Herbert W Armstrong

   And as I said before, when men have guns, they begin to use them, and when nations have hydrogen bombs, sooner or later, some madman and some tyrant is going to let go and use it. It's just a case of how many months or years do we have? And it isn't going to be very many. I think you'd better be awake to the times and what it all means.

   We're not living in normal times. There never has been a time like this from Adam and Eve on down until today. There has never been a time when the whole world was in chaos, when the whole world was upset, when such horrible, terrifying weapons of destruction had been invented. And yet we go callously on. Heedless just as if it was not so at all, paying no attention, totally oblivious to what actually is coming, not heeding in any sense, the real meaning of these times. You know, the significance of the very days you live in and what this all means, it means you're not going to live like you're living now very much longer. It means we're coming to the end of the present age and it's about time for every one of you to wake up and to realize the kind of a world you're living in.

   Now, everybody wants security. We want financial security, we just want peace and we just want to bog down and be contented. Yes, we do. Let me tell you something. There is only one kind of security now, only one, that one's security is God almighty. And the people that have been sneering about God and been careless about God had better begin to pay attention. You know, when people are tossed around on a raft out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, no rescue ships anywhere in sight. They go several days and no ship appears on the horizon and it looks absolutely hopeless. They begin to turn to God and to pray. Even men that absolutely were confident that they were atheists and didn't believe in God. Well, I think most of you believe in God in a way, in a sort of a careless sort of a way. But you've gotten so far away from God that he has become a myth and a fantasy of imagination. He doesn't seem real and you just ignore God altogether. It's about time began to think about God. It's about time. You began to understand a few things about God and that God Almighty is working out a purpose here below and that he has foretold these times and he has revealed to us the meaning of these times and he has shown there is only one security and only one protection in the things that are now immediately ahead of us. And that is the protection, the divine, supernatural protection of God Almighty Himself.

   A lot of you, my friends are riding to the biggest fall that ever happened to any people since Adam was on this earth. It's about time something would shake us and wake us up. But preaching won't shake people. I just want to tell you my friends that the only hope is intervention from God. If God Almighty does not step in and intervene, we will come to the kind of the end of this world that most people have thought. The meaning implied when we speak about the end of the world. Actually, the quotation from the Bible is speaking of the end of this age and the dawn of a happier world tomorrow. But if God Almighty, we're not going to step in and intervene. I want to tell you there would be no hope for this living generation and I'll just face it. Just what does that mean? Just where does that leave us. It means that this thing can't go on another 20 years. It's impossible for it to go on another 20 years unless either this thing is used and we are destroyed or else God almighty steps in and prevents it. And that means the end of this age, either way, either means the end of the age by the stepping in and the supernatural intervention of God as his prophesized or if you don't believe in that my friends, just the things that you can see means the end of civilization, the end of the world, in the sense that most people have believed in it, the end of all existence on this earth.

   Now, that's what you're faced with one way or the other. And here we go about our daily round of routine and duties calloused and not even thinking about it. You read this in your newspapers and the chances are that it's either down in a small headline at the bottom of page one or they put it back on page 10 or maybe page two or something like that. You know why that might throw this whole nation into panic and to start panic if they knew the danger that this world is in now and yet we go on calloused and indifferent and not perturbed at all and not thinking about these things or the cause of these things or the reason or the significance and meaning of what's taking place on the earth today.

   There is a meaning to all of this. There is a reason for these things. There is an overwhelming significance to the things that are taking place on the earth today, and the people are asleep and don't seem to realize it, and yet it's going to affect your future, your life, that of your children, your family, everything that you hold dear.

   What about your property? Well, let me tell you my friends one way or the other, you're not going to own and possess the property you have now another 20 years. I can say that to you and I can say it on the authority of Jesus Christ by the word of God Almighty. It's as certain as the rising and the setting of tomorrow's sun. You will not be possessing the property and the money and the financial and the economic and the material things that you think you own, that you set your heart on now, you won't be possessing them 20 years or I'll say for an absolute certainty, 25 years from now and I don't think it will even be 20. I don't mean to set the exact dates, but it is that near it. Is that near? And yet we go along not a bit perturbed.

   I want to tell you my friends, men are going to be so perturbed that they're going to scream, they're going to scream and cry for rocks to fall on them. They're going to soon be seeking death and unable to find it. Some of them. And that will be because God Almighty isn't letting this thing happen or it would annihilate all life off the face of the earth.

   We are at the end of an age, God Almighty has set aside 6000 years for humanity to do what it pleases. You know that the human family is the only type of life that we know anything about, except by revelation from God. It is the only kind of living organism that man can see or can know normally. And as you would say, scientifically, that has mind and the power of mind in the way that the human family has. In other words, we are the only beings that we know and to know consciously without revelation from God that have something like the mind of God, the mind power of reasoning and of designing, of planning, of laying out plans and designs and then of bringing them to fruition. We are the only ones that can think and decide and make decisions and that have will and purpose and can decide what to do and carry it out, decide to build or to construct and to make things and to reason as the human mind can do and then could carry it out and build.

   And I wonder if you have ever thought, although I've mentioned this before that, even if some animal had the mind of a man and could do that kind of reasoning and thinking and planning, they still couldn't do the things we do. They couldn't build these very delicate little wristwatches, most of which are made in Switzerland. And we have at least a couple I know of pretty good factories here in the United States. But I think most of our watches come from over in Switzerland. Now, supposing that a horse or a dog or a cow or an elephant or any kind of animal, you know, could have the mind that could think out and plan and design a little wristwatch. Could they, with their hooks and their paws? Could they put it together? Could they design it without the human hand? They couldn't do it.

   I wonder if you ever realize the mechanism of the human hand? And what a marvelous thing it is and what we can do with it. But what have we done with it? God Almighty set us aside as free moral agents because for God's purpose and what he proposes to make of us, it could not be made. If God forced us to do the right thing, then we would be automaton. Now, for instance, I've mentioned this so many times before the moon, for instance, travels around the earth in approximately 29 and one-half days. Well, the moon has nothing to say about it. Now, that is the right thing. God Almighty has decided that is the right thing for the moon to do. It doesn't do a wrong thing. It does the right thing and it has no power to do anything else. There's no character there, it has nothing to say about it. It is an inanimate object. It can't become a character like God. God is the supreme character, the supreme holy and righteous character possessing all power. And God has made us potential Gods of his family. God has made us in his image, God has made us with mind power such as God has only, we are limited and God is unlimited. Thank God, we're limited. Look what we've done with it. But God can do whatever he purposes and so can man, God though has the righteousness and the wisdom and the holiness to do only that which is good.

   Now, man is imbued also with human nature. And so man abuses and misuses the wonderful talents and the wonderful mechanisms and functionings that God has given him and made possible for him. And so that man turns his work into degeneration and into destruction and he has it running in reverse. That's exactly what we have done.

   Now, God has set aside 6000 years for mankind to do as he pleases. God has always made the truth and the right way known. He has even worked out the rectification for our having gone the wrong way and to get back on the track and go the right way by sending his Son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty of our past transgressions. In our stead, God has always made the truth known. He made it known to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But they spurned it. They decided that God didn't know what he was talking about. They didn't agree with God and people today don't agree with God. People today think God's all wrong. They don't believe in the right way, the way of God. Now God's way would bring us peace and happiness and contentment and full abundant lives. But men don't believe in the way that will bring those things. They want those things all right. But they believe in going the opposite way and still wonder why they don't get those results.

   Herbert W. Armstrong will return in a moment. But first, this offer concerning literature of related interest. Utopia. The word is derived from Greek roots appropriately, meaning nowhere 300 years before Christ Plato envisioned a utopia ruled by philosopher King, Sir Thomas Moore who coined the term in the year 1516, looked to Christian communism to bind men together. Dozens of books describing ideal societies have been written and dozens of attempts have been made to realize those dreams, the ideal society was also the central theme of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Utopia is not destined to remain nowhere forever. The Bible describes both the dream and how it will come about on earth. A free booklet, The Wonderful World Tomorrow - What It Will Be Like, traces this fascinating theme through the scriptures. All you need to do is request The Wonderful World Tomorrow.

   Men don't believe in God's way, men are just and imbued with vanity and with greed. And that is the actuating motive back of almost everything that human beings do on this earth self-advantage, self-glorification. And God Almighty has set aside 6000 years to permit it. And we've been going the wrong way now that 6000 years is about up and it's about time it was. As God says, as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of man? And do you remember how it was back in the days of Noah? And also immediately after the days of Noah, let's go back right, immediately after the flood. I think I can find it back here in Genesis. I want to read you something there and I hope that you can get the significance of it. This is more important than anything that has come up in your life. And it's about time we began to think of it here in the 11th chapter of Genesis (Genesis 11:1-9).

   The whole earth was of one language and one speech, immediately after the flood now, and it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, or eastwards as the margin has it that, they found a plane in the land of Shaar and they dwelt there and they said one to another go to let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime they had for mortar. Now notice man was beginning to make things, man was beginning to build and construct. Once again. Now they had built cities prior to the flood, but that had all been wiped out by the flood. Now they're beginning to make and to build and to construct. But men never construct wisely. Men never construct constructively but destructively. So they said, go to let us build us a city in the tower whose top may reach unto heaven. Man is always trying to get up to heaven. That's what Lucifer, the archangel was trying to do that made him a devil. And men are still trying to get to go to heaven and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth and the Eternal came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men build. And the Eternal said, behold, the people is one and they have all one language and this they begin to do notice and this they begin to do and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to let us go down and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech. And so the Eternal scattered them abroad from there upon the face of all the earth and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name called Babel because the Eternal did confound the language there, of all the earth. So he caused them to leave off by a supernatural act of God.

   Now, here's what I want you to notice. They were beginning those things and God said this, they begin to do and now nothing shall be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. In other words, the imagination, the thinking, the thought, the planning, you have to imagine things before you can think out a design for a new machine, a new device, a new invention or something of the sort it comes from imagination. And that's exactly what is implied there.

   Now we're becoming all of one language and one speech. Once again, men are beginning to learn each other's languages. I speak to the people of India and I speak to them in the same language that their own prime minister must use to speak to the people of the Southern half of India in order to be understood. Now, they have a number of different languages and dialects in India. But the one language that is understood more universally by the different ones than any other is English. I don't mean that more people speak English in India than any other. Hindi is the language that is spoken by more people there than any other. But I mean, as a language with which the people of one part can understand those of another part, the intermediary language or what shall I say by which they can speak to each other from their different languages. English is coming to be the one language that they have to use.

   And now we're beginning to understand one another's speech and now airplanes fly us very rapidly anyway, time has been whittled down till it's almost instantaneous and we do have instantaneous communication and on just a few minutes notice you can get anyone on the telephone. And so now my friends, once again, it's just as if we had one language and one speech and now look what we have begun to do. Look at the hydrogen bomb, look what man has begun to do and just like God said, this, they begin to do and now nothing shall be restrained if God doesn't intervene and stop it.

   I tell you, we just don't realize the time we're living in and we haven't much time for God in this time at all. And I want to tell you my friends that as I say, you're not going to possess what you now have in another 20 or 25 years, you're not going to have it. You're not going to be here where you are and a lot of people are going to be killed between now and then by violent death and all these things are facing us and there is no security, absolutely no security whatsoever. Accept God Almighty and his protection.

   And there's only one way you can get protected and let me just tell you something, your friends can't protect you. Maybe you have a father or mother who is a very good Christian and maybe they're good enough and close enough to God that they're going to be protected, that will not protect you. Absolutely. And if you are living all right, you can't protect your children. Or if you're a Christian and your parents are not, that will not protect them. There is not going to be any protection for anyone except the person himself. And exactly the way that that person is living God almighty is about to speak to this world and he's going to punish this world for its iniquity.

   He is going to punish it because God has sent his prophets into the world. They stoned and killed him. He sent his Son and they crucified him and they rejected his message. Although later they found it was popular to take up the name of Christ and preach his name all over the world, but they don't preach his message, they don't obey him and they don't want to obey God. They want to obey their own impulses and their own human ideas. And the carnal mind is enmity against God and believes God is all wrong and always has been. And that's the kind of a civilization that we want to be a part of on this earth.

   Now, here in the 14th chapter of Ezekiel verse six (Ezekiel 14:6-9), therefore, say unto the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord, Eternal repent and turn yourselves from your idols. Now, your idol may not be some graven image that you bow down in front of and worship your idol might be your, your own child. Your idol might be your home. Your idol may be your automobile. Your idol may be your money. Your idol may be social prestige and vanity. Your idol may be anything repent and turn yourselves from your idols, turn away your faces from all your abominations for everyone in the house of Israel. And if you understand, we are the house of Israel today or of the stranger that sojourn in Israel, which separated himself from me and set up idols in his heart.

   Now, these idols are not set up on a pedestal that you worship. These are the idols that are set up in your heart, and they can be anything on which you set your affection. Your idol may be movies and going to movies all the time, or it may be television. Maybe you've been all entrenched on television all of a sudden, and I heard one speaker say that a good many people have looked into television, and they've been so disappointed by the thing they saw there. They're turning back to radio, and I think there is something to that. Otherwise, nobody would be listening to radio anymore because there's so many television sets. But perhaps a lot of people are getting disgusted with what they see on television, just like we certainly have in our home. And I think a lot of you have too, and they try to put out what is in the popular interest. However, and I want to tell you that the popular interest is very degenerated, very, very degenerating.

   I've only heard of one exception so far where they have gone as far as they have on what they call the legitimate stage in the what is called the legitimate theatrical stage. And so far as I know, I have not heard of any play in the past 10 or 12 years, whether on Broadway or in any of the major cities, that is the type of play that you speak of as Broadway. And incidentally, most of the theaters down in New York are not on Broadway, but in the little side streets, a quarter of a block or half a block or two-thirds of a block just off of Broadway, but they call it Broadway. I have not heard of a single play that hasn't had absolute profanity in it in the last 10 or 12 years.

   The people today are living lives that are so empty and are so fruitless, and they are so starved for something to fill that void in their, in their poor, weak hungry, spirit, starved souls that the world is trying to give them something that will shock them or that will give them some terrific sensation of the moment or something of the sort. But that's the type of thing that people want. Well, now things like that and looking at these TV shows, looking at nothing but murder pictures and that's about all you see. It's either murder or illicit sex. That can be the idol in your heart.

   Well, anyway, that's the very thing that our people have gone to, and they separate themselves from God. They set up idols in their own hearts. And as God said, put the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face and cometh to a prophet to inquire of him concerning me, I the Eternal will answer him by myself and I will set my face against that man and I will make him a sign and a proverb and I will cut off from the midst of the people of my people and you shall know that I am the Eternal.

   Now, my friends, all the way through the book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel speaks about a time when the people are going to know that he is the Eternal. And if you understand the book of Ezekiel, if you have ever studied it as a whole, until you really understand the book of Ezekiel, the time when people are going to know that he is the Eternal is at and after the second coming of Christ, they're really going to know it then, but they don't know it now.

   And if the prophet be deceived when he has spoken a thing I the Eternal have deceived that prophet and I will stretch out my hand upon him and will destroy him from the midst of the people of Israel. And they shall bear the punishment of their iniquity. The punishment of the prophet shall be even as the punishment of him that seeketh unto him for the preacher that misleads the people. What about today, my friends? How many people preach the same gospel that Jesus did? Not very many. They preach the soft and smooth things that he seeks and exactly what people want to have.

   Well, here's what I wanted to come to: verse 14 (Ezekiel 14:14-20). Now, these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it. He'd been talking about the time that the famine and disease and things are going to come in the coming war. That is World War III, the hydrogen bombs. That's exactly what he's talking about. And this time and though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness saith the Eternal. If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land and they spoil it and so on, though these three men were in it yet as I live saith the Eternal God, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, they only shall be delivered. But the land shall be desolate or if I bring the sword upon the land and that's what's going to happen in World War III. And it's coming, though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live saith the Lord Eternal, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter, they shall, but deliver their own souls by their righteousness. And there it is and there is no hope for you and there is no security for the things that are coming, but for you to surrender to God Almighty, for you to repent of the way you've been living in the way of society and the way other people are living and turn to God to forsake your thoughts and your ways to repent of them and to turn to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. There is no other way, but listen, you who have heard the warning, you heard it. If you don't take warning and deliver your own soul by turning to God from your own evil ways, your blood will be on your own head. You heard warning you didn't take it. It's your responsibility from there. That's all I can do. You know God hasn't called me to cram it down anybody's throat. He just called on me to try to make it so plain, so simple, and to get it out with such power that the people have no excuse if they don't listen.

   The only thing, my friends, that's of any importance now is to warn this world of what is coming on it. Anything else is going to disappear. The days of the material things in this world are numbered. We're at the end of this age of this world. Now, you can't know where anything is prophesized for the United States till you know where the United States is mentioned in prophecy. And for the next few issues, the next few months of the Plain Truth, we are going to be in that phase of it, telling you in detail the most interesting, the most fascinating story in all the Bible. More exciting, more fascinating than any fiction you read, the very story of the Bible itself that leads down to the identity of the United States and where we are mentioned in the biblical prophecies. And once you get that, then you can recognize our identity in the prophecies and then you can know what God says is destined to happen to us. And I want to tell you it's a lot different than most people think. It's going to amaze you and you want to follow what is prophesized to happen to the United States. And there's no subscription price to the Plain Truth.