Herbert W Armstrong

   And greeting friends around the world this is Garner Ted Armstrong with the good news of the World Tomorrow.

   Just what is God? Who and what is God? Anyhow. Do you believe you know? Is God a spirit? Is he a principle of good? Is he a mere theological or philosophical concept in the mind of man, a figment of man's imagination? Is God a Trinity? Is he in a certain place or is he everywhere? Is God in nature, in plants, animals, trees, is God in you? And where is God? If there is a God? Is he in a specific place or does he fill the entirety of the universe?

   Well, what a dilemma, what a group of questions, these and related questions, furl the brows of the great so-called thinkers of the world from time immemorial. And instead of today in the space age of getting any less confusing, the problem seems more clouded and veiled in conflict, doubt, guesswork, mysticism, and vain babbling than ever before.

   You can read more about who and what God is, where he is, what he looks like, what he does, whether or not he exists and what he's doing. If he does, then perhaps any other subject, it seems library shelves are filled with books, booklets, magazine articles and so on, on the subject.

   Now, one man in a book entitled, "Something with regard to the God idea" or the evolutionary concept. The evolution for that matter of religion itself was saying that it was a matter of the Old Testament prophets deriving a certain idea over a long period of time. And again, as many comparative religionists say, the God idea is merely that which man has ultimately or finally arrived at after a search in his own mind, a philosophical concept trying to achieve what, well, a definition, how he can define God, just what is God anyhow in the mind of man?

   Now, the Old Testament prophets said this author led to the mind of man step by step from the so-called primitive conception of the tribal God of war and storm, you know, like the pagans concept of Thor and so on which we're naming our missiles after today to the universal God of spirit and righteousness that is he looked upon the Bible as the development of an idea of man. And so he said, consequently, they had come to the universal God of spirit and righteousness, the development of the idea of God can certainly he said be set down as one of the creditable achievements of the human race.

   Well, now on the other hand, a very famous religionist recently was answering the question that, that there is a Trinity that God is one in three. But it poses a problem said the New York World Telegram and Sun, because the concept of the Trinity presents somewhat of a natty problem to missionaries dealing with primitive tribesmen in Africa or illiterate farmers in Asia. What do you say when a prospective convert asks, now, how can three be one? How do you get three and one? And then what are you going to say to him that this article and you better have an answer that makes sense to him because the Trinity is one of the central doctrines of Christianity. So one minister said in answer to the problem, our missionaries would begin by telling him it's a mystery. You can't understand it. It's a mystery. Now he said a mystery defining what he meant by that is truth that has to be revealed. But now isn't that a little bit contradictory? If a mystery is truth and if that truth is absolute and if it is truth that has to be revealed, that doesn't mean concealed or hidden, does it? It doesn't mean to turn around and say it's a mystery, you can't understand it. Why bother trying because it's just an ethereal mystical something he said it can't be reasoned. Well, that's true, it must be revealed. But the thing he seemed to miss is that it is revealed. There is a source of revelation to which you can go, you can find a specific source that will give you the answer. And as one theologian said, in actuality, this speaking of the, three-in-one idea, that many people accept and believe today is a mystery. No one can possibly understand the three in one. How can our finite minds understand the infinite, accept it by faith? Well, now, do you need to accept one concept or another about God about who and what God is about where he is about the very purpose in your being merely by faith? Or isn't there a real source, an accurate, thoroughly documented provable, discernible measurable source to which you can go and really sink your teeth into it and know you've got the answer?

   Now, can you really go to a place where you can get the answer? The Trinity idea, supposedly coming from the Bible, causes about much confusion, apparently, as the ideas of the philosophers who are wondering whether God is not everywhere or nowhere.

   Now, how could God be a Trinity when you stop to read Matthew one in verse 18 (Matthew 1:18), if you do believe the Bible, which says, according to the historical record, that Jesus was begotten or that Mary was found with child of the Holy Spirit? Why then did Jesus pray to the Father instead of his real father, the Holy Spirit? That is, if the Holy Spirit is a person.

   Well, here today we have pantheism, theism, universalism, asceticism, fundamentalism, stoicism, modernism. And how many more are there? But how would you, as a man on the street, go for the real answer? Where would you go to find it? How would you look for it? Where would you know where to look? What is the most ancient source? What is the most ancient source that all of these people go to themselves? Well, here in the Western world of Christianity, it is the Bible. The Bible represents the most ancient source of all of these so-called ideas. If indeed, that is what the Bible contains about God.

   First of all, then again, as in so many of these questions, you've got to answer for yourself. The question does God exist in any form in the first place before you find out what God is? You better find out whether he is and you know, in the finding out whether he is, you're also going to discover what he is because when you look into evolution, when you look into the proofs of God that can be measured, weighed and discerned easily. And when you find the real proofs of the identity and the existence of God, then you also have discovered a great deal about what God is.

   Now, in many programs through the Book of Genesis and programs in advance of that through the questions of evolution. Some of the major problems with evolution. Some of the major proofs of God, constantly, I've announced this booklet. Does God Exist? The companion article, Seven Proofs God Exists. And another booklet on, The Proof of the Bible. I've announced those booklets time and time again. Let me again on this program, reiterate that announcement. They are free of charge. There's no price whatsoever you write in for them. And then of course, I can't take time on this one broadcast to cover all those many points.

   But you find in looking into it for yourself, proving by laws, by tangible, evident, plane, easily measured, observed, weighed object, forces energies, laws that God does exist that he is the life-giver, the author, the originator, the planner, the designer of the universe that he is the architect of all you can come to see and know by your five senses.

   Now, science today proves that matter has not always existed, that this great earth in this universe of ours is like a giant clock that is gradually running down. It had a beginning at some time in the past many different laws from many different points of view. Prove this fact. Science has now discovered the hydrogen atom is the basic building block of all matter.

   But as one noted scientist said recently ask us who made the hydrogen atom, we'll tell you, we simply don't know. They proved to us that matter has not always existed. And yet in the evolutionary theory and concept, they nearly always begin with an orderly systematic law-abiding universe and earth that as they say, is gradually cooling as a result of a thunderous collision up in the universe at some indeterminate period of billions of years ago, give or take a few million one way or the other.

   But if you begin at the beginning and if you ask, well, where did the universe come from and where did matter come from? And where did life come from? Then you've really got a problem on your hands if there isn't a God.

   Now, science also has thoroughly demonstrated as one of the basic laws of all science that life can come only from life and further whether or not they like to admit it regardless as to comparative anatomy or comparative embryology or any other related study that, that life must not only come from pre-existing life but pre-existing life of the same kind, not species kind. There are many species or varieties within a certain family or kind just as you can have many different species or varieties of cow or cattle and so on. But there is only one basic kind and you can't cross in between a horse and a cow and you can't make a chicken turn into a dog. I don't care how similar the embryos might look like in the earliest beginnings of the gestation of life.

   Well, now, they give you a lot of guesses, they call it spontaneous generation. But that's a plain lie. That's your idiocy and rank error. It has never been and never will be demonstrated because actually, they do demonstrate life has not always existed as we know it on this earth. It had to have a beginning. Where did it come from? Science itself answers. Life can come only from life, pre-existing life and further pre-existing life of the same kind.

   Now, all of these things are in these booklets and articles I've already announced to you on, Does God Exist? And of course, the companion article on, Seven Proofs God Exists. Actually some of these very things utilized by evolutionists and of course, by the other related studies are some of the strongest proofs of God, the very study of the strata, the rocks under our feet, the laws that place them the way they are the study of paleontology or the study of first life forms and fossil life as they are and so on is another remarkable study of God, where are today all the multiple thousands and the millions of intermediate species.

   If evolution is going on, why did evolution suddenly stop? What guarantees it will come forward? Why doesn't it go backward? Oh, there are just a lot of problems with evolution. What about some of these intricately complex plant-animal combinations? One of which could not live without the other, which came along first. What about the study of microbiology, the little bugs and microbes in your internal intestinal tract and all the rest of you, your mouth, ears, eyes, nose, and the rest of you, you couldn't live without microbes. Now, which came along first man of the microbes and the whole question that always makes them so mad, which came first the chicken or the egg. But it's still a legitimate question and it still has never been answered. Not by evolution, it hasn't. Well take a look at the marvelous minerals, the flawless plants and flowers, the animals, the intricately balanced complex world in which we're living now in taking a look at the world.

   God says in Romans, the first chapter, you can find a great deal about God. The Apostle Paul under inspiration said that those things about God who and what God is and all about him are clearly seen. Yes, they're evident. He said, they're clear, it isn't hidden. It's not a mystery you can understand about the existence of God by looking at the things God has done by looking at his handiwork at that which he has created.

   Now, what above all things is the greatest of that which has been created or whether or not you even believe in creation. What is the one greatest thing which your mind can come to comprehend so far as that, which is measurable, that which you can discern through the five senses. Would it be the balance in nature. Would it be the great whales or the creatures in the sea? Would it be the tiny little microbes or the germs? Would it be the atom itself? Would it be the complex way in which atoms are put together to form the molecular structure of certain perhaps materials? Would it be the flawless, intricate, beautiful petals of a flower? The wing of a fly? What would you say would be the most marvelous of all things, whether or not we call it creation.

   Well, there is one thing, yes, even above the star, the sun and everything else that stands out above all the rest. And that is the mind of man, the mind of man. The human mind is the greatest thing we may come to know. We can't find see, smell, taste, touch or observe anything superior to our own minds through the five senses. And yet we can't produce anything even remotely equal to ourselves, let alone superior.

   Now, of course, through marriage and the production of the reproduction rather the human species. And of course, childbirth, in a sense, we produce and reproduce as the cyclical life character of all plant and animal life. We produce things equal to ourselves in that sense of the word. But I mean machinery things, we can put together design plan and make with our own hands and inventive ingenuity. We cannot make anything even equal, let alone superior to ourselves.

   And today people get diluted by so-called mechanical brains. And by computers, without realizing that that is the sum total of the endeavor of multiple thousands of human minds over a period of many, many years. And that the only thing that comes out of that machine is that which has been put into that machine by its designers and planners in the first place. And even though there are certain electronic impulses and complex systems, that would guarantee a different answer than that, which has been fed in.

   Nevertheless, it is the ultimate outgrowth of different signals which would react in a certain determined way which has been set there and has been caused to react that way by its inventors and designers.

   No, we can't produce even a worm. We can't bring into existence one living thing regardless as to the so-called experiments with amino acids which are not living things in themselves, but merely part of the constituents of living things and of cellular life. No, there has been no laboratory experiment to bring into existence life from the not living. We can't produce anything even remotely equal to ourselves, not even a single cell, not even a little worm, which is a pretty complex animal, let alone something superior.

   Now, isn't it a little bit of idiocy to think that we came from green slime from the fated dark seaweed in a primeval swamp of eons and generations ago, isn't a little bit ridiculous to think you came from the apes and of course, that's been discarded today. But let's understand a little bit about it. Almighty God in his word. In Isaiah, the 40th chapter, thunders at us and makes plunderous claims. Can they be refuted? Can you deny them? Can you really deny the claims of Almighty God in his word? He says he's the creator. Have we come up with a decent answer? Have we come up with a different opinion that would really stand on its own weight? Have we come up with some disproof of his claim of being the creator of the heavens and the earth?

   In the 40th chapter of Isaiah God said in verse 26 (Isaiah 40:26), lift up your eyes on high and behold who has created these things. And then back in the 41st chapter and verse 20 (Isaiah 41:20), he said that they may see and know and consider and understand together that the hand of the Eternal has done this and the holy one of Israel has created it. Produce your cause says the Eternal, come on trundle out your evidence, produce your proof. Bring forth your strong reasons. Says the King of Jacob, bring them forth and show us what shall happen.

   Yes. Predict the future. Tell us what's going to happen. 10, 20, 50, 100, 1000 years from now, show us what shall happen. Let them show the former things what they may be that we can consider them and know the latter end of them or declare us things for to come, show the things that are to come here after he said, likening it, of course, to the idolatry of God-defying degenerate human beings, turning their back on their creator today saying there is no God and even admitting if there is one, not knowing what he is like, all different, confusing, conflicting ideas about whether he's just in essence, a principle of good, a high standard of morals, a first cause or some other related idea show the things that are to come here after that, we may know that you are gods.

   He challenges yay, do good or do evil that we may be dismayed and behold it together. That is the works of man's hands, idols. He challenges then the pagan nations that saying let your idols produce something, let them do something, let them predict something, let them cause something to happen, either good or evil. No, God rejects those ideas and no one has ever accepted the challenge yet.

   But today on our campuses in the United States and for that matter, in other countries, our co-eds and our college students have a lot of weird assumptions about 90% of most entering college students enter into college with an idea that God does exist. But that percentage really depletes itself by the time they graduate because then it's only about 15 or 20% that still believe in God in any form.

   Well, now today in an article taken from the New York Post. It was said that God assumes many forms for this campus generation. One co-ed confessed with mild embarrassment that she finds some comfort and solace in her image of a man with a long white beard. Another youth, a sophomore said, does God exist? It seems strange but the question pops up at such peculiar moments and I try to reason it out.

   So you see, like most of this, he tries to reason it out. It never occurred to him. He ought to prove it. But there is a source to which he can go to prove it and demonstrate it that he would think deeply if he would think about his own mind, about laws, forces energies and things, the creation of the universe itself, he can only come up with one answer. So he says, I try to reason it out. Well, would it be a conventional God if I should believe some kind of force? He wondered some kind of love, would that be what I would arrive at some kind of metaphysical being, some kind of cosmic offshoot?

   Now, I wonder if he could even define his own terminology. What's he mean cosmic offshoot? What's he mean? Metaphysical being? He said, I just don't know. Now that was about the truest thing the fellow said, I just don't know. And he said there are so many alternatives open. I'm afraid I'll have to disagree there. There are no alternatives. There is either sheer idiocy, ignorance and saying, I do not know or else there is acceptance of the truth, which is God does exist and then acceptance of the truth of what that God is like.

   Now others on the same campus among those students being interviewed said, "God is an underlying force, something like energy". Now, that's what one young teenager thought or whatever those thoughts are worth another thought, it was a break on our conduct. The good in all of us said a third, a fourth said, well, a kind of an overseer, that was his opinion. Still another said, a higher being kind of like a soul. Another one said, a mechanistic God, not all-powerful but a prime mover who started the universe going. Now, that would really be a whale of a thought, wouldn't it? He had the power to start the universe going, but let's not let him be all-powerful, just powerful enough to start the universe going. Now, that's an interesting thought. How could you be powerful enough to start the universe going? And yet in our limited terminology, not be all-powerful, that would be a perplexing thing to think of that could confuse you for a week or two.

   And others said it's a state of mind. What's that? A state of mind. Another still said, a force without shape that created the world and doesn't interfere with it. Now, can you think of a force to create the world, everything upon it. All the laws energy's and everything and yet it doesn't even have a shape. It's kind of like an ethereal blob of great nothingness, all the idiocy in the minds of human beings, the misguided half truths, the deceived different opinions of humankind today, when the truth is so available, so readily obtainable to us, a scientist wrote in answer to the question, how do you define God?

   He said some regard God in very human terms as a father who is kind, but nevertheless subject to spells of wrath. Others assigned to God, a lot of other human qualities such as love, anger, sympathy, knowledge, and etc are these human qualities? Are they really? He went on to say that they expand these qualities beyond human possibilities into infinite wisdom, total knowledge, et cetera. But he said still others take a mystical attitude toward the concept of God. God is a spirit, that's their concept. He didn't know that he was quoting the words of Jesus who revealed what God is like. I am sure, was his reasoning that each of these ideas has well served different persons at different times.

   There again, is your prevailing concept today, whatever satisfies you think that, whatever seems to appeal to you accept that, whatever seems to be all right for you at your particular status or level of education or intellectual thought, your own particular private philosophy of life. Well accept that if that's good for you that's what you ought to have. You know, we're so broad-minded. We're just like the river that gets so broad, it gets pretty shallow and we can't see beyond our own noses.

   So this man reads to himself. He said, when I take any such idea of God and try to work with it mentally, try to clarify it or think it through. I find myself getting confused or embarrassed using words with which I'm not fundamentally content, words which cover up difficulties rather than explain them. Why I should think so. Well, isn't it about time you began to look into it one way or the other? Almighty God said in Genesis one and verse 26 (Genesis 1:26), let us make man in our image, strange isn't it that we can't find anyone older than Adam, regardless of the so-called discovery such as the Piltdown man.

   And if you want to look that one up, you'd better do it quick before the last remaining vestige of the Piltdown Man is destroyed from all textbooks. Look up the Piltdown Man. Go ahead and do it. Look up this thing about carbon-14 dating and then write and get this article on, The Missing Link. Did Professor Leakey discover in Zinjanthropus the oldest known human being recently when he picked up a part of a jawbone with a couple of decaying teeth in it? Or did he discover the head of an ape, which, well, if you're going to look up the Piltdown, then, as I said, you ought to do it quick because you see it was a hoax.

   And the amusing thing about it is that it was accepted by thousands of scientists, university professors, the world over and taught in all austerity and dignity as actual facts for years and years and students of evolution smugly with tongue in cheek were able to laugh at those who believed in God because they had among other things, their Piltdown Man, which in reality was just a hunk of jumbled bones which had been deliberately marred and scratched and made the pier to look older, which was just a part of a female monkey, a deliberate hoax. Well, what about it?

   Jesus said he came to reveal the Father. He said, "I and my Father are one." He didn't say three, just one. Jesus, remember what begotten of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the mind, the power, the nature of God. Jesus was in the exact similitude of God. In the first chapter of the book of Hebrews, he said that he was making man in the image of God. God says in his word, he sits on his own. He talked of his hearing, of his eyes, arms, legs and so on. Believe it or not the God of the Old Testament, the one who became Jesus Christ, remember that wasn't the Father dealing with Israel, as you find in I Corinthians 10:4, John, the first chapter Hebrews one and elsewhere that God who became Jesus Christ got right down in the dirt and wrestled with Jacob, that God who became Jesus Christ ate a huge feast of Abraham. He walked along the road talking with Eunuch, he appeared in vision to Ezekiel, notice what your New Testament says about God.

   The Apostle Paul was talking to the foremost philosophers and mental giants, question mark, of his day. Now, in verse 16 of the 17th chapter of the Book of Acts (Acts 17:16-18), while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was spirit in him holy when he saw the city given to idolatry. Therefore, he disputed in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons in the market daily within that met with him. Then verse 18 Acts 17 certain philosophers of the Epicureans and those were the ones who were the modernists of their day. Let's say they believed in real fast living, wine, women, song, eat, drink and be marry. You only have one life, why not enjoy it and so on. And then there were the stoics. So here were the two opposite extremes. The stoics believed in abstinence, a frustrating drab, empty, gray, dull life of no pleasure. And that was the way to get pleasure in the hereafter. So all they said, what will this babbler say? Others said, well, he seems to be setter forth of strange gods; because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. So they took him, you find up into the Areopagus. And in verse 21 (Acts 17:21), you find the Athenians and strangers that were there, spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

   Now, let's notice what Paul said here in Acts 17 verse 22 (Acts 17:22), Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, "You men of Athens. I perceive that in all things you're too superstitious for as I passed by and beheld your devotions. I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God that might as well be the title of many of the books, articles, magazines and the rest, written about God today, a God who is unknown, either by shape or form, by location, by nature, by intent and purpose, by plan and unknown by name. It seems to so many people today except profanity. Yes. Even back then they had idol to the unknown God whom therefore you ignorantly worship him declare I unto you." The Apostle Paul said those men of great minds. Yes. Many of them are even lauded today. They are busts and figures sitting around in some old musty tables in universities today and they're lauded and acclaimed of great minds.

   The apostle Paul said they were pretty ignorant. He said, "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth dwells not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with men's hands as though he needs anything seeing that he gives to all life and breath and all things." Later, he said in verse 29 (Acts 17:29), "For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like in the gold or silver or stone graven by art and man's device." And the times of this ignorance, God winked at but now commands all men everywhere to repent. And then the Apostle Paul revealed about the resurrection of the dead.

   What is God? God is the creator of heaven and earth? He has a shape just like man. Jesus was in the exact similitude of God. He looked just like him. But Jesus said, "God is a spirit." He is in a particular place, heaven, but he's going to come to this earth. It's about time we were able to say with Job in Job 19 verse 25 (Job 19:25), "I know that my Redeemer liveth and know what he's like." Write for this article, "Has God Always Existed? Here's proof in this article that God has eternally existed. How could he have? Here's another article, "Is Jesus God?," and then write for The Plain Truth.

   Send your letters to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 111, Pasadena, California. That's Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 111, Pasadena, California. Remember they're free of charge. No price whatsoever. Be sure to list the call letters of your station. The address again in just a moment until next time. This is Garner Ted Armstrong saying, goodbye friends.

   You have heard the World Tomorrow with Garner Ted Armstrong or literature offered on this program. Send your request along with the call letters of this station to Herbert W. Armstrong, Post Office Box 111, Pasadena, California 91123. Or you may dial this toll-free number, 800-423-4444.