Personal
from Herbert W. Armstrong
Very early in 1927, when I was in my first biblical studies, leading to my conversion, my wife and I often visited various churches. I was searching for the truth.
One Sunday morning we attended a church service at a leading downtown Baptist church in Portland, Oregon. They were announcing the conclusion of a contest at which a very handsome new Bible was awarded to the winner. The contest question had been, “What is the most universal sin?”
The winning answer was “Ingratitude.”
Assuredly that is a very prevalent sin. Another very prevalent sin, and one of the oldest, is the misuse of sexuality. Indeed, prostitution is often spoken of as “the world’s oldest profession.”
Satan has seized on this sin to make it far more universal than is generally realized. Satan sways humanity into making sexual sins one of the most universal and destructive.
During most of the so-called “church age” in Roman Catholic teaching, and in England and the United States since the Victorian age, sex was a virtually forbidden topic of conversation, seldom mentioned. Satan made sure sex was considered as “shameful” and so evil it was not talked about.
About the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, changed all of that. Up until World War I it was illegal in the U.S. to publish, sell, or even loan a book containing sex knowledge. After World War I the legal barriers on the imparting of sex information toppled. An avalanche of books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles descended on the public. Yet in all this the most vitally needed dimension of knowledge was missing.
My book The Missing Dimension in Sex provides this missing dimension of knowledge. It is offered, gratis, upon request.
Beginning the middle of the twentieth century, the catch phrase “the new morality” was completely changing public attitudes. Today sexuality is openly discussed in the public media, especially in television, turning promiscuous sex into public acceptance. Today it may be questioned whether as many as 2 percent of young brides go to the altar as virgins. Marriage for much of society is on the way out. In some areas divorces virtually equal marriages. Family life is being broken down though the family is a basic building block of any stable civilization.
More and more, children are not wanted. Abortion is fast gaining public acceptance.
God created sex, not only to keep humanity alive, but to bring delectable, joyfully pleasurable happiness in pure and wholesome love between husband and wife, and as a means of binding tightly together a happily married couple. But under modern attitudes, the cord supposedly tying a husband and wife tightly together is proving to be the cord that cuts the marriage in two.
Its time you knew the truth about the missing dimension in sex. It is set forth frankly, fearlessly, rationally and spiritually, as well as physically, in my book mentioned above.
We commit individual and national sins and give such sinning wide public acceptance.
God condemns homosexuality. He destroyed the whole populations of Sodom and Gomorrah for this sin. It is condemned in the first chapter of Romans, saying no such person can enter the kingdom of God. Then we try to change the ugly, reproachful name homosexual, and call those who practice it “gays.” The public media and the public in general are coming to make this perversion acceptable by calling it “sexual preference.” We are becoming nations of drunkards, and thousands are being killed on our highways by drunken drivers. Yet excessive drinking of alcohol is encouraged through millions of dollars of advertising on TV commercials.
We inflict on ourselves through sin such diseases as alcoholism, AIDS, herpes and other venereal diseases, and then try to prevent the penalty of those sins by initiating medical and scientific studies to produce cures that will allow the sins to continue.
