The World Tomorrow

Rules of Success - Part 1

by Herbert W Armstrong

(PLAY FROM START)

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

Well although the news is going to be good in the World Tomorrow, do you know why today's news today is nearly all bad? Now this is shocking, but it's true. There is something criminally wrong with today's prevalent system of education. And that, plus human nature, is the one reason why we are having such bad news today. Yes, I mean even in the grades and high school, and colleges and universities, there is something criminally wrong with today's education. In many instances, children in their grades are not even taught to read, believe it or not.

But I mean something far more serious than that. Sure, young people in high school and college are being taught certain vocations and professions. Young men and young women are being taught about material and physical things. They are being given certain social and cultural training. They are being prepared to earn a living, at least many of them are. But listen, my friends, they are not being taught how to live.

Today these people taught in technical schools and universities, specializing in science and technologies are developing undreamed of powers. They are harnessing the forces of nature. They are producing powers of destruction faster than they are developing in character, to know how to guide these colossal powers into safe and peaceful directions.

Why This Unhappy World? (Play from 1:50)

Today, world famous scientists tell us that they are frankly frightened. They tell us that now the engines - the weapons of destruction - are developed to the point where it is becoming possible to annihilate human life from off the face of this planet. Everyone knows that a World War III is in the making. But, my friends, sooner or later something is going to break somewhere. I tell you we are headed into the greatest violence that this earth has ever dreamed of.

Yes it's coming. We're living in frightful times, and this world is not happy. Even while we play the ostrich and get our minds off of what's coming, of the fearful times that we are living in. Even in our own private homes, what do we have? Well more than fifty percent of homes are unhappy today. Divorce is breaking up one third or more of all homes. How many more are unhappy and would wind up in divorce if it were not for either religious reasons, or economic circumstances, or children, or some such reason, so they go on and endure it?

There's not much happiness in the world today. There's so much poverty. There's so much sickness, and mental sickness even more than physical sickness today. Well my friends, what's the answer to all of this? It's about time we wake up and begin to think about it and learn what is the reason, and what is the answer, and what is the solution? Where are we and what's going to happen?

Now this is the series on the Seven Rules of Success. This world isn't very successful. Most people aren't successful or we'd have happiness, and we'd have peace if we were. I don't think any life can be a successful unless it is a peaceful, happy life. It must be freed from fears and worries. It must also be freed from poverty, sickness, all of these frustrations that are besetting so many people today.

Now most people know nothing of these seven basic rules of success. Most people have never applied a single one of them. They just don't know, even know what they are, they never even thought about it, their minds have not been on this sort of thing. And most people today are not successful in life. I don't mean merely in making money, that's only one of the possible qualifications of success. Some men, as I have mentioned before, might be successful and not have accumulated money at all.

First Law: Fixing a Right Goal (Play from 4:13)

Well the first rule toward real success is fixing a right goal. You've got to know where you are going. You should know what is the purpose of life. Were you put here for a purpose or are you an accident? Did you just happen or were you put here to work out a definite purpose, and what is that purpose? Why does the Eternal Creator God give you the breath you breathe? Why does He let you live? He has caused you to live, brought you into being for a purpose!

Do you know what that purpose is? Are you fulfilling it? Most of you are not. Most of you just don't know. Most of you are just victims of circumstance. You've been buffeted around, you're where you are because circumstances put you there. You don't seem to have much to do with your own lives, so many of you. I tell you my friends, it's time that we sort of get to thinking about these things.

What God is creating is holy character - sons of God, in which we share with God in the process. Everything that goes into that divine being which we may become, as I think I mentioned in a recent broadcast, we receive from God. But it comes only as we abhor the evil in us and as we desire the righteousness of God and we beseech Him for it. Now God made us all free moral agents. We make the decisions. We put forth our effort in overcoming and asking and seeking from God in faith. But it is God who actually supplies everything: the love, the faith, the righteousness, the life that is eternal.

Now, God's great design, because there is a purpose being worked out here below, you didn't just happen. You were put on this earth for a definite purpose. Your life is here for a definite purpose, and yet most people know nothing whatsoever about that purpose. Well how can they be working it out then? How can they be doing what they were put here to do? And if you don't, my friends, you are going to be miserable, you're going to wind up frustrated and unhappy and looking back on a life of failure. God's great design then is to mold, to fashion, to change us from what we have made of ourselves, before we finally wake up to this real truth, and to make us over into the noble characters that He purposes to make of us. Well I devoted a number of broadcasts to that purpose of life.

Second Law: Right Education (Play from 6:33)

Now the second is right education, That is the second rule of success. Once you know your purpose. Once you know where you are trying to get to, then you have to know how to get there. Yes, you need the road map to guide you in the right direction to your destination once you know where you are going. So right education is second. But do we have right education? Again I say my friends, there is something criminally wrong with today's education. There is something decidedly wrong in the world today, and the chief cause is our system of education and human nature.

Now give us right education and remove the evil from human nature, which prevents the world from acting on right knowledge even if it had it, and then my friends, we would have Utopia. That may sound fantastic, but you know, I like to stop and ask, "Why should we not have Utopia?" Why does everyone think that's so absolutely impossible, that the question itself is rather foolish? Why should that be foolish? Why should we not have Utopia?

Why should there be any sickness or disease? God made our bodies the most wonderful instruments you know of. Of all of the instruments that man has invented, out of metals, steel, iron and mechanisms, he has never invented anything that will even remotely compare to the human body. And the human body was not made to be sick but to be well, believe it or not!

If we weren't violating the laws that have been set in motion, regulating our physical bodies, we would not be sick. Of course, any one person in the civilization like we live in today, might not violate a single health rule at all, and still be sick because of the sins and the diseases and things around him, and because of heredity, which means merely the sins of his parents and forefathers before him and all that sort of thing.

But I mean if humanity were all living as we should, and had been all along, there would never be any sickness whatsoever. Well that's something to think about and it's true. I think any physician, if he knows anything about his profession at all, knows that that is absolutely true. Why don't we look to the causes of these things and eliminate it instead of just pouring in more poisons into our bodies when we are sick, I wonder?

And then, my friends, if we all knew the real way of life and if we had right education, and we had the right judgment and the will to live the right way and act on our right knowledge, you know that there would be nothing but peace? And everybody would love everybody and everybody would be happy.

And there wouldn't be any poverty because everybody would be healthy, and everybody would be industrious and working hard.

Everybody would be producing and everybody would be happy. You wouldn't go along locking up your car when you park it on the street. You wouldn't have to keep your money in a safe and banks be guarded with armed guards and things of that sort. You wouldn't need locks and keys to your front door to your home or your back door. You wouldn't lock your windows when you close them so the thief can't climb in the window. There wouldn't be any thieves.

We would all be happy. We could have Utopia, but we don't have it and there are reasons why we don't have it. Yes, fantastic though it may seem my friends, we are going to have real Utopia right here on this earth, and before the present generation of young people has passed on. That is shocking, but happily that's true. But we're going to have a lot more violence and suffering and frightful events occurring before we get to that place.

Right Knowledge Was Revealed (Play from 10:21)

Well I think it's about time we begin to look into these things. Today we live in a confused, misguided, deceived, chaotic, world. We find ourselves in a civilization that was started thousands of years ago by a God-rejecting man named Nimrod. Every phase of this Babylonish civilization is established on principles that are diametrically contrary to the revealed laws that would bring happiness and peace and prosperity and good health and everything else that's good to everybody!

This world is not happy, it's filled with strife. It's filled with fear, with ignorance, deception, injustice, crime, poverty, suffering, with anguish, with woe and death. And this whole worldly civilization is based on a false system of education. Modern education today is almost wholly materialistic. Now how did this thing all start? How did we get this way? Where, when and how did the present educational system start and how has it developed?

Well it all started back at the very beginning, and so let's trace it just very briefly. Our first parents rejected the revealed knowledge of God. When God created the first man and put him on the earth, before that man could go out and make any mistakes or do any wrong things, violate laws that would punish him, or bring suffering upon him, or pain of any kind, the Eternal God the Creator talked with that man in the Garden of Eden.

Now all that God explained to that man isn't recorded. Very, very little is recorded in your Bible between the creation of this first man and the time of Abraham. And not very much is recorded until we come to the time of Moses and the children of Israel, as a matter of fact. The Bible just gives little bits of, just little rays of light into the events that happened way back there, just a brief summary.

God must have explained a lot of things to that man, but he rejected the revealed knowledge of God. He broke the laws that God set in motion for his own good, for his happiness, for his welfare, and for his prosperity. He broke them, he rejected that knowledge, and he must have taught his children erroneous knowledge.

Now to Adam and Eve God revealed certain definite facts, principles and laws, but they spurned all that knowledge, they disobeyed God's laws. Four of the Ten Commandments were broken in the original sin, because they had another god before the true God when they made a god out of Satan by obeying him. They coveted the fruit. They stole it. They dishonored their only parent because they were the offspring of God by creation. So they departed from God's revealed way of life. They broke the laws and the rules of life that had been revealed to them.

Now the laws of God are forces, they are living laws. God set laws in motion, all the physical laws that we know of, but God also set spiritual laws in motion that govern all human relationships, and our relationship with God. And God made man incomplete, believe it or not! God made man so that man needs God and he needs a contact with God, and he needs the things that he can only drink in from God. And without the Spirit of God within him and the things that he so badly needs, that he can get only from God, man is incomplete, and man is distressed and unhappy. And he is bored and he doesn't know why, he doesn't understand why.

God gave him laws to keep the man in a continuous relationship with God, that he could drink in the things from above that he needs. You know, you take a tree and a plant, it drinks in a great deal from the ground below, but I wonder if you realize that it also does drink in something from the air above. And we need to drink in from the Spirit of God from above ourselves.

Rejection of Revealed Knowledge (Play from 14:32)

Now down through the centuries, man has continued to reject God's revealed knowledge. Contrary to God's ways, mankind soon was organized into competitive units of society. It was all started by the man named Nimrod at the original Tower of Babel, and in the original city of Babylon which he founded in Nineveh, and the original city states. He was the world's first despot. He was the world's first human ruler, that made himself a ruler over other men.

And other men were willing to do it because he at first emancipated them from the wild animals, and now he offered to emancipate them from God and from the rules of God. And somehow there's something in human nature that is hostile toward God and the thought of God, and so man rebels against God, and man doesn't want to obey God. He wants the results of that obedience, but he wants to smash the laws of God and still have the result of keeping those laws. I guess man just cannot understand why God doesn't change His laws around and let man disobey God and break all of these laws and still have the happy result of keeping those laws.

Well ancient nations developed, all straying from the revealed knowledge, the laws, the ways of God and groping in the dark seeking to learn about the unknown - because it soon became unknown - they were cut off from God. Now there was so much they didn't know and they sought to learn about the unknown, so the ancients speculated their way in succeeding generations into the pagan philosophies that have come on down to us today, the very philosophies which form the basis of modern eduction in practically all of our institutions of learning today, the teachings of men like Aristotle, Socrates, Plato. Epictetus and Virgil.

So as the Creator said through the apostle Paul, and I've read this to you a number of times, in the first chapter of Romans, of these ancient philosophers; "...they did not like to retain God in their knowledge" (Romans 1:28). Or the knowledge that God had revealed.

So today's popular education has no place for God or divine revelation. No, you don't find divine revelation being taught in the average institution of learning today. The institutions of higher learning are very few and far between where the Bible is taught at all. Today modern education is almost wholly materialistic. It has lost sight of the true spiritual values. It fails to teach young men and women the most needed knowledge of all, and that is what life is, what it's all about, why we are here, what is the purpose of life, why were we put here, where are we going and what are the laws how to live happily, how to arrive at that destination?

That's the foundation of knowledge. That's the beginning of knowledge. How to live happily, how to have peace. My friends, the great rulers of the world don't know that. If they did, they'd bring us peace, or would they? You'd think that they would if they knew. Or is it that they don't want peace? But they don't know how to get peace. Now I think some of the world rulers are very honest and sincere men. I think our President is a very sincere man, but he doesn't know the way to peace. He can't bring it to us my friends, because he doesn't know it. And the heads of other nations just do not know the way to peace!

Has it become lost from all humanity? Why don't we know the way to peace? Why don't we know how to prevent wars? Why don't we really know the cause of wars in the first place? And what can we do about it? About all we know today is that here we are in an armed and hostile world. And the only thing that it seems that our leaders know how to do is to maintain a stronger armed power than the other side, so that if they ever start anything on us that we can retaliate and hope that that will deter them so they won't start it. But we are not having peace in the world. Yes, we're in a real bad plight.

Now as the Creator said through the apostle Paul, "they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge" and so we've come down to materialistic knowledge today, failing to teach young people why they are here, what is the purpose of life and how to live that life. And do you know that every bit of that is revealed in your Bible! But what do most people do with the Bible today? Now nearly everybody has a Bible, it's the biggest seller.

But you know, a lot of people are like a young woman that said to me one time, when she found me reading the Bible to understand what it said, she said, "You don't try to understand what the Bible says surely?"

"Well," I said, "I certainly do, I certainly do."

"Oh my, oh," she said, "You're going to be misled if you try to do that."

"No," I said, "I find in the Bible the only explanation, that is rational, of conditions as they are in the world. The only way to success and to peace and to happiness." I said, "Do you ever read the Bible?"

"Well, yes, oh yes."

"Well," I said, "You don't try to understand it?"

"Oh no, my no" she said, "I wouldn't try to understand it, I don't think I'm capable of understanding it."

"Well what do you read it for?"

"Well," she said, "For inspiration, for inspiration."

She doesn't want to get any meaning out of it. She just wants to get her thoughts up in the clouds somewhere. Inspiration, to make her feel good, make her feel more pleased with herself. And still she doesn't know why her home isn't more happy as it might be. We need to learn how to live and how to live happily, abundantly and joyfully and fully. Modern education can't impart a knowledge that it does not possess, my friends.

The Bible Has the Answer (Play from 20:36)

Now I want you to see where this all leads us. Here is bewildered, deceived, unhappy, suffering humanity groping in the dark, seeking by human speculation to come to a knowledge of the unknown. One man said to me, he says, "Who can know?" Yes who? How can we know? To this man knowledge was hidden. He didn't know where to go to get it.

Well if there be a God would He have left mankind so hopelessly in the dark that we couldn't know? God did reveal knowledge to our first parents, but "they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge."

God has caused His word to be written in one of the greatest and one of the biggest books ever written, the Holy Bible! In fact it's a combination of many books, but man still doesn't like to retain that knowledge, and he rejects that knowledge. And if he reads the Bible he reads it for inspiration and not to receive the very thing that God had it written for, that God inspired it for, and had it written and has watched over it to preserve it down to our time for.

No, they want to put it to a different and a wrong use. Well that's what sin is, putting things to a wrong use. You can put a pair of dice to a wrong use, probably playing cards, a dance floor, a bottle of whiskey, and a whole lot of things you can put them to a wrong use. But a bottle of whiskey isn't sin. A deck of cards is not sin. A pair of dice is not sin in themselves. It's putting them to a wrong use that is sin. Sin is usually taking things that could be put to a good and a right use and putting them to a wrong use.

Now God has not left us in the dark. Why must man be in the dark about such vital basic knowledge as creation, and the very accounting for the presence of things that exist? Of what life is and where it came from, and why it is, and what's the purpose of life, and where are we going, and what are the rules and laws? How shall we live to be happy and to make life worthwhile?

Almost no-one, it seems, has been able to learn what the Holy Bible really IS. We don't seem to know what it is. Let me tell you what the Bible really is. It is God's revelation to man. It's the message of God Almighty to man to tell us these things that our scientists can't learn, that our great statesmen don't know and cannot find out of themselves. Something that no man can learn or discover or find out, except from God. And God has revealed it but we spurned that and we don't want to take it out of the Bible. If we can't get it from some other way by human reasoning with God left out of it, it seems that man would rather go on and suffer.

It's God's means, the Bible is God's means of communicating to man that basic knowledge that man needs, and must have, if he's ever going to live successfully, if he's ever going to be happy, if we're going to have a peaceful, and a happy, and a joyous civilization living full abundant lives. Through the Bible as God's vehicle of information, God reveals to man knowledge of facts, of laws, of purposes and also of events, both past, present and future, and things that man has no other way to know.

The Foundation of Knowledge (Play from 23:56)

Now I might illustrate: man is able of himself to build laboratories, to experiment through test tubes, he is able to invent and to build telescopes to learn about the stars, microscopes to learn about infinitesimal particles of matter. Now man has been able to even break down the atom. He has been able to unleash the very powers of nature.

So God didn't reveal in the Holy Bible, the laws of physics or chemistry. He didn't reveal the distance to the sun, the moon or the various stars from the earth. Man has been able to discover that and learn that for himself. God left it for Newton to discover and to reveal to us the laws of gravity. Many things man is able to discover for himself and those things you do not find in the Bible, unless it's incidentally there. But I mean the Bible doesn't have for its purpose, revealing of all that sort of thing.

God gave us minds to think with, and hands to work with and eyes to see with. He gave us certain equipment by which we can learn certain things. But my friends, the unknown, many of these spiritual laws and things and purposes, which man needs to know if he is going to be happy, God has revealed those things through the Bible as the foundation of knowledge and there is no other way you can COME to that kind of knowledge except in and through the Bible.

The Bible then is the beginning and the foundation of all knowledge, and man should go on and build on that. From there God left it for man to go on to explore, examine, observe, to measure, and to make tests and all that sort of thing. To add to the basic store of knowledge with which God started him out. And it's right for man to add these material facts that God expected him to add.

God gave us eyes to see with and ears to hear with, hands to work with, minds to think and to reason with, if we reason properly. Now just think what a wonderful fund of knowledge man might have had today if he proceeded from the very beginning as God had intended. Now I don't say that everything taught in this world's educational institutions is erroneous and false. I'm not trying to say that at all. Much of it is true and accurate knowledge.

A Mix of Good and Evil (Play from 26:06)

You know what we have in this world? It's error mixed with truth, right and wrong mixed. The tree that Eve took and gave to her husband, and he ate of it too, was the knowledge of good and evil.A mixture, and that's what we have, but it's a very dangerous mixture.

Now take science. Insofar as scientific men, have stuck to pure observation, measurement, laboratory tests and definite practical experiments, why they've been among the most cautious, conscientious and accurate men we have on earth today. It's where they have mixed human speculation of the unknown with observed facts, rejecting the revelation of God, and trying to account for the presence of what they see through their own imagination. That's where they have gone into gross and ridiculous error. Yes, even scientists.

So, my friends, it's true that "The fear of the Eternal is the beginning of wisdom [and], a good understanding have all they that do [God's] commandments" (Psalms 111:10), that obey God. Because God gives His Holy Spirit to them that obey Him (Acts 5:32). And until you receive the Spirit of God you can't understand the Bible. And until you understand the Bible you can't COME to that kind of knowledge. But Jesus said, "...you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). Notice, "you shall know" and knowing is knowledge.

And so my friends, there's the basis of knowledge, and that is really the reason why, in this world today, we find so many failures and so little success.

And so, finally my friends, listen: if you were to attain to the GLORY that is your potential destiny, to really fulfill the tremendous purpose for which you were put here on this earth, you must, as Jesus Christ said, actually live by every word of God (Deuteronomy 8:3, Luke 4:4). That is by every word of the Bible.

The very first business of your life ahead of everything else, ought to be the study of your Bible. You need to come to really understand the Bible, but you need help. At last, you can enroll for the 'Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course' by correspondence, and study it in your own home.

Until next time then, this is Herbert W Armstrong, saying, "Goodbye friends."