(NB Headings are not part of original, but are added for clarity)

The World Tomorrow

John 8

by Herbert W Armstrong

(PLAY FROM START)

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

Now we’ve just been seeing that there are millions of people today, just like those of a little over 1900 years ago, who believe on Jesus Christ and yet they don’t believe Christ at all. They don’t believe Jesus Christ but they do believe on Christ. They’ve heard the scripture quoted: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31). So they think that’s all there is to it.

Now we saw here in the eighth chapter of John, during the very ministry of Jesus:

"As he spake these words many believed on him [that was verse 30 and the next verse, verse 31]. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him..." (John 8:30-31)

Now these were those that believed on Jesus Christ and were not saved! These were those that believed on Jesus Christ, but didn’t do the things that He said. These were the ones who believed on Jesus Christ and who worshipped Jesus Christ in vain. As He Himself said, "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the precepts of men" (Matthew 15:9; Mark 7:7 American Standard Version), and making God’s law of no effect by your human traditions, your human ideas and ways.

The way to come to God, through Jesus Christ, is to forsake your way and your thoughts and then accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and come and find God, and God’s ways, and believe Jesus, and the things that Jesus said, and the gospel that He proclaimed. And then you’re on the way towards salvation.

But the way you’re hearing it today, that there are no works, and that all you have to do is to have an empty faith by believing on Him and go do as you please, and follow the crowd. You’re following the broad and the popular way that’s so alluring, so attractive.

"…broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat" (Matthew 7:13).

That’s the way the many are going. Well now, "Jesus said to those that believed on him, If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed." (John 8:31)

Now if you don’t continue in His word, which means do the things He said, the things He spoke, and He said He didn’t speak of Himself, the Father that sent Him gave Him a commandment what He should say and what He should speak. (John 12:49 paraphrased)

And "If [there’s that great big little two-letter word, ‘if,’ I-F, the biggest little two-letter word in all the English language] If ye [do] if you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed." (John 8:31)

A lot of people today think they don’t need to continue in His word, but they believe on Him just like these Jews did.

And He said, "…If ye continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed; and [he wasn’t through yet. Here’s part of the same sentence] and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:31-32)

Now everyone can’t know the truth. And we’ve been seeing that. It is only those that do the will of the Father, Jesus said, "…he shall know the doctrine" (John 7:17). Those who will do the will of God the Father, they shall know the doctrine.

And then you read in the Old Testament, in the hundred and eleventh Psalm, that "…a good understanding have all they that DO his commandments." (Psalm 111:10)

Well these people were not free. And Jesus said they were not free. They said that they didn’t serve any man. He said, "You’re the servants of sin; and you’re the slaves of sin" (John 8:33-34). He didn’t say they were the servants of a man. They were the servants of something a great deal worse.

He said, "I speak that which I have seen of my Father: you do that which you have seen of your father." (John 8:38)

Only Two Ways (PLAY FROM 03:44)

Today they say there’s no doing whatsoever. Well there is doing, my friends, one way or the other. You’re either doing right or you’re doing wrong. You’re either doing righteousness, which is the commandments of God and obedience to God and recognizing the authority of God and the Word of God, the Bible, or you’re doing the way of the world and of your own thinking and of the carnal human nature. You’re doing either way. It’s just a case of which way are you doing?

Are you doing the way that is evil, the way of human nature; the way of the sway of the devil; the way of this world; the way of customs and of the society of this world? Are you conformed to this world, going along with the crowd? Or are you doing the way of God – which is the way that Jesus lived setting us an example?

He said, "You do…" Yes they did. They believed on Him. And they did something. But He said, "You do that which you have seen with your father." (John 8:38)

Well they said Abraham was their father. Jesus denied that. Then they said God was their father. (John 8:39-41)

"Jesus said, If God were your father, you would love me, because I proceeded forth and came from God; he sent me [then He told them the truth]. You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do." (John 8:42, 44)

Oh they were doers, but they weren’t doers of the law of God. They were doers of the lusts of the devil. They were doers of the murders and the thefts and the adulteries and the lies of the devil!

"You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do! [now] He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth. There wasn’t any truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own." (John 8:44 paraphrased)

He’s a murderer; he’s a liar; he lusted. He broke the commands of God, in other words. And you’re doing the way of him.

Now, my friends, that’s the way all of you have been doing, unless you have really forsaken your way and turned to God, and received the Spirit of God, and come to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. But I want to tell you it’s more than just believing on Christ.

Then He said, "Because I tell you the truth you believe me not" (John 8:45). They didn’t believe Him. Now Jesus said that, " Then said Jesus to those which believed ON him [verse 31] and [verse 45] because I tell you the truth, you believe me not." (John 8:45, 31)

He said that to those that believed on Him. But they didn’t believe Him. Now in verse 51: "…If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." (John 8:51)

My friends why don’t we read our Bibles; why do we believe exactly the opposite today of that which Jesus taught? God is the only power. God has, and wields, and sustains, and directs, and controls ALL POWER!

The people today don’t seem to think God has any power. Or if He ever did have, they seem to think He’s lost it. And they don’t fear God today. And they don’t realize that the Bible is the inspired WORD of God – His message to us by which He SPEAKS to us, and that that Bible carries authority!

They don’t tremble before the Word of God! They treat it carelessly. And where the Bible makes a statement, which is God making that statement, men say, "No, I don’t believe that. It doesn’t mean what it says."

Where the Bible says, "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), well death doesn’t mean death. Death means separation from God, so that they can twist it around to mean exactly the opposite. Instead of meaning death, it means eternal life, just the opposite of death, eternal life in a hell fire which they have imagined, and which you can’t find depicted any place in the Bible. That is what people are doing today. You and I were born in a world like that and we’ve grown up in that world.

Well this was all on the day after the Feast of Tabernacles in the Temple. And so finally Jesus concealed Himself when they tried to kill Him. These same people tried to kill Him that claimed that they believed on Him. And they said they were the children of Abraham; they said they were the children of God. Jesus said, "You’re the children of the devil" (John 8:44). And they were the children of Adam, not of Abraham and of God.

They tried to kill Him! They had lust and they were liars and they were murderers, Jesus said so. And yet they believed on Him.

A Spiritual Mirror (PLAY FROM 07:57)

My friends how about you? You know the Word of God is a spiritual mirror. Are you looking into it? Does it reflect anything? Look down deep in your own heart and your own soul! God’s looking there.

You may conceal it from your neighbors. You may have a lot of skeletons in your closet your neighbors don’t see. Maybe you can lock up that closet from your neighbors. Maybe you can lock up some things in the secret recesses of your mind and your heart from your wife, your children, your parents, your neighbors – you can’t lock them up from God! You’re looking into that spiritual mirror of God: His Word and His law. What does it tell you? Does it show you any dirt on your own heart?

You know you can’t do away with the law of God. The law of God isn’t going to remit your sins, because "by the law of God comes the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20 paraphrased). It’s God’s spiritual mirror that reflects whether it’s there. But if the law of God shows you the dirt that’s on your heart and in your mind, you need the blood of Christ to wash it away so that you can come under God’s grace.

Well Jesus escaped. His time hadn’t come yet. And so they couldn’t take Him. He made His way out of the Temple. Now chapter nine {1}:

"As he passed along, he saw a man that had been blind from birth [now in the King James Translation, in the English, it says this]. His disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind [now that implies that he was born blind because they were sinners]? and Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents." (John 9:1-3 paraphrased)

Now the way that’s translated it would indicate that neither this man had ever committed any kind of sin of any nature whatsoever; nor his parents. And that is not the meaning as John intended it in the Greek language in which he wrote it. The Moffatt Translation makes it plainer, where it is worded this way:

They said, "…Rabbi, for whose sin – for his own or his parents’ – was he born blind?" And Jesus replied, "Neither for his own sin nor his parents’.” (John 9:2-3 Moffatt)

Now you see he had sinned and so had his parents, "… all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). But this blindness didn’t come as a result of any sin they had committed. That was not the reason for the blindness.

Now let me just tell you this: very often our physical infirmities, or such, a handicap or an impairment as blindness or deafness or being lame or crippled, very often these things come as a result of sin.

Let me explain what sin is. The Bible definition of sin, in I John 3:4, is that "…sin is the transgression of the law." (I John 3:4)

Now, spiritually, sin is the transgression of the spiritual law. Paul is talking of that law in the seventh chapter of Romans (verse 14). And there he said that the law is spiritual. But that’s because he’s talking about a law that is spiritual: a spiritual law.

But there are also physical laws that God created. God is the Creator of all laws that move and have being and exist.

Now the laws of God, I’ve explained this so many times, the laws of God are not just arbitrary ideas put on paper. When your state legislature passes a law, or when Congress down in Washington, DC, passes a law, that’s merely some idea of men written down on paper. And other men have to get the same idea in their minds and have a police department, or someone like that, and watch people, and go out and, through human activity, try to enforce those laws. The laws, otherwise, don’t mean a thing.

Now a law of God is like the law of gravity. That’s one of God’s laws. The law that makes water run down hill, for instance, and the law that forces everything to drop down to the ground, unless something supports it, or pushes against the law of gravity by holding it up, or something of that sort.

And so the laws of God, my friends, are moving. The laws of God are real. The laws of God are active and they are forces and they are energies. They are POWERS. And God is the power who thought them all out, who designed them, who planned them, who produced them, who produced all force and energy, and who set them in motion. And He is the One who sustains them and He guides and controls them, and by them He rules the universe.

Created In God's Image (PLAY FROM 12:33)

Now you know human beings don’t seem to realize today that God rules even over this world or the universe or anything else. And the reason is because God is working out a purpose here below. And in order to work out His purpose, it is necessary that God leave us free to use our minds, which He has devised and invented and produced and created and given to us, to use our minds independently of Him to either obey Him or reject Him.

Now you can’t find any other creature in God’s creation, that you know, that you can see, that you can become conscious of by any normal processes, that has a mind like the human man and that more than anything else is the way that man is made in the image of God.

Of course God is described as having hair. And God is described as having a face. He has eyes, nose, mouth, ears. God has hands; He has feet, and so on. And man is in the image of God all the way around.

But man is in the image of God in another way. And I intend to bring you a program, one of the Sunday programs, sometime soon, on that very thing: just how man is in the image of God. And man is more nearly linked, now get this, man is more closely linked to God than he is to the animals, because man can change, and be changed by the power of God, and transferred, or transplanted, from this animal kingdom into the God kingdom.

But he can’t be changed into a dumb inanimate animal. He can’t go from the human to a regular animal family, but he can go from the human family to the God family.

And there is a missing link. And most people have never found it, and certainly our scientists have never found it. And there is no link between man and the other animals; absolutely no link. Except that to conform to God’s purpose, and to bring out His purpose, it was necessary that God make man of the same material of which an animal is made and that man have the same kind of temporary existence in this life as an animal.

Now some animals live, perhaps, twelve to twenty-four hours. I know some of these gnats or bugs that you’ll see in the summertime, around in the middle west you see them, fluttering around lights tonight and they’re all drop dead on the sidewalk tomorrow morning.

And there are some that live, perhaps, one or two years. And some animals that live a hundred years, and some live longer than that. I’ve seen old, let me see, crocodiles, and so on, that are quite a lot more than a hundred years old, they claim, down in Florida.

Well the length of life may differ, but the kind of life is the same. And, according to the Bible, we all have the same breath and we all die the same death.

Well that has to do only with composition and chemical existence. But animals don’t have minds like men. Animals can’t think and plan and design and initiate and produce. They can’t make decisions like men. They can’t reason and come to a decision and exercise will and volition like man.

Man can do that like God. And man is the only creature in all creation that has that faculty like God. Man, in other words, has some of the creative power, and to some extent we can create, because creating is devising a new idea and producing it. And while we can’t create the material of which a thing is produced, we can create the idea and change existing material and make things and build things according to our own ideas.

Now man’s mind was made incomplete. Man was given certain powers, but only an infinitesimal fraction of the powers of God. And God had great wisdom in that; and there was a reason.

Made To Need Another Spirit (PLAY FROM 16:40)

Now then man was made to have an absolute constant relationship with God so he could draw on the excess power that he lacks that he can receive from God, the strength and extra wisdom and understanding to guide his mind, that he wasn’t given at birth and that wasn’t created in Adam and Eve.

And God made man so that man needs God and he needs extra things that God will give him on certain condition and from, let’s say, from day-to-day or from year-to-year, and things that are not inherent in the man that he has to receive from God.

Now God’s purpose is to make us like Himself. And in order to do that, God is character; God is the Supreme Character, the Supreme Mind. And in order that character can come to us; it’s something that has to be developed. It isn’t anything that God, even God, could create instantaneously.

Because character is that power of an independent entity, that is independent in itself, to think, to receive knowledge, and to reason with that knowledge, and to come to right knowledge, and to make a right decision, and to determine the right from the wrong, and to determine to do the right, and to have the will and the volition to enforce that right on himself.

And in order to make us like God, God even put a nature in us that pulls the other way, like the power of gravity, it’s a pull on us. And there is something, in impulse and in desire that is innate and inherent within us, each one of us, causing us to want to do the wrong thing, so that there is both good and evil in human nature. Now there’s good in human nature, too, but there is also the evil. And that pull of evil we must resist. And our minds sit as an arbiter, as an umpire, over and above the pulls of both good and evil.

God will reveal the good if we want it. But man makes his own decision, and must make his own decision, or the plan, the very purpose of God, could never be carried out!

And so it was necessary, in order that man develop into what God intended, the supreme character that can be, first begotten and then born into the very family of God, and become a part of the very God family, the God kingdom, the kingdom of God, it was necessary that man be left to make his decisions independent.

If God forced His will on us, if God, well it would be just like the, for instance, like God has set the planets up in the sky. They can’t think; they can’t do a thing about it. They go around precisely on time.

And that moon travels around the earth on exactly, the precise time, I don’t know the exact number of days and minutes and seconds, but it’s approximately twenty-nine-and-a-half days.

And the earth itself is inanimate. And it travels around the sun once a year. It hasn’t anything to say about it. It can’t decide, "I don’t want to go in this orbit. I’d rather go up and travel around some other sun." Or, "I’d rather travel twice as fast," or "I’m getting tired of going so fast. I’d like to slow down a bit." The earth hasn’t anything to say about it. And the earth hasn’t any character.

There is more character in your mind, or possibilities of character, let me say, I don’t know how much you’ve developed. But there is certainly more possibility of character in your mind than there is in Jupiter and in Venus and in Mars and all of the planets in our solar system put together. I’m speaking of the planets themselves that are inanimate and that have to do just whatever God sets them to do. Now that’s just an automaton that can’t have any personality, that can’t have any character.

But God is Supreme Personality. Incidentally, God gave us personalities to develop. And they ought to be developed. And that is ability and power of expression and of influence, and we should develop it for right influence. We ought to develop those things.

Well in order to make all that possible, my friends, it was necessary that God reveal Himself to the human families. He did to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and give them their choice to accept the intervention of God, and to come to God voluntarily for knowledge and for direction and for wisdom and for excess power that they lack, and for all of the things that they don’t have, and for guidance. Or to reject that and lean to their own understanding and their own ideas and their own guidance according to this evil pull of human nature, of lusts, and of inordinate desires, and impulses to do things that are wrong. And they’re wrong simply because they’re just like a boomerang, they’re going to crack right back at us.

You know there are a lot of things that give us pleasure tonight; pleasing sensations. God created the sensual system of nerves in our bodies. And they give us certain feelings, or of sight or of taste or of smell, or feeling, or whatever it may be that can be pleasurable; and can also be painful. All pain comes from the nervous system, and all these pleasurable sensations.

Well there are many pleasurable sensations that you can enjoy, temporarily tonight, but they’re going to give you a terrible headache tomorrow. Now those things are evil. But the things that are good are the things that give you pleasurable sensations, let us say, I was going to say anticipations, but you get the realization, and then that are up-building and uplifting and beneficial – that benefit others, that benefit you. They’re like one cigarette says that, if you believe it, 'best for me and best for you.'

Well, you know, you know what they do, they take things like that and they take the very slogans of the very thing that belong to God and misappropriate it and apply it to their products.

You know the thing that’s best for me and best for you, the thing you ought to walk a mile for, and the thing that is right for you and good for you and enjoyable, are the ways of God, the law of God.

The people don’t want that. No, they want these things that destroy them. They want these things that dissipate and tear them down and that’s why they’re evil.

Now things aren’t evil because they’re good for you and because God wants you to suffer and therefore God is full of vanity like the little imaginary god of Herbert Spencer. He never knew anything about the true God. But the god of Herbert Spencer that he pictured was a god that was so vain and so egotistical that he was lower than any human being could become, and that he got pleasure out of our unhappiness and our suffering, and denies us everything good and that the law of God is bad for us.

Now the law of God is the way of good for every one of us. It’s God’s greatest blessing for us.

Result of Choosing The Wrong Way (PLAY FROM 23:28)

Well there we are. And so anyway God had to make us free moral agents. And He had to make it possible for man to so completely reject God that God is just out of the picture.

Now God has set aside 6,000 years to permit that exact process; 6,000 years for humanity to have free reign and to write its lessons in its own experience. And man has been doing that for 6,000 years.

Look at the results; we’ve been writing it the wrong way. We’ve been defying God. Mankind has turned away from the law of God. He’s turned to his own ways under the sway of Satan. He can’t see the devil any more than he can see God. But he likes to obey the devil.

And so he has followed the way of lust, and the way of murders, and the way of thefts. It’s all vanity, vanity, vanity! And even greed is only a means of satisfying vanity. And 'all,' as the wisest man who ever lived was inspired, by God, to write, "…all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). The book of Ecclesiastes, following the book of Proverbs, in your Bible, "all is vanity."

And human beings have come to the place they, it seems that we just don’t have good understanding anymore. Our minds have become perverted. We’ve been born into such a world.

And this world has rejected God! And, as a result, our sins have separated between us and God! And the world does not know God! And so the world seems to think that God has gone way off – that God has lost His power, and that God is impotent.

Listen my friends, God RULES this world! And it is a part of God’s rule that He allows this world to cut itself off from Him. He allows this world to get so far from Him that the world doesn’t even know God and that God doesn’t seem real anymore.

Let me tell you God is more real than anything that does seem real to you. The things that seem real to you are all going to rot and decay and they aren’t going to last very long. But God will be here forever. And God created everything that you see and know.

Now Jesus replied that it wasn’t because of any sin of this man’s parents. And I started to say that there are sins that are physical sins as well as spiritual. And when you commit a physical sin you bring unhappiness or suffering or sickness or disease or something like that on yourself.

Now every sickness and disease is not the direct cause of a sin that we have committed ourselves. Actually, this blindness was a result of sin. But Jesus didn’t say it wasn’t a result of sin, did He?

"Jesus replied, "Neither for his own sin, nor for his parents’ [you know it might have been inherited from way back, or from some other reason, but]- it was to let the work of God be illustrated in him. While daylight lasts, we must be busy with the work of him who sent me: night comes, [the night is coming] when no man can do any work. (John 9:3-4 Moffatt Translation)

My friends God is allowing it to be day still; when we can still get out the precious gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the gospel that God sent by Him; that’s the gospel that you hear proclaimed on this broadcast. And my friends it still can go out. And Jesus said it must go to "…ALL THE WORLD for to witness unto ALL NATIONS." (Matthew 24:14)

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