The True Church
8W-22
Telecast Date: November 28, 1978
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   Let me tell you, only one person has ever been born again — yet — and that is Jesus Christ. Now that is a stunner, and some of these things are so remarkable, because this world has been deceived. Your Bible says that all nations have been deceived. There is a devil that is smarter than all of us put together, but he's invisible, we don't see him, and he's so clever, he has managed to deceive us into believing he doesn't even exist. Well, he does exist.

The World Tomorrow — the Worldwide Church of God presents the World Tomorrow with Herbert W Armstrong... ladies and gentlemen Herbert W Armstrong.
   Well, greetings, everybody. We're living today in a sick, sick world, and a world of extreme confusion. We have confusion in governments, and governments are being overthrown now at the rate of about one every month. You tune into the news, as you will this evening perhaps, and you'll find civil wars, governments being toppled and overthrown, and others meeting to try to prevent a war, which they probably will not do.
   Now the world is filled with religions. In the eastern, Oriental world, we have Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Taoism, and Hinduism, and others. Then in the Arab world, we have the religion of Islam, or the Moslem religion, founded by Mohammed (and incidentally, not by Ali). And the largest religion of all, however, is Christianity. In the western world, it dominates rather largely.
   One peculiar thing, I wonder if you ever thought about it — why is it that in a certain country, nearly everybody claims one religion? Of course, always there will be a few others. It's not 100%, but the overwhelming majority will have one of those religions. Now, religion is really the worship of God or of the supernatural, and in many cases, some of these religions are more properly perhaps called "philosophies," because some of them know nothing about any God, and it's merely a philosophy of living, and of meditation, and of things of that sort.
   Well, even in the western world of Christianity, we have a Babylon of religious confusion. There are hundreds of different denominations and sects in the (what is called the) Christian religion. There are certain things that they seem to all more or less believe, but many differences in the more minor details. Now in this present series of telecasts that I am engaging in now, I want to show you, and I won't get any more than just started in the present telecast, seven proofs of that one, original, true church.

How To Identify The True Church

   How are you going to identify it? The Bible gives you the seven points that identify which is the true church, and there's only one church that can qualify in all these seven. As a matter of fact, many of them, there's only one that believes in, anyway, in just one. Now first of all, is the nature of God, and the nature of Christ. I found that churches don't even know about God. Now isn't that strange? They don't know who and what God is. They don't know who and what Jesus Christ is, or was. Oh, that sounded like I'm crazy. Oh no, don't you believe it.
   I think there must be a lot of others that are crazy, and it reminds me, I was brought up (as I say) in the Quaker church, and it makes me think sometimes of that old Quaker many, many years ago, and like they've stopped saying, "thee" and "thy" and "thou", but my grandmother still did. She's always saying "thee" and "thy" instead of "you" and "yours," and I was an impudent little boy, I know, that I asked her why she talked that way all the time. I said, "Why don't you talk like other people and say 'you' and 'yours' and so on?" And she says, "Well, the reason I do that is because I want to talk the same language that Jesus did, and he said 'thee' and 'thy."
   Well, you see, that is not true, because the "thee" and the "thy" that are used, and "thou" and so on, and "thine" and that you'll find in the King James is merely the language of the higher-class language, and I think in that day back in 1611 that, a good deal like German today, there's a high and a low German, and it must have been the higher, more polite and dignified English, and so this Bible is translated back in that day, and the English language has changed a great deal since 1611.
   That's what upset some people. But we haven't any modern translations that straighten all that out, if people want to take a little time. Someone said, "Well, I don't have the time to go into all that." Well, you've got time for other things. Maybe you'd better decide which is more important. I think of an illustration, of an old sow, and you can throw out some diamonds and pearls and very valuable jewelry, and she'll just trample it down in the mud underfeet. But throw out some slop that we're throwing away, and it'll go right after that. It's a case of knowing what are the true values. And that's the way some people are.
   Well, I learned that the Bible says things about God that I had not been taught in church, entirely different. Now, many profess Christianity who do not know who and what God is, and who and what Jesus Christ was and is. God reveals himself in the book, the Bible. And I came to have the knowledge in the same manner that the apostle Paul did, and I'd just like to read that to you in the first chapter of the book of Galatians.
   The apostle Paul says this at the beginning of verse 10 (Galatians 1:10): "For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man." He didn't get it from other men, he got it direct from Christ. "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ."
   Now Paul said that he had been with Christ. He said he had seen Christ, and there's a period of three years that is not accounted for in the history you find in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, and in the writings of Paul, when he was down in Arabia. Well, undoubtedly then, there's just no other way to put it together — he was there alone with Christ, and Christ after he'd ascended to heaven, in person some way. And I don't know how he manifested himself, because it isn't explained at all, but had taught Paul direct.

The Word Of God

   Now Jesus Christ is the living word of God. The Bible is the printed word of God. The only difference is one was a person talking, and the other is in writing, but it's the same truth exactly. Now later he said here in verse 15 (Galatians 1:15): "But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me into his grace to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." He went to receive this from Christ direct.
   Now let me say the same thing. Immediately when God had called me from this challenge, I did not go to man to find out what to believe. I didn't go to a theological seminary. If I had, I would have been taught what man had written in man's books, that their particular church or denomination had decided to believe, and I had already found by my study that what they believe is almost the opposite of what the Bible says. I had the Bible as my...
   Now I went then, just like Paul did, to God. I was not taught by God in person. He didn't come and appear to me in the flesh in person, because he wasn't in the flesh any longer, anyway, but in spirit. But here is the same, the same word of God, but it's in writing. I had to eat crow. I was brought to have to realize that I had to let my mind be swept clean of everything I had previously believed. I have looked into the lives of leaders of world religions, and I can't find one of them that ever came to what he believed that way.
   Now many of them, I said awhile ago many of the religions are merely philosophies. I don't mean Christianity, I mean other Oriental religions. But those men, they had nothing to base it on, they had no instruction, no contact with God. There was no word of God available to them at that time, and they would just sit down and think, and meditate, and imagine in their own minds, and they just made their philosophies in their own minds.
   There was no, no basis, no authority. As I said, God reveals himself in the Bible, and he taught me through this word the same as he taught Paul in person. But
   I had the teaching direct from the same one, exactly. Christ is the living word. He is the one who inspired every word in this book.

[Commercial break: The Plain Truth Magazine]

   Now Jesus had existed with God, I find revealed, from eternity. The beginning of the Bible, and I've said this before in this series, is not {1} Revelation 1:1. Actually, if you, in time sequence, if you go clear back, even antedating that, is what is revealed here in the New Testament in the book of John, John 1, verses 1 to 3 or 4 here (John 1:1). "In the beginning was the Word." Now "Word" is a name, and it comes from the Greek word, as this is written in Greek originally, "logos." Logos merely means spokesman, or the one who does the speaking, the mouthpiece.
   "And the Word was with God." Now the Word was a person, and that person, that Word, was with God. And then it says, "The Word was God." Now how in the world can that be? "The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made."
   Now I found... Well, let's look in verse 14 before I go away from this (John 1:14): "And the Word," now this is much, much later. This is in the time of about 4 B.C. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." That was Jesus Christ. The Word, then, is what became Jesus Christ. He was one of the personages, and there were the two, there were two people there, two personages, both spirit, composed of spirit, both having almighty minds.

All Things Created By Jesus Christ

   Now as to Christ, he was not a son of God then, because you read that he had no beginning, no father and no mother. And without any ancestry, or beginning of days, or end of life. All things were made by him. In Ephesians the 3rd chapter, you will read (I won't turn to it right now) that God created all things by Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 3:9)
   But now we come to Genesis 1:1, and here is the beginning of the physical creation. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth." Now, I want you to notice something here. "In the beginning, God...." The word "God" is an English word, and it's translated from the word that Moses wrote in Hebrew, and Moses used the word "Elohim". Now Elohim is a uniplural noun or word. It is like the word "family" — there could be a number of people in a family, but there's only the one family, the Jones family or the Smith or the Andrews family, or whatever it might be. It is a word like that. In other words, God is more than one person. And Jesus came to reveal the Father, and until Jesus came, they had not known about the Father.
   Now we come to the 2nd chapter of Genesis, and a new name for God is introduced (Genesis 2:1). "Thus the heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the host of them, and on the seventh day God" (and that's Elohim) "ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made, and God" (again it's Elohim, meaning more than one, but it's one God) "blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he had rested from all of his work which he had made." And don't think he was tired, he wasn't, but he was setting an example and putting his presence in that day.
   Next is a new paragraph beginning, and in verse 4 (Genesis 2:4): "These are the generations of the heavens and of the Earth, when they were created, in the day that the..." Here it says "Lord God." Now, if you notice, if you have a King James translation, the word "Lord" is in capital letters — small caps, but they're, it's all caps. That word originally in Hebrew was "Yahweh," and it is translated "Lord", and that is a mistranslation. Now if you will read it in the Moffatt translation, it'll say "the Eternal, Eternal God." If you look in the Fenton translation, it'll say the "ever-living God."
   As they explain, there is no word in the English language that will translate the Hebrew word Yahweh. It means one who is self-existent, who, like as Christ said, "I am the beginning and the end." He's always existed, always will, ever-living, always living, eternal. I like to use the word "Eternal," and usually when I see it in caps here in the Bible, I usually read the word "Eternal." And "the Lord God," I read it "the Eternal God formed man of the dust of the ground."

God Of The Old Testament Became Jesus Christ

   And, in verse 8 (Genesis 2:8), "and the Eternal God," or Lord God. Now that's Yahweh Elohim. Both words are used in the original Hebrew there. "Planted a garden eastward in Eden," and so on. Now then, from there on, all through the Old Testament, it's always this Yahweh, or the one called the Lord, and that is the one who became Christ. There are many passages in the New Testament quoting the Old Testament, that prove, absolutely prove, that the God of the Old Testament was not the Father, but was the one who became Jesus Christ.
   Now most people think that the God of the Old Testament was God the Father. Now I had an aunt that was really the wife of my uncle who steered my early life, and I remember her saying, "Well, I tell you, I think Jesus was very nice. He was a Christ of love, but that God of the Old Testament, I can't stand him. Oh, not that God of the Old Testament." Now, she just simply didn't know. She'd never studied the Bible, she just had her mind already made up, and really she was talking about Christ in two different phases.
   And the God of the Old Testament is the God of love. It says, "like a father pitieth his children," "whose mercy is as great toward us as the heavens are high above the Earth," that's all in the Old Testament (Psalms 103:11, 13). If you just read it, God is pictured as the great giver, a merciful, loving God. But he's a God of justice, and when they see the justice part, they want to say that, "Oh well, he was a hard, destructive God." No, he was never destructive in any way at all.
   Well, now then, as I say, Elohim was the name of the uniplural God, and at first in included only God and the one who became Christ, or the Word. Now, they created the Earth after angels. Angels were in existence before, because in the 38th chapter of Job (I've read this to you before on previous telecasts): "Then the Eternal answered Job out of a whirlwind, and said, Where..." (this is the 38th chapter of Job - Job 38:4). "Where wast thou," he's speaking to Job, "Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Declare if thou hast understanding."
   Job had just built... Many people don't know this, but Job had just been the contractor, the architect, designer, and builder who supervised the construction of the Great Pyramid. Now he was not the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh had, apparently, two names. I don't know which was the official one, Khufu, or whatever the other name was. In other words, he employed Job to do it, but Job was the man who had built the greatest building on Earth.
   In verse 6 (Job 38:6), God here is saying to Job, "Well, whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or, who hath laid the cornerstone thereof when the morning stars," or that is, the angels, "sang together, and all the sons of God," which means, it can't mean anything but angels there, "shouted for joy?" Angels are sometimes called sons of God, in the sense that they are created beings that God created.

[Commercial break: Just What Do You Mean... Born Again?]

   Now I want to show you a little bit more about Christ now, before I close this. By a resurrection from the dead, Jesus, who came in the human flesh, originally had been this Word. Now he became a man called Jesus, the Christ, and he also had the name Immanuel, which means "God with us." But he was crucified, he died, and after three days and three nights in the tomb, he was resurrected.

Christ Is Called God By God Himself

   Now then, if you will turn to Hebrews the 1st chapter and verse 8 (Hebrews 1:8), you read: "But under the son," which is Christ, God said, "thy throne, o God, is forever and ever: a scepter of righteousness and a scepter of thy kingdom." There Christ is called God by God himself. Now then, we turn back to Romans, verse 4, it's speaking of Jesus Christ here, "And declared to be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead." (Romans 1:4)
   Now let's get all of that in context. Just before, it says "Concerning his son Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh." Now, David was an ancestor of his, and by flesh birth, he was a son of David, but "declared to be the son of God by the resurrection from the dead," with a few other words thrown right in between there. He became a son of God by the resurrection.
   And in Romans the 8th chapter and in verse 29 (Romans 8:29), it speaks of Christ, "the image of his son, that he," Christ, "might be the firstborn of many brethren." He was born as a son of God, by a resurrection. We can be born as a son of God also by resurrection. Now that brings me to another booklet that I would like to show you. And this booklet is Just What Do You Mean... Born Again?
   I'll tell you, even the heads of government don't know what it is to be born again. I won't mention any names, but some of you get the significance of what I'm saying. And we need to understand what the Bible means, and what God means, when he talks about being born again. Now this booklet will show you what the Bible really means and what it says about being born again.

Man Was Made In The Image Of God

   Man was made in the form and shape of God. Man was made so that from birth, there is a spirit in man. Now that spirit is only essence, it's not an immortal soul or anything of the kind. It's not a ghost. It's only just spirit essence. But it does impart to the physical brain the power of intellect, and it gives us an intellectual power that animals don't have, because they don't have that spirit.
   But we need another spirit, and that's the spirit of God which impregnates us with immortal life, and when we're born of God, Jesus said, in John the 3rd chapter to this Nicodemus that you'll get in this booklet (John 3:6), that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." We won't have been born of the flesh, we are flesh. "But that which is born of the spirit is spirit." You will be spirit when you're born of the spirit.
   And then in the 15th chapter of I Corinthians (I Corinthians 15:50), you read that "flesh and blood," made of matter here, "cannot enter into the kingdom of God." And yet people think they've already entered into the kingdom of God and already been born again. Let me tell you, only one person has ever been born again — yet — and that is Jesus Christ. Now that is a stunner, and some of these things are so remarkable, because this world has been deceived. Your Bible says that all nations have been deceived.
   There is a devil that is smarter than all of us put together, but he's invisible, we don't see him, and he's so clever, he has managed to deceive us into believing he doesn't even exist. Well, he does exist. So I'd like to have you get this little booklet — What Do You Mean... Born Again? It'll make it very, very plain, very clear, and I think that you will rejoice in the knowledge when you have it. So now, until the next time, I'm going to leave you there, and I'm going to continue with this series.
   The first proof was that the true church of God believes that God is a family of persons into which we may be born. More of that will come later. We may be born into that family, and we will also be God, as Jesus Christ has become very God. When we are born, we'll be like him. We are co-heirs with him now, and we will then be co-possessors with him. There will be a marriage of the church with Christ, and we will all be the family of God, the God family. That is a wonderful thing. No other church on Earth believes that. But that's what the Bible teaches.
   Why don't they believe the Bible? Well, I don't know, but you keep listening, and you will learn things, many of you, that you never thought of or heard of before. But they're absolutely proved. So until next time, this is Herbert W. Armstrong, the only address you'll need: Pasadena, California. Booklets are free, we have nothing to sell. Until next time, goodbye.
Footnote: {1} Mr. Armstrong said Revelation 1:1, but in actuality meant Genesis 1:1.

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Telecast Date: November 28, 1978
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