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The Worldwide News – November 12, 1979
The Worldwide News – November 12, 1979
This Is The Story Of You, Me And Those Called Into God’s Church

by Herbert W. Armstrong


Many have never understood how God came to predestinate and call YOU, me and other members to various functions, offices and administrations in HIS CHURCH in our time. This will be an eye-opener to some who have not fully understood before.

THERE CAME A TIME when the living God needed to raise up a human leader, with many others solidly behind him, in His Church for a very SPECIAL commission in these LAST DAYS of the present world.

It is undoubtedly the MOST IMPORTANT thing the Mighty GOD has done on earth in 1,900 years. It is of SUPREME IMPORTANCE to HIM- and it should be to you and me.

How the world got this way

Here we are in the very LAST DAYS of the evil world. NEVER BEFORE was there such a world as we have been born into. How did it get that way?

To UNDERSTAND, I say again it is like tuning in on a 2 1/2-hour movie when it is near the end now. So please read again, as I try BRIEFLY to hit the high spots of what led up from the beginning to the need and reason why YOU were called into God’s Church and Work today. We need to have this FRESHLY in mind.

At the time of the creation of man, God had driven the first Adam out from the Garden of Eden and supernaturally barred entrance of mankind, lest he take of the tree of life (the Holy Spirit) and gain immortality in sin. Had man been allowed to acquire immortality in sin, it would have imposed on mankind an eternity of suffering, anguish, indescribable defeat.

The former Lucifer, now Satan, and his demons already had imposed such a fate on themselves.

God did not want humanity, made in His own image, potentially members of His own GOD FAMILY, to inherit any such total eternal condemnation.

So, God cut all mankind off from access to Him, or His Spirit (which would impart eternal life), EXCEPT such infinitesimal few as He would call into His service preparing for the KINGDOM OF GOD (to appear after 6,000 years).

WHY?

The archangel and mighty Lucifer had been placed on the THRONE OF THE EARTH to administer the GOVERNMENT OF GOD over the earth then populated with angels. Lucifer had been PERFECT in all his ways from his creation UNTIL iniquity (lawlessness, rebellion, evil) had developed in him by his own choice. Lucifer became Satan – mighty, powerful next to God Himself, immortal, imbued with rebellion, self-centeredness, vanity, lust and greed, jealousy, envy, resentment, bitterness, hatred, spirit of competition and strife, destruction, evil and TOTAL unhappiness.

It is God’s law of His GOVERNMENT that one placed on the throne of that government must remain on it UNTIL a successor qualifies and is seated of that throne.

God’s fail-safe plan

God had provided a FAIL-SAFE plan – just as is a jet plane (if one system fails, another has been installed instantly to take over) God had provided that IF Lucifer disqualified and the GOVERNMENT OF GOD ceased to be administered by him, God would reproduce Himself through MAN. If the first man Adam, failed to qualify [sic – qualified] by rejecting SATAN’S WAY, and chose OBEDIENCE and the GOVERNMENT OF GOD, that Adam could have succeeded the disqualified Satan and been put on the throne of the earth administering the GOVERNMENT OF GOD over all the earth – over all mankind that would descend from him.

If this first Adam failed, then the Eternal WORD (who was with God and who was also God from eternity – John 1:1-3) would divest Himself of His immortal power and glory, come to be born HUMAN of a human mother (sired by God), would QUALIFY by rejecting and OVERCOMING Satan and his WAY, choose GOD and the GOVERNMENT OF GOD, with its way of divine LOVE.

Then being now human for the purpose of death, He would submit to death (though He never sinned), taking on Him the penalty of human sins, paying it by His shed blood for the sins of all humans who will repent of Satan’s way of “GET,” turn to GOD’S WAY of outflowing LOVE (the way of the GOVERNMENT OF GOD).

God had called to Him righteous Abel, Enoch, Noah. He called Abraham, who became “father of the faithful,” to whom both national, material and spiritual PROMISES were made. Four hundred thirty years later He called Abraham’s descendants – then about two or three million people – as HIS nation the Kingdom of ISRAEL.

But they, except their prophets, were still cut off from the HOLY SPIRIT.

God promised them, and under the Old Covenant in their day, only material and national rewards. But in their carnal human minds cut off from God’s Spirit, they never accepted the GOVERNMENT OF GOD, but rebelled as had Lucifer and his angels.

Jesus Christ came, the only begotten Son of God, in human flesh. His people Judah did not accept Him. He was despised, humiliated, persecuted, rejected. Only 120 chose GOD’S WAY and followed Jesus, among them His chosen 12 apostles. He sent them into the world declaring and announcing the future KINGDOM OF GOD. It shall administer the GOVERNMENT OF GOD, after Satan shall be deposed and put away.

God’s Church raised up

Now God began to call people for HIS CHURCH. Every individual called by God had been called to a special service. Israel had been called to have GOD and HIS WAY revealed to them, but not to spiritual salvation.

But now God called His CHURCH, to REPENT of Satan’s WAY of “GET” and accept the WAY of God’s law, “GIVE” or outflowing LOVE. God gave them HIS HOLY SPIRIT, which is the LOVE OF GOD, “shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

Some in the Church were called to specific special duties, for God’s CHURCH is a spiritual ORGANISM, well organized. In its work, God established many different operations and administrations. For this He set in His Church first APOSTLES, then evangelists (there are no prophets today), pastors, elders – some of whom were preaching ministers, some local spiritual elders, nonpreaching.

Others, the majority, the “laity,” are called to TAKE THEIR PART in the WORK of the Church – not as officers in specific duties or departments but by actively and loyally standing back of the apostles and other specific administrators with their constant PRAYERS, tithes and offerings and constant loyal ENCOURAGEMENT.

But fierce and overwhelming persecution set in. A false church, deceived and influenced by Satan rose up beginning A.D. 33. God’s Church was founded A.D. 31 by Jesus Christ. By A.D. 58 much of the Church had turned to ANOTHER GOSPEL. The Gospel (GOOD NEWS) of the coming KINGDOM OF GOD, ruling with the GOVERNMENT OF GOD, was abolished and counterfeited. The true GOSPEL Jesus preached was not again preached to the world until 1953.

Commission for the end time

The time had come when God needed to call a man to lead in the final LAST DAYS’ surge of 1) carrying the GREAT COMMISSION – the true Gospel of the Kingdom of God – to all the vastly multiplied 20th-century world, and 2) to raise up an enlargement of God’s true Church as a “BRIDE” made ready for Christ’s coming – to be married to Christ.

The true Church of God, by the 20th century, had dwindled to virtual spiritual impotence, and perhaps around only 2,000 members. So far as the WORK OF GOD (carrying the Gospel of Jesus Christ about the now soon-coming Kingdom of God to the world), the Church at this stage in time had “a name that thou livest, and art [spiritually and in the WORK] dead” (Revelation 3:1).

The time had come for God’s Church to spring to new life, spiritual vitality and energy.

The time had come when the Church must carry that shocking, dynamic Gospel in power to a dying world that had not heard it for almost 1,900 years – a message that would sound incredible, false and prejudicially crazy to a modern 20th-century world, far advanced in material, scientific and technological advances – a world spiritually DRUNK (Revelation 17:2) and DRUGGED mentally on the FALSE teachings of the great false church that started under Satan two years after the Church of GOD was founded in A.D. 31.

Incredibly IMPOSSIBLE

How could the true Church, starting from the condition in the first quarter of the 20th century, suddenly spring to life and growth, and accomplish such an IMPOSSIBLE mission in such a world, wholly in Satan’s deceptive grasp? The answer may be found in Zechariah 4:6, prophetically speaking to Zerubbabel, who built the second temple at Jerusalem, and a forerunning type of the one God would in these last days raise up to build up the temple to which Christ will come at His Second Coming. “This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by MY SPIRIT, saith the LORD of hosts.”

The job of building the second temple was probably only by physical strength. The Holy Spirit had not been given, except to the prophets, prior to Christ’s glorification after His resurrection (John 7:37-39).

So it referred to the one God would raise up in this 20th century, of whom Zerubbabel was a type and forerunner. The WORK today can be done ONLY by the Holy Spirit of God IN US who now compose His Church, for we of ourselves have but a LITTLE strength (Revelation 3:8).

So HOW did God go about it, IN OUR DAY? I never dreamed I would ever be called to such a mission for God. At age 18, in 1910, I had dropped out of church attendance and Sunday school. I virtually lost all interest in “religion,” though in no way had turned against it.

Yet even then, in a way I did not realize, Jesus Christ was guiding my life, even in this materialistic world. He was guiding my life then so that later He might guide YOURS who are Spirit-led members of His Church today.

He led me to choose a profession – at age 18 – that GOD knew would give me training and experience to be needed later, when He did knock me down, so to speak, and call me to His service – at age 34. By that time I was an experienced magazine writer – experienced in a writing style that MADE THE MEANING PLAIN to the GRASS-ROOTS PUBLIC – if not the scholarly. I was experienced in both newspaper and magazine production. I was experienced in travel, in contacts with the great and near-great in the American business world. I was experienced in dealing with advertising agencies. I had some public-speaking experience. ALL THIS WAS TO BE BASICALLY NEEDED IN GOD’S WORK.

WHY is this Work of God bigger than Billy Graham and Oral Roberts combined, as the CBS news program, 60 Minutes, told the nation? Neither of them ever had that preliminary experience and know-how. They raised up no church – published no magazine, in comparison, to the PT. In God’s Church, that pre-experience made all the difference! I had been prepared in advance to speak on radio, to publish The Plain Truth and other magazines, and write so many vital booklets and books. And without radio and the printing press this Work never could have grown as God caused it to grow!

But now GOD HAD TO ENDOW ME WITH MUCH MORE! Principally, the knowledge and UNDERSTANDING of GOD’S WORD! In the fall of 1926 God caused me to be put through an angered, yet open-minded and superintensive study and research of evolution and of GOD’S WORD.

I know of NO MAN who has ever been put through such an experience, which swept my mind CLEAR AND CLEAN of all contrary religious, biblical or spiritual ideas or beliefs. Into a mind CLEARED FOR IT, Jesus Christ poured in GOD’S TRUTH! He showed me that this world’s “Christianity” teaches the precise OPPOSITE to Bible TRUTH!

Another important point – God chose a man who from a child had craved understanding. So in this ordeal He put me through HE GAVE ME UNDERSTANDING of His TRUTH!

He had to bring me to total surrender to Him, to TURN FROM Satan’s way of “GET” – to a real REPENTANCE until I was CONQUERED BY HIM, and then to a living FAITH in Christ, which was to become the foundation on which this Church and Work was built.

How the Work developed

Now in this world, most organizations or corporations that are big started with MONEY – adequate financial capital. God deliberately and for good reason TOOK ALL OF THAT, WHICH I HAD, AWAY from me. I had been very successful in Chicago, as a publishers’ representative, making what in today’s dollar value would be an income of $175,000 to $200,000 per year.

That was an exceptionally BIG income for a young man still in his 20s! But God knew it would be good for me and His Work to be making it, and then, for no reason of mine, HAVE IT TAKEN FROM ME. The flash depression of 1920 – when I was 28 – swept away, or into receivership, all my biggest clients.

Later I was developing a very successful advertising business in Portland, Ore., but, unknown to me, an action taken in Indianapolis, Ind., took away ALL my clients, at a time when my advertising was doubling and tripling their volume of business!

God did not start His Work of this Church with MONEY or financial capital. It was started in ABSOLUTE POVERTY and HUNGER! It was started on SHEER FAITH – and some “guts” amid much opposition and persecution!

But by 1933 Christ had me where He wanted me – in material and financial POVERTY – but RICH in UNDERSTANDING and KNOWLEDGE OF HIS TRUTH, and in FAITH. It was not by physical or material strength, but by GOD’S HOLY SPIRIT.

Learning God’s TRUTH did not come easy. The living Christ had to teach me, through His written Word, a doctrine at a time, and then unscramble them, and, like a jigsaw puzzle, let Him lead me in putting them all together in SEQUENCE. Thus He gave UNDERSTANDING of GOD’S PURPOSE, GOD’S MASTER PLAN, the prehistory of God’s dealing with the angels on earth, God’s dealing with MAN from Adam to NOW! UNDERSTANDING of the CAUSES of today’s world evils, of how and WHY God allowed the churches of traditional “Christianity” to be deceived by Satan the devil.

Jesus Christ used me to receive all the wonderful TRUTH, at the cost of GREAT EFFORT, suffering the persecutions of Satan as probably, no other man in our time. He did this so that through me He could GIVE YOU all this tremendous gold mine of TRUTH already dug out for you – handed to you, so to speak, on a platter.

You did not have to go through the severe traumas He put me through to receive this TRUTH beyond normal understanding.

He used me to found Ambassador College, providing part-time employment so many could work their way through – with the PRECIOUS TRUTH handed to them freely. They did not have to go through what I did to receive it. It came dearly to me – cheaply to many students.

Yet all the while I was only an instrument – a SERVANT of the living CHRIST!

Praise His name above all names. HE did it – I didn’t. Yet I have paid a price in HARD WORK, SACRIFICE ABOVE ALL, PERSECUTION, HAVING LOVED ONES I HAVE SERVED TURN ON ME AND DESIRE TO DESTROY ME, AND THE WORK OF THE LIVING JESUS CHRIST! Some have threatened my life.

But you in the Church as a whole have remained LOYAL in Christian and deep LOVE! I KNOW, dear brethren – my dear children in Christ – how you love me. And I LOVE YOU with a depth of love that perhaps only God can comprehend!

May He ABUNDANTLY BLESS YOU and bring you, with me, into His Kingdom, FOR EVER AND EVER!