Sermon (March 15, 1980)

by Herbert W Armstrong

You’ll notice I’m all ‘loaded for bear’ this afternoon, but I don’t know any better ammunition than three different Bibles. And by the way, by way of just a few opening remarks, I always use the King James or the so-called Authorized Bible because more people use it than any other; and I think they understand me better if I use that than one of the modern translations. But any numbers of modern translations have come out in the last three or four years, and some of them are absolutely no good at all; and I want to advise you against some of these real new modern editions. I think that for accuracy perhaps the Revised Standard is even a little more accurate than the King James, and perhaps more accurate than any other.

I was talking to the chairman of the Revised committee who is revising the Revised Standard–a new revision that has not been published as yet. And there was one thing I called to his attention. He admitted he was wrong. That’s when we changed the day of Pentecost. That’s because every translation of the Bible when I first set that day, about fifty years ago, every translation said we should count from a Sunday; or a morrow after a Sabbath. Now one day from Sunday is not still Sunday, or the day before Sunday, or anything like that. It is Monday. And so, when you count, one day from Sunday is Monday; and that’s where you begin counting. And it comes out on a Monday Pentecost, and for exactly forty years this Church observed Pentecost on a Monday.

I went into it very thoroughly here, some, just a few years ago. Perhaps you remember it better than I do just when it was that we made the change. But some of our Hebrew and Greek students had been looking into it. To be frank about it, I didn’t really look into the Hebrew at the time, fifty years ago, because I went to every single translation in the English language that had been made at that time; and there were quite a number. The Revised Standard had not come out yet, but it had used the same expression in counting ‘from’ that day. Now some of our men came to me and said that every other place the Hebrew word is used it is translated into the English word ‘ON’ and not the English word ‘from.’

I had a friend of mine that I know very, very well who is a lady teaching the Bible in Israel. Now, of course, in Israel that means the Old Testament; but she teaches it in the Hebrew language. I called her long distance. I asked her to just read that; and I said, “Tell me, how do you count? Do you begin counting with a Sunday, on a Sunday or from it; and tell me how it would come out? I want you to count it for me and tell me.” She said, “Well, it comes out that Pentecost is on Sunday.”

Later I found I talked to two of the translators of the Revised Standard translation (very learned men of course, with their doctor’s degrees and a very great deal of graduate scholarship), and they tried to defend the word ‘from’ for a while; but I showed them that ‘from’ means ‘away, out of.’ It never means ‘inside of.’ One step from this building is not inside of this building. It is one foot outside of it, in any direction. If you take one foot on the I guess this would be the north side, that’s outside. ‘From’ means away, out of–never within . And he said, “Well, Mr. Armstrong, you are right.” And he said, “I am chairman of the committee for a revision of this Revised Standard, and I will see to it that we correct it in this new translation.” Well, I hope he keeps his word. That’s all I can say. (chuckles)

There is one translation that many of our brethren have been buying that I wish I could have stopped before they did because it is not even a translation. It is merely someone who has put his own ideas of the way he thinks it ought to be into it. It is not in any way a translation from the original Hebrew or Greek languages. For example, Moses wrote the first five books all in the Hebrew language. Most all of the Old Testament is written in the Hebrew language, a little bit of it in the Aramaic. All of the New Testament is written in the Greek language, and we do have thousands and thousands of copies. In no case is the original that was written by Moses, or the original written by the apostle Paul, or the apostle John, or by Peter, or Luke or one of those extant, we don’t have anywhere the original manuscript that was written by any one of them; but it has been copied thousands of times.

And one thing traditionally: that the Jews preserved the Old Testament for us, there is no question about that. And their scribes, and you read a lot about them in the New Testament, they were hypocrites. Jesus had a lot to say about them and against them. But there was one thing they were very careful about and that is copying the scriptures. When they copied a page, several went over to check it whether it was right or wrong by a number of people. And if there was one mistake, they didn’t correct that mistake. They had to write that page over again until they got it perfect without a single mistake.

Now where you have thousands of copies, and we know that the ones who did the copying were that careful, we can be pretty sure that we do have the original. If, out of a thousand, one of them is a little different from the other 999, we can be pretty sure in most cases that the one is an error and that the other 999 are correct. Again, any passage of the scripture must sort of jive with other passages that refer to the same thing. The Bible, you know, is a great deal like a jigsaw puzzle.

A niece of my wife has been living at our home for some time going to high school here in Tucson, and some little time ago they had a very large jigsaw puzzle. I thought they would never get it put together. The different pieces have to fit a certain way; and, if you get them put together properly, they finally turn out to make a very beautiful picture. But the Bible is that way. You don’t get all the truth in any one place. For example, the first chapter of Genesis: There is a great deal that is not mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis that happened at the same time. And you have to find some of it in the book of Revelation, and some of it in 1st and 2nd Peter, some of it in the writings of the apostle Paul, some of it in Jeremiah, or some of it in Ezekiel or Isaiah; and you have to put them all together. But you have to get every piece that you put together as that piece would read in its context, and so many people have been careless about that.

Now those are some of the things that I had to learn 53 years ago. And I will say this: Everything that you people have and believe, directly or indirectly, came from me. I wonder if you realize that. In other words, putting all of these things together into the various major doctrines is something you didn’t have to do. It was done for you. Take the subject of the Sabbath, take the subject of God’s law, take the subject of law and grace, take any theological subject or biblical subject; and you received the doctrines that you believe all came from me. Now how did I get it?

A minister that we have had to put out of the Church, he came to see me. He thought maybe he could save the situation by talking to me and unfortunately though he didn’t. But he said, “Well, Mr. Armstrong, you got all you believe just from the Sardis Church. You just took what they had and memorized it.” Now that was absolutely untrue. I did not get one doctrine from the Sardis Church. I did not get one doctrine from the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the Seventh Day Baptist. I didn’t get one doctrine from the Quaker Church in which I was raised up from birth. Neither did I get a single doctrine from the Methodist, the Baptist, the Roman Catholic or any other church. I did not get one bit of what I have taught you and of the truth that you all are privileged to know and understand because it is truth. I did not get it from man. I did not get it in any theological school. I was not taught it by any human being or any group of human beings.

Let me just give you a little illustration of that so you can know how the truth came into this church. And I don’t know of another living person on the face of the earth who received the doctrines and the beliefs in the way that God gave it to me. My wife had been visiting a woman who happened to be a member of what we call now the Sardis Church. Now that is not an epithet. Sardis is one of the real true Churches of God. It’s the era of people that lived before us; and it hit its prime perhaps 250 years ago, before any of us were born. I came in with those people in the latter end of that era and that time. But I was highly prejudiced against them because one of their women had taught my wife to keep the Sabbath and I thought that was religious fanaticism.

I used every argument I could to talk her out of it. I said, “How would you keep the Sabbath if you lived on the North Pole? We live on a round earth. You can’t keep the Sabbath at the same time here that they do in Japan or that they do in Jerusalem.” Well, she had an answer for every one of those questions; and, of course, I do now; and I think you do. We keep the Sabbath day when it gets here because God sets the day when the sun sets wherever you are on earth. And the sun doesn’t set the same time here as it does in Jerusalem. It sets here 9 hours later than it does over in Jerusalem. So we begin the Sabbath 9 hours later than they do over there. We observe the day when that day comes to us. But I didn’t know that then.

And so, in order to convince my wife and to save our marriage… And, incidentally, that marriage did last fifty years. I don’t know if we have any of you here who have enjoyed a marriage for fifty years yet or not. But I did, just lacking precisely 3 ½ months. If my wife had lived 3 ½ months longer, it would have been fifty years. Now I am married again, and this time again it is until death do us part. That’s the way marriage ought to be. But death finally took my wife, and she was past 75 (75½, half way towards age 76), which is a fairly ripe age. And then I lived alone for ten years before I was married again. But marriage is of God, as we all know. Well, anyway, I had to start studying the Bible.

Now, at the same time, I was challenged by a sister-in-law on the doctrine of evolution. I had never researched the doctrine of evolution in a real in-depth manner. Well, I had studied more-or-less about it, as maybe some of you had. You can be quite an educated person and not have studied evolution all the way through, and I was having to prove to her that evolution was false because I didn’t believe it. And I found myself for a while–when I studied the works of Darwin and Heckle and Huxley and Lyle and going clear back to the Marx time and others–I found myself wondering if there is a God after all. I began to realize I had never proved whether God exists.

I’d been brought up to believe there is a God. Now, why did I believe? Well, I had been taught it since I was a child; and I took it for granted . I had never seen proof. And now I said, “I have to see proof. I’ve got to PROVE whether God exists.” Now before I began to learn any of the doctrines that you have now learned, I had to PROVE, absolute PROOF , that God exists; and I have proved it by several infallible proofs. And I have been able since to convince Atheists and Communists that they are wrong and that God does exist and make them admit that I had proved it to them.

The next thing I had to come to, well, is the Bible. Now I know the Koran is the religious writing of the Islamic people. Which of these writings is the real revelation of God? And how does God talk to man? I started with the Bible; and before I got doctrines, I had proved that this Book–the Holy Bible–is, in its original writings, and that we do have different translations; and it was originally, of course, mostly in two different languages, and part of it in the third language, Aramaic. But I had to find (and you can get at the original if you will have the patience and study) that it is the inspired and authoritative Word of the living God. I found I could believe this Book. But I had to, in some cases, go to the original languages. I had to study different translations. That much I did have to do in some cases, but not many, because the King James Bible is about 99.9999% correct as far as that goes. And, as I say, the only one I know that might have been an improvement on it is the Revised Standard.

Now I brought along with me today the Moffat Translation. I use Moffat quite a little because wherever Moffat is correct, Moffat did not exactly transliterate, he put what he thought was the meaning, and in some cases he was wrong. I can’t recommend Moffat as authoritative; but I will say that, wherever he is right, he puts it in language that makes it a little more clear and plain to us in today’s English. And so I like Moffat in some cases for that reason, and only where I have proved that the part of Moffat I quote is correct. And in some places he even makes the truth more plain than others.

So I would recommend that you use the King James as your main Bible. And if you can afford two, and I think that any of you could, I would say get the Revised Standard. But these modern translations that have come out in the last 2, 3, 5 years, I will not recommend a one of them because today there is an absolute tendency everywhere to water down, to change, to liberalize and to, in other words, to go more towards Satan’s way.

Now when I talk to audiences overseas in other nations, and in some cases they speak a different language. But I speak to the chief people and people high in government and in education who also understand English; and, when I do, I speak in very simple language. I don’t talk to them about the 10 Commandments. They don’t understand that. I just say that there are two ways of life, and you either go one way or the other. There is no other way at all, two broad ways. And I make it so simple a little child… Some of you kids can get this, so if you children will listen right now for just a minute. There are two ways to live; and one is the way that I call give, and you know what that means. And the other is the way I call get or take. Everything is give or get, and there are two different ways.

Now God’s way is the way of give, and that is the way of out flowing love. You children each have a mother, and your mother loves you because you mean an awful lot to her; and that is real love, and that is ‘give’. That’s mostly give. Maybe some mothers get a little bit of ‘get’ in it here and there, but mostly a mother is one who gives to her child. So I just put it in that kind of plain language, and they begin to understand it.

Now the way of get, the way of this world, is self-centeredness. It’s everything comes to me. I, me, I’m number one. I don’t care about you. I’m only concerned about me. No one else is going to look after my interests if I don’t. I want to get what I can get. I want to take whatever I can take. If I am a child, I want to take the other child’s toy and play. I want to get everything I can get. I want to have what I can have. I want to have this, and I’ll cry if I don’t get it. Now that is the way of vanity then, of self-love, of self-centeredness; and it is the way of coveting what someone else has, or the way of lust and greed. It is also the way toward other people of envy and jealousy and the way of competition, to compete with others.

Now every one of our games and sports (at least almost every one) is a matter of competition. You take football, basketball, anything of that kind; it’s a matter of trying to keep the other side from getting anything if he can. Don’t let him get anything. But get all you can get yourself. And the one that gets the most and has the highest score wins. That’s the Devil’s way of life. And competition leads to strife, and finally violence, and then to war. And that’s why we have war all over the world. It is also the way of jealousy and envy, and it is the way of resentment of any authority over you.

But now GIVE, that’s the way of love going out towards others, the giving way. Not lust, but LOVE. And love is giving. And the greatest giver of all is God. God is the Great Giver. Now the way of love is cooperation, not competition. It is the way of giving instead of taking away from others. It is the way of SHARING. You say, “I have it, I want others to enjoy what I have too. I want to share it with them if I can.”

Now it’s all right to look after your own interests, you have to look after number one. But it is stated in the Bible of love towards others that you should ”love your neighbor AS yourself.” You have to love yourself too. But loving yourself you have to remember that this self, that is you, is something God created and gave you and made you responsible for. And if you love yourself you take good care of this self, or this body that is yours, this mind that is yours. And you take good care of it. And it isn’t giving to others to the extent that you harm yourself. You don’t want to harm others. You don’t want to harm yourself. You want us ALL to be happy.

It is the way of cooperating, of sharing, of giving, of helping, of SERVING. Jesus came as a servant. He came to serve others and help. He didn’t come to lord it over others and say, “You listen to Me, or I’ll do so and so to you.” He didn’t come like that. He came with love. He came wanting to help and wanting to share. Now all of this I hadn’t intended to say a word, I just got started; and the first thing you know I could go on and talk for the next several hours. And I had a message prepared I wanted to bring you, and it’s going to take me about three hours; so I may keep you here a long time.

Now it just happened that, on the Wednesday night before, I had listened to a Billy Graham program on television, and perhaps some of you saw that same television [program]. It was a Billy Graham Crusade in Halifax, I believe, Nova Scotia. And it gave me something to think about that I thought would trigger a message that I would bring you. Now Dr. Graham, as they often call him and as I addressed him the one time I did talk to him. The only time I ever talked to him direct was in England, and it was a telephone conversation. And the managing director of the great Harrods store there was one of the pillars of the church leaders that were sponsoring a Billy Graham Crusade.

Well, it happened at that time that we at Ambassador College there were the chief customer of the Harrods store; and they were buying everything for the College through them, and even through some construction and building through their constructors and builders as well as some, all kinds of, retail goods. And you can even buy animals off them, horses. And I bought a pony for a grandson of mine off Harrods store. But the manager of the Harrods thought it would be good for Billy Graham to talk to me, so he got me on the telephone. He called me “Dr. Armstrong” and I called him “Dr. Graham.” Anyway he was telling me that he hoped I would never forsake my prophecy ministry. He said, “Your ministry is prophecy, and that is a very needful ministry.” Well, he looked at it that one man has this ministry and that ministry; and we don’t look at it that way, you know that.

But Billy Graham that night was speaking on the signs of the times, and he spoke to quite an extent from Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24. Now I’ll show you his sermon outline. It began with Matthew 16 and the first 3 verses of Matthew 16.

Matthew 16:1-3 The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired Jesus {1} that he would show them a sign from heaven. (2) He answered and said unto them, when it is evening, ye say, it will be fair weather; for the sky is red. (3) And in the morning, It will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

Do you know what kind of times you are living in? Do you know what is prophesied? Do you know what God says is going to come next? In other words, WHERE ARE WE NOW in the panorama of prophecy? What is going to happen? WHY ARE THINGS HAPPENING THE WAY THEY ARE HAPPENING TODAY? Well, then he turned over to Matthew 24. Now let me say that Matthew 24 is, in a sense, the report of exactly the same things that Luke, that’s another writer, recorded in Luke 21. Now they asked Him for a SIGN that would let them know when the end of the world was near and when His coming AGAIN was near. They understood He was going to leave and go to heaven. They understood that He would come again. They didn’t know all the details, but they did know that. And they knew that, when He was coming, He would come to set up the Kingdom of God and rule the whole earth. But their minds were still a little cloudy about it at that time. But they asked Him for something that would tell them how they would know when that time was NEAR.

Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive YOU.

Now He was speaking to people somewhere back in the year of 27 and the year of 31 AD in the first century, and He was saying that even at that time someone would deceive them. He wasn’t saying that the people must be careful that someone doesn’t deceive them 1900 years from now. And what He said–“take heed that no man deceive YOU.” He was talking to His disciples who were living in 27 AD, or between that time and 31 AD.

Matthew 24: 5 For many shall come in my name, saying I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

Now Mr. Graham read that a different way. “Many, in the last days…” He took it that it meant that many will come today. Why would Jesus say to them “take heed no man deceive YOU” 1900 years after they would be dead and buried and gone? Billy Graham read it that He was saying many would come and they would say that THEY are Christ. And he said, “There have been some that have come and said they are Christ.” Well, I know of one that gained a little bit of publicity and got into the news; and that was a good many years ago. It was a fellow from India by the name of Krishnamurti; and there was a woman by the name of Annie Besant who brought him over, and said he was the Christ.

Now a man walked into the office of one of our ministers who said, “I am Jesus Christ.” And our minister said, “Oh, are you?” So he said, “If you are Jesus Christ, you’ll be so strong I won’t be able to put out of my office. Now we’ll just see.” So he rose up, and grabbed him by the nape of the neck and the collar of his coat and the seat of his pants, and shoved him out and said, “I don’t think you are Christ. I was able to throw you out.” Well now, that was funny; but that is not the kind Jesus was talking about. Jesus said, “Many will come saying…” THEY will say that JESUS is the Christ. Jesus was talking: “Many will come saying I (Jesus) am Christ.”

Now that is what happened beginning in the lifetime of those same apostles. They turned to another doctrine by the year of 52 or 53 AD. They had done away with the doctrine of Christ. It had been suppressed; and it was not preached for 1900 years, one century of time cycles. And when it was again preached to the world, I did the preaching; and it was not preached again until that time. They had been preaching another doctrine, another gospel. They had preached about another, a different Christ. They had preached about a Christ that came to do away with His Father’s law. And they said, “The law is done away. Don’t you obey God. You must disobey God.” That isn’t the Christ I believe in, or you believe in. You know that. So He was talking at first to them. Now let’s carry on here a little bit. And that has happened all since the time from 31 AD when Christ ascended into heaven until now.

Matthew 24:6 And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, BUT THE END IS NOT YET.

Now that shows that is NOT the time of the end. Billy Graham says all these things are the sign of the end. Oh, no! He says THAT is not the time of the end. Wars and rumors, they’ve had wars and rumors of wars ever since that time.

Matthew 24:7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, (and pestilences) and earthquakes in divers places. (8) [and] all these are the beginning of sorrows.

Really there are two kinds of sorrow. One, we are sorrowful as we come to the Passover that Christ had to die for us, and we’re partly sorrowful that He had to pay that price; but we caused it. It’s because we have sinned and we have done wrong that He had to give a life that had never sinned in our stead. That is one kind of sorrow. We’re sorry He had to pay that price. But I think along with it perhaps we should be a little bit sorry that we have done what we did to cause Him to have to die for us. But there is another sorrow, being sorry for what you did. You did something wrong; and you wake up to it and say, “Well, I am sorry I did that.” But this sorrow alone, being sorry or remorseful, is not repentance. Repentance is something very much deeper than that. And He said, “all these are the beginning of sorrows.” So we’ve had a time of sorrow for 1900 years.

Matthew 24:9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you and you shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.

Now that began with the early apostles. Many of them were martyred. And I wonder if any of you have read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. That shows actually how millions of Christians were martyred, and tortured, and put to death for believing in Jesus Christ. That has been happening for 1900 years. That is not the sign of the end.

Matthew 24:10-11 And [He says] then shall many be offended and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. (11) And many false prophets shall rise…

Now false prophets have risen and they began rising almost immediately, and they had actually turned the Churches in Galatia to another gospel by the time Paul wrote the book of Galatians ( as you read in the first chapter in verses 6 and 7). Galatians 1 verses 6 and 7, already the true gospel had been suppressed. The gospel that Christ brought is the gospel He PREACHED . The gospel Christ taught is the message God SENT BY HIM. He was the Messenger with a MESSAGE. So what gospel are they preaching today? They’re preaching a message about the person of the Messenger, but they don’t preach anything about His message.

Now we believe in His message, and that is the Kingdom of God is coming. He came preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and that’s what they turned away from.

Matthew 24:12-13 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. (13) But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

In other words, He was telling them then, and all others since that read this, that we have to endure these trials and these things; and the one who endures to the end will be saved. Paul used it like a race. You can have a mile or a two-mile race; and one man may be pretty well in the lead half way, but he can’t endure; and others can; and so he falls back, and he doesn’t run at all. The one who wins is the one who is there at the finish. And that’s the way it is. He says that “he that endures to the end , the same shall be saved.”

I know when I was preaching the first evangelistic campaign that started the raising up of this present Worldwide Church of God, and that was back in the year of 1933. Now some of you weren’t born yet at that time. But there was quite a Bible scholar there, and he tried to heckle every speaker who came in that community. So I was speaking in a little 36-room schoolhouse. We couldn’t have an audience as big as we have here today. I think we averaged about 41 or 2 because several had to stand up quite often, we didn’t have enough seats. But this old fellow said… He would always try to question the ministers that would come there to preach; and he would trap them because he was a pretty clever Bible scholar, he thought.

He said, “Mr. Armstrong, may I ask you a question?” I said, “Why yes, Mr. Belshaw, you may.” He said, “I want to ask you before all these people: Are you saved, Mr. Armstrong? Are you saved?” I said, “Mr. Belshaw, you ought to know how Jesus said as recorded in Matthew 24 and verse 13, ’He that endures unto the end the same shall be saved.”” They all began to laugh, and he didn’t ask any more questions that night. Then he knew that, and he also knew that the average preacher who came out didn’t know this little verse was in there. And he was going to quote this, so I quoted it to him.

Oh, he tried to get me several times later. One time was after we’d even started the Church. He came to our meeting one time, and it was on the Sabbath; and he was always trying to get me about the Sabbath. He didn’t believe in the Sabbath. And he finally, when the service was over, he didn’t interrupt me in the service this time, but after it was over he asked me as I was meeting with others in the rear of the… It was being held in the schoolhouse at the time, a little one-roomed schoolhouse. And he said, “Well, Mr. Armstrong, may I ask you a question?” “Why,” I said, “Yes, if you’ve got another question Mr. Belshaw, you ask it.” So everybody gathered around quick. Some of them were about to leave, but they didn’t leave. They wanted to hear this question.

He said, “Mr. Armstrong, haven’t you said that Paul said he had not shunned to declare unto them the entire gospel?” I said, “Yes, Paul said that. That’s true.” “Haven’t you preached too and didn’t Paul say that he had kept nothing back that was profitable to the Gentiles?” “Yes, Paul said that.” “All right, Mr. Armstrong, can you show me where Paul ever commanded the Gentiles to keep the SABBATH?” I said, “Yes sir, I can Mr. Belshaw.” And he looked so funny. He didn’t know of any place where the Bible said that. I said, “Now that’s a scripture you don’t quite understand.” I said, “But now, Mr. Belshaw, I want to ask you a question. You asked me and heckled me a lot, now I’m going to ask you a question. If I show you that Paul commanded the Gentiles that they must keep the Sabbath, that means YOU’VE got to do it; and I want to ask you, if I show you that, WILL YOU REPENT AND KEEP THE SABBATH?” That really got him. He thought a minute and he said, ”No sir I won’t,” and out he stomped; and the rest of them all laughed. And I said, “Well, maybe I had better show the rest of you where Jesus did command the Gentiles to keep the Sabbath.”

I turned where Paul said, “Be ye followers of me even as I follow Christ.” I said, “You see, that’s a command; isn’t it–that they should follow him as he followed Christ?” “Yes.” All right. I turned to another scripture where Paul for three Sabbath days entered into the synagogue and preached. And another time for a year and a half he entered the synagogue and preached and kept the Sabbath, and how Paul kept the Sabbath ”as his manner was.” Now I said, “He said “follow me as I follow Christ.” Back in the 4th chapter of Luke you will find where Jesus kept the Sabbath ” as his custom was.” So Paul commanded them to keep the SABBATH!

Mr. Belshaw never asked me another question. I tell you, our young ministers who start off have got to know their Bible because someone like Mr. Belshaw is going to come up to them sometime and catch them napping and really make a laughing stock of them. But now we come down to the next verse where Jesus finally gave them the only place that He gave them a sign of how we’ll know that the Kingdom of God is coming, that Christ’s Second Coming and the end of this world is at hand. It doesn’t mean the end of the earth. It’s just the end of this world, this civilization. That’s in verse 14.

Matthew 24:14 And this gospel [this gospel Jesus was preaching]of the KINGDOM shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations ; and THEN SHALL THE END COME.

When will the end come? When the gospel of the Kingdom… They had turned to another gospel. They turned to a message about the person of Christ. What did Billy Graham preach that night? He read right over this and said, “Well, we’ve preached the gospel.” But he overlooked that word ‘of the Kingdom.’ It could not be a sign that Christ is coming if that gospel had been preached all along. The very fact that that gospel was not preached for 1,900 years shows that someone was going to come and preach that gospel just before the Second Coming of Christ. So He said, “then shall the end come.”

Matthew 24:15-18 When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth let him understand ;) (16) Then let them which be in Judea [not those who are in Tucson, Arizona; but let them which be in Judea] flee into the mountains; and (17) Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house; (18) Neither let him which is in the field return (back) to take his clothes [for they’re going to have to run and flee in a hurry].

Now, another little joke I want to take time to tell you right there, how some people distort the Bible. This goes back to my great grandmother’s time I guess (and you’re great, great, great, great grandmother’s time) when the latest style in women’s hairdos was when they would bring their hair from the back up and turn it around into a little knot right on top, a little forward from the middle of the head, almost in the middle of the head in a kind of a top knot. And that was the latest fad. And there was a fiery old Methodist preacher one time. The old Methodists, you know, were pretty strict and stern some of them. And this old preacher one Sunday he says, “I am telling you women you must take those top knots down. The Bible commands you and says ‘top knot come down.’ He said “I want to read that to you in Matthew 24 and in verse 17 ‘top not come down.’ Now you women take those top knots down.” Well, I just read that to you. Did you get it? And here it is in verse 17 “Let him who is on the house top not come down . ” So forget ‘the house top’, and just say ‘top’; and it says ‘top not come down.’

Now that’s sort of distorting the Bible out of its intended meaning, and that’s the way some people are doing around the world today; and some modern translators do that too, and then call it the Bible. That’s why I don’t recommend these modern translations.

But now here He says:

Matthew 24:15 When you (therefore) shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place…[then you shall flee to the mountains, those is Jerusalem{2}].

Now then, what did He mean? Many of our ministers even have tried to say, and I am trying to straighten them out on this, that that was a case of Antiochus Epiphanes in the year 168 BC. That Antiochus Epiphanes put a statue of Jupiter Olympus, which is an idol of course, into the Holy of Holies, an abomination; and that that’s what it means. Well, I’d like to show you what it means. If we would turn over to Luke 21 and in verse 20:

Luke 21:20 And when ye shall see [Now Luke was writing the same thing, but he puts it in a little different language. The same thing and says, “when ye shall see”] Jerusalem compassed with armies then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.

It’s those armies that are going to make Jerusalem desolate. It is not a statue thrown into a holy place. And besides, there is no such holy place in Jerusalem now. Anyway, I can show you that back in Daniel’s prophecy–in Daniel 11, and it comes in verses 30 and 31.

Daniel 11:30-31 For the ships of Chittim shall come against him: therefore he shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant. (31) And arms [Now that means an army, speaking of Antiochus Epiphanes, arms] shall stand on his part, and they[these armies] shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.

It is the armies surrounding Jerusalem that are going to make it desolate, not a statute of Jupiter Olympus. Well, I just wanted to clear up that little point as we get along. Now He says:

Matthew 24:19-22 (And) woe unto them that are with child and to them that gives suck, in those days! (20) (But) pray that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day: [But that is really those that happen to be in Jerusalem at that time. That might be some of us.] 21) For then shall be GREAT TRIBULATION[Now that’s spoken of in about say two or three other places. Daniel 12 speaks of it, a time of trouble such as never was before. And in Jeremiah 30 it speaks of trouble such as never was before. It couldn’t be more than one such time, and it then calls it ‘the’. Really it’s the trouble that comes on America and Britain, if you understand it. “For then shall be great tribulation…]such as was not since the beginning of the world to this [same]time, no, nor ever shall be. [Now how great is that time of trouble? That’s just ahead of us now.] (22) And except those days should be shortened , there should no flesh be saved : [and other translations have it “saved alive.” That isn’t talking about spiritual salvation, it is talking about saving your life. Saved alive, the physical life. “No flesh should be saved alive” meaning every human being would be killed.] but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

And we are that elect. Now, if you go, on it comes down finally; and I am going to have to skip some of it now because time is going.

Matthew 24:29-30 Immediately after the tribulation of those days [verse 29] shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: (30) And then shall appear the sign of the son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall SEE the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

That is the Second Coming of Christ. Now, in other words, that will come right after this Great Tribulation; but it is those signs that God will set in the heavens that are going to cut short those days and stop that terrible Great Tribulation.

[**Tape turns over at 46:38.]

[One third] of our people are going to be killed because all of our cities will be destroyed. Now that means nothing but nuclear energy, hydrogen bombs and other forms of nuclear destruction. Nothing else could destroy enough cities to kill one third of all our people. Another third will have died just prior to that as a result of a disease epidemic caused by famine and lack of rain. And the third that remain are going to be taken as slaves over to Europe, and perhaps some of them will even be taken to South America. The Bible doesn’t give the exact definition of where they will be taken. Now if you have a copy of our booklet, ‘The United States and the British in Prophecy{3}’ that will explain all of that. I won’t go into it further at this time.

Now Matthew 24 is explaining the book of Revelation, and I would like to turn for a moment over to Revelation and show you how it starts out. You read in your bible ‘The Revelation…’ Oh, my bible says ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.’ I never noticed that before. But in most versions is says ‘The Revelation of St. John the Divine.’ It is not the revelation of John, but of Jesus Christ.

Revelation 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass…

It is a message to the 7 churches; and in the 10th verse he shows the theme of the whole book of Revelation: how in a vision, in the spirit, he was taken into the Day of the Lord. And there is the only place in the Bible it is called The Lord’s Day. But the Lord’s Day is the Day of the Lord. We used to have a bank in New York called the Bank of Morgan. I don’t know whether it is still there. I think it has gone into consolidation with other banks now under a different name. So anyway, it was a bank that was owned by Mr. J.P. Morgan (J. Pearson Morgan), and it was Morgan’s Bank. Well, the Kingdom of Heaven is heaven’s kingdom. The 2nd chapter of Revelation goes a little further and shows the setting in heaven and the throne of God. And the 3rd chapter; well the 3rd and 4th chapters are the messages of Christ to the Churches. Now we are one of those Churches; but we are in what we call The Philadelphia Era of the Church, which is the time element considered. Now chapter 4:

Revelation 4:1-2 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven… [And so on.] (2) And immediately I was in the spirit: [or I was in a vision] and behold a throne was set in heaven… [and it shows God sitting on the throne].

Now it shows later here (I think that’s in the 5th chapter.) the one sitting on the throne has a book, and it’s a scroll. Now when I was in Peking, China very recently, I went over to the library; and they showed me some very old manuscripts in the Chinese language, and they were rolled up like a scroll. And they would unroll it with part of the roll here, part there; and you could see what’s in the middle. Then they’d roll this up, and then it unrolls on this side, and then you read more of it. Well, that’s the way books used to be. They weren’t like this where you come to page 13 and 34 and 147. They weren’t that kind of book, like we have today. They didn’t put them together that way. They were just one ­long roll. And it was sort of interesting for me to see how those scrolls were and how they’d been in these old days. I was able to handle some of these old scrolls that were many hundreds of years old.

And the one sitting on this throne has this book. And no one is able to release the book from its 7 seals that seal it, so you can’t unroll it and read it. And then finally one comes up who is able to loose the scrolls and tell you what’s inside of it and explain it. And that, of course, represents Christ. So Christ is the one who can reveal what was there, otherwise it was hidden from mankind except as Christ reveals it.

Now you come to the main prophecy in chapter 6, and just to give you a little bird’s eye view in a hurry:

Revelation 6:1 I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals…

Now chapter 6 gives six of those seven. There were seven seals altogether that sealed it. That is explained by Jesus in Matthew 24, and Luke 21, and Mark 13. I really have gone through it, but I should have gone back here to Revelation first to show you that. And, by the way, you can get all of that if you will write for another copy (if you don’t have one on hand, because it hasn’t been circulated now for several years); and that is “The Book of Revelation Revealed at Last.” And if you’d like to study that you’ll find it very, very interesting; and it gets right down to the time we are living in now.

Now in Matthew 24, the first thing Jesus saw was false Christs coming. And that really represents what was seen there of the white horse, because the white horse is not the same white horse that you see pictured in the 19th chapter of Revelation. In the 19th chapter of Revelation is a white horse, and that is Christ on it. He has a sword, but that sword is in His mouth and the words that He speaks. And Christ’s words sometimes cuts us pretty deep, like a sword would cut. But the one in the book of Revelation in the 6th chapter; I might just read that to you. Let’s see.

Revelation 6:2…a white horse and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

That is the picture of the ministers of Satan, and not of Christ–the false prophets. And the black horse is famine, and the pale horse is the death that follows the famine. And then when he opens the 5th seal it’s the Great Tribulation; and the 6th seal is where the tribulation is ended by the great signs that God will have in heaven, the sun and moon being darkened and the stars falling to the earth which will probably mean a meteor shower. I don’t know how else to explain it because many of the stars are a million times larger than the earth, and it would be pretty for many of them to fall on the earth. But that will rather explain that.

Well now, let me get along a little further here. I wanted to show you that it comes down though to the time when this gospel of the kingdom was to be preached in all the world, and that is the sign that we are reaching the end. Now that can only be the sign if the world had not heard that gospel for a long, long time. No one living today had ever heard it before.

Now I want to give you a few things. Maybe they are just coincidences, and maybe they are not. The gospel was suppressed; you read in Galatians 1 verses 6 and 7. And now let’s see, I brought along these Bibles. I might as well make a little use of them. Here is the Revised Standard translation. Now in Romans chapter 1, verse 18:

Romans 1:18 (RSV) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth .

The gospel was suppressed. You read of that in Galatians 1, verses 6 and 7 as I mentioned. It says, “who hold the truth” and it means “hold back” in the King James. But that makes it very plain there. Also Galatians 6 and 7 show that the gospel was to be held back from about 52 when Paul wrote that or 53 AD, the gospel was to be held back. Now Jesus said the gospel of the Kingdom would be preached in all the world as a witness and THAT is the sign of the coming of Christ.

Now let me give you something about the way God has set things in the heavens to measure time for us. Actually God set certain signs in the heavens to mark off spaces of time. He set the sun and the moon and the earth in their orbit as they are to mark off spaces of time. One revolution of the earth on its axis is a day, but how do we tell? There is only one way that you can mark off where that day begins or ends, and that is according to the sun. And God starts it…the day starts; one day ends at sunset and another begins at sunset; and it’s the earth turning on its axis as measured by the sun.

Now one revolution of the moon around the earth is a lunar month; and, according to God’s sacred calendar, He counts the months beginning with the new moon, a revolution of the moon around the earth. One revolution of the sun around the earth is one solar year. Now the only thing that God ever gave us to set apart a week, so that you know when one week ends and another begins, is the SABBATH. That’s why Satan has tried to destroy the Sabbath and get people all over the world observing Sunday, because that is the sign God gave by which we would know who God is, because it is a memorial of creation, and by which God knows who His people are because they’re the only people that obey Him. And there is no reason in the world to observe Saturday instead of Sunday except to obey God. That’s why we do it, to obey God; and nobody else will do it.

But now, what is the next largest number of years? We come into a time cycle. The sun and the moon and the earth get into the exact same position, or orbit, once in 19 years. That becomes a time cycle and is measured as a 19-year period. What is the next largest number of years the way God mentions it? A century, or 100 years. What is the next largest number of years? A millennium, or 1,000 years.

Now, the gospel was suppressed about the middle of the first century; and by about 53 AD Paul was writing to the Galatians that already they had turned away from the true gospel, and the true gospel was being suppressed. A century of time cycles on taking God’s units of time, 19 years is a time cycle. A century of time cycles is 1900 years. 19 centuries of 19-year periods. Now Jesus began teaching His disciples in the year of 27 AD. That’s when He called them and began preparing them to go out, but He had to teach them. And they didn’t… Well, He did send them out on one trip (as you’ll read in the 9th chapter of Luke, and the 10th chapter of Matthew); and He told them to preach the Kingdom of God. But they were not ordained in the regular ministry as yet.

Now before Jesus rose to heaven, it was before the day of Pentecost but after Jesus’ resurrection, after 40 days, Jesus told the disciples, “Don’t go out and start your ministry until you be imbued with the power of the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Now it was ten days later that they came to the day of Pentecost. On that day the Holy Spirit came; and that was the time when the disciples, as they had been, were really ordained as apostles and inspired by the Holy Spirit to go out and PREACH. That was in June of 31 AD.

Now, in the year of 27 AD Jesus began teaching His disciples. My wife began keeping the Sabbath in the autumn, or the fall, of 1926. I was studying evolution, and the Bible, and the Sabbath for six months almost night and day. I had not come to the place where I could accept it and was baptized until in the spring of 1927, or exactly a century of time cycles I began being prepared for the gospel . I was converted and preparing and that’s the time my real Bible study started, and that is when the one century of time cycles when Jesus was teaching His first disciples.

Now they were, you might say, ordained and filled with the Holy Spirit and sent out on the gospel ministry on the day of Pentecost, which came in June 31 AD. What is a century of time cycles from 31 AD? It would be in June 1931. In June 1931 I was ordained and sent out to preach the gospel, exactly a century of time cycles later. And the gospel of the Kingdom had not been preached in the meantime.

Now then, the gospel of the Kingdom stopped being preached around the middle of the first century. Paul wrote to the Galatians how they had already turned to another gospel in 53 AD. I began preaching on the radio in 1933; but I had only preached over the United States, and I was 19-years of one time cycle getting the gospel where it went finally coast to coast. And then I leaped over to Radio Luxembourg the most powerful radio station on earth. And the first broadcast went to ALL OF EUROPE on January the 7th 1953, or exactly one century of time cycles from the time that the gospel had been suppressed. The gospel was not preached then for one century of time cycles, until 1953. And it has been going in more or less great power ever since that time.

I have talked to more kings, and emperors, and presidents, and prime ministers than Mr. Kissinger or any other man that I know of that is living today. I am the only man who is not in any official capacity, and never has been in government service, who has ever been granted a private interview (a very personal private interview) with the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito. I was allowed to take no one with me but the United States Ambassador; and all he could do was just to go in and accompany me, and he said not a word except to acknowledge, to bow and to acknowledge, the Emperor when we came in to his presence.

I sat down, and the Emperor and I talked for 35 minutes. Once, I didn’t understand and had to talk to a translator–or interpreter rather; and I didn’t understand what the interpreter said one time, and the Ambassador whispered into my ear what he said. And that’s the only thing the Ambassador was allowed to say. Then we bowed ourselves out together. I had to go with morning attire. That’s a cut-a-way coat with tails in the back and striped trousers and so on. No one was allowed to go into the Emperor’s Place unless he is dressed like that in the daytime.

But I had that privilege, and I have been given the highest decoration and the highest honor by the Japanese government that has ever been given to any non-official who was a non-Japanese. Now some Japanese Prime Ministers, after their term was over and after they had reached 70 years of age, have had this one-notch higher honor than I have. And there are eight different degrees of honor, and mine is the 2nd but the highest ever given to anyone who is not in a very high official position. For example, former President Eisenhower; and also he was the general of all of the united armies which conquered both Germany, Italy, and Japan. And he, of course, had a very high position. He was President of the United States. He had one, one notch higher that I have had. But I know of one or two other United States citizens that have been honored by Japan; but they have had lower honors, rated about number 5 or 6 along in there. God has given me those honors.

Now then, there is something else I wanted to read to you. Let me see. It is in Zechariah 12, beginning in verse 8; and I want to give you that as it is in the Moffatt translation. It’s the same in all translations, but the Moffat just makes it a little more clear as I say he often does. Now it’s beginning in… Let’s see, I think it is in verse 7 or the beginning of verse 8, I don’t know which.

Zechariah 12:8 (Moffatt) On that day [talking about the day just before Christ comes, the day we are in right now…on that day] shall the Eternal protect the dwellers in Jerusalem even the lame among them on that day shall be like David himself. [In other words, be powerful as David… like David himself.] And David’s house [or the house of David] shall be like God himself, like the angel of the Eternal who is their leader.

Now if you look at it in the King James:

Zechariah 12:8 In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; [In other words, they will be strong as David.] and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.

Now “angel” merely means a messenger. That is why I read it to you as the Moffatt has it, “the leader;” that the leader in that day will be of the house of David.

Several years ago (before we came down to start Ambassador College, and this goes back to about the year of I would say 1941 or 2 when we were still up in Eugene, Oregon), another minister visited me; and he stayed all night. I had been going through the Sabbath question with him the night before. And, low and behold, he accepted it and is a very rare minister. He was a minister of a church in Oakland, and they had their church services on Sunday. And I went into the Sabbath with him, and he accepted it.

Well, I suppose he turned away from it as soon as he left my home. But the next morning he was shaving in the bathroom, and the door was open, and I was standing talking to him. And he said, “Say, something just came to me.” He said, “Mr. Armstrong, you are going to find that you are of the house of David.” “Well,” I said, “now what made you say that?” He said, “I don’t know, it just came to my mind this minute. You are doing things that only someone in the house of David could be doing.” “Well,” I said, “I don’t know. If I am of the house of David, I sure never knew it.”

You know, it wasn’t very long after that until I was contacted by a certain foundation that had been left a lot of money; and the whole purpose of the foundation was to track down the genealogy of a certain family. Now my great grandmother had been a member of that family and married my great grandfather who was, I believe, Silas Armstrong, my great grandfather. My grandfather I remember when I was just a little bit of a kid, maybe about 3 years old, and he was Mason Armstrong; and my own father then was his oldest son, and his name was Horace Elon Armstrong; and I’m of course my father’s eldest son. My father was the eldest, and so on as it goes back.

So that family genealogy, they wanted me because they wanted to get all of my children and all of my brothers and sisters because they go into this family, back into the time of my great grandmother. And so I got the whole genealogy; and, low and behold, I found that my ancestors go back–and I have it every generation back to Edward the First of England, King Edward I. That’s a long time back. My ancestry splits off from one of King Edward’s daughters. That’s where I leave the Royal line. She became, let’s see she married a Duke and she was a Duchess. Their son was a Duke; but pretty soon they came down to lower rank, and it came on down. My family left England with William Penn and immigrated to Pennsylvania, and that was 100 years before the United States became a nation even. That was about 1660 or 1670.

Anyway, the Royal Family have the genealogy all the way back to King David, every generation. And, of course, in the Bible I have my genealogy all the way from David back to Adam. How many people do you know that can show their genealogy generation by generation all the way back to Adam? Not very many, but I was struck somehow by the fact that I am of the house of David.

Now God called me and began teaching me for the ministry exactly a century of time cycles from the time He began teaching His early apostles. I was ordained and sent out into the ministry exactly a century of time cycles from the time they were sent out. The gospel was not preached for exactly a century of time cycles from the middle of the first century until I was preaching it to Europe and America in the middle of the twentieth century, exactly a century of time cycles. Now of course that probably all was just a coincidence, it just happened, or was it? Well, I won’t answer that. I’ll let you answer. But the gospel of the Kingdom of God had not been preached before the world before.

Now right here in Tucson I really died about 2 ½ years ago. My heart stopped completely. It was total heart failure. Not just a heart attack, it was complete heart failure. There was no pulse. There was no blood pressure. I was not breathing. My face was all blanched; and my fingernails became, I don’t know what color it is, I don’t remember; but I only know what the nurses told me. I don’t remember a thing about it, but they brought me back by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But if they had not done that, I would have been pronounced dead by a doctor as soon as they had gotten one there, maybe about 30 minutes or an hour later.

I know there is some reason why God brought me back. And God is giving me strength, and more vitality, and more strength, and more power now year-by-year and month-by-month than He ever has before. I had another check-up just Wednesday of this week. The first time I had seen a doctor in, I don’t know, five or six months, a long time. It’s a long time before I went to China. And everything is in perfect condition. He said I seem to be a little strong in potassium. I thought that’s a funny thing because I never seemed to have enough potassium before. But he just cautioned me against eating bananas and things like that, but I haven’t tasted a banana now in 3 months anyway. The doctor told me that I am in better condition now than I was 30 years ago.

Well, someone mistakenly said that I had claimed that I am going to live to see the Second Coming of Christ. I have never said anything of the kind. I don’t know that I’ll live that long at all. I will be 88 a little later this year, but this much I am satisfied with now: God still needs me and there is no one in the Church to take my place. If there was I would feel like the apostle Paul said that it would be more satisfying for him if he could just die, and in the next second of his consciousness he would be with Christ in the resurrection. But he said, “It is more needful for you that I remain.” until the work is finished.

Now of course later, much later, Paul wrote again that his work was finished; and the time had come for him to depart this life. But earlier than that he wrote that it was more needful that he stay. And that’s exactly the way I feel and the way it is. God has given me exactly the men that I need to work with me, and in the teamwork, to get the job done and to get this Work around the world; and I know that He is going to give me life, and vitality, and strength to do it. Now you heard it announced that I am having a new television studio build as part of my house here in Tucson; and that’ll be both a combination office where I do my writing, and I really am running the whole Work from here.

Now in China, you already know what happened; and let me just say this: When I go to an atheist country like that, a communist country, their religion is atheism. They don’t believe there is any God. THEY DON’T BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE. I DON’T DARE MENTION THE THINGS THAT ARE IN THE BIBLE. I can’t talk about repentance. I can’t talk about law and grace, about salvation, about the grace of God, and things like that. I can’t talk about being converted. SO WHAT DO I DO? I talk about the TWO WAYS OF LIVING– ONE IS GET, AND THE OTHER IS GIVE– and they understand that.

In China, the next night after I had given the first speech, some Chinese officials that had been there were heard saying, “Well, I have never heard anything like that before; and, you know, that was interesting. I heard this man saying, ‘The two ways of living are get and give.’ Now, that makes sense.” And I showed them that every trouble in the world, every evil, everything that’s wrong in the world has come from people living the way of GET,self centeredness, of vanity of coveting, wanting to get everything, of jealousy and envy, of resentment of authority, of competition. And I say that we will never have peace until we REPENT of that. We’ve got to TURN AWAY from that, and turn to the way of giving.

That is the way I tell them to repent and turn to God’s way. The Ten Commandments are the way of giving and the way of outgoing love, and I express that. I say that giving is the way of outgoing love, love that flows out from you to other people. And, you know, that impressed the Chinese. And I had a very fine full hour, private talk with one of the Vice Chairmen. There are two of them: the head man Hua (Or however you pronounce it. I don’t know how he pronounces it.) and then Vice Chairman Deng they call it. I think they spell it D-E-N-G. He’s the one who visited Washington and the President some time ago, and he came out and visited Seattle on the way back to China. You’ve seen him on television I’m sure.

Well, I didn’t see either of those two. But there is one other Vice Chairman that is older than they and who fought with Mao and with Chow en Lai and was very close to both Mao, and closer than they were to Mao and Chow en Lai; and I spent one hour with him.

Now I am invited to visit the top men in the Kremlin in Moscow. And we are proposing a scholarship over there. The things that they can do on bars, and then just leaping and running and with the human body it is just marvelous. It is very, very graceful. Anyway, we are proposing such a scholarship over there; and whoever wins it will get to start a professional career in the United States at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena. And then, through the Ambassador Foundation, we will see that they are booked in leading auditoriums or music halls all the way across the United States and will finally end up at Lincoln Center in New York City. And the top people in the Politburo, or the Kremlin, are very much interested in something like that.

They are very friendly to us, but they are not a bit friendly to President Carter right now. They don’t like him at all. So I am invited by the government; and I am also, as I did in China, to stay in a government-owned guest house that is maintained just for their top guests, and also our airplane crew. The one thing that is not finalized yet, in China we had our television crew with us. The same television crew that was here the number of times I have spoken here and televised the program, and these same men we want to take with us into Moscow.

One thing, it will be safe to take my own plane in there; so I can go in my own airplane, and I am glad of that. I don’t want to go in a public airplane because you don’t know when it is going to be hijacked or what might happen to it. This way I have my own crew that I can rely on and that I feel safe with. But we haven’t found out yet whether or not they are going to allow our television and camera crew to come in with us. But we hope they will. And in any event, even if our photographers can’t go in, there will be USSR or Soviet camera men; and they will give us the pictures. I am sure of that because they want the publicity and to go into The Plain Truth and all over.

Now there is no reason why we even need to try to fight communism. We are not called to fight communism or to fight this ism or that ism. We are called to proclaim the Kingdom of God; and we are just not in politics one way or the other, and they know that. That’s what we presented to them. They know that we are not communists; and we are not coming, not going to pretend to be communists. But we are not trying to fight against it. They know that I formally, oh 25 to 35 and up to 50 years ago, I used to write against communism; but I don’t do that any more. I’m not here to fight those things. I’m only here to proclaim the gospel, or the good news, of the Kingdom of God; and that’s what I am going to do.

Now the way is also open for us to go into Warsaw, and they are anxious to have us there; but, of course, that’s much smaller that getting to go into Moscow. And to think that no other minister from the world of Christianity has ever been invited to Communist China or to Communist Russia. I am the first one, and that is quite an honor for our Church. I hope you realize that, brethren. But I have had to learn how to get the gospel over to them. I tell them about the Kingdom of God in this way, that this world cannot go on the way it is.

Now I can say in Russia there were two men in Germany here quite a while ago, Karl Marx and Engels. What was his first name? I forget. Marx and Engels. And they saw the governments in this world were not right and conditions were not right, and they thought up their idea of what they thought would be right. Now then Mr. Lenin was sold on, thought it was a good idea; and he was able to put it into work and to create a new government based on that.

All right. IF YOU ASK ME, I DON’T BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY EITHER. DEMOCRACY IS NO MORE THE WAY OF GOD THAN COMMUNISM IS, not at all. And I hope you brethren realize that. The national propaganda in this country is democracy is the kind of government. What actually, WHAT happened was, when God ruled Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden because they disobeyed Him and they rejected His government, He said, “You won’t accept My government. So go form your own governments until the Second Coming of Christ.” And God’s government will not be on earth until Christ comes to set it up. And it will be the kind of government we have in this Church. And I don’t think any of you people have ever smarted under the government of the rule that is in the Church because we don’t rule that way. We rule in LOVE, and not in harm or in anything of that kind.

But the rule in this Church is not democracy either. You don’t vote. The government in this Church is THEOCRACY, government from GOD; and CHRIST is the HEAD of the Church. CHRIST is the real ruler. I am only following Him; and I say, “Follow me as I follow Him.” You have to follow someone. Now some of those that have gone out from us said, “Oh, don’t follow a man. If you are in that Church, you are following Armstrong.” That is not true. My own son wants people to follow a man, follow him. We are following Christ in this Church. And wherever you find that I am not following Christ and I don’t have the truth of Christ, I want you to come to me. My door will be open to you, and I live right here in this city. And you show me. And, if you show me, and my mind will be open, and God will see that my mind is able to see it. And I’ll straighten out the whole Church, if I am wrong and you are right.

So if you think that the doctrines of this Church are not right, it’s not your place to start preaching to other people. It is your place to come directly, well, first to your own pastor and then to me; and my mind will be open. I have proved that. I don’t have to prove that again. Now that’s the way it is.

I found that the translators were wrong on translating that word ‘from,’ and that changed the day of holding Pentecost after we’d had it the other way for 40 years. So all God called me to do was to COUNT. And I counted 50, and I counted THE RIGHT WAY. The mistake wasn’t in my counting. The mistake was in the translating of the Bible. And I was not a Hebrew scholar, and I still didn’t accept it until I made the Hebrew scholars admit that. In other words, those whose native language is Hebrew and who learned English afterwards will make the mistake of saying ‘from’ Sunday; and they mean ‘beginning with’ Sunday. But it should not be stated that way. It should state ‘ON.’ Count on Sunday, or beginning on Sunday, 50 days. And if you do that, then you come out on a Sunday; and that is the way, of course, we are doing now.

I found I was wrong and CHANGED. I would have changed any time in that 40 years if anyone could have shown that to me. But no one did. And Christ didn’t show it to me. So that’s the way it is. And that’s the way this Church is, and there is no other Church like it on the face of the earth.

Well, I have taken up a lot of time today; but it is the first time I have ever been allowed to have the opportunity. I won’t say ‘allow’ because no one is disallowing it. But it’s the first time I have had the opportunity of talking just directly to you people. Always before you were just listening in on a telecast, and I wanted to talk to you. We are all fellow citizens.

And I like it very much here in Tucson. I think this is a wonderful climate; and oh, I say oh boy, have we had some wonderful days lately. Now we can get some rain. We get some storms once in a while. But how are you going to enjoy the beautiful days if you don’t have a few of those once in a while. But I don’t know where you could find a nicer climate than we have. We are blessed above all the people on earth right here. So let’s count our blessings and let’s thank God all the time. He’s been so merciful to us, and I hope I can come back and speak to you again some time. In the mean time, I know many of you are praying for me and for my health. And God is blessing my health in every way, and I do thank you for it and ask you to continue doing it and that God will bless me.

Now I don’t know, President Carter may do something to prevent my going to Moscow. But as of right now the door is still open, and the invitation has come from the top at Moscow. And I think that is going to be a wonderful thing to be able to get the gospel in a language that they can understand what I mean. But I can use the language of the Bible. So I hope that I will be able to have it recorded, and you can actually hear what I say over there; and I think you did eventually what I said in China. I learned a lot of things. I could have been a lot more bold than I was in China, and I didn’t know it. But they’ve been so austere, and I was a little bit afraid I didn’t dare go very far. I could have gone farther. So now I am invited back to China again. They want me to come again, and I am going to go again. And this time I am going to speak a little plainer than I did last time, and I will in Russia.

So thank you all, and thank you for allowing me to have this much time.