Personal
from Herbert W. Armstrong
POVERTY, ILLITERACY, crime are growing - not diminishing. World troubles and evils have escalated. Weapons of mass destruction exist by which MAN CAN BLAST MANKIND FROM OFF THIS EARTH! The whole world today stands on the brink of human extinction.
But WHY?
There has to be a CAUSE for every effect. While humanity has been supposing we have been ADVANCING – IMPROVING – we’ve been bringing more and more evils upon ourselves - more and more suffering and agony on PEOPLE!
The whole world went along on a fairly even keel, with little agricultural, mechanical and industrial progress for almost 5,500 years. Transportation was by foot, mule, camel back, rowboat or sailboat. Communication was by written letter carried the same way.
Then, just over 500 years ago, the printing press with movable type was invented. About 300 short years ago came the first beginnings of modern science. This advancement of modern science and technology is so recent that 90 percent of all the world’s scientists WHO EVER LIVED are alive today! In the brief span of my lifetime, this world has passed with lightning speed past the age of invention, the machine age, the major developments in science and technology, the nuclear age and the space age!
The world thinks of it as wonderful PROGRESS - ADVANCEMENT! The world’s fund of KNOWLEDGE doubled in the decade of the ‘60s, and again in the ‘70s - but in each decade the world’s troubles and evils doubled also!
WHY? Even if the increased knowledge did not CAUSE the increased evils, neither did it solve the world’s problems or rid the world of evils! What the world does not know, and refuses to learn, is that peace, happiness, contentment, joy, abundant and universal well-being are spiritual values - the ONLY TRUE VALUES IN LIFE.
There is a SPIRITUAL LAW – a law of outflowing LOVE - the way of life of helping, serving, cooperating, sharing. I simplify it by calling it the way of “give.” Its transgression is the way of “GET” – of vanity, coveting, envy and jealousy, hostile competition, strife, violence.
That basic spiritual LAW is as ACTIVELY in motion as the law of gravity - as inexorable, as relentless, as certain! Its punishment for transgression is the suffering and anguish humanity is suffering now – for every trouble, every evil, has been caused by the way of “GET.” We measure SUCCESS in life by the amount one has been able to “GET” – to accumulate - to TAKE from others - to HAVE and POSSESS!
The way of life of “GIVE” is the basic spiritual LAW set in motion by our Maker. But our first parents spurned it and turned to “GET.” Yet that way of “GET” is the CAUSE of all of mankind’s troubles. If we all lived the way of outflowing LOVE – toward our Maker and toward each other, in helping, serving, sharing, GIVING! - we would have world UTOPIA! There can never be SALVATION, peace, contentment, happiness, joy, universal well-being and eternal salvation from trouble and evils until we TURN FROM the philosophy of “GET” - repent of that way - turn to our Maker and his way of outflowing love. Yet 6,000 years have PROVED MANKIND SIMPLY WON’T!
And so now, just before MAN utterly DESTROYS mankind, that “Unseen Strong Hand from Someplace” is going to intervene dynamically in human world affairs and save mankind from itself! I am merely a voice crying out in the spiritual wilderness of this 20th century, calling on people to repent of their false ways and turn to the God who gives us the breath we breathe, and saying, whether you believe it or not, that “Strong Hand” will intervene to prevent man from utterly destroying mankind and usher in a world living the way of outflowing LOVE - a soon-coming world of PEACE, contentment, joy, and eternal salvation offered to ALL!
