HWA Radio Transcript 1979
Transcript of Radio broadcast April 25, 1979
This is Herbert W. Armstrong with the Good News of the World Tomorrow.
Why is it my friends that you have not heard the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, but rather a message of men, a gospel of men, about His person, but not the message that Christ Himself brought and preached. Now do you know that that message was not the message of Christ either, so far as that is concerned; it was not Christ's message at all actually. It was the message of God the Father. And so, when we read the fifth chapter of John and verse 30; Jesus said here, “I can of Myself do nothing.” I wonder if you've all realized that? A lot of people never did; they thought Jesus had power inherent in Himself to perform all miracles and to do all of the things that He did. He said that He was helpless. He was a human like you and I and He said that of Himself He could nothing. “I can of Myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.”
My friends, do you know the difference between the Church that Jesus actually did build and every other church? Where is that Church today? Jesus Christ said, “I will build my Church.” We have a lot of churches today. Which one is His? Any of them?
Let me tell you how to find the Church that Jesus built. There are a lot of earmarks, a lot of ways. One thing is that Jesus Himself foretold that His Church would be a “little flock,” not a great political power, not a great pressure group or anything of the sort, but it would be a “little flock.” Prophecy shows and Jesus said that His Church would be persecuted even as He was. Prophecy says it would be scattered and not organized and a great, powerful group or having any political influence at all.
In the book of Revelation, you find two prophecies of two different churches. One is a church in this world that is politically powerful. It's called by a very ugly name. It is a church that has committed fornication spiritually speaking and that fornication was committed by having a political relationship with the governments and the kings of this world and going into this world's politics. That makes it a church of this world and the god of this world is Satan the devil. This church is the implement - the instrument of Satan the devil. That church ruled over many nations, speaking many different languages and over the governments of the western world.
Another church is pictured in the twelfth chapter of Revelation which is a Church driven to the wilderness, the dessert, the mountain - away from organized society by the military and the police powers of the organized state. It is a Church that was scattered, a Church that was persecuted, a Church whose members were martyred. This great church that is a fallen church, was drunken with the blood of these martyrs because that church has caused them to be killed. It didn't kill them directly. Oh no, it was merely the one that caused them to be killed. It declared them heretics and the powers of the state, the civil government with its secret police, its military forces; took hold of these saints and put them to death after a great deal of torture. Sometimes it was inhuman torture; almost impossible to bear and tortures even perhaps more fiendish than those we have heard of in modern wars. We have heard of terrible tortures inflicted by the Germans in World War II and the Japanese - well there were tortures as bad or worse, that were inflicted by that great church, yet it professed to be the church of Jesus Christ - the true Church of God on this earth. It is drunken with the blood of the martyrs that had been tortured until dead!
Now the true Church of God is pictured as one keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. These people did not love their lives “unto death” as the Bible explains or describes in the twelfth chapter of Revelation. It had to flee.
There is another earmark of the true Church. How are you going to know the true Church? Let me tell you something, the true Church that Jesus did found; that is the Church of which He is the Head and God is the Head of Christ. It is a Church which will be continually admitting it has made some mistakes. It will change its doctrines as fast as it finds that they have been wrong, and will have a record of having admitted that it had had some wrong doctrines and some wrong practices. It will have straightened up and will have changed and accepted the truth that has come out. It will be a Church that will have progressively grown in Bible knowledge and will have added to its doctrines such light and truth as has come up from time to time. Now do you know any such church on the face of the earth today? I'm sure you don't. I don't think that you know any organized group that calls itself a church - any sectarian denomination - any organized church or political group, that goes by the name of a church today that has ever changed its doctrines, that has ever admitted that it had been wrong, that has ever admitted that it had taught something that it now finds was an error and admits publically and tells the people it had been an error and now preaches the truth and straightens the people out on the thing it had misled them on, in ignorance, before it has come to see and know better. Do you know any such Church?
Listen my friends, any church is merely the sum total of its members. Is that not true? What is a church? It is a group of human beings. The true Church of God are those human beings that have been begotten by God and in whom God has put His Holy Spirit and are led by the Spirit of God. Now, it's true, it will be a lot of people joined together in the love of God and by the Spirit of God, and the harmony that comes from that Spirit and on the basis of love. However, all humans are carnal and have a carnal nature, even though they have now also received the nature of God through the Holy Spirit. And so the natural nature of man and the natural man wars against the Spirit, even after a man has been converted and received the Spirit of God. Why, even Jesus Christ who never sinned, was tempted in all points like as we are. He couldn't have been tempted my friends unless there was something within Him, within His mind, and within His flesh that did cry out to want to be satisfied in a wrong way. It tempted Him and made Him want to do what in His mind He knew was not right. Only He had the willpower. He had the control over self, to refuse to let Himself do those things that His passions and emotions cried out to do - that His Spiritual mind, being led of God, showed Him He should not do. He also had that power of will to propel Himself to do those things which He just didn't want to do or shrink back from, but which His mind, led by the Spirit of God, showed Him He ought to do. Do you do that? Of course you don't, always. You know anyone that is living perfectly like that - like Jesus Christ did? I've known people that bragged they did, but their very bragging was the worse sin of all: spiritual pride.
Now that battle is going on within all of us and the very purpose of our being here is that we overcome all that is wrong in our own nature. We must come with our minds to be enlightened to see what is right and where we are wrong and to have the self control and the self direction and the will and the volition, to build the character that will do what is right and reject what is wrong. We will force ourselves when we feel lazy or feel that we don't want to, to do even unpleasant things, that we see ought and must do.
Too many people shirk those things and never do them. And too many people are always doing things that they just want to do, but which, perhaps they ought not, but they're just so weak they can't prevent it. And so we develop habits and we become the creatures, the victims of habit - until we're slaves of habits of different kinds. We can't seem to shake them off or break them.
Now my friends, overcoming and coming to a knowledge of the truth is something that every Christian must do and we are told in the second letter of Peter, in the very last verses of Peter's letter, that we must “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Listen, did you come to all the knowledge of God perfectly, until you fully understood everything in the Bible all at once - in the split second that you were converted? Or do you know anyone who every did? I know a good many of you listening to me aren't converted now! But do you know of anyone who, upon conversion, just all of a sudden, quicker than you could bat an eye; all of a sudden had all of the understanding, the comprehension and the knowledge of everything in the Bible and the full knowledge of God and knew everything that God could impart and would want them to know? Do you know anyone that ever got it quite that fast and that quickly? Of course not!
What would you think of a baby, when on conception, instead of growing large enough to be born in its mother's womb; all of a sudden in one second, became a six foot man? Or a baby, upon birth, that would all of a sudden grown up to be six feet in the next one or two seconds? You know, it has to grow. Things like that grow. Physical things grow, but they don't happen so suddenly.
Now we are told that we have to grow in knowledge as well as in grace. And this whole thing is just common sense. It is a matter of just learning the true values and the things that really make you happy - the things that really make life worth living, the things that help you to make other people more happy and that are good for everybody, until it's just good to be alive. Anything wrong with that? Of course not!
My friends, that's the gospel that Jesus taught. It's the gospel that I preach - the same gospel that Jesus did. It's the way of life that will make everybody a lot happier and make life worth living. I don't think you can find fault with that. I don't think there is anything wrong with it. But listen my friends, we have to grow into it and there are inclinations and pulls in our nature to pull us the wrong way. I think we all know it.
There is evil as well as good in human nature. The thing that Adam and Eve took of in the Garden of Eden, was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and there was good and evil mixed. Good and evil is the mixture in every one of us. Oh, I know in the comic strips and in the movies and in the plays and in the fiction stories, the hero is always just one hundred percent good. He's perfect; there's not a fault in him and the villain is always one hundred percent evil. But in real life it isn't like that. No, in real life, there is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us. There is a little of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in nearly everybody in real life. We're built that way and everyone of us has a wrong side. We have to struggle to master and control it or it's gong to get away with us and run the wrong way and then we will have regrets. We have to grow toward the right way if we're ever going to get there.
What is the Church but the sum total of its members - the individuals that are to gather and compose it. Can a church grow in knowledge any faster than its individuals, or than, at least, its leaders? And can its leaders (they are human men), do they get into it all at once? Is it just hocus pocus, a snap of your fingers - quicker than you can bat an eyelash - do they come into all knowledge? Has any church done it? You go back here at the beginning of a lot of churches; take the beginning of the Protestant churches, three, four hundred years ago, and you find there was a leader and the people found that leader and they thought he was a great man and he came to see a certain amount of truth. That's true, but he didn't have it all. And I remember of one leader, John Wesley. He told his people that he had not found all of the truth. He had tried. He said he had found a lot of truth, he had restored some truth he felt, but he said “I haven't got it all. And after I'm gone I want you people to continue to acknowledge that when you're wrong and continue to grow into more knowledge and more truth and get things straightened up better than I've gotten them.”
You know, he wrote a wonderful sermon and preached it. I have read the copy of it in writing. It's a wonderful sermon that John Wesley wrote one time on Repentance and Believers. Repentance isn't just something you do once before you “get saved,” as they say. Once you've “repented,” you felt a little sorry for the way you've lived. That's about all it amounts to with a lot of people anyway. Then you're all through with that and from then on you can become vain and egotistical and think how good you are and get spiritual pride and think what a wonderful Christian you are!
He showed that a Christian is one of humility and that in order to retain the humility that really does make for true righteousness and true greatness for that matter; there must be a spirit of repentance continually in the mind. There must be that spirit of humility and teachableness and willingness to be taught, willingness to unlearn, willingness to confess it when we're wrong. You know that's the hardest thing in human nature for anybody to do. Why people find it very easy to bristle up and resist and fight and refuse to acknowledge they are wrong and then try to accuse the other fellow of being wrong. You get into a lot of untruths when you do that. That's the way most people ride right over their own evils and faults and sins - by trying to accuse the other fellow. They ride right over it.
The hardest thing on earth is to admit when you are wrong. Now any true Christian is one who will admit when he is wrong, and therefore the true church is merely that body of people made up of such people. The church as a whole, must be one that is humble enough to admit it when it's wrong.
Now, I think maybe, perhaps a lot of the leaders and founders of these churches and denominations that we have around, had the idea that when they died, the people would continue to admit when they were wrong. But, what did the people do? They said “no, that's what he [the leader] said and we're not going to change it. He was a great man. He was a great leader.” Yes, well you know, I have found that I got into the Church that Jesus Christ started myself. It was just a little group of scattered people - the world never heard of them, and under their direction I started preaching in a little country school house eight miles west of Eugene, Oregon. There were nineteen converts in a little church of nineteen people when it started out.
We moved to another little country school house four miles farther away and started holding services there. Later there was another group organized in Eugene and then another and then another in another town. We then bought a property in Eugene and moved the whole church into there and it began to grow. But you know, it grew because we were growing and it grew because when we found we were doing something wrong, we quit and we changed. And when we found we had preached something wrong, we corrected it.
I remember a woman that didn't like me very well; stopped me on the street one time in downtown Eugene, Oregon. She said “Herbert Armstrong you're all wet.” You know that's modern slang meaning “you are in error, you are wrong.” That was a little bit hard to take from that woman because I knew she didn't like me. I said, “well I don't think so,” but she began to point it out where! You know, she had me stumped before she got through. Well I said, “I'm not going to just jump around at anything just because you tell me. I'm going to look into that and if I find you're right and I've been wrong, I'll straighten it out. I'm not going to just be easily led around with any old little wisp of doctrine that comes along, but I certainly shall check into it.”
Well, there was a passage or two in question. I had studied into it and had felt there was a mistranslation from the Greek language of a certain verse that I couldn't explain, but when I looked it up, I found there was no mistranslation. It meant just what it says in plain English in the King James, or any other translation on careful research. We are to study and prove - we are not to be led easily around one way or the other. I don't think we should be too quickly led even into truth, because how do you know it's truth until you've proved it? I never have been [easily led to change]. Now I studied this for days. I looked into it thoroughly. I went into exhaustive research and I had to admit I had been wrong and this woman was right. But you know at the next church service in that church in Eugene, Oregon, the subject of my sermon was that very thing. I straightened out the membership and ,I've had to do that more than once, but I don't have to do it so often anymore because every time you get one error rooted out, then you get another truth in. You're getting a little closer to the whole truth and you don't have to do it so often, but you certainly have to start out.
Now some people say, “well that can't be God's Church, why they don't even preach the same thing they use to; they changed one or two things.” My friends, you can't be God's Church if you haven't changed because you're not perfect! No human being ever is and the only one that can be the true Church of God and is the same Church that Jesus founded, is a Church that can be corrected by God! Have you never read in Hebrews, in the very Word of God, of how God corrects every son that He loves and that if we are not corrected, if we are not chastened, then we are not the sons of God?
Let me read you a little of it here. Beginning in the fifth verse of the twelfth chapter of Hebrews: “And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou are rebuked of him.” My friends, what's the Bible for? What is the Bible? What good is it? All scripture, as Paul wrote to Timothy is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. Oh yes, it's profitable, but what for? For argument? To have your own way? Chew the rag around with someone else? Oh, no. “But is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” But, how we do hate to take that kind of instruction. We don't like reproof. We don't being corrected when we're wrong. That's what the Bible is for. Did you ever read the letters of the Apostle Paul that he wrote to the people over at Rome? They weren't Romans - some of them were, some of them were not. And to the Ephesians and to the Colossians and the Galatians and to the Thessalonians and the others. Did you ever notice that every one of those letters are corrective - that Paul is correcting those Church members and straightening them out and telling them where they are wrong?
That's what they are. The whole Bible does that and the Bible is like a sharp two edged sword. It cuts both ways. It's sharp on both sides and whichever way it goes it's going to cut and it hurts. It's human nature. Listen: “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth” (Heb.12:6). You know, that isn't human nature. I believe I may have told you this before, but most of you weren't listening then. I have a little grandson. Let's see, I forget how old he is. This is when I believe he was about only three years old and we had driven over to one of these grocery markets - these glorified grocery stores that we have in this day and age. My wife and his mother, who is our daughter of course, had gone into the store for groceries and left the little fellow in the front seat of the car with me. He got to playing around with the little sun shade up at the top of the windshield, and I thought he was going to break it so I told him not to do it. But he didn't pay any attention. He went right ahead. He was bending the thing all around and I told him again and he went ahead and I said, “I'm going to spank you.” He went ahead so I started to spank him and he looked up at me so quickly, “Grandpa, Grandpa, Grandpa you love me don't you Grandpa. You wouldn't spank me if you loved me, would you?” And you know, before I thought, I had to burst into a lot of laughing. It just caught me and after I began to laugh. I couldn't spank the little fellow, but he needed it. But his argument was: “you wouldn't spank me if you loved me, would you?” And I had to explain to him that I would spank him if I loved him. And later he said, “Well Grandpa, why did my Daddy spank me? My Daddy wouldn't spank me if he loved me, would he?” So I explained it something like this. I said, “Look, does your Daddy spank other little boys?” “No.” “Well, he doesn't love those other little boys like he does you. Your Daddy spanks you because he doesn't want you to do wrong because it's going to hurt you if you do wrong. Your Daddy doesn't want you to get hurt. He wants you to do the way that will make you happy and he would rather spank you a little bit and hurt you a little bit, than have you punish yourself a lot more or see you hurt yourself and grow up to be the wrong kind of a man someday.”
I think I finally got him to see it. But you know, a lot of us never had that explained. We think, “why, if God loves us He wouldn't punish us, would He?” Well He says He would. “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening,” “endure,” it doesn't say “enjoy,” does it? No, if you endure it - oh you don't enjoy it! “God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?” (Hebrews 12:6-7) Well, modern, wacky psychology doesn't believe in it. They say, “well let the sweet little,” what do they call him? “Little brat, sweet little thing, just let him do what he wants to.” Just let him act on impulse. Oh boy, these psychologists don't even know human nature yet!
“But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” (Hebrews 12:8) I read that out of the Bible. That's Bible language. That's pretty plain isn't it? It doesn't mince words about it at all. “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” (Verse 9) “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous. . .” Oh well, how true. People just don't like it, do they? “. . . but grievous: nevertheless after ward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” (Verse 11) You see, my friends, the true Church of God is a Church that God is going to be correcting and chastening and the ministers in that Church will correct and chasten - or it is not a true Church of God!
Jesus didn't teach anything of Himself. He said, “Of Myself I can do nothing. I seek not mine own will but the will Him that sent me.” Every true Christian is the one who has given us his own will and is seeking the will of God. If you're not doing that and living by every word of God and studying the Bible to find God's will and put your own will down where it is contrary; you are not a real Christian. Maybe you have been kidding yourself, but you're not. And any Church that isn't seeking the will of God and changing as is necessary, is not the true Church of God. Why don't you apply that to yourself - to find out whether you're a Christian and why don't you apply it to your church. Has it ever corrected any of its errors? Has it ever admitted it has been wrong? Has it been willing to be chastened? Has it advanced in new revelation and truth as God reveals it? If it hasn't and you must answer no, it is not a Church of God, but a church of this world and Satan is the god that the churches of this world worship! That's something to really think about. That ought to knock you out of your chair! (End of HWA)