(NB Headings are not part of original, but are added for clarity)

The World Tomorrow

The Way Out Of Troubles - Part 2

by Herbert W Armstrong

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Well greetings everybody. THERE’S A REASON FOR ALL OF THE TROUBLES WE’RE HAVING IN THIS WORLD – let me tell you, my friends. And we don’t have to have it. We're bringing suffering on ourselves. And the trouble is you bring suffering on others along with your own self. And you suffer, every one of you, from what others are doing that you didn’t even bring on yourself.

But it’s a wonderful thing to come into the knowledge of your own Maker, your own Creator – the One who gives you the breath you’re breathing. And why, what are His purposes, what does He do, why does He do it, how does He do it?

I would like to have you turn to Job 38 – here in verse one. I’ve read this a good many times in these programs.

"Then the [Eternal] answered Job out of a whirlwind, and said [now come to verse four, of what He said to Job], Where were you [Job] when I laid the foundations of the earth [Job had just completed building a monumental building. So He says, Where were you Job when I built something so much greater – the whole earth] when the morning stars [and the stars, you’ll find, are a symbol of angels, in the first chapter of the book of Revelation] when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (Job 38:1; 4; 7 paraphrased)

The reason the angels shouted for joy, this was to be their home, their abode! And they were to have the job of completing the finishing touches of this earth: of making it more beautiful.

Now it was beautiful as far as it went. "And God beheld all that he had made [you’ll read back here in Genesis the first chapter], And God saw everything [the last verse] that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). Not 'very bad,' it was perfect as far as it went. But it was not completed. And God intended the angels to complete that creation.

Love Towards Neighbor/Love Toward God (PLAY FROM 02:18)

He set over them a government. And that government was based on His law which is a way of life. And that was to keep them together, to keep them in teamwork and all working together, instead of fighting against one another, and so that they could accomplish it.

But it was also a way of life. And it’s a way of life based on the principle of love. Now love is out-flowing. It’s not something that’s coming in towards you that you’re getting, or acquiring or something; it’s giving. It is an outgoing, loving concern for others, and a concern for others of your own kind, now other humans, for us, equal to your concern for your own welfare and your own good.

If you have that love of God, you are just as much concerned for the good, the welfare, and everything that is good, for your neighbor as you are for yourself, and whether you know that neighbor or not, any other human being.

Now of course love to God goes even farther. It’s adoration of God in worship and reverence, because God is the One who gives us life in the first place. He is the Creator. He is the One who designed the most marvelous mechanism ever made; the human mind and body. And God is the One that we owe everything to. And we love God by obedience, and realizing He is the great giver of all, and that every good thing comes from God. But no evil comes from God.

Now then, of the angels we find, in Ezekiel 28 and in Isaiah 14, something of the one that God set on the throne over these angels; and he was a super archangel. His name was Lucifer. And he had extreme great knowledge.

But here were the angels shouting for joy at the time the earth was created. And that was before the first man. And it may have been millions of years before; we don’t know. The Bible doesn’t tell us that. And God doesn’t reveal that. And no scientist can tell you; because there’s no way they can discern that.

So God set this super archangel, Lucifer, on as the king over the earth to rule the angels with the government of God so they could produce, and do what they were to do, in working with the materials on this earth, to make it more beautiful and, really, to complete the creation.

AND, IN SO DOING, to build their own creation, and finish their own creation! Now behold the greatness of God! This goes beyond anything a human being can think or has ever done.

But it’s a wonderful thing to come into the knowledge of your own Maker, your own Creator, the One who gives you the breath you’re breathing. And why; what are His purposes; what does He do; why does He do; how does He do it?

I began to want to know things like that when I was a little scamp, five years old. And my dad told me that I would be a Philadelphia lawyer when I grew up, because I always asked so many questions he got tired of answering them.

Now here’s your duality principle again: the angels were finishing their own creation of developing character, either good or evil, while they were finishing the creation of the earth.

Now what happened? We turn back here, as I've read so many times to you, second Peter, the second chapter, and verse four.

"For if God spared not the angels that sinned," (II Peter 2:4)

Now these angels are not holy angels. Apparently this is one-third of all the angels. The other two-thirds are holy angels. But these angels sinned. They could’ve been holy, but they never went on to create that character to make them holy. They could not be holy until they had the holiness of God within them. And that they had to take of their own knowledge and consent.

"God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to tartaroo ['hell' is the wrong translation here. It isn’t the kind of 'hell' that most people think of, at all], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." (II Peter 2:4)

Now there is a time of judgment coming on them. And actually there’s one scripture that says we’re to judge angels (I Corinthians 6:3). I don’t know that we judge those particular ones.

Now getting back once again: after they had done this, what happened? Instead of beautifying and improving the earth, they polluted everything in it and on it, so that deterioration, decay, and chaos came to the face, the surface, of the earth. And you find that described back here in Genesis (Genesis 1:2).

Now, because they had done this, God, now, determined to create man, and to reproduce Himself. Because, in man, He knew He could reproduce Himself into millions and millions, even billions of beings, human beings that will become Divine Beings that can have His character. And it’s the most marvelous thing you ever heard of; just such a program and such a plan as God has made to do it.

Result of Angels' Rebellion (PLAY FROM 08:04)

Verse {1} one "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)

Now the word for 'God' is 'Elohim,' it’s a uniplural. And it includes both the One who was 'the Word,' the One who spoke and the One who became Christ, and also it includes the One who is God the Father.

"And the earth became [or 'was,' it says, 'was,' here, but the same Hebrew word is translated, 'became,' in other places here in this same chapter] without form and void; and darkness…" (Genesis 1:2)

Now 'without form and void' comes from the Hebrew words of 'tohu and bohu,' and it means, 'decayed and empty and in chaos.' And the face of the earth had been ruined. Now not only that, but I am sure, myself, from what I see in the Bible, I can’t give you a direct scripture for that, but I think that you’ll find, someday, that God has revealed this to me through what He has revealed, and it is consistent in every way. That at the same time, you see the angels, once they had perfected their own character, once they had really beautified and completed the earth, and completed their own character, then the angels were to go to other planets and all over this solar system, and then out over the whole vast universe of outer space, and create the billions upon billions of planets that do exist!

Now this earth was their 'testing ground' to prove whether they could do it or not. This is the one they were practicing on. But they didn’t make the grade. Instead they destroyed the earth and, in the same way, they brought destruction and they brought decay to other planets.

You know our neighbors over here, part of Cal Tech, the laboratory; it’s really a government project. And they made the spacecraft that was sent up to land on Mars. And, as it landed, the first pictures came in about 5:7 or 8 – 5:07 or 8 in the morning – and they were shown on the screen right above where I’m sitting here now.

And we had this auditorium pretty full of people; many had been sitting here waiting all night to see the very first pictures coming in. And, as the scientists saw them in some little thing they were looking at, we saw them in the big screen. And, through their cooperation, they arranged that it could be transferred over here.

Now I knew what we were going to see. But I got down here a little before five that morning, and I saw those first pictures come in. And, as they came in a little piece at a time, and another piece, we saw exactly what I knew, from the Bible, we were going to find: we saw decay; we saw wasteness.

Now that is not a state of creation! Decay is something that has happened after a creation, a rotting, a deteriorating condition of something that once was different. God doesn’t create things like decay. Everything you can find that shows what God creates - it was 'very good.'

You can’t find a place where God ever created anything that is not 'very good,' not anywhere in the Word of God.

So I know that these planets all over the whole vast universe were unfinished, but now have gone into decay, and even what they were is just like this earth had become. It’s worse than when the angels went on to it.

Mankind Has Rebelled (PLAY FROM 12:08)

Now man was created and to do what the angels failed to do! And man is supposed to obey the law of God!

And God gave it to Adam. And Adam had to overcome Satan and turn away from the way of Satan – which was the way of get, and the way of jealousy and envy, the way of vanity and greed and lust, and the way of competition and strife, and the way of violence, and the way of resentment against authority – all of those things. And this Lucifer turned his angels to the opposite way of resentment, of hatred, of destruction, of tearing down instead of building up.

God is a creator, He builds up, He doesn’t tear down and destroy. And if we’re to be God, we must learn to do that.

Now God, in six days, remade the face of the earth. I've read that to you many times from the one hundred and fourth Psalm and, I think, it’s verse thirty.

"Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, and they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth." (Psalm 104:30)

God has renewed the face of the earth after the angels brought it into a state of decay. And He renewed it, now, for man.

So what you read of in Genesis, the first chapter, and after verse one, beginning with verse two or three, you read of a renewing, a recreation of what had been created, but had been destroyed!

Now man was put here to do the same thing, and to build character! And what have we been doing? The first man, Adam, went the wrong way, and humans have been going that way ever since. And we have polluted everything that human beings can get their hands on of God’s creation.

YOU TELL ME ONE THING THAT MAN HAS BEEN ABLE TO TOUCH, OR TO HANDLE, OF GOD’S EARTH THAT MAN HAS NOT POLLUTED, OR DESTROYED, OR HARMED, OR INJURED! And you can’t do it.

I first heard that from a country doctor. You know I’ve been thinking about it for these last 45 years and I am convinced now that the doctor was right. But man thinks he’s progressing.

And that’s just it: here we are in the age of the greatest progress. When you go back here five hundred years ago – and they didn’t have a printing press yet – and nearly all inventions, and all of the things that we think mean progress, have come in the last hundred and fifty years. And I would say seventy-five, or eighty to ninety percent of it in this century and, well, more of it in the last fifty years than in the fifty before that. It’s just as if man had just been created about a 150 years ago.

And we’re just learning a lot of things. But while we’re learning a certain physical, mechanical, material things, that’s why we can go to the moon and bac, but the spiritual reasons, the spiritual knowledge we don’t have, man has rejected. That’s why a man can go to the moon and back, and come down here, and then divorce his wife. And that’s happened to one of the astronauts. I don’t remember which one; I wouldn’t name him if I did.

But it’s just an example of humanity and how ungrateful we are and how we want to go the wrong way. We don’t want to go the right way. We should be building up; we should be improving everything.

Now I’ve learned that when God put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden He put them in there to dress and keep it. He didn’t put them in there to let the garden, that God had planted, grow up into weeds.

So I’ve tried to see that the grounds of this campus are kept up and in beautiful shape and, in no sense, run down. That’s why we have won that award a couple of years; and that’s as far as anyone is allowed to receive it.

Dual Stages of Character (PLAY FROM 16:22)

Now the creation of the earth, as I said, was dual.

Now we come to the creation of man. And how does God create man? He’s creating man to reproduce Himself. And there, again, is a dual phase. And the first is the physical phase and that began with the physical Adam. And you read of him back in the twenty-sixth verse of the first chapter of Genesis, and in Genesis two and three. And Adam started off wrong!

Adam had the chance to resist the way the angels had been going and to accept God’s government. God talked to Adam and explained. Adam knew it was his own Maker, his own Creator, talking to him. He had no excuse at all. He didn’t let Satan get near him until after God had given him ALL the real knowledge.

But also God intended that Adam must reject Satan’s way, as well as accept His, in order to qualify. And he could have replaced this Lucifer, who became Satan, Lucifer who was once created as a perfect archangel "...perfect in all of his ways from the day he was created" (Ezekiel 28:15). You read in Ezekiel 28. But he came to be Satan the devil. And that was all his own doing, because the character, as I say, God can’t do that alone.

You have everything to do yourself, I mean primarily, to do with the building of your own character. Now you, alone, can’t do it either. You have to have God’s help. But God will give you the help if you want to do it. That’s why you were put on earth.

The purpose of angel life was to build that character. The purpose of human life is to build that kind of holy and righteous character. And that is simply going the way of the law of God. And the law of God is the foundation and the basis of the government of God.

And, because of what the angels had done, the government of God was removed from this earth. And so the government of God is not on earth. God said to Adam, "You have rejected Me; you have turned down My way; you have decided to go the way that Satan went, to destroy, instead of to build. So, therefore, you’ve made the decision, and you’ve made it for your posterity and the whole world that will be born from you."

And God sentenced all humanity for 6.000 years, that is the children of Adam and Eve, to being cut off from God, and said, "You don’t want Me, you don’t want My knowledge, you don’t believe what I say."

Believe God (PLAY FROM 19:10)

People say, "Oh, I believe in God." And I say, "But you don’t believe God, do you?" Well they don’t quite get it; what I mean. Don’t believe God? Well you have to know what God says before you know whether you believe it or not.

Adam and Eve believed in God. They knew that God was their Maker. There wasn’t any question about that.

In the New Testament many of them believed in Christ. There were the Jews you read of in the eighth chapter of John, beginning with verse 30 I think it is, of the Jews that believed on Jesus, ...And to those Jews that believed on him [He said, if you read through a good many verses there], ...You seek to kill me, and put me to death, because you don’t believe what I say! My word has no place in you; you don’t believe my word" (John 8:30-40 paraphrased). Yet they claimed to believe on Him.

Today they say, "Just believe on Christ!" OH YES, MILLIONS DO, BUT JESUS SAID, "IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, ...teaching for doctrines the ideas, the commandments, of men, making the law of God of none effect by your human tradition" (Matthew 15:9; Mark 7:7 paraphrased). And that’s what’s going on all over this world.

There’s a reason for all of the troubles we’re having in this world, let me tell you, my friends! And we don’t have to have it; we’re bringing suffering on ourselves.

Now you don’t hear anything of the government of God in any religion that I know anything about. But let me tell you, the one Church that originates from where I sit right now, not only believes in the government of God, but it is administered. But it’s a voluntary government, and it’s only administered over those who voluntarily come and put themselves under it and to accept it. There’s no force or duress of any kind in it.

But the government of God is based on the law of God. But you see the churches that call themselves, 'Christian,' the main tenet, if there is any, that is the belief that they have is that God’s law is done away: that Christ came to abolish the law!

A lot of people believe that the God of the Old Testament was a harsh, stern God; where Christ was a loving God. And He came to do away with that law of God and to let us do any old thing we please and bring curses and troubles and everything on ourselves. Well we’re sure doing it.

But now He put humans on earth to build that character. And we have the chance, just as the angels did, but we’re not doing it, we’re going the same way they did. But I said a while ago that God pronounced this sentence of being cut off from Him for 6,000 years.

Now that 6,000 years is just about up; it’s going to end in our present, living generation. And I would guess that two-thirds to three-fourths of all of you people listening to me now are going to live through this time – when this present world is going to be over! That doesn’t mean the destruction of the earth. The world is one thing; and the earth is something else. The earth is the planet we live on. The world is the system of society that man has built on that planet. And that system of society is rotten, it’s filthy, it’s damnable and it’s going to go!

The Source of Spiritual Unity (PLAY FROM 22:40)

And so we’re told to pray, "Thy Kingdom come [God’s Kingdom, God’s government], Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10; Luke 11:2). And not until then will we have any peace, any hope, or any truth on earth.

If you’re going to have truth in a church, and to the Corinthian church the apostle Paul was inspired to write that, "You must all speak the same thing that there be no divisions among you, no schism in the body." (I Corinthians 1:10 paraphrased)

There is only one way that can be, because you can’t get a group of people, if they vote on what they want to believe and what they don’t want to believe, they’re not going to agree. There’s only one case in the Bible, only one case and one illustration, where there was a council; and they came together to decide a doctrinal matter, and that’s in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts, to decide a doctrinal matter of a question that had come up in the Church up at Antioch.

And there were probably only three or four of the apostles there, but there was Paul and Barnabas, so that would have made, at the very least, at least five of the apostles and other elders, that means ordained ministers.

And there was much disputing, and much wrangling, until Peter stood up, who did have primacy. And he laid down the law, what it was, and gave the decision.

Then James, who was the pastor of the local church, and for that reason was acting, at what we would call, today, the chairman of the meeting, as a matter of diplomacy, he just said, "Now Peter has spoken, and so we just make this official, what Peter has said."

You’ll find that everything that was believed in the original church had come from ONE SOURCE, not what the people believed. Not what ministers wanted to get together and decide among themselves what we think ought to be the true doctrine. IT ALL CAME FROM CHRIST, AND CHRIST GOT IT TO THE CHURCH THROUGH THE APOSTLES THAT HE HAD CHOSEN, AND IN NO OTHER WAY!

And as long as men are going to decide, and ministers want to get together and decide on what to believe and what not to believe, you’re going to have confusion of tongues. That’s why we have it in the world today.

The truth must come from God. He’s the Author of truth. And Christ is the Spokesman of God, and the Word. And it must come from there.

And He chose the apostles; they didn’t choose Him. They didn’t choose themselves. Jesus said to His apostles, He said, "You have not called me [or chosen me], but I have chosen you." (John 15:16)

You see Peter wanted to be a fisherman, and Andrew, his brother. And one of them wanted to be a tax collector. But Jesus said, "No, you come and follow Me. I have called you into My mission" (Matthew 4:19; 9:9). And so they followed Him, and they got their teaching directly from Him.

Now the apostle Paul, he spent three years with Christ in Arabia. He says, I have seen Christ; I have been with Christ (Galatians 1:17-18). He got it and he went to Jerusalem to be sure that what he was preaching was exactly the same as they were preaching, that there wouldn’t be any division. And he found that what he had gotten from Christ was precisely the same thing that Peter and James and John and those other apostles at Jerusalem, as they were at that time, had also received from the same Head of the Church, who is Christ. That’s where it must come from.

And, if it comes in any other way, you’re going to have confusion; and you’re going to have trouble; and you’re going to get into the same trouble that will damn the Church as the whole world has damned itself by the way they have done, and the suffering and the sorrow and everything that we have in this world.

So I hope that here we’ll come out of all of that, and come into the way that God will show us.

And I’ll tell you, an apostle of God always keeps the door open, and someone thinks he’s human and he’s made a mistake, someone can come to him and his mind will be open enough that, if you are right and he’s wrong, he’ll find it and make the change.

You know if he can’t ever change when he’s wrong, he can never really be right. I haven’t had to change very many times, but I have, when I’ve had to, I’ve done it. And I would do it again. And that’s the only way you can be sure.

You’ve got to be in the hands of God. And so that…you see, we’re only the clay and He’s the Master Potter. We’ve got to let Him form and shape us His way. You’ve got to let Him give us His doctrines, His beliefs, His teaching of what we ought to do, what we ought to believe, and any other way you’re going into the confusion of tongues and the religious confusion that is now engulfing this world.

And I think that’s a good place to close right there. And let me say that here I have, once again, I have this booklet, 'Just What Do You Mean – Born Again?.' I’ve spoken somewhat on that today; and I think you’d like to see it in print, and also the booklet on, 'Just What Do You Mean The Kingdom of God?.' That was the gospel that Jesus preached: the Kingdom of God.

Let me tell you, the Kingdom of God is the Family of God into which we can be born. But it also is the ruling, governing Family restoring the government of God. It is a Kingdom, a government, a nation, a ruling nation, and not just some ethereal nothing stirred up in men’s hearts.

So now remember these things that we have offered. there is no charge whatsoever. We just don't put a charge on things like that and glad to send it to you.

So, until next time, this is Herbert W. Armstrong saying, "Goodbye friends."

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