Bible doesn't say that, misconceptions then about Jesus Christ himself, about his life and his ministry are the most ripe of all of the misconceptions of the Bible.
And here's one of the most important ones. Did Jesus come to save the world? Now, next time I'll show you by these scriptures that Jesus said there is a time schedule that he has in mind that he did not come to save the world then and believe it or not listen to me carefully, please. He is not trying to save it now, I'm telling you that Jesus Christ of Nazareth says in his own first-person quotation in the Bible that the sum total of the collective evangelists all around the world and all the scream of religious literature and broadcasting does not represent the very best effort of God Almighty to save this world today. And Jesus Christ isn't trying to save it today. Some few are having an opportunity, but the masses are not yet having their opportunity. Write for these booklets, After Death, What Then? or Then What? Either way? And also, Is There a Real Hell Fire? They're free of charge. You can see the address until next time. Garner Ted Armstrong. See you then.
All literature offered on the Garner Ted Armstrong program is sent free of cost to anyone requesting it, for your free copy of these booklets, After Death Then What? And. Is There a Real Hell Fire? Write to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sidney, be sure to watch Garner Ted Armstrong again next week at this time brought to you by ambassador and the Worldwide Church of God.