Herbert W Armstrong

   Why is it, my friends, that today we believe we are Christians, which means we should be followers of Christ? And we find we're doing anything but following Christ; we're following customs exactly opposite of those that Christ followed. We are believing teachings that are the exact antithesis of those which Jesus taught. Now. Why? What's wrong? I tell you, it's about time. We began to open our eyes and once again, I say, get your own Bible, open your Bible, and see this with your own eyes. Don't believe me if you believe me; I'm just another single man here telling you something different than you've heard a lot of other men tell, and you probably would believe the majority. So I say, don't believe any man; your own Bible tells you that many false prophets are gone out into the world today. Not one single false prophet, while all the rest are right. But there are many false prophets. Where are we supposed to get all of the truth? Anyway, they all claim to get it out of the Bible. That is the one textbook used by what we call Christianity in this Western world.

   Why is it then that we don't hear the Bible preached? Why is it then that we don't have the Bible given to us straight and honest and clear, exactly as it is? Why is it that we find the Bible turned upside down? Why is it that we find it malign mutilated, misrepresented, lied about until when we look at it with our own eyes, we find in it exactly the opposite of what we have been taught that it said. So I ask you put this thing to the test, the Bible itself tells you prove all things and you prove it by looking into the Bible, which is the word of God.

   Well, we're ready to get into the 13th chapter of Luke as we've been going through Matthew, Mark. Luke and John to see what Jesus Christ did teach. And why is it, my friends, that they crucified him because of what he taught, he taught a gospel about world government. He said he was born to be a King. And as he said before pilot on trial for his life, for this cause he said was I born for this cause came I into this world to be a King. Pilot said, are you a King? Then he said, thou sayest I am a King, and he was accused of starting a movement against Caesar, of being a traitor and of antagonizing the government of Caesar. Jesus replied, my kingdom is not of this age, not even of this time, this age at all. My kingdom is not of this world. His kingdom is of the world tomorrow.

   I wonder if you understand the real name of this broadcast, The World Tomorrow. What is The World Tomorrow? How many of you really know? Oh, I tell you, my friends, we're so close to our everyday work, our everyday routine, the things that our hands touch and that our eyes see the material things, material people about us, material objects and gadgets and machines and this and that and the other thing. And we're so far from the real truth and we just accept whatever came into our mind. How did you come to believe what you believe? How did you come to believe what you believe about Christianity? How did you come to believe what you believe about religion? I'll tell you why and how you were born a baby, knowing nothing and nothing of what you believe now is in your mind then not a bit of it. It's all come into your mind since then. How did it get there? Well, you heard it, you've been taught it, other people believed it and like sheep, you just swallowed it and believed it too. Like all the rest, you have assumed it must be true. You have assumed, like I used to when I told my wife why you can't tell me all these churches could be wrong, why these churches can't all be wrong. But, you know, I got to looking at it, my friends, and one church believes one thing and another church believes exactly the opposite on that point. And then that church believes something else and another church exactly contradicts it on that point. And so it goes, and there are hundreds and hundreds of denominations and they don't agree, they all believe something different. They all claim to be teaching you exactly what the book says and the books, the Bible.

   Now I've said many times, you take a textbook on, well, shall we say astronomy? And you hand it to an astronomer, and he uses it for teaching in a class. What does he teach out of that book? He teaches one certain thing. Now you go over to another college. It might be a college started by a different church denomination too. And there you find an astronomer teaching from that same textbook. What is he teaching his class? Something altogether different? Oh, no. Oh, no. The book says just one thing, and they all teach the same thing out of the same book.

   And you go to another college, and there, the professor teaches exactly the same thing out of that book. You show a book on astronomy to 100 different professors, and every one of them will agree on what the book says. But you show the book of spiritual values, the Revelation from God Almighty, the Holy Bible to 100 ministers in 100 different church denominations. And every one of them will disagree with every other one of them as to what that book says. I ask you why, my friends, listen. Are we afraid to think? Are we afraid to open our minds and to question? Are we afraid to look into these things and find the answer and find the reason why? What's wrong with us? Is it intellectual stupidity? Is it laziness? Is it fear? Is it ego and vanity wanting to go with the crowd? What is it? Why don't we blow the dust off our Bibles? Look into them with intellectual honesty, with the right curiosity to want to know what is the truth and why aren't we willing to find it and to follow it when we find it?

   Well, here we are in the 13th chapter of Luke (Luke 13:1). There were present at that season. Some that told Jesus of the Galileans that was way up north in Palestine whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. Now, some of this in here, my friends, I could go into it a long, long time. I could go into a technical exposition from the commentaries and some of the histories. And to get all of the truth of that, I would have to bring out some of the volumes of Josephus, which we have in our library. The history by Josephus written in 70 A.D. to explain some of that. I think it's enough just to say this much that Pilate was an enemy of Herod. And this was up in Pilate's jurisdiction, and he had killed some of the Galileans and offered them with their pagan sacrifices. And it was news now being given to Jesus; he probably knew it ahead of this time, but it hadn't been officially reported to him before. So this was just news that they were giving to Christ there at the time.

   And Jesus answering said unto them, suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things. Now, not that Pilate knew who was a sinner and that he was trying to punish sinners. But that the idea is they believed that God would permit this kind of thing to come only on those who were sinners. And Jesus says, you suppose then that God allowed that because they were sinners above the others. I tell you nay. But here's the important thing. Listen, my friends, this is what he said to the people. And this is what he says now through my voice to you, but except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. Now, there's a significant thing except you repent, and to repent, my friends. In Bible language, the word repent means change your mind. But it means in Bible language, change your mind in respect to sin. And in Bible language. What is sin? You find the definition in I John, the third chapter, the fourth verse (I John 3:4), sin is the transgression of the law.

   Paul said that the law is spiritual. He said he wouldn't have known what sin was except for the law, except the law had said thou shalt not covet. He wouldn't have known that lust was a sin or that there was anything wrong about it. And James said that we must fulfill the law just like Christ fulfilled it. Love is the fulfilling of the law. And if we do, we're all right. But if we don't, we commit sin and that the law has points. And if you break any one of the points, you have broken the law. And he mentioned two of the 10 commandments as two of the 10 points of that law. And it is a complete law, the 10 commandments. There, it is the spiritual law. It is sin to transgress. In other words, my friends, God Almighty, created force and energy. God Almighty created all powers, all energy, all force, all of what we call natural laws. All of the laws that our professors of physics and chemistry have studied and have discovered a few things about. God left it to them to discover some of these things, the things, all that they could never discover, the things they could never ascertain, the things the human mind never could learn without a separate revelation from God. God is revealed in the Bible.

   Yes, Newton was able to discover the law of gravity. Other scientists and professors have been able to discover other physical laws that are actually energies and forces that God set in motion. But where did the laws come from? Where did nature come from? How did nature get that way? There was a first cause; there is a supreme mind back at it all, and that mind worked it all out. The mind of God thought it out, planned it, executed it, created it, set these laws in motion, and God is the power who sustains all these forces and these actions and keeps them in constant motion. They work out exactly as God keeps them in constant motion.

   Herbert W. Armstrong will return in a moment. But first this offer concerning literature of related interest. From the dawn of history man has sought to understand the forces that act around him. Ancient philosophers visualized every different power as a separate God. In this modern age of laser beams and space technology, we understand how to use these forces. But we still don't know how they came into being, what should we be able to learn from the existence of matter, energy, force and inertia. Does God Exist? He is a free booklet that dares to look at our world. God and science objectively, Does God Exist? uses the tools of modern technology to prove how the laws and forces acting upon us every day clearly demonstrate the existence of God from the dawn of history. Man has sought to understand. Now you can know, request, Does God Exist? Send your request to Herbert W. Armstrong Post Office Box 111. Pasadena, California 91123. That's Herbert W. Armstrong Post Office Box 111. Pasadena, California 91123.

   Now, my friends, you break any of these laws and you're going to get hurt. That's all there is to it. But there are things and values that you can't see, that you can't feel, you can't taste, you can't reach out and touch your feet. There are spiritual values and there are spiritual laws, and those laws, my friends, determine your happiness or your unhappiness. Those laws determine whether we have world peace or whether we are having strife and warfare. Now, men don't know anything about those laws. Men don't know the way to happiness. Men don't know how to get rid of their fears, their worries, and their mental headaches. Men don't know all of those things, and while I'm on it, let me say this with all of our science and all of our medical science and everything that we have today like that, my friends, you know, the doctor still can't tell you how to keep from getting sick when it comes to the little simple thing that your body was made in a certain way and of all of the material things that we can see and know that God Almighty ever created. There is nothing that is more fearfully made and put together than our human bodies.

   Men invent machines. Some of them are very intricate and complex, and we're amazed at them, but a man never invented anything as wonderful as a human body. The way it's put together, the way it functions. And you know that your human body is sustained by the food you eat, the water you drink, the breath you breathe. Well, what I'm getting at is this the food you eat is converted into something in your body that replenishes the broken-down cells and rebuilds. And we still don't know how it functions, and doctors don't know what foods are good for us and which foods are bad, and they're beginning to learn something about food combinations and which combinations go together and which are going to clash and have a fistfight in your stomach. But they don't know too much about those things yet. You know, God Almighty told us, my friends, way back here thousands of years ago; he revealed in his Bible something that some of the doctors are just now beginning to find out. And some of the doctors don't even know yet. And that is that certain things will not function properly, will not nourish your body, that they're going to set up a clash, and they're just like poison in your body. If you eat them, now you can't eat everything of the plant world that grows.

   Now, some of the things in the plant world, carrots, very good food, spinach, very good. And, a lot of things, a potato if you know how to cook it properly is the king of all vegetables. And it's good food. You've heard that potato is all starch. That's not so, you cut off most of the starch when you peel it and you boil out about 40% more when you cook your potatoes and that's all that's wrong with it. I, I don't mean the starch, just the alkaline elements. I mean that you, you peel off and that you boil out and you'll leave the starch. That's what I should have said. So that the potatoes, the way most of you serve them are starchy. That's true. But if you would eat them properly and if you knew a few things more about it, you'd find that a potato is very well balanced.

   And there, there are enough alkaline elements with it to be a very nourishing thing. I'm thinking of Irish potatoes incidentally. But there are some things in the plant kingdom that are not good food and there are some things that are deadly poison and if you take them, they'll kill you and they'll kill you quick. And other things are a poison that are not quite so deadly and they do you harm and if you continue to take them, they will shorten your life after maybe 10, 20 or 30 years, you know, they're poison too. But instead of killing you in, in five seconds or in a minute and a half or something like that, they kill you after 30 years.

   Now, my friends, the same thing is true in the animal kingdom. Everything that is in the animal or the fish or the, the fowl kingdom is not fit to eat and everything of the fowl and the shall we say of the sea animals in those categories of the animal kingdom. God did not create all of them in such a manner that they digest in the human stomach, that they enter the bloodstream and nourish your body and build up the broken-down cells that they will supply bone and muscle and tissue and flesh and skin and that they will give you the proper energy that you need and keep you going.

   Now, some of them are poison and some of them are very slow poison. They will bring on certain diseases after so many years. And today we have a lot of heart disease and we have a lot of cancer and we have a lot of things and the doctors do not know what causes them. But years and years ago, way back in the time of Moses through Moses, God revealed to us that all animals are not food, were not created for the purpose of food and are not fit to eat. And doctors are just now beginning to learn that one reason a lot of people get toe main poisoning is that they will take certain seafood like lobster, crab or some of that type of thing and they drink milk with it and associate it with wrong things. And, well, they, they call a doctor quick and they wonder why.

   And, a lot of people think that it's all foolish to think that you can't eat anything that you want. You know, you find a little baby and the baby has no knowledge. Now you take a little calf or a little dog or something like that. And by instinct, it knows what to eat, you know why it doesn't know anything as a matter of fact about it. But God thought it out. God thought out what it should eat. God formed a certain brain in the first dog and the first cow and each reproduces after its kind. So each one has the same kind of brain and you know what's in that brain of that animal. It is something that God has already sort of pre-adjusted. God thought it out and God fixed the brain so that it acts instinctively as a matter of instinct to cause the dog, for instance, to eat what it ought to eat and to turn down some things that are not good for it. There are some things that are not good for a dog and if you give it to it, it'll smell it and it'll walk away. It won't have anything to do with it.

   I don't mean by that, that a dog automatically always takes exactly the right food because I know there are some things you can feed an animal and they will eat and it's going to injure them and make them sick or kill them. But there are a great many things that an animal just by instinct will not eat. Well, God thought that out and put it in them in the form of instinct. But God did not put instinct in the human family. And the result is we have to work by knowledge. God made us in his image. And God is the all-knowing great supreme mind. And God can think, God has knowledge and from that knowledge, he can reason, he can think he can plan, he can make a design and then he can create what he has thought out and planned and that's what God has done. That's what God is. God is creator. And God is the ruler over his creation. And that's the point I'm trying to come to.

   Now, God gave us minds like his, except that our minds are so limited. We're so limited in our knowledge. We're so fallible in our reasoning and we make so many mistakes and we reason in such a faulty manner sometimes and we come to wrong conclusions and we jump to conclusions from insufficient knowledge of the facts and all that sort of thing. So we make a lot of mistakes.

   God doesn't make mistakes and God limited our abilities and our powers. Thank God he did, look what we're doing with what he gave us. Look what we're doing with now that scientists are able to harness some of the elements and they've learned how to create atomic bombs and now hydrogen bombs that have to be triggered by atomic bombs used for destruction. And there we are, look what we're doing with the knowledge we have.

   Well, God knows better and guides everything in the right channels, but here we are not knowing what we should eat, not knowing what we should do. And as I say, doctors are just now beginning to discover that some of these things are not fit to eat. By the way, if you want anything on it and what the Bible teaching is, you've been all mixed up about it and you've understood that God made every kind of animal, anything you want to put in your mouth clean in the New Testament. He didn't do anything of the kind and some people gave you some New Testament text that gets you all upset and you put a wrong construction on them and think they say something. They didn't say at all. They don't even say that at all. It isn't a case of interpreting them a different way. It's just a case of what they really say.

   And, I think we still have an article around here about what kind of meat you ought to eat. If you want to write in for the article, there's no charge for it. We'll be very happy to send it to you and I'll give you the mailing address here in, in just about seven minutes. So get paper and pen ready to write in for it. If you want it, if you really want the knowledge, we'll give it to you. And if you're prejudiced and you don't want it, you think that like a little baby, I started to say everything goes to its mouth, you know, and a baby thinks that anything is good because it has no knowledge. Now we have to learn. The baby hasn't learned yet. You and I are supposed to be grown up. We should know something, but most of us don't, most of us are just like babies and we don't know any more than a baby when it comes to food, everything goes to our mouths. If it tastes good, we eat it. If it doesn't taste good, we don't. And your taste is no barometer as to what's going to happen in your stomach. I'll tell you that some things taste very sweet in your mouth. They're gonna make your stomach mighty better. You'll find some scriptures on that too. Well, you write in for it if you want that article.

   Anyway, my friends, God almighty is the supreme ruler. And the one thing that God has revealed to man is that he made us a free moral agent, we can accept his rule or reject it. But from the beginning to the end of human life on this earth, the message of God to mankind has been submit to the rule of God to the laws that God has set in motion and you'll find happiness, reject God's laws and go your own way and do the thing that seems right to a man and you're in trouble and you're going to suffer and bring heartache and headache and retribution and suffering on the human race.

   And when you do things that are wrong, when you break the laws of God, they not only break you, they also result in your being a source of injury and unhappiness and suffering to other people. And the result is that you are suffering from the sins of other people because we have rejected God. Listen, every prophet that God Almighty ever sent to this world had one message only and that is surrender to the rule of God Almighty, which means repent. How are you going to find God and get converted?

   You know that the Apostle Paul said to one of the young evangelists that he was sending out, he said to him, "From a child, thou hast known the holy scriptures that are able to make thee wise unto salvation, which is in Christ Jesus." What holy scriptures had Timothy known from the youth? The only scriptures he knew, the only ones completely written at that time, were the Old Testament scriptures, able to make us wise to salvation.

   And then here was this Ethiopian eunuch, a gentile God by the Holy Spirit called one of his own men that was filled with the Holy Spirit. And he sent Philip down there to see this Ethiopian unit, and he had the book of Isaiah, and he was in the 53rd chapter. And he said, "Well, who is he speaking of?" And he explained it was Christ. And so he explained about Christ, and the Ethiopian eunuch was converted. He repented and he was baptized. Now just two chapters farther over in the 55th here is one of the scriptures able to make us wise unto salvation.

   The New Testament Church is built on the foundation, the church Jesus said he would build, the true church. I don't know about your church, my friends. I don't know what church you belong to. I know that there are many, hundreds of thousands of you people listening right now and you belong to all kinds of different churches and they can't all be the true church that Jesus built. Jesus said, "I will build my church." I know every one of you think the church you belong to is that church? You believe it, don't you? Well, everybody else thinks their church, which is a different one, is that church? You see how mixed up we are. Why don't you look into your Bible and see.

   But here is what the book that says, we're able to be made wise unto salvation. Here's the Scripture, and the New Testament church. The church Jesus built is based on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And here's one of the prophets, "Seek ye the Eternal while he may be found. How? Call ye upon him while he is near." How are you going to do it? How are you going to really get salvation? "Let the wicked forsake his way." (Verse 7, Isaiah 55) Let the wicked forsake. What his way.

   You know, there is a way that seemeth right unto a man that's inspired by God in the Proverbs, the end thereof is the end thereof are the ways of death. Death is the penalty of sin. So the way that seems right to a man is wrong, it's sin. "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Eternal and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon?" But you'll have to forsake your, in other words, that means repent.

   You know, before Jesus John, the Baptist came for tearing away. What did he preach, repentance? When Jesus came, he said, "Repent, or you will perish." And what does perish mean? Well, I tell you a lot of people think perish means that you will live forever in hell fire, that you will live forever in hell fire. A lot of people think that's what it means. But Jesus said in plain language, here are two things. They don't stress repentance today. And if they do, it's only repent from your own ideas and your own conscience. And always the message of God is repent of the way of man. Repent of the way of the customs of the time. People say, well, that's out of style. Now, we do so and so or here's what we believe today. God isn't concerned with what we, the people believe today. It's what God says. And God's truth is the same yesterday today and forever. It doesn't change what was right. 100 years ago is right today. And if it was right 1000 years ago, it's right today. And if it was wrong 2000 years ago, it's wrong today. God does not change his little standard, his standard of right and wrong every little time. Every 25 or every 50 years or something like that. But men's styles and men's ideas keep changing and men's customs.

   Jesus said in plain language, "Except you repent. You shall all likewise perish." That's the truth. And now finally, let me remind you, if you want to really understand your Bible. If you're willing to set yourself to devote a half hour or more every day to Bible study, you may enroll now for the Ambassador College Bible Correspondence. There is no tuition. Just send your name and address to Herbert W Armstrong Box 111 Pasadena California. That's Herbert W Armstrong Box 111 Pasadena, California. And so goodbye friends until tomorrow. You have heard the World Tomorrow with Herbert W Armstrong.