by Herbert W. Armstrong

For many years there has appeared in the annual Ambassador College catalog a section captioned “Foundational Policy.” As you will see in my “Personal” (“The Deadly Leaven of Higher Education”), Ambassador College had been systematically infiltrated in the past seven to ten years by the leaven of “intellectualism” and “higher education.”

That article explains how I fought, bled and died to KEEP OUT this leaven the first three years after the college was founded and to establish Ambassador as uniquely GOD’S OWN COLLEGE.

Jesus Christ, the living HEAD of God’s Church and college, has led me to STEP BACK IN FULL CONTROL, setting Ambassador College back on the track as GOD’S college.

This college, as it was – unique among the educational institutions on earth – and as I have now RESTORED IT, once again follows this foundational policy.

I ask you to read it, whether again, or for the first time. It is reprinted here:

Ambassador College is rooted to an educational policy and a philosophic approach which permeates the institution.

Today we live in a different world. Frightening changes have occurred. The world went along on a comparatively even keel from the dawn of history until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Suddenly knowledge increased. Nearly all modern inventions have appeared during the past 150 years.

In little more than the brief span of a lifetime the world has passed with accelerating speed through the age of invention, the machine age, the age of science and technology, the nuclear age, and now, the space age. The sudden acceleration in scientific development is evidenced by the astounding fact that 90 percent of all scientists who ever lived are living today.

And with these developments has emerged a new age in education. Today’s world is what its leaders have made it, and these leaders are the product of this world’s education. But what kind of world has this education produced?

It appears to be a progressive world, suddenly newly enlightened and fantastically advanced. It has become a modern world, producing awe-inspiring inventions, labor-saving devices, dazzling luxuries undreamed of a single century ago. Today there is instantaneous communication, worldwide. We fly around the world in two days, and orbit the earth in 90 minutes. The miracles of radio, television, hi-fi stereo sound reproduction, and cinerama entertain an amusement-hungry world. Assembly-line mass machine production makes available a myriad of exciting new devices and simultaneously increases incomes and shortens work hours, thus providing both the leisure and the purchasing power for the masses to enjoy all these new luxuries.

A fascinated, entranced world now looks ahead to the magic dream-world, push-button Century 21, when human labor will be all but abolished, with idleness, ease and luxury enjoyed by all! Isn’t this breathtaking PROGRESS?

So it seems. But there is the other side of the coin, and it’s high time we AWAKE from the trance and take a hard look at it!

True progress is not measured by the false yardstick of gadgetry, mechanical devices, and the fatal concept that labor is a curse and idleness is a blessing. Science, industry, and modern education have concentrated on developing the machine while degenerating the man!

Education – and the world of its creation – has lost all knowledge of the PURPOSE and true meaning of life. It has lost all sense of the true values, while blindly pursuing the false. Education has failed to teach THE WAY to peace, happiness, and abundant well-being. The actual bitter fruits of this modern materialistic “progress” are increased unhappiness, discontent, boredom, and moral, spiritual and educational DECADENCE! The American and British peoples are traveling the identical road that led to the fall of the “great” nations of the past-Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome!

This is a very deceptive world. With all this “progress” it remains a hard, cold fact that never before was the world filled with so much discontent, unhappiness, and suffering – never so much ill health, mental disturbance, frustration and suicide, even in the affluent nations. Never before so many divorces and broken homes, so much juvenile delinquency, crime and violence. That is, unless, as Jesus remarked, it was “in the days of Noah.” And never before was it possible to erase human life from the earth by the educational and inventive genius and the productive capacity of man!

This is a deceived world that doesn’t know it is deceived! WHY?

There is a reason. There has to be a cause for every effect.

Sir Winston Churchill put his finger on the answer. Speaking before the United States Congress, he said, ”… he must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below of which we have the honor to be the faithful servants.” This implies a divine Higher Power doing the working out. This is the starting point of a right and true education. This strikes directly at the FOUNDATION of knowledge – the most important, most needful of all knowledge – the PURPOSE of human life, understanding of the true values, and knowing the way to every desired result!

Yet right here, at the basic starting point, is precisely where education jumped the track of its true mission. And this chaotic, mixed-up, unhappy world is the result.

IS there PURPOSE – MEANING – to life? Science can give us no knowledge of purpose beyond trying to enjoy the passing moments. Education does not have the answer, nor teach it. Aristotle, Socrates, Plato all lacked the answer. Augustine sought the answer all his life – in vain! Of this most important of all knowledge, the world is utterly IGNORANT!

In such a world is it any wonder that the great minds doubt whether there is any real Higher Power working out His intelligent PURPOSE? Is it any wonder that some dim-brains gave the world a fresh shock with the ridiculous slogan “God is dead!” To state that God is dead is to confess there really was a God – and if God was, God still is – for unless He is the Eternal – the Ever-living – He never was GOD!

In the second and third centuries we had gnosticism – meaning “we know.” Today most educators, scientists and great minds are AGNOSTIC, meaning “we don’t know – we are IGNORANT”! And this IGNORANCE they glorify in the guise of “KNOWLEDGE”!

As a BASIS for knowledge – as a FOUNDATION for education, we start with two alternatives. Right here is the CHOICE between fact and fancy; between true knowledge and ignorance; between TRUTH and error. Is there a Higher Power with design working out intelligent PURPOSE, or are we mere accidents of the blind, unintelligent, purposeless force of nature, descended from a single-celled amoeba sparked to life by “spontaneous generation,” “electrochemical action,” or other unknown accidental process?

The only truly scientific method is to PROVE a proposition before accepting it as scientific FACT. But has either science or education PROVED the evolutionary theory? Emphatically they have not! By its very nature it is a theory not subject to proof. Has either science or education PROVED the nonexistence of a personal Supreme God, of supreme intelligence, wisdom, and POWER to create? Emphatically they have not! WHY, then, do so many great minds who profess knowledge and wisdom doubt or deny God’s existence? Simply because of something inherent in human nature – something of which they are ignorant – a spirit of vanity, coupled with hostility and rebellion against their Maker and His authority!

Is it, after all, rational or intellectual to willfully assume fables, unproved and unprovable, to be fact, while ridiculing provable truth, branding it folklore?

But what of the other two basic ALTERNATIVES as one’s approach to knowledge?

There is a Higher Power! And at Ambassador College this is not carelessly assumed, but definitely, rationally, scientifically PROVED! And there is PURPOSE! Humanity was put here for a PURPOSE of such transcendent magnitude that even the great minds, in their carnality, cannot grasp it! And there is A WAY to peace between individuals, groups and nations, but tragically none of this world’s leaders were taught it! There is A WAY to happiness and abundant well-being, but modern education does not teach it.

So it all boils down to this crucial point: There are the two alternatives as a starting point – a BASIS – a FOUNDATION for knowledge. This world and its education have adopted the fictional, false foundation. And this erroneous foundation is the concept which becomes its approach to knowledge. It got off on a false start. Hence it is axiomatic that this world and its leaders are not being taught the true values, but pursue the false. The world is left without knowledge of life’s PURPOSE and meaning and is devoid of right goals, in utter ignorance of THE WAY to every desired blessing!

What an indictment against a complicated, highly organized, monumental system of education that has become DECADENT!

This gigantic system is ready to topple! It will soon fall, along with the civilization it has spawned! But a better day is soon coming! The happy WORLD TOMORROW is soon to dawn! It will be a world of PEACE, of PLENTY, of HAPPINESS.

But how? I have traveled into all parts of the world. In China and India millions are starving. The filth, squalor, and wretchedness is simply indescribable. This same degenerate condition of degradation and suffering fills many parts of Central and South America, and of Egypt and other parts of Africa. Two-thirds of the people on earth live in such destitution. I thought of the joyous WORLD TOMORROW that is coming, and immediately the question came to mind: HOW can abundant well-being be brought to these teeming impoverished millions?

And the answer was obvious. Correct the CAUSE – lack of right education.

On the other hand, I have known many of the world’s leading men – heads of state, industrialists, bankers, scientists, educators. And most of them – the highly educated – were not happy. Some committed suicide. Their minds were of high caliber; their IQs were high. They had learned much in material knowledge – they had learned how to earn a living – but they had not learned the true values, nor how to live. It will require a right education, available to all, to correct all the world’s ills.

Very soon, today’s decadent education will be replaced by the educational system of the WORLD TOMORROW. This already has been introduced in Ambassador College. And like the proverbial grain of mustard seed, it is already beginning to spread around the world.

Ambassador College knows, and teaches, the PURPOSE and true meaning of life – the TRUE VALUES that pay off – and THE WAY to peace, happiness, and abundant well-being. How do we know? We don’t guess, or theorize or express unfounded opinions – we have it on AUTHORITY! The Bible is that authority, and it is PROVED to be the revelation of the almighty living God to humankind. The Bible is the world’s biggest seller, but also the book almost nobody knows. Few even know what it is.

When you purchase a gadget or mechanism, you receive an instruction book which the maker sends along with his product. The most complicated mechanism ever produced is the human mind and body. The Bible is our Maker’s instruction book which He sent along with His product. It is the authoritative revelation of the most necessary basic knowledge otherwise inaccessible to the mind of man – even the great minds! It is the FOUNDATION of all knowledge, and the approach to humanly acquirable knowledge.

Here is what modern education doesn’t know, and fails to teach:

What is MAN? WHY is man? What are the TRUE VALUES? What is THE WAY to the most necessary objectives – peace, happiness, abundant well-being? This BASIC KNOWLEDGE cannot be acquired by all the mental, inventive, mechanical, exploratory, observational or philosophical powers of man. This kind of necessary knowledge is received only by revelation! It has always been accessible. Yet science and modern education grope hopelessly in the dark, searching, researching, speculating and philosophizing in vain for the acquisition of knowledge that can come only through the very source they reject! Astonishing? Yes. Intelligent? Well, hardly!

In the WORLD TOMORROW we shall have world PEACE. There shall be universal prosperity. There will be knowledge of the TRUE values, and people will cease chasing the false and suffering the painful consequences. People will learn the way to real happiness and find it. Life will be continuously interesting, comfortable, invigorating.

How will this be brought about? By a universal education that will banish ignorance and teach these basics utterly omitted from today’s education. But I am not naive enough to suppose that this will blossom forth automatically by the imminent general acceptance of these truths on the part of all who are involved in the existing educational system. The leaders of this world are no more willing to accept truth, confess and change from error, than they have been in the past. The SOLUTION will never come through the hands of man. What has been conclusively demonstrated by educational experience is the utter unwillingness of human leaders to confess truth and the utter inability of MAN to educate and rule over man. The awesome Creator God is now going to intervene in human affairs! He is going to send the living Jesus Christ to earth again – this time in the supreme power and glory of God! He is going to reveal Himself in awesome glory to a world that has denied and rejected Him! He is going to set up world government by divine rule. By supernatural power He will abolish the present decadent educational system – and replace it with the true system of the WORLD TOMORROW! The change will be made by the enforcement of divine GOVERNMENT of the living Christ, against whose law and authority they rebel today.

This basic FOUNDATION of all knowledge and right education has always been accessible. But the great and near-great – the best minds – swayed by vanity, greed, and carnality, have spurned, rejected, and foolishly ridiculed it. Ambassador College is pioneering in the educational system of the WORLD TOMORROW. And a foretaste of that peace, happiness, and abundant well-being is literally radiated by Ambassador students.

Yes, all of this – and more! Ambassador students learn HOW to live – THE WAY to happiness – but in this most important living, the “how to EARN a living” is not neglected. More than 99 percent of Ambassador graduates are living SUCCESSFUL lives financially – as well as socially, morally, spiritually. When they find the way to enjoy a monetary competence, however, they enjoy knowing HOW TO LIVE, as well. Their marriages are happy and permanent – their home and family life is peaceful and invigorating. Their children are well trained. Yes, life CAN be worth living!