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

The World Tomorrow

John 10, Ministers Condemned and Healing

by Herbert W Armstrong

(PLAY FROM START)

{1} …the gospel that Jesus preached. They recognize it. The world doesn’t recognize it, "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God" (Romans 8:7). And Jesus is the Word of God. And He didn’t speak of Himself. He only spoke that which the Father, which sent Him, told Him and commanded Him (John 12:49-50). And the world is antagonistic against that. And the world is not going to recognize what you hear preached on this program as long as I preach exactly that which Christ preached: the same message, the same gospel, that which the early apostles preached, that which the early Church believed and practiced and followed while they were inspired and led by the Holy Spirit of God.

Now Jesus said that His sheep would follow Him. A stranger they will not follow. They will flee from him. That is a parable, but they didn’t understand it. Then He said He was the door, or the gate into the sheepfold. And all that had come before Him were thieves and robbers. (John 10:1-8 paraphrased)

And there had been many so-called 'Christs' before Him. And all of the pagan religions are based on something that started way back there right at the time of Nimrod and his wife, Semiramis, just two, three generations – three, four generations after the Flood. And every religion in this world today is merely a degeneration, a derivation, or an evolution from that which started back there at that time.

Then He said He is the door, or the gate, into the sheepfold. And He said, "The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy…" (John 10:9-10). And we see a lot of that today.

And we read of the preachers of this time in the thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel. We read of them that:

"Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel [and we’re Israel. We are the land, the people of Israel today], prophesy against them, and say unto them [and this is the ministers, the preachers], Thus saith the Lord [Eternal] unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should the shepherds not feed the flocks? [Jesus came to feed the flock. He came to save the flock and to protect them. But what do they do today? Here it is in the third verse, Ezekiel 34:] You eat the fat, you clothe you with the wool, you kill them that are fed: but you feed not the flock [that is with the spiritual food, not with the message of Jesus, as God sent it by Him]. The diseased have you not strengthened, neither have you healed that which was sick…" (Ezekiel 34:2-4)

Healing Power of Faith (PLAY FROM 02:41)

Why of course not. Didn’t God raise up medical science for the healing of the people? Should the ministers heal the people by direct prayer? Should the ministers be required to have to be close enough to God to have THE FAITH OF CHRIST by which they might heal – the same faith with which Jesus healed the sick?

Jesus gave His disciples – when He sent them out, even in practice missions, before they became ordained as the apostles – He gave them power to heal the sick! And He said when you go, heal the sick, and preach the good news of the kingdom of God!

But they don’t preach the gospel of the kingdom of God today. They don’t even know what the kingdom is; they don’t know how to be born into it; they don’t know when you can be born into it! They don’t even know whether it’s here, or whether it’s coming, or what the kingdom is!

And some people think the kingdom is the Church. And some people think the kingdom is just some hocus-pocus spiritual nothing, or a sentimental, or an emotional something up in the clouds, or some wishful thinking in your mind. And some people think that the kingdom of God is the British Commonwealth of nations, and the United States, because they know our identity.

And everybody has an idea except the right one, it seems. And very few people know how you get into the kingdom of God. You have to be born into it. "Except you be born again, you can’t enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5 paraphrased). And very few people know what it is to be born again, and the difference between being begotten now and then being born later. Very few people know those things.

And so you read back here. "The diseased have you not strengthened, neither have you healed them that were sick." (Ezekiel 34:4)

Jesus set an example. He set the example for His ministers, as well as for the lay members.

Now in the New Testament we are told for the Christians, if you are sick. "Is any among you sick? let him call for [what – the doctors of medicine? Now I can’t find that in my Bible any place. I can find where God rebuked and condemned people for calling on medical science or the doctors, and where they were not healed, but were allowed to die. But the only command I can see when you’re sick is, not to call for the doctors, but] to call for the elders of the church [and it doesn’t say let them use medicines and drugs, or operate with knives, but it says], let them pray over the sick" (James 5:14 paraphrased). Pray to God, rely on the power of God!

Today there’s much of the form of godliness in the churches, there’s much form and ceremony. We have beautiful church services every Sunday morning in stately, magnificent cathedrals and church edifices all over the United States, all over the British Empire, wherever the people of Israel are today in the northwestern Europe nations.

You’ll find much of the form, much of the ceremony, "…but they deny the power thereof" (II Timothy 3:5): They deny the power of God to heal when they’re sick.

Listen: your faith in Christ won’t save you, my friends. Your faith in Christ is required, and your repentance toward God is required as a prior condition to receiving the Spirit of God which will implant within you, by a divine miracle, THE faith OF Christ!

That’s the same faith that Christ had; that is the faith by which Jesus Christ healed the sick.

And if the ministers of the churches were the real ministers of Christ, THEY WOULD HAVE THE FAITH OF CHRIST. THEY WOULD HAVE THE SAME FAITH that Jesus had. That was the faith that healed the sick.

That’s the kind of faith that Peter had; and Paul. Why even Peter’s shadow passing over people healed them. He was so filled with that faith of Christ.

Paul healed people by the hundreds and hundreds. Really, it wasn’t Paul who was doing it. It was God who did it, not Paul’s faith, but the faith that was IN Paul.

Now Paul explained it in, let’s see, Galatians 2:20, I think it is where he said:

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life I now live, I live by [what?] by THE faith OF the Son of God." (Galatians 2:20)

Let’s turn to that now. Keep Ezekiel 34. I’m keeping my finger in there so I can turn back to it just a moment later. But notice this over here that Paul said, Galatians 2:20:

"I am crucified with Christ." (Galatians 2:20)

You’re bought and paid for with a price; you are not your own! And you’re to give up your own life if you’re a real Christian! If you haven’t done that you’re not a real Christian.

Different Bible Versions (PLAY FROM 07:08)

As long as you’re hanging on to your own life, as long as you have the carnal mind that is enmity against the law of God, and that disagrees with God, and all of those things, until you have given yourself mind, body, spirit, soul – everything that composes you – to God as His servant, as an instrument in His hands, to let Him take over and fully possess you, and live His life in you – you’re not a real Christian. You haven’t even been begotten, let alone been born again. And most people today think they’re already born again.

And a whole lot of that comes from the King James Translation, which is merely, not really a translation of the Bible, it only is a version. And it in itself, I wonder if you realize, my friends, the so-called Authorized, or the King James Translation, it does contain hundreds of mistakes – they're little ones, I know. And most people - well I don’t mean to say that anybody is misled by it, except on a very few points. People are not misled by it. If they would only understand it as it is, they’d be alright, they’d twist and pervert that.

But nevertheless the King James Translation is merely a revision of the Douay Roman Catholic Translation.

And we have here in our library copies of that Bible, the Douay Roman Catholic Bible. And the copies that we have are originals printed way back before 1611. One I think was printed in the year of 1600, and the other in the year of 1609, before the King James was translated.

And you can compare; you can take our copy that was actually printed, and the very copy we have was printed before the King James was ever revised, or translated, or whatever you want to call it. And you’ll see that there is very, very little difference. And that Bible, in English, was translated out of the Vulgate, or the Latin translation, and that was in the Latin language.

Now the Bible wasn’t written in the Latin language. But nearly all of the Old Testament was written, originally, when it was inspired through the prophets of God, they wrote it in the Hebrew language in the Old Testament – in the New Testament in the Greek, not in the Latin language.

And this Latin translation, in turn, the Old Testament had entirely been translated out of a Greek Septuagint translation, which had been translated, some years before Christ even, from the original Hebrew into the Greek language.

Now every time you translate you lose some of the sense and, naturally, you can’t get it, well, exactly the same in another language, perhaps, always. Certainly you don’t get it word-for-word. Perhaps the thought can be very faithfully translated. And there is no reason why, in the English language, we can’t have the exact faithful rendering of the Word of God. And it is available and we can have it.

There are thousands of copies of the Greek New Testament and of the Hebrew of the Old Testament. And there are mistakes in some copies. But where you have a thousand of them it’s pretty easy to weed out the ones that are in error and find the ones that are true. And you will find many Greek texts of the New Testament.

But anyway the Vulgate was translated out of copies of the Greek of the New Testament and out of the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old. And so the Old Testament, it had first been translated, before Christ, into the Greek language.

Then later, after Christ, that was translated into the Latin language – and, after that had been copied and re-copied, with a chance of some mistakes, that had been translated into the English language, by the Roman Catholics, in the Douay Version.

And then that in turn was revised, by comparison with what copies they had at the time of the original Hebrew and Greek, by the King James translators, and that is the King James. And it’s written in language that they used over 400 years ago in England, but which has undergone so many changes that many of the words we don’t use at all anymore. And when you read them they don’t carry too much meaning.

Now that is why, my friends, we consult many different translations, and also why we consult the original copies, that is copies of the original of the Hebrew and the Greek, to know exactly what any passage does say.

And then again it’s almost impossible to translate the Bible without interpreting. You have to certainly interpret thought, because you can’t, well, transliterate. You can’t simply make a translation word-for-word from one language into another, because sentences aren’t phrased and expressed in the same manner in one language as they are in another. And so what you have to do is to translate the thought, and you have to be sure you understand the thought.

And since the Bible interprets the Bible, a carnal mind can’t interpret it, and can’t understand it. The Bible interprets the Bible. Christ is the Word and He is the Interpreter. You shouldn’t look to anyone but Christ as an interpreter. And so there you are.

Begotten; or Born? (PLAY FROM 11:59)

Well now one thing in the King James is this: they often use the word 'born' where 'begotten' should have been translated. And the reason for that is that, in the Greek language, they have one word that stands for both 'begotten' and 'born.'

That is 'begotten' - by that I mean the conception that takes place. In other words at the time the child, for instance, the unborn baby, is conceived in the mother’s womb – that’s one time.

But it isn’t born yet. It isn’t born until the fetus that is there conceived has grown large enough to be born. And so the birth actually is something else.

And yet in the Greek language, in which the New Testament was inspired, the same word is used for both 'begotten' and also 'born.'

And so the translators, in one or two places, have made a mistake in translation. And you might be led to think that you are already born again. But if you get the whole sense of all of it, and get the whole Bible, you will see that no place does the New Testament teach, and the inspired original, no place teaches that you are born again when you have publicly professed Christ. There is nothing in the Bible, in the way it was originally given, to indicate that anyone is actually born again when they accept Christ. That is an absolute error and it is a mistake.

We are merely begotten. And no one, when you’re BORN of God, you cannot sin! It’s impossible to sin! You’ll find that over there in I John, the second or third chapter. I John, let me just turn to it here real quickly, just a second. And it’s impossible to sin, because the seed, that is the Spirit, which is the seed of life of God remains in the one who is actually born of God. It’s the third chapter and it is the ninth verse.

"Whosever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: AND HE CANNOT SIN, because he is born of God." (I John 3:9)

Now while Christ was on earth He could sin. He was tempted in all points like as we (Hebrews 4:15), and if it was impossible for Him to sin, He could not have been tempted. Therefore it was possible for Him to sin.

You could not say of Jesus, during His earthly life, that He cannot sin – that is, no one could have said it at that time, in the present tense – because He could have sinned, but He just didn’t!

And He didn’t for the simple reason, my friends, that He kept so close to God, He spent so much time in prayer, that He was so much closer to God in the spiritual things than the carnal things of this world, that He didn’t give carnality a chance to enter in. And He didn’t let any temptation conceive in the act of sin, never once, in His whole lifetime. And, consequently, He didn’t sin.

But every other human who ever lived has, because "all have sinned" (Romans 3:23). And I don’t think that any of you would try to tell me that nobody, that you know anyone that has never sinned, today, or even since conversion.

I have known people that bragged and claimed that, but the very bragging, and their very spiritual pride, was one of the greatest sins of all.

But when you are born of God, why, you will be spirit. "That which is born of the flesh IS flesh [that’s what we are now] but that which is born of the Spirit IS spirit." (John 3:6)

And God is a spirit, but we are flesh. Man is mortal; God is immortal. Man is human; God is Divine. And when you are born of God, you will be divine! When you are born of God, you will be Spirit! You’ll be flesh and bone, but you will be composed of spirit flesh and bone. And there will be no blood in your veins. And you won’t have to eat food to live.

Angels have eaten food on occasion. And there are scriptures that indicate that we shall eat food in the kingdom after we are really born of God. But it certainly won’t be necessary to sustain your life, because you will be immortal. Then you will be elevated to a condition where you can’t die – where it will not be possible!

Well back to what Paul was saying here, "I am crucified with Christ [he said]; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by [not by my faith in Christ; he didn’t say that, but] by THE faith OF the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

Now just a few verses before, he explains how you get that faith.

He says here, "…even we have believed [in verse sixteen] we have believed in Christ [that’s our faith in Christ] that we might be justified by the faith OF Christ…" (Galatians 2:16)

And that’s what you receive after you have been begotten of God and have received His Holy Spirit.

So my friends, "…we are saved by grace through faith: and that [faith] not [even] of yourselves: IT is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8 paraphrased). It’s the faith of Christ.

The Faith Needed For Healing (PLAY FROM 16:48)

And let me tell you something: if the ministers today were the ministers of Christ, really and truly, if they had really been begotten of Him, they would have the faith to pray for the sick, and they would have, not their human faith, but the faith of God by a divine miracle, the faith of Christ, the same faith with which Christ healed the sick, and they would pray for the sick, and the sick would be healed!

Now in this work we follow the Bible example. And do you know, my friends, that all over the United States today, and in this audience now listening, are people who have been healed of cancer, of leukemia, which is considered fatal?

Yes one woman, and she may be listening now, who was in a hospital when I was called to her, and wasn’t expected to live at all, with leukemia, but she’s well and she’s been out of the hospital for some time – quite a while ago – I don’t remember exactly.

One woman with a withered arm, which had grown out, and even her unbelieving husband admitted it before our young ministers when they were there, even though he, himself, was very disagreeable, apparently, at least opposed to the truth. But he had to admit that that had happened to his wife.

And almost every disease that you can think of, yes I’ve known of a good many that have been healed of tuberculosis, of heart troubles, of almost everything that you can think of.

Now God does require your faith, too, my friends. But I will say this: that all who believe are healed. And many, many hundreds have been healed.

One man, even, who had been blind, and I’m not sure, I believe that he had been blind from birth, like the one that we’ve just been reading of in this book.

So against the ministers of this day God says here in Ezekiel 34 "The diseased have you not strengthened, neither have you healed that which was sick…" (Ezekiel 34:4)

Well today they have the weak-kneed excuse for their lack of faith – the fact they don’t have the faith of Christ! "Well," they say, "healing was done away and we think God raised up medical science."

Well you'd better find where medical science came from. It didn’t come out of the Bible my friends. It just simply didn’t come out of the Bible. And you see if you can find any place in the Bible where it says, "If you’re sick, go to the doctors and the physicians and take medicines and drugs." See if you can find it.

Now I’m not going to offer a thousand dollars for it. But I’m going to tell you this: if you can find it, and if you’ll send it to me – any passage that gives anyone any such instruction – I will proclaim it to this whole nation over this program – and there are millions listening!

Now He continues, "…neither have you bound up that which was broken, neither have you brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost…" (Ezekiel 34:4)

And Jesus said He was "…sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:24). And they have been called the LOST ten tribes of Israel!

Where are the lost ten tribes? Well we know. But you know most of the ministers today are very irate about that truth that, in these last days, it has been revealed! And we come to see that the British and the American people, and the democracies of northwestern Europe, are the lost ten tribes in these modern nations that we call, 'democracy,' today! We are the lost ten tribes!

And the Jewish people are the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and some of Levi. They were the house of Judah. And the word, 'Jew,' is only a nickname for the house of Judah, another one of the kingdoms of Israel. They’re brothers, or cousins of ours, absolutely!

And my friends why should we have any feeling against them; why should there be any prejudice? I don’t know. And let me tell you: some people think because we know the truth of our identity as Israel that we’re, what they call, anti-Semitists, and that we have hatred toward the Jewish people. Let me tell you we don’t! And we have no antagonism; we say nothing against them one way or the other.

There are good Jews and there are bad Jews. And there are good Israelites of the ten tribes and bad ones. And there are good Gentiles and bad ones. It’s an individual matter. And God loves them all; and God loves all of us. And so should we love them all.

Now He said here, "You have not sought that which was lost." (Ezekiel 34:4 paraphrased)

And some of us who have, and have found them, my friends, most of the ministers of this day will criticize us.

I have never yet found anyone that could in any way overthrow the truth. But they always pretend we believe what we don’t on some argument, which of course isn’t true, because we don’t believe it either. And then they refute that argument and they say, "There, we’ve proved that they’re wrong." Well they'd better study it and open up their minds a little bit to the truth and begin to find them.

But God says, "Even though you didn’t seek them and find them, with force and cruelty have you ruled them" (Ezekiel 34:4 paraphrased). You’ve been right here ruling over them and feeding yourselves and not the flocks.

Well there it is. Now Jesus fed the flock. He came as the One to feed the sheep!

And He said, "I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). Oh, His way is the way of the abundant life. But the thieves and the false prophets and the false preachers come to steal, to kill and to destroy and to feed themselves instead of feeding the flock!

Now Jesus said down here in verse 16, "…other sheep have I [other sheep have I], that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." (John 10:16 paraphrased)

I would like to explain that. I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow. And I want to go right back to this same thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel – and I’m going to show you that other fold and what it is.

And Jesus said, "…other sheep have I, that are not of this fold [now what sheep was that? It was not the Jewish people to whom He was speaking there, at all]: them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." (John 10:16)

Now, in the next program in this series, I’ll bring you scriptures that show you exactly what that is so plainly that there can be no doubt as to what He meant. Where is that other fold; and who is it? Is it the Gentiles; or who is it; and what is it?

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