Herbert W Armstrong

   The biggest and the best news you can hear is that human survival is not only possible but assured, that there will be a peaceful world tomorrow. We will still be on the earth in another 50 years. 100, 2,000 even. Oh yeah, humankind is not going to perish from the earth. And I have that on top authority, the most scientific source to which you could go. I have that on the direct authority of that one document that free provides the basic groundwork for the creation of a brand new ruling government. I have that on the authority of the one who has already been decided upon as the world ruler and the leader in that wonderful utopian era that is described in that same document as to what can become possible when the natural resources of the earth are used for peaceful purposes. When all the defense industries, of all the big nations of the earth are changed into peaceful purposes. When vast linguistic reform, agrarian reform, religious reform, economic and social reform, all of the reforms that are needed where the human family will really become one family, believe it or not.

   There is a great outline, a program, a plan that was brought to this earth nearly 2000 years ago by a man whose name is used continually as much as I imagine as politicians use it, golfers do, people in churches do, the man on the street does every now and then. Hardly anyone seems to know what that man said. They don't seem to know that he talked about a world ruling government or that he offered people who were willing to get in harmony with his laws and overcome their own human nature, an opportunity to provide or to let's say, grow and develop so that it can be provided for them. They'll have an opportunity to rule within him a place in that government. But that's, that's the way it goes. People have looked at his name, they've looked at a segment of history. They've looked at a personage whose name has been banged about a great deal, but they've forgotten and almost totally buried the message that he brought. His name is Jesus Christ. He came talking about a world-ruling government. He asserted there is a God. He said he believed in Adam and Eve. He said he believed in Noah and the flood. He said he believed in Job. Well, let's see. He talked about Job, Daniel, Adam and the Garden of Eden. He talked about Noah and the flood. He talked about these sage Jews that people say either did or did not exist. Many of whom I think lied about their own interpretations of their attempt to aggrandize their own tiny nation, Jesus. It seems went out of his way to say he believed in things that had happened that are plainly revealed in the Old Testament of the Bible.

   You know that Jesus believed in God. Now, people are willing to forgive Christ for all those mistakes. They're willing to say, well, we believe that Jesus was a great man. Maybe some people think as great as Nostradamus, maybe as great as Muhammad, or maybe as great as Plato or some people think maybe as great as Melvin McGillicuddy, but they're not quite sure that he really was the Son of God. They're not quite sure the message he brought from heaven is really for our time or really was from a heaven and that there really was a God, the Father there and that Jesus really did die and was really resurrected and is really going to come again.

   Now, actually, I'm not on any attempt to try to get you to believe that because you see, I've also been told by that same authority that, that's impossible. So I can't do that. I don't know how I've been told by that same authority. His name is Jesus Christ. None can come to the Son except the spirit of the Father, draw him. And if the spirit of the Father is not working on your mind and is not drawing you is not opening your mind, getting rid of some of the paraphernalia and the trash that we accumulate in our minds from all of our earliest age, from the influential personalities around us, from our teachers, from our textbooks, from society in general and especially the education part of it and the religion part of it. I, I really couldn't change your mind at all unless God through a miracle is working on your mind to let you begin to accept what he says. But let's just indulge like science does oftentimes in a few perhaps and could be's and possible's if there could be a God, if there is a God, would he have left humankind without a record of his existence? Would he have left us with no proof whatsoever? And would he have come along with a whole series of laws that demand consequences and penalties and then sneak up on us here?

   We've been working so hard, and we've been developing, and our ingenuity and our science have taken us along to a jet age, not in the space age we've been striving in all of our colors and races religions, languages and creed for world peace ineffectively in sometimes ludicrous fashion.

   But is he going to sneak up on a someday and say now, why didn't you do what I told you to? And here I was so evident that I proved myself to you and so on. Yes, that's just about exactly what he's going to do. He shows the evidence that he exists is all around us. The air you breathe is evidence, your eyesight, your human mind, the human hand, the wings of a fly, the feathers of a bird, a sunset, water. The laws of science, the rocks beneath our feet, the living creatures all around us. All of these, according to the Bible, are proof that God exists.

   The last time I had to break off for a lack of time and I was zeroing in on just one kind of what is called a rot. It isn't really a rot, which is coal. And I was showing how here is the example of interbedding of cross-bedding of strata beneath the surface of our feet in this earth all over the United States. I showed you our coal is found in the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains in the Great Mississippi Valley in Oregon, Washington, and California. It's found in practically every state; it's found all over the world, and what is coal.

   Well, I'll go to the article in the encyclopedia to tell you what coal is, and I want you to notice some fantastic opposites in this article.

   Now, I've called coal as so many people have fossil fuels and talked about pollution from burning fossil fuels. Some people call it stored sunshine. So it says underneath this picture, the plants that help to farm coal range, listen very carefully this from delicate mosses, ferns and brushes to the largest trees. I'll think about that for a minute. You've taken a walk in the forest, no doubt in the past. And you've seen great tree trunks lying there. How did they get there?

   Well, you might say, well, they died. Sure. How long ago did they die? Well, there are ways to measure that. You can probably take a look at the tree. I've seen cases where in the redwood, for example, and maybe the roots of one tree they're actually growing atop of another tree and maybe you could cut this first tree down, don't you do it? In case somebody in the forest service has, you can count the rings. And you know, then how long that first tree has been there.

   About this time though it's rotten and completely decomposed, isn't it? But the point is that coal, is something which was virtually buried alive. It was buried while all that energy was still there, it wasn't given off, it didn't change too much. It was in a state of decomposition surely. And yet here are the ferns that you can see beautiful pictures of that planted without the form coal range from delicate mosses it says. Ferns, and here is a picture you can see the lacy delicate shape of the leaf of a fern on the sample of coal. And it says the largest trees.

   Now, what am I getting at? Well, it should be obvious to you by now that when ferns and little leaves and delicate things and large trees are all found in homogeneous mass uprooted, carried by the water action of sorting deposition of that particular layer of vegetable material. And remember to get 1 ft of coal, it takes anywhere from 5 to 8 ft of that vegetable material, that vegetation. So you got 20 ft of coal. It took 5 to 8 times that much in thickness deposit that coal in its original raw form, you got 2 ft of coal. It took anywhere from 10 to 16 ft of vegetable material waterborne deposited, then a horrible avalanche of mud deposited over that.

   Another one from another direction of a different constituency deposited over that and then another one from another direction deposited over that. Then maybe another theme of coal. Now, here's the source of energy of heat and light electrical power. It's so commonplace. Coal mines are everywhere in practically every state. They are a pollution problem today. It's one of the world's great natural resources. Isn't it lucky that this massive burial did occur?

   Here's one point before I tell you how it's true. That they were buried alive and you can prove it and you can prove it in a courtroom trial. And that is that you can't decide in advance you're about to discover coal by some kind of rock that is near it. The roof of a coal seam can be of any material. The metals that are found in association with it can be practically anything. The colors can go to every extreme range. A coal seam can be from one inch thick to 20 ft thick.

   You can have a seam of coal. A seam of shale, limestone, sandstone, coal, shale coal, limestone coal, some other kind of coal, you can have lignite at the bottom and the bituminous coal at the top and even the sub-bituminous coal down below that you can have all kinds of formations, they can be interwoven. They can be shuffled like a deck of cards, sandstone or clay and shale and so on and coal and then sandstone and coal and on and on.

   So what does this prove? It proves that what even the textbooks try to tell you about how coal was formed is absolutely wrong and that they are contradicting themselves. It proves that ancient peat bogs, ancient swamps into which giant ferns were supposed to have fallen did not provide this world with its coal reserves. It proves it because when you've got a delicate fern that falls into a swamp, what does it do? It decomposes it becomes absolutely undefinable, indistinguishable in a matter of days. It does. If you couldn't keep the thing fresh on your own dining room table for very long, even with water, it's gonna gradually decay and it's gonna curl up. Ok. You put it in water. What happens? Especially if there's any kind of a tidal action. Surely the uniform atarinest don't want us to suspend the action of the moon and the earth do they? So, they can have their theories. They're not going to suspend tidal action in large inland lakes or swamps of the action of wind or wave, the sorting action, the eroding action of the action of water. Well, I hope not if you've been to lakes and rivers, you've seen that in a matter of days, leaves and vegetable material are completely torn apart and disintegrated. They're not preserved this way. They were buried alive. And this is one of the important proofs. There is a God. It's only in a context of many other larger proofs, but it's certainly one of the very important ones and one that I think anyone from a tiny child ought to be able to understand.

   For hundreds of years, a man was taught to imitate the flight of birds by observing the mechanics of bird flight. He gradually learned the principles of aerodynamics by staying within the limits these laws impose. He can now fly at supersonic speeds. All of this is possible by using the laws of flight energy motion gravity. Yet man did not invent these laws. He only named them the existence of law necessitates the existence of a lawgiver to find out how this fact is one of the strongest proofs a creator God exists. Be sure to read the free booklet, Seven Proofs God Exists.

   If the police department had been notified of suspected foul play in the death of someone, they had unearthed the body after they got an appropriate clearance from the authorities and the powers would be. And they discovered a body inside a coffin that was in a, a tortured position as if it had died through paroxysms of agony and strangulation. I think that the coroner's report and the autopsy and the observation of scientists and specialists and just the eyewitness account of how that body was found. When they first opened, that coffin would be ample testimony to demonstrate. But sure enough, the poor person had been buried alive.

   There is a place in Southern Italy called Pompeii and here is a whole city that was buried alive. Vesuvius, the well-known volcano, it exploded and volcanic ash, tons of it spewed up into the air formed giant clouds and came raining down just like soft pumice stone but mostly ash and began piling up very rapidly. Many people fled and got out but many others did not. Thousands of years go by. The archaeologist paid one day discovered Pompeii. They began excavating and digging every now and then as they were digging, they would come to a crusty area and hear a hollow sound and then crunch and they fall through and they begin to discover, as grizzy as it may sound, some bones and they began to realize they were discovering human bones. And then someone thought, I think what we're discovering is decomposed bodies which as they were buried in this pumice this ash that accumulated decomposed. And so, what we ought to do is to tap and very carefully try to preserve these forms and see what went on what it was like. So, they were tapping around, they hear a hollow sound. They would drill just a little hole, they would pour in some, I think some solidified material of some type. I don't know what it is. Maybe Plaster of Paris very likely. And I don't think so. Then the Plaster of Paris and then when it hardened, they would scrape around it. And sure enough, they found bodies of people of dogs and animals and so on and they were in torturous positions.

   Now today, if you were to go there to the museum that is at Pompeii, you would see these very bodies that I'm talking about. So, they made a mold by pouring this material into this hollow space where these bodies had disintegrated and it proved absolutely demonstrated that these people were buried alive. Some of them were their arms over their heads and in positions that showed, they suffocated when you look in the rocks under your feet and you find a crushed body of a shark that is in a swimming position. But the rock subsequently on top of that shark have pressed it down to where it's just embedded in a rock. What is your observation? You don't need to be a geologist. You don't need to be anybody. You can be a housewife, you can be a schoolboy. You don't have to have a degree up your name to see what your own eyes tell you. You know that fish was buried alive.

   Now, what does it take to bury a shark alive? Well, it takes a fisherman, I guess with a hook, I guess a piece of pig on it. A lot of very powerful men, a big net, a big hole and get him in there before he dies and then put lots of rocks on him and then jump around on it and keep him there, doesn't it? But that's kind of silly because there are millions of sharks that were buried alive and all at the same time, not by men with fish hooks, but by a gigantic catastrophe of some sort, which buried those sharks as well as many other myriad forms of fish and other living creatures alive. And those living creatures began to disintegrate and they began to collect as the body decomposition would form in various pools. And over the many years, they form our oils and some of the raw materials and resources that are beneath the surface of this earth. Same comment about vegetable material except the vegetable material formed coal.

   Now, here in the same encyclopedia is the picture of this delicate fern fossil and the statement that coal is made up of everything from mosses and ferns to the very largest trees. And I've shown time and again that if it isn't buried alive, it isn't preserved because it decomposes. You're walking on the beach and somebody says what that horrible odor there and you smell a terrible stench. It may be the rotting carcass of a fish or a whale or a shark that was tossed up by the tide. What happens to it? It disintegrates, the birds pick it apart. Finally, only bleached bones are left rodents gnaw at those. And finally, even the bones are disintegrated and become little bits of what appears to be seashell or sand. And finally, even those are gone unless it is buried, unless it is preserved, unless it is fossilized, it completely disintegrates.

   Now, coal is a fossil stratum of rock. Here is an example of the way coal is laid down and it's done this way right out of a textbook which shows how there has been tidal action that has brought in sands, sandstones, clays. And here's a cheaper kind of coal where it's mixed with fire clay pebbles and gypsum. And here's another layer. Then here's some pretty hard coal down below, it shows the sand, the clay and a soft sandstone. Now this is accurate. This is from a textbook, in many cases, you can have interruptions of this to where you would have erosion, maybe a couple of miles distant, this would be formed into a valley. Then over here in another mountainside, you would find the same coal seam and you could determine that he erosion had gouged out of valley. But that this actually wa a contiguous area that was all one layer, one series of strata that were all set down at approximately the same time. Now, was coal deposited slowly over eons of times?

   In a moment I'll show you how this one encyclopedia is contradictory only inside itself because the entire approach of most of this kind of education is evolutionary. So, they have to try to tell you how coal was formed gradually. This chart proves that it wasn't formed gradually. Coal proves it wasn't formed, gradually, pick up a piece of it and look at it and it tells you it was not formed gradually. But you know, people aren't going to accept that kind of evidence because God is involved. I'm telling you that there was a God and what the Bible shows about the burial, the mass avalanche of burials of animals and a plant is absolutely harmonious with what the Bible says about the creation week in Genesis one and the flood even during the notation [inaudible].

   There's one question that has bothered man for centuries probably has bothered you also. Average men and great philosophers alike have struggled with this monumental problem. But it's a question that needs answering the question is, does God exist? But if so, how can you prove it? The free booklet, Does God Exist? offers tangible information that will help you answer this timeless question. You will learn how matter, intelligence and design, prove the literal existence of a spiritual God. Everyone has an opinion. But how many have the facts? There is no greater question that means so much to your own daily life and peace of mind, Does God Exist Now, you can know beyond any doubt, write for your free copy of, Does God Exist.

   In one of the encyclopedias on the subject of coal it tells you how coal was formed. And in this exposition, it shows how dense forests and swamps covered much of the earth's surface hundreds of millions of years ago so far, no contradiction of the Bible. I know that many people that go into the Bible think the Bible contradicts that people assume that the Bible says the whole thing, the whole shooting match the entire world everybody on it was created in one week. Not quite 6000 years ago, the Bible says nothing of the kind the Bible allows in the book of Genesis. The first few verses for any undetermined period of eons of time.

   The Bible plainly allows for a pre-Adamic creation where plants and animals of all kinds and types once teemed on this earth. The Bible allows, and Bible commentaries and other books reveal, that there was a program that God had in mind, that there was a great God and designer who over eons the time, was preparing this earth for man's habitation. There is just as much proof for God in the study of geology as there is any remote wild imaginary reason to suppose God does not exist because there are cataclysms, natural laws, and forces, and energies, yes, but uniformitarianism is disproved everywhere you look. Uniformitarianism, in short, is that theory, a portion of evolutionary theory which suggests that everything that we see today is a guide to what happened in the past, that everything in the past went along pretty much as it is today.

   Take a look at the coal and you simply cannot understand their reasoning. Here's the way they say it was formed. It says hundreds of millions of years ago, these swamps were filled with strange-looking trees, giant brushes, and widespread ferns. Among the plants lived big lizards and giant insects. Ok, so far so good. No coral with the Bible, as the giant plants died, they fell into the swamps, the dead trees and ferns became tangled in a mass of decayed vegetable matter. Now, so far, so good that that's true in many cases, except not all because much of coal, not all. But a lot of coal has fossils clearly visible that show the finest hair-like particles of ferns, mosses, plants, even to the branches of huge trees such as big pines. And that is evidence just as much as those bodies at Pompeii and just as much as that body we suppose might have been exhumed and was found in a tortured condition in a coffin, represents evidence of having been buried alive, not of a gradual falling into a swamp, plop and lying there for five years, disintegrating and gradually, you know, swamps don't really move around a lot. I said, just stay there and think and coal. Most of the coal on this earth's surface that is found in embedded cross-bedded. The scene can be 5 feet thick and its terminus can be one inch thick. That proves absolutely proves that vast floating rafts of uprooted vegetable material were heaved and tossed by tidal action as the continents themselves were raised or lowered. And the Bible allows for a number of times with continental raisings and lowering.

   There is no conflict between God's word and what geology plainly proves what geology speculates about, about the idea that at the very bottom are simple forms of life. What's simple about a trilobite? And at the top is man, that is a question because you see the geologic sequence of strata is nowhere found in that perfect form on the face of the earth as a matter of fact, there are exceptions to that all over the earth, but they try to get around it with things like deceptive conformity in their bedding and over thrust faults and all kinds of explanations. Some of which may partially be true, but most of which simply do not hold water. It says here that new plants grew on top of the old, then they too died and became part of the mass of peat. But the mass of peat, a kind of indefinable stuff that looks like has been put through the household blender is not sufficient to account for the seams of coal. It can be 15, 20 or more feet thick of coal that shows the imprints of delicate mosses and ferns that's proof for burial alive. And that means a giant catastrophe, not one but several.

   I honestly believe that much of the coal of the United States of America and the rest of the earth was buried prior to the creation of Adam, believe that it represents a pre-Adamic creation and believe that the gouges and the big canyons that have eroded away through it and have exposed it to the eye of man happened as a notation deluge. Now, maybe I'm dumb. You can disagree with me if you'd like. But I do believe too that your eyes would show you by looking at such a phenomenon as the Grand Canyon that those huge layers of rock that are mixed with an evenness that your own blender couldn't provide in the kitchen, miles and miles and miles of then absolutely even.

   What does that show? Does that show gradual accumulation over years with windstorm and with water and freezing and falling in the tracks of animals and the decaying vegetable matter? Oh, no, it sure doesn't. No, it's solid sandstone and clay stones and shales and other kinds of rocks that are smooth and are perfectly harmonious and sometimes 20 or more feet thick that shows sudden deposition, water carried water born, water sorted, water deposited how the Grand Canyons get there after all, that was deposited by that one little river in comparison with its vast size over eons of time and where did all those big angular boulders come from downstream that are the same constituency as the rocks inside the canyon.

   Well, Jesus believed in a vast flood on the surface of this earth, but that doesn't account for coal and everything else that was deposited. There were quite a few, and the Bible does not take any exception to that whatsoever.

   Well, there are seven proofs God exists. Now, this booklet that we'll send you by return mail free of charge shows you these are not guesses but factual proof. It's not a weighty booklet. It's a very short, very brief booklet that I imagine you can read in less than 20 minutes. It's just that simple.

   If you are discussing religion, which oftentimes is not too good an idea. Religion isn't always a very exciting subject over dinner is it, because it tends to get into arguments and people get a little touchy about religion. But if you want some ammunition you're discussing whether or not there is a God with a person who is mildly skeptic or really does doubt it. An atheist or a friend of yours. I just can't see the proof.

   I've met many people heard of many people who have said there can't be a God because, and then they begin to talk about Vietnam or starvation or accidents or warfare or sickness or a loved one of theirs that was a very great person but who died of throat cancer with seemingly no cause. And people have well, many reservations, many doubts. They wonder whether or not there really is a God.

   You write for this booklet, if you want some real solid proof for further research and discussion on your own part, all seven of them, one after another very tangible, easy to read, simple to understand and it's free of charge. There is no price whatsoever.

   Now, also, while you're writing for the, Seven Proofs God Exists, write for the book that it is its companion, Does God Exist? If you ask for the booklets on, Does God Exist? We'll send them both to you, Seven Proofs God Exists and the one, Does God Exist?.

   And all you need to do is to request it by sending a letter to Post Office Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. Be sure to tell us the call letters at your station. We need that. That's all there is no cost, but tell us the name of the radio station in which you've been listening, the call letters and then send your letter to Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong, saying goodbye, friends.