The World Tomorrow (April 26, 1979)

by Herbert W Armstrong

And greetings friends! This is Herbert W. Armstrong with the Good News of the World Tomorrow!

Why is it, let me ask once again my friends, that you have not heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ? But rather a false gospel, a gospel that masquerades as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but which in fact is merely a gospel about His person and which represents Jesus Christ as a sort of smart aleck young man who knew more that His Father and came to do away with His Father’s Law, to knock it in the head and to institute a new and different kind of religion.

Now, Jesus did not introduce any new and different kind of religion whatsoever. He did come to bring a Message that the world had not understood or known; although it had been declared at least in its broad outline to the prophets of old. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for instance had known about it; although, they didn’t know the details. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel which Jesus Christ preached. It’s the Gospel of God which God sent by Him. This world has not heard it.

So listen. Open up your Bible. See this thing with your own eyes. Why is it that the things that Jesus taught are opposed today and men do not believe the things that Jesus taught but teach you exactly the opposite? Why do they make Him out a different Jesus than He was? Why is that we read over here in II Corinthians the 11th chapter in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians when he was correcting them, when he said to them, “Would to God that you could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” And then why is it that there are these influences and these factors in the world trying to smear and besmirch that virginity and trying to prevent the people from becoming the real bride of Christ and presented as a chaste virgin. For he said, ”…I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety,” deceived her, “so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus…”

Do you see that it was prophesied that another Jesus would be preached. They take a lot of things about the life of Christ; they extol Him, they exalt Him, they make a hero of Him and that’s fine because He is and was very God in the human flesh. But He came for a purpose and He came with a message and it’s about time that we wake up to that Message, my friends. You’re now living in the last days of this world! You’re in the last days of this civilization. It’s soon going to be gone and all of these false prophets are soon going to be silenced and they will be gone.

“…that preach another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit, which you have not received…” And I want to tell you there is a different and lot of different spirits going abroad today and in organized religion. And different so called denominations have their various and different spirits, but they are not the Holy Spirit of God. God wake us up and help us to come to the truth in these trying days.

“…or another gospel, which ye have not accepted…” Yes, preaching a different gospel today – the gospel of men about Jesus Christ.

Now a little later he says, ”…no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. And therefore it is no great thing if his ministers…”, the ministers of Satan the Devil. He is the god of this world. This world has its churches, its worldly churches. And they have a god and they believe that that god is God – they’re deceived. And that god who masquerades as the God of this world is none other than Satan the Devil.

“…therefore it is no great thing if his,” the Devil’s, “ministers, also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness… And righteousness – what is it? God’s definition is “all thy commandments are righteousness”, Psalms 119 verse 172. Why have we done away with God’s word, God’s definitions and substituted therefore the ideas and the lies of men that have originated from their god.

“For such are false apostles,” we read in verse 13, “such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.” And they call themselves the ministers of the Gospel, the ministers of Jesus Christ. They themselves are deceived and very often they’re sincere. Very often they themselves don’t know whom they serve. God help us then to open our eyes and to enlighten our minds.

Now, as we go through the New Testament to see what Jesus did teach, what His real teaching, what His doctrine was that God sent by Him to bring to this world, as we go through to see what customs He followed and practiced, setting us an example that we should follow His steps and do as He did, as we’re told in the Bible, and why it is that we’re following customs so foreign to what He did, and those that He condemned and that we condemn those which He followed and set as an example that we should have followed, why is it? Haven’t you always been told and haven’t you been brought up from the time you were a baby to suppose and believe that Christmas is the chief of the Christian holidays and that Christians are expected to keep Christmas, that we’re suppose to celebrate the birthday of Christ, and haven’t you supposed that December the 25th is the birthday of Christ? What are you going to do then my friends with the fact that Jesus Christ was not born in the winter at all, that December 25th is not the birthday of Jesus Christ, that Christmas is not a Christian institution, that the disciples never observed it, but that it was observed hundreds and hundreds of years many centuries before Christ by the heathen religions and the pagans, that it is pagan to the core and that in the Bible you’re told not to practice those very things, that the Christmas tree is described in the Bible and condemned, and that God Almighty condemns it?

Of course, I suppose now we’re going to get our blood pressure up against God. You know the carnal mind is enmity against God or as the Moffatt translation has it a little plainer, it is Romans 8 verse 7, ”…the interest of the flesh are hostile to God…” or the carnal mind in which goes according to the interest of the flesh, hostile to God, and there it is. And the minds of men are naturally, your mind, my mind, all of our minds have naturally been from birth until God changes it, hostile to God. We look on God as an enemy. Yet man seems to think that everything God ever gave us to do is wrong. And every thing that God has ever set for man’s hand to come in contact with, man has done his best to pollute it, to pervert it, to change it and to ruin it. Now, you may not believe that my friends, but look about you, and the more you look, the more you’ll see that’s true. A country doctor told that to me. I laughed at him. I didn’t believe him. And I suppose you don’t believe me now. And you know for years I’ve been observing, I’ve been opening my eyes, I’ve been looking and I have concluded that country doctor who was quite a philosopher was about right. That just about everything that God has ever given us that’s good, we try to pollute it, to pervert it, to change it, we think God is wrong, and all we do is bring on more sickness and suffering and sorrow and heartaches and headaches and squalor and poverty and more and more empty lives and wonder why we’re so unhappy and so miserable. God gave us a way that would make us happy, if we’d only follow it. But we don’t want God’s way. We want to run right away from happiness and all the good things and then wonder why we don’t have them. We think we’re going after them. Of course, we’re trying to catch that little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, we’re all trying to catch up with happiness and with joy and with prosperity, but we want to get it quick. We want a shortcut. We don’t want to pay the price. We want to get it some other way. And there is no other way but the way of God. Christ is the way, yes. And what did Christ say, “If you would enter into life, keep the commandments.” Well, we’re coming to that.

Now, we’re in the 5th chapter of John as we’re going through the very account of what Jesus taught, of the practices that He followed, of the customs that He set for us to follow as His example. And Jesus said, “I can of myself do nothing.” Did you realize that, that Jesus of Himself could…? There was no power in Him to do anything of Himself as a human and Jesus was God in the human flesh. He was converted into humanity, into the human flesh. And humanly He could do nothing. Neither can you, neither can I. It’s about time we wake up to realize that. He said elsewhere that it was the Spirit, the Power, the Father dwelling in Him that did the works. But He did great works. But He was merely the instrument. It was God’s Power, God’s Mind, God’s Spirit working in Him that did the works.

Now, again He said here, “I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” And He set us an example. Do you seek God’s will? How can a carnal mind, a natural fleshly mind that is enmity against God, that it is hostile to God, how can it seek it God’s way and God’s will? Instead, what do we find, even in the churches and even among professing Christians, when we come to something in the Word of God that does correct us and reprove us and all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable to correct us and reprove us and instruct in righteousness, and that’s God’s idea of righteousness which doesn’t seem to be our idea. And when we get something like that, my friends, and we don’t like it because it’s going to make us give something we don’t want to give up or do something we don’t want to do, what’s the natural thing that most human beings resort to? Why, we try to use human reason. We say, “Well, now you know I don’t think God would be fair, He can’t mean that, that wouldn’t be fair and I see it this way and this is the way I look at it. And right away each one has his own idea how he looks at it and not how God looks at it. Tell you my friends, it’s about time we begin to look into to the Word of God and see how God looks at these things and get our minds attuned to His. And like Jesus, to seek His will and not our own. God’s will is your happiness. God’s will is your prosperity.

Somehow you’ve gotten the idea that God loves only poor people and we talk about God’s poor and God wants you to be miserable and poor. God wants you to give up all the pleasures and happinesses and everything that might be good in this world and to live a life of living painful penance and if you do that that maybe God will send you up to Heaven some day. And the idea of happiness that has been generated in this world is laziness, sitting around in idleness and ease and playing on a harp perhaps and having nothing to do but be waited on. And here we are trying to get closer to that kind of a false fake heaven, inventing more and more electrical gadgets and everything of the kind and the faster the technologists can invent these things and our industries can manufacturer them the sales agencies and the television and the radio broadcasts and the newspaper and magazine advertising and the high pressure salesmen can certainly induce the people to buy them until we’re getting to the place we’re so lazy we can’t even turn the crank to lift the window of an automobile anymore, we just push a button. We can’t press a button and push the front seat backward or forward, we just touch a button and it automatically, have to have a whole motor built in to save us that little bit of work because to use that muscle you see might be bad for us. You know it’s rather ridiculous when you stop to think about it isn’t it now? Why we’re just getting so lazy that we don’t use our legs anymore; we go everywhere in automobiles. And we’re getting to the place we don’t like to use our minds and what are we going to be, idiots, morons, or what some of these days? We’re degenerating so fast that, well, you just can’t see it and nobody will believe it because we like to kid ourselves and be deceived into thinking we’re getting better and better. You only get better and better when you work at it and we don’t like work, we’re allergic to it, it seems. Well, now Jesus worked and He said that His Father worked. We saw that here a few days ago, and He worked and God sets us an example of industry and work but we don’t seem to like that idea. That’s why we’re suffering. That’s why this world is such an unhappy place. That’s why there are heartaches, headaches, every other kind of ache.

Now, Jesus said the witness that I receive is not from man, it came from God. And when will we wake up and realize that God’s will for us is happiness and peace and joy and prosperity. As I started to say, God doesn’t want you be miserable, He doesn’t want you to suffer. God set laws in motion in your body that were designed to keep you healthy all the time and if you’re sick you’ve been breaking some of nature’s laws somewhere that God designed and created and set in motion or you’d never be sick. If you haven’t broken them maybe your parents before did and it is hereditary and you inherited it or you’ve had an accident, but the laws of your body have been broken or you are not sick, one or the other.

Jesus had a perfect body. He was never sick a day in His life. He never had an ache or pain until He gave His body to be beaten and broken open by men. And He did that to suffer your aches and pains and sicknesses and your diseases in your place so that they could be removed from you by a divine act of God if you go to God and ask Him to do it, because God is your own Divine Healer, not any man or any preacher. Write in for the booklet on faith – What is Faith? Why don’t you have it? How can you get it? How can you have the faith to know you’ll be healed when you’re sick?

Now, Jesus said that He was busy and that His Father worked and He worked. We saw that back here in the 17th verse. Now, here we are in the 36th verse, John the 5th chapter. And Jesus said here, “For the works which the Father hath given me to accomplish”. You see, He was sent here with a message, with a mission to perform and God had given Him something to accomplish. “The very works that I do bear witness of me that the Father has sent me.” Now, He said His Father was greater than He. And the one who is greater sends the one and Jesus obeyed His Father. The Father is the ruler. Jesus is the Son of the Father. There is a family relationship represented. God Almighty is a Family not a person. God is a Kingdom. And you can get into the Kingdom of God but you have to be born into it. And people talk around about a born again experience.

Now, a lady came to my office yesterday. She talked about a born again experience. I said, “Did you ever read about a born again experience in your Bible?” She looked a little funny, at first she didn’t quite understand, she thought she had. And I said, “Have you ever read those words – a born again experience?” Did you ever read in the Bible where the Apostle Paul had what is called a born again experience, or have men just phrased those words into an empty piece of phraseology and give it to you and to do away with the real born again thing that God is talking about, give you something that you think you’ve gone through here and now when you haven’t, you’re only being deceived?

I say wake up, my friends, you’ve been deceived! Let’s get the Truth because the Truth alone can make you free and give you Eternal Life!

When you’re born again, you’ll be in the Kingdom of God and a part of it! Do you know anyone who is now? Jesus came that you might be. And that is God’s purpose for you, if you want it and if you are willing, but it’s about time we begin to understand.

Now, don’t say that I don’t believe in being born again, I do. And I understand it. But let me tell you something. I think that every minister in the United States that would call himself fundamentalist believes, every Christian fundamentalists as he would call himself, will believe in being born again but he doesn’t understand it my friends, that is certainly not very many do. They talk about a born again experience as if it’s something you’ve already had now and it’s here and it’s been here and it’s gone, you’ve had it. Oh no, you haven’t. There isn’t any such thing in your Bible. Now, you start to search for it. I’m not going to go any further on that now because that’s getting off the track, but you search for it. You search through your Bible and see if you can find those three words – born again experience. See if you can find where Jesus went through it, where Peter went through it, where Paul went through and where it’s called a born again experience. I know they had certain experiences that men today call a born again experience. That isn’t what I am asking for. Because it wasn’t a born again experience, it was different kind of an experience. Jesus had a born again experience – when He was resurrected from the dead. But did any other man ever have it, yet? I challenge you, look in your Bible and see if you can find it and let’s quit just taking things for granted and assuming the Bible says what it does not. Because the Bible says exactly the opposite of what you have been supposing. Now, let’s wake up.

Alright, Jesus worked. He wasn’t a lazy man and He had a mission to perform and He said, ”…the works which the Father hath given me to accomplish, the very works that I do…” He did. He acted. Today they tell you, “Oh, there are no works. You just be lazy. You’re under grace without any work. You mustn’t obey God. Obey your own impulses of your fleshly mind that is enmity against God, that thinks God is all wrong. Just do as you please. Use human reason. You’re under grace!” So they tell you! Well, if you want to follow that kind of teaching when the blind lead the blind they’re going to lead you into the ditch. That’s where they’re going. But I’m asking you, open your minds. The Bible says, ”Prove all things.” Look in your Bible and see what it teaches, my friends. It’s the Word of God! That’s where you’re going to find life and salvation, if you’re ever going to get it, not from these misconceptions that have been going around.

“And the Father which sent me hath born witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his form.” Well, now wait a minute, Moses saw the back of the Eternal called Jehovah, falsely called Jehovah, you remember that? Well, that couldn’t have been the Father then, could it? “Because the Father which sent me hath born witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his form.” And I certainly assume that that means that no other man ever had. Of course, He was speaking to those men there at the time. But actually the one whose back Moses saw at Mt. Sinai was the very one who is doing the speaking now, the one who spoke to Moses, the Logos, the Spokesman, the one who was made flesh and dwelt among us. In other words, not the Father, but the one who became the son by a human birth of the virgin Mary.

Now, God is invisible! Well, so is wind but it’s there, it’s real isn’t it? Can you see electricity? You use it every day, don’t you? You probably have electricity turned on now to amplify my voice and to bring it into your loudspeaker in your radio so you can hear. Can you see electricity? Or do you know anything about it? Perhaps you see it if it flashes but do you know anything about it? Do you know what it is? Nobody does. Electricians don’t know but they know how to utilize it and how to use it and make it serve our purpose. That’s about all they know. What is gravity? What makes anything draw down to the earth if there’s nothing to impede it or if you’re holding it and you let loose of it. Can you see it? Can you feel it? Well, it’s real isn’t it? It’s there. You can’t see God my friends but He is real, He is there and He works and Jesus works.

Now, Jesus said here, “And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he sent, him ye believe not.” Jesus was the Word, the Spokesman, and God sent Jesus and He spoke the words of God and they wouldn’t accept them. They didn’t have those words abiding in them, neither do most of you today, my friends, because you won’t receive them, because you don’t want to do them, because they’re profitable to correct you and reprove you and you don’t like to be changed and corrected and reproved. You don’t like to have anyone tell you where you’re wrong. Are His words abiding in you? He said they weren’t in those to whom He was speaking at that time, these Pharisees. ”… for whom he sent, him ye believe not.” I speak His Word my friends. I speak it faithfully. Do you believe it when you hear it? It isn’t what you’ve been hearing customarily in this world today. Do you believe what is common, what is customary, what the men believe and bandy about or do you believe the Word of God? It’s in your Bible, open your Bible and believe it there, not because I say it. And don’t accept what I say unless you find it in your Bible. But when you find it there, believe it, my friends, because it’s in the Word of God.

Now, He said, “You search the Scriptures; because you think that in them you have eternal life: and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that you may have life.” Yes, they bore witness of Jesus. And they bear witness of the very voice, my friends, and the message that you are hearing this minute! Jesus bore witness of it! And Jesus said, “That this gospel of the Kingdom,” which has not been proclaimed in 1800 years, “shall be preached” as it is recorded by Matthew and “published” as it is recorded by Mark in the 13th chapter, ”…in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall the end of this age come.” The disciples had gathered privately with Jesus. They said, “Tell us, when is the end of this world coming. And when are you coming again.” What about the second coming of Christ? When is it going to happen? This is the only place where He told them when. This Gospel of the Kingdom which was soon snuffed out after two nineteen year time cycles, it was snuffed out so far as any organized effort at proclaiming it to the world was concerned. But now once again it’s going. God has opened a door. And this Gospel is going out once again after 1,850 years and your ears are hearing it this minute! This I tell you my friends is prophetic and these words, this Gospel of the Kingdom, the Government of God and that God is a Kingdom and that God is a governing Kingdom and that God rules and governs His universe which He created and that the Laws of God are the laws by which you should live and the only laws by which you can find eternal life. And you’ll have to have the Spirit of God in order to keep them because Christ in you can keep His Law. Mortal man can’t do it. But once you’re converted, once you have the Power of God you can. Do you think Jesus kept the Law of God? He said, “Of myself I can do nothing.” It was the Father that dwelt in Him by the Power of the Holy Spirit that did it. And can that same Father, that same Power of that Spirit dwell in you? Well, if so, my friends, then you can keep God’s Commandments, that is, He in you can. Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Can you say that? If you can, Jesus Christ living in you will live the same life He lived before. And that was a life of keeping His Father’s Commandments. He said, “I have kept my Father’s commandments.” Are you letting Him live that life in you?

Now, the true Gospel is the Gospel of obedience to God and that God is the Father of His Family, His Kingdom that we can be born into that Kingdom and that Family! But we must repent of sin! And sin is the transgression of the Law of God! And that we must repent of that and turn to the way of God and obedience to God and through Jesus Christ who paid the penalty of your past transgressions in your stead that you are reconciled to God the Father because your sins have cut you off from Him and that once you’re reconciled to Him, He has promised to put within you His Holy Spirit which is the begettal within you of Eternal Life.

You know that child birth, human, material child birth is the exact picture, the exact type of being born again. And a baby once it is conceived must grow in that conception state before it is ready to be born and it is born later. We in this body, we now as mortal human beings in the flesh can receive the Spirit of God and you’re no longer in the flesh, that is living a life in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. But if the Spirit of God does not dwell in you, you are none of His – Romans the 8th chapter, the 9th and the 11th verses. I read to you from the 7th verse just a while ago. You turn and read the 9th and the 11th verses of the 8th chapter of Romans. And who are the sons of God – they that have the Spirit of God and are led by the Spirit of God. And the Spirit of God is the Love of God which He will put in your heart, the Love that fulfills His Law, the Love that will take away that stubbornness and that rebellion and will help you to say as Jesus did, “Not my will but thine be done.”

Now, this Gospel of the Kingdom of God and of the way of God is going out. Your ears are hearing it. This, my friends, is also a prophecy of the scripture. And so Jesus said, “You search the scriptures, because that in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and you will not come to me, that you may have life. I receive not glory from men. But I know you, that you have not the love of God in yourselves.” If you have, my friends, you will keep God’s Laws and God’s Commandments, because the Love of God is that spiritual love that will fulfill His Law and will keep the Commandments of God.

Now, I’ll have to have more. “I am come in my Father’s name, and you receive me not: if another shall come in his own name,” and the churches are named after men today, in their own name, “him ye will receive.” I come to you in the name of Jesus Christ and in the name of the Father and I tell you my friends these are the words of God. It’s time we began to hear. It’s time to quit pussyfooting and tell the Truth.