Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce Garner Ted Armstrong of Ambassador College with the World Tomorrow. In this series of programs, we will tell you something of the problems of the world today, how they will affect you, and their solution in the World Tomorrow. Ladies and gentlemen, Garner Ted Armstrong. The big news of the World Tomorrow is there is going to be one, and you know where you'd have to go to find out about that. You'd have to go to the strangest place you can imagine. The place most people, I imagine, would never look—the last place on earth that anybody would think they would find good news about the coming World Tomorrow. The way it's going to be, would be in the pages of your Bible. In your Bible, you can find Jesus Christ of Nazareth talking about our day, the time in which we live. In the Bible, the major powers of today are identified: the United States, the British Commonwealth, Japan, Russia, China, the nations in Asia, some of the major countries of this earth. Does that meet the traditional image of a Jesus, which people kind of pull out of the skies and appropriate to themselves as a religious talisman, someone into whose arms you can creep in a time of extreme stress? Is Jesus someone the kids can follow along after as the first hippie, the one who went head to head with the establishment and who would authorize them with anti-war demonstrations, sit-ins, and confrontations with constituted authority? Did Jesus come to camp out with his little hibachi and his disciples around and maybe pluck songs on the guitar and kind of say a lot of nice kind things, or did he talk about global conditions, our world in which we live today? Was he relevant to his age? And must be appropriated only as a historical figure, someone that people believe in historically, but who is not alive today, or is Christ alive today? Because you know, we are in a condition now where human annihilation is a distinct possibility. Sir Bertrand Russell, that famed British philosopher, I suppose historian and I suppose agnostic, all of these may be correct labels, one time or another. For Sir Bertrand Russell, he went to his grave they said with the last portions of his autobiography, absolutely reeking with his pessimism about the survival of humankind. The man had a great mind. He was able to have that overview, that concept of what man was doing to himself. It is very rare today. And when he looked abroad at what humankind is experiencing in all of our colors and races, languages, religions, and governments, he didn't find anything that was really optimistic. He saw instead the potential of human extermination, and he went to his grave, apparently convinced this is what would happen. Well, the big news, the good news really is news that was brought to this earth nearly 2000 long years ago that people have ignored, but they haven't paid a bit of attention to, and most don't even know where to find, and that is the good news that God Almighty does exist, that Jesus Christ of Nazareth does exist, that we will be saved from ourselves. Now, everything I've got to say in this series of programs is going to be so completely different from any time-honored, cherished, dog-eared old religious tradition you can think of. That you will be shocked and amazed when you continue to see where some of these graphic differences are between what the Bible actually says and what people have been telling you it says because there is a vast difference. Very few people seem to realize the word gospel merely means good news, good news about the world the way it will be. Now, in the Bible as we were seeing last time, Jesus came into the area of Galilee in the early Galilean ministry preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God. And what's that? A pleasant story, a bedi-by Christian story for people to believe in about going to heaven? Well, you know, it would be well and good if everyone were free to build up a concept of his own. Then he could worship that concept. It would be well and good if everybody could have his own personal talisman, his own personal interpretation of what Jesus means to him, his own idea about what Jesus looked like, what he said and what he did. All this would be perfect, beautiful. If there were no God, it would be just fine. We can say he has a different idea, Jesus and I do, and we're both friends. That would be great, wonderful if there weren't any real Jesus Christ. But since there is, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to ask him what he said? Then ask each other, both of whom may be equally in the dark? You know, Jesus did say, "Let them alone, they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, they are both going to stumble and fall into the ditch." Where did you get your concept your ideas about Jesus Christ? From pictures you saw somewhere? From pictures in the Bible? From the picture on the wall? From what somebody else drew up or wrote? You can look in history, and you will find that each generation began to alter their concept of what Jesus looks like. They never altered their concept of him as a baby, but they certainly altered their concept of what he looked like. Kind of thin, watery eyes, brown locks tumbling clear to his shoulders. A halo around his head, a thick kind of an effeminate face, a kind of an ethereal sad expression on that face, slender hands that looked like he had never done anything more than maybe manipulate a few paper clips in all of his entire life. White robes, open-toed sandals, his disciples sitting there leaning their heads on each other's shoulders and so on. The picture of the last supper. All these other pictures. Is that where you got your concept, or did you get it out of the Bible? But even more important than what he looked like is what he said. And the gospel message Jesus brought was a message for our day, not a message for us about the person of Christ, of what a nice man he was, of the things he did. The question is what did he say? Did he say what he meant? And did he mean what he said? Because he did talk about his kingdom. In a moment, I'll show you when that kingdom was to be and just exactly what that kingdom consists of and who's going to be in it and where it will be located. There's a time to be born, a time of youth with its lessons to be learned at its carefree moments, a time to raise a family, to watch your children grow and teach them of life. A time for work, for productivity and doing your part for mankind. There's a time to grow old and enjoy your grandchildren, and there's a time for death at the end of a full, exciting life. But then what? Heaven, hell, reincarnation, transmigration. What is the answer to this question that has long bothered man? You need to know, read the free booklet, "What is the Reward of the Saved?" It answers this question in a unique and surprising manner. The Bible nowhere promises what you've always assumed. Be sure to read this informative booklet, "What is the Reward of the Saved?" Send your request to Ambassador College, Box 345, GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College, Box 345, GPO Sydney, New South Wales. Probably heard of Expo 72. I've been asked questions about it recently. You heard about a lot of the great big revivals, and certainly, many of the evangelical types are very excited about some of the youth who were kind of riding the crest of the wave of a new Christian awareness. I know many were very excited to see youth, no matter how they may have differed and no matter how they may have disagreed on their interpretations of what Jesus was. The point was made by many evangelical types, as I say, that at least Jesus was central to their thoughts and their teaching. They say one way with Jesus, that's all well and good. But apparently, the upshot of the whole thing was, go out and join the church of your choice. I talked to a radio station in the Dallas area. They informed me they were going to be doing a survey in that area to find out whether or not church attendance in that area had really increased as a result of Expo 72. And I said, perish the thought because it could be just a little bit confusing, couldn't it? People who rallied together by the tens of thousands who say we believe in Jesus and who were told, well, you ought to begin going to church. All right, fine. So far, so good. When they get to church, what are they going to find? When you poll the beliefs of churches on one very important thing, which is an important point in the belief of the Jesus people. You know, these Jesus people, many of them, if they look even more thoroughly than they have, they began on the right track. If they just stay on the right track, they began with the Bible, not a lot of ideas of men about the Bible, but just the Bible, if they would just stay to the Bible and let the Bible interpret the Bible and stick to what it says. They would really be turning the world upside down before long because that just hasn't been a very huge, powerful thing that has been done. The numbers up into the hundreds of thousands at any rate. So a poll discovered that if these people do begin to shop around and go to the church of their choice after this revivalist type of meeting, that they will find that a sizable majority. And it mentioned some of the churches here which I would prefer not to do. It lists the name of this denomination felt that Jesus would definitely or probably not return compared to only 2% of another denomination, only 13% of this one denomination, and 21% of another denomination thought that he would definitely return compared to another church, which thought to the 75th percentage that he would return. And another Southern Bible Belt church thought up to the point of 92% that he might return to the Earth, however less than half. And here I can mention it because it's a general statement, less than half of Protestants as a whole as well as Catholics thought the second coming was definite and less than 60% thought it probable Protestants then can no longer sing Christ, crucified, risen and coming again with less voice since less than half the total of American Christendom really believes it's true. Let's put it in other language which I prefer. That means that more than half of American Christendom believes Jesus Christ of Nazareth lied. They believe in a savior who is a liar. They believe Jesus did not tell the truth. He said I am coming again and he said it over and over again. That was the focal point of his message, the resurrection and his return to this earth. He said he came preaching the good news of a coming government of which he was the head, the kingdom of God, it is called. He said, you must be born again. Last time I showed you. And I want to repeat that very quickly because it's something that is so shocking to most people. I am convinced they won't get it unless they turn to it and read it for themselves. It's found in John the third chapter and I'll turn to it right now and read for you again here in John, the third chapter, this leader of the Pharisaical religion of the day. He was a Jew named Nicodemus came to Jesus and he said, now rabbi, we know you're a teacher from God. I went through this last time because he said nobody but a man from God can do these miracles like you do them. But he said, what about what do I do? And so on. Jesus said verily, verily truthfully, truthfully in other words, and he was really bearing down on this. I'm telling you the truth, Nicodemus, except the man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God. I can pick up religious tracts, magazines, books, and articles. I can read them and read his digest people stuck them into my window and I drive by the corner slowly, they hand them to me on the street. I can pick them up in reading racks and rooms and it talks about you must be born again. But right there they stop and Jesus didn't stop there. He used the Greek word which if he had been speaking in the plain English language. You would have understood. You would not have misunderstood. Nicodemus did not misunderstand. Nicodemus didn't think for one instant, Jesus was saying, you need to have a personal encounter with me. He didn't think for one instant that he was saying you must have a religious emotional experience in your heart. What he said was, well, how can this be? How can a grown man enter into his mother's womb and be born a second time? He knew the word Jesus used meant birth just as much as the word birth means birth to you and me. And I'm not talking about a place on a train. I'm talking about being born right out of the womb just like we all were. Jesus answered and said verily, verily, I say unto you except a man be born of water and of the spirit. You know, baptism is a subject. It's a separate subject that is taught in the Bible, but it begins to make you wonder. I'll fill this in just quickly if these people excited at a revival, a big evangelistic campaign, a giant demonstration and they're marching up and down the streets. They're having seminaries they going out to hear the music and the rock sites that are singing spiritual songs. They get all heaped up about it and they go off there several ways that there are several different churches. One church is going to tell him this. You believe in a Jesus Christ who would send the entirety of the nation of Africa, China of Vietnam and Southeast Asia, Indonesia of Japan. All the oriental religions who have not professed his name, who lived and died, who lived their lives in poverty, squalor disease, hardship, and agony who never saw a Christian missionary in their lives. Many of them were butchered. They lived lives of privation and by the millions, some of those hapless people in those countries of such wretched government and such miserable conditions have been murdered and butchered and slaughtered. And yet the belief of many a professing so-called Christian in this world today is that their, Jesus Christ has consigned those millions to roast and to spit and sputter and pop as they roast and they burn, but they never quite burn up for all eternity because they didn't profess the name of Jesus Christ. You believe that? I don't and I can tell you thank God that isn't even in the Bible. Why were you born to become a farmer trying to feed the population bomb? To become an entertainer? To give people a fleeting moment of laughter, to be a millionaire with big houses and fancy cars and ulcers to live out your last days at the end of a plastic tube in a hospital to be the last to die in a war you don't understand. Is that all that is to human existence just putting in your time on a troubled planet? No, there's a great purpose for your life. A reason. You draw breath and you need to know what it is. Read the free booklet. Why Were You BORN? This knowledge gives reason to life adds meaning to all you do for a true added dimension to your life. Be sure to read. Why Were You BORN? Send your request to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney New South Wales. That's Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales. If you wanted to take a trip to Australia, I imagine there are travel agents here and there that could probably tell you how if you want to take a trip to heaven, don't you think there ought to be somebody that could tell you how well there isn't anybody who can because you're not going there and neither am I because Jesus Christ of math said no man has ascended into heaven, but the son of man who came down out of heaven. And your Bible says very plainly, David is not ascended into the heavens. It talks about Christ coming back to the earth. His reward is with him. It says, am I saying people can't be gotten and born into the kingdom of God. No, Jesus said, you must be born again. Is that a spiritual experience? If it is? Why are we deaf, dumb and blind read with me? And we don't need me or anybody else to interpret what we're about to read. You can understand English and so can I it says right here in John three verse five (John 3:5), except a man be born of water and of the spirit. He cannot enter into the kingdom of God that which is born of the flesh is flesh. You need interpretation. Why? That's plain. We're all born of the flesh. We are flesh that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Does that need interpretation? Why if you're born of the spirit, you are spirit. Are you spirit? Well, you could do the old hat pin test. As I used to say, we could sure find out in a hurry. I know when I make myself with a razor blade that I'm cutting myself shaving, which I do. Unfortunately, once in a while what comes out, blood there's nothing spiritual about that experience that's painful and that's physical because I was born of a physical human mother. And so were you? And so you are born of the flesh and you are flesh. Now, I ask, are you spirit? Well, now let's not just interpret it. Let's go on and let Jesus interpret it. He's the one who interprets the Bible interprets the Bible. We don't need to interpret the Bible. Let's let Christ do that. He's the one that ought to know what he's talking about. He says here in verse eight (John 3:8), the wind blows where it will and you hear the sound thereof and you can't tell where it comes from or where it goes. So, is everyone that is born of the spirit? How about that? Is wind invisible? Is that why Jesus said and use the example of wind? You can hear it blowing. You don't know where it came from or where it goes from here. You just hear the sound of it going by. So is everybody who is born of the spirit? Did he mean to hang around the eaves of houses and go or something? Let's be irrational. Let's be sensible. I know this goes contrary to mainstream Christian thought that's not my fault. I didn't put that in the Bible and I didn't go around twisting anybody's arms to tell them to get out here and stand up in front of people and say you must be born again, which means a spiritual experience. The Bible doesn't talk about an experience. It doesn't talk about an encounter with Jesus. It talks about a literal change in your very bodily being and your makeup. It talks about a resurrection. It talks about people coming up out of their graves and being changed in I Corinthians, the 15th chapter, the resurrection chapter, you will find some of the most exciting, some of the most shocking differences that you can discover anywhere in the entirety of your Bible. From the Book of Genesis to Revelation, it says in this the resurrection chapter that Jesus died for our sins according to the scripture that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures, which practically nobody believes. You sit there with a pencil and try to get three days from Friday sunset, Saturday sunset, Sunday sunsets. Oops, we went too far there, didn't we? We tried to do it according to the Bible. According to the Bible, it says the third day. According to the Bible, it used to be three days and three nights in the heart of the tomb. But according to Christian tradition, from Friday, sunset to Easter Sunday morning, that's not my fault either because I did not originate Christian tradition. I did not originate the Bible. I'm an innocent bystander. I'm walking along the street one day and somebody shoves the book in front of me and says, look at there. I say, what do you know what the people have been telling me? Isn't true but what the Bible says is different. The Bible says things, people don't say, I can't find the word limbo in the Bible. I can't find the word rapture in the Bible. I can't find in the Bible where I'm going to heaven. I find where Christ is coming down out of heaven to the earth. Time and time again. It's not my fault that over 60% of American church-going professing Christians think that Christ was a liar. They call him a liar and say bless you, Jesus. That's great. They've given him forgiveness. This is weird. People have got it all turned around backwards and upside down in their minds. People are big enough to forgive Christ. Christ lied and they say we'll forgive you Jesus, but we'll believe in you anyhow. It looks to me like we've got it upside down. We need it the other way around. Christ ought to be forgiving us. We don't need to call him a liar and then say, well, we'll go along with the part of his message we find palatable for our modern day and age when and where are we going to come down off our spiritual hypocrisy and begin to really believe exactly what Jesus Christ said he said and meant what he said and said what he meant instead of what people write about what people wrote about what some men thought about the Bible. And then we call that religion. If we're going to have our own religion, why don't we keep Christ's name out of it? Why put his name on our own personal religion? Here in I Corinthians, the 15th chapter (I Corinthians 15:20), it says that he is risen from the dead, verse 20 and become the firstfruits of them that slept for since by man came death by man also came the resurrection of the dead. Now, how do you square heaven with a resurrection? People are dying like flies every day by the millions and tens of millions. People have died on this earth. Did they go to heaven? The graveyards are filled with all of the crosses and all the sermons that have been preached over those same people to say they went to heaven. What is going to happen to those people if Christ comes back? He's going to take those souls and put them back in those bodies and give them cancer all over it again. Here's the book of your Bible I Corinthians 15 that talks about the resurrection. And it says here as in Adam, all die. You know, the Christian theologians have the other way around. People don't die, just their bodies do. They stay alive? The Bible doesn't say that it says death is death and life is life and those are two opposites for as in Adam, all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order, they that are Christ, Christ the first fruit afterward they that are Christ at his coming. Now, wait a minute. Maybe you didn't get that. It says every man shall be made alive. I ask, when will Christians be made alive, if they die? It says in Adam they die but they're going to live when, when please tell us what does the Bible say when right when they're put in the grave at the instant their soul departs. The Bible says, yeah, that's a favorite statement, forget it. But the Bible does say in this case, every man in his own order, Christ, the firstfruit afterward they that are Christ at his coming. I'm sorry, I just have to tell you what the Bible says. That's what I'm accountable for. I can't tell you the Bible says this, but it doesn't mean this. I'm telling the Bible says that and it means that at his coming, not before you ought to write for this free booklet on, Why Were You BORN? You know, the Bible is so different from what you've been told that it's absolutely shocking and I intend to shock a few people. I think maybe that's what I've been called to do. If it's shocking to you, it's not my fault. I didn't preach it the other way. If people look into the Bible, they find it doesn't say what they thought. It says, it's not my fault. It isn't something I did because I didn't put those words in your Bible. That isn't first Armstrong 3 to 2. You know, there just isn't any such scripture. But if you look in your own Bible and you find out it says what I'm telling you, it says, then you're not believing me, you're not believing me because I told you something, you're believing exactly what your Bible says and nothing else, you know, you're proving it of and by and for yourself and you know, where your faith really rest. It doesn't rest in human beings in some voice you hear on the radio. So it's important to know where your faith rests that it's not grounded upon a voice you heard somewhere over the airwaves, but it's grounded upon the tangible proof of what is in your own Bible. So write for the booklets and the articles that I have announced and also the, Plain Truth magazine. And while you're at it, write for that booklet, The Wonderful World Tomorrow - What It Will Be Like, these booklets are absolutely free of charge. There isn't any pitch, there isn't any hook in them. Nobody is going to give your name to someone else. You know, I'm saying that over the airwaves and I'm held accountable for it. I'm held responsible for it. There is a federal government that has laws about advertising and whether it is false advertising or not, it would be absolutely illegal and against the law and I could be arrested if I were to tell you, there is no charge for these booklets and then you found out we tried to charge you for them. So I'm telling you publicly, there is no charge and there is no request for money either inside the booklet or to come along later. The only way anybody would ever say one word to anybody about money is if someone of himself by himself, for himself completely unilaterally and on a voluntary basis, decided he wanted to have a part in this great worldwide work and it was his own private conviction and decision. Then of course, the subject no doubt would come up. And I'm not saying that with tongue in cheek, I think that's as practical and as honest and as forthright and as biblical a way to approach that subject as you possibly can. But for those of you who would like this free literature, I just want to tell you over and over again, it's absolutely free. There is no charge for it whatsoever, but also write for, Does God Exist, this goes into more of the intelligent versus non-intelligent idea of where did life come from? Of how there is a supreme intelligence that unintelligent and absolute ignorance does not produce intelligence that randomly and haphazard chaos does not produce order. Man's intelligence is compared versus God's. You look all around you at the miracles it seems that man is wrought. Man has a great mind. I mean, man, collectively, I mean man, in all of his history, but man still doesn't know how to deal with some of the problems that are brought upon him by breaking of what seems to be natural laws. We still don't know how to get rid of the penalties that come upon us by breaking of laws. The whole question of whether or not God exists revolves around man's mind, man's ingenuity, man's creativity and whether or not we are in some ways, truly limited. You need to write for the booklet, Does God Exist, and the one entitled, Seven Proofs God Exists.