The World Tomorrow
Man's Last Chance
by Herbert W Armstrong
(PLAY FROM START)
I tell you, my friends, it is a good thing that there's good news for the world tomorrow because there is very bad news for the world today — Not only bad news that has already happened, that is now news now recorded as history within the last 24 hours — but the news of the remainder of this world is very, very bad. The whole continent can now be laid waste in one night — men, women, children, all animal and plant life without warning — in one night we can have human life blasted from off this planet.
General MacArthur once announced that we have had our last chance — if we will not devise some greater or more equitable system, our Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spirit of recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature, and all the material and cultural development of the past 2,000 years — unless we can change human nature, and our spiritual attitude and approach of all humanity and all over the earth. We have had our last chance. I tell you, it's time we begin to look into the future and see what's going to happen.
Nineteen hundred years ago, Jesus Christ came telling us that there is a time of trouble right ahead of us now in our generation in this twentieth-century; a time of trouble so great that there has never been anything like it and never will again in the history of this earth and that except those days — of world trouble, of catastrophic events such as this world cannot dream now, that will dwarf anything that has happened in World War I, World War II or any other time on this earth — except those days should be shortened there should no flesh be saved alive.
Christ's prophecy (PLAY FROM 2:25)
Now Jesus Christ looked down into this time a long time ago and in this great prophecy of Matthew 24, this has not been understood, you haven't really seen what He did say — He talked about a time of tremendous trouble coming on our people. And it's going to hit the United States and the British Commonwealth of nations and Northwestern Europe and that's exactly what He's talking about when you put together Luke's account of this same prophecy of His and Mark's account and all of them and then the other scriptures you can finally see exactly what He was talking about. And He said it would be a time of trouble — national trouble, and international world trouble such as never had come to any nation from the beginning of time nor ever shall be again.
The prophet Daniel spoke of this same time. It's spoken of in a good many prophesies in your Bible. I tell you, it's time we look into the future. But He said for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. And His whole Gospel, the whole message of Jesus Christ, while He warned people of what men are going to bring on themselves as they are now doing, and now we're coming to the grand smash climax of that — when even human life is threatened with being wiped off the earth — the whole message of Jesus Christ, nevertheless, was one of GOOD news for the world tomorrow; when He is coming again, the second coming of Christ, to setup the Kingdom of God and to bring peace to this earth at last. And He teaches everywhere that it will not come by men crying out to God, it will not come by men themselves deciding to reform and to change their own natures which they will not do and are not capable of doing. It won't come by any efforts or any ideas of men one way or the other — it will come by the direct intervention of God because man will have brought himself to the place where if God does not intervene, we would exterminate human life off this planet. I tell you, my friends, we're coming to that place now. I tell you it's time to open our eyes to what is coming.
Now, Christ said that He is coming back to this earth. And every scripture says He'll come not only as the King of kings and the Lord of lords but He's coming in all the power and the glory of the supernatural creator God; the ruler of the entire universe and He's going to rule the nations. How? With a rod of iron. They're going to be forced in the government of this world to be governed by the very laws of God. Now, I want to tell you my friends, until Jesus Christ returns and enforces the law of God — which is the law of love, and which is the way of peace and the only way — until He forces it upon a mankind that is antagonistic towards God, we will never have peace. And we have come to the place that while human nature may not have changed, my friends, the engines of destruction that our technologies and inventive sciences have produced, have changed. Yes, as it was in the days of Noah, so is it right now as Jesus Christ Himself said it would be — but, in the days of Noah, they didn't have the tremendous technological developments and scientific and mechanical developments that were capable of blasting human life from off the earth, as we have now.
Well, what is going to happen and what is the time order of events as they are to come? Now, we were in this twenty-four chapter of Matthew where Jesus was giving the prophecy; showing how the whole world would be deceived in the meantime but coming down to the time of the end as it approached; we would be in a time of world war — we're already in that. We've had the first two stages of world war; we're in a recess now between World War II and World War III. Next He said there would be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in different places and all these even He said are the beginning of sorrows. That's the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, the seventh and the eighth verses I've been quoting. And then next something else is going to happen.
Now, here's what we have seen. He interjected in verse fourteen to show that the very gospel He preached was once more going to go to the whole world in these last days. That time has come. It is now going around the world. That prophecy is being fulfilled this moment, this instance, in your ears. That is the prophesied event now taking place on the earth. This very program that you're hearing is foretold by Jesus Christ, it is definitely prophesied, and it is the warning that when this Gospel has gone around the world for a witness unto all nations, then shall the end come. The end of this world, which is the end of this present civilization of this age; this time.
the great tribulation (PLAY FROM 7:21)
Now, He went on to show that a terrible time of tribulation and trouble is coming next, but He indicates here that those who are His servants, His agents, His instrumentality, His body though whom the same Spirit is working in carrying out the work of God; that work in the very body of Jesus when He was here in person, His own physical body 1900 years ago — that they shall take a flight to a place of safety. God will provide it. And He said in verse twenty of Matthew twenty-four: "Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter neither on the Sabbath day." Now, I was showing you that at this time in Daniel the twelfth chapter is explained the prophecy of where Michael, the great archangel, will stand up. And how, when the archangel Michael stands up, he stands up against somebody.
Then we turned over to the twelfth chapter of Revelation, and we saw Michael standing up against another former archangel who is now Satan the Devil; the great dragon. And how the devil was cast down to this earth as a result of Michael standing up and how as a result of that he came down in great wrath. And he was stirred to great wrath. "The devil is come down unto you," verse twelve, Revelation 12: "... having great wrath because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. (13) And when the dragon, [who is the devil,] "...saw that he was cast [out into] the earth, he persecuted the woman [which is the True Church, the saints that God is using with His spirit carrying out His work on this earth,] "...persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child and to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle that she might FLY into the wilderness..." To a place of protection and safety that God has provided.
Now, my friends, that does not say fly up to heaven. There is not one promise anywhere in the Bible that anybody can ever go to heaven. There is ample scripture that nobody ever will. If we're to go to heaven, then David must have gone to heaven; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If the Kingdom of God is heaven, then Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are there because Jesus said to the Pharisees that they themselves would be resurrected but they won't be in any heaven. At least it won't be the heaven that people think about, up where God's throne is. But that they would see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God and they themselves thrust out! Now, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not in heaven now. David is not in heaven now because Jesus distinctly said that no man has ascended up to heaven at all. (John 3:13) No human being has ascended up to heaven when He was here, in the flesh, 1900 years ago. And on the first inspired sermon by the Apostle Peter when the Holy Spirit had come to inspire him on that very day of Pentecost, Peter speaking definitely of David, said David is not ascend into the heavens and that's in the your Bible in Acts, the second chapter, and verse 34. Read it, Acts 2, verse 34 — the inspired sermon of Peter. He said that David is not ascended into the heavens. But he's talking there about a resurrection and how Christ was resurrected from the dead. And the Bible says He's the first born of many brethren and that we're to be resurrected too. David is in his grave; David will be resurrected.
Now, those living, at this time, who are in the very work of God, who are watching, and who are praying always, are to be accounted worthy to escape and they are going to be taken to a place of safety. Alright, now where are we now? Well, this gospel of the Kingdom is going to the world. We're in the middle of the world war situation that was to come at the very end. We have already had some forerunners of the famine and the pestilence. We had a great pestilence epidemic right after World War I, let me see I think it was in 1918, that it struck — the flu epidemic which was worse than anything before or since in the way of flu or a thing of that type, but my friends, that was mild compared what is coming. That was very mild compared to what is coming.
great drought (PLAY FROM 11:52)
We have had drought. There was the drought in the Middle West in 1934, and then the invasion of bugs and grasshoppers and locusts and everything in 1935. And many people from Kansas and South Dakota and sections in the Middle West like that, and from Oklahoma and places of that sort came out here to the Pacific coast at that time. My friends, that's only a forerunner, that's all. But when it comes in its full force and fury it's described by the prophet Joel, and also Ezekiel says something about it. It's described in other places in the Bible. Joel says, that it will be a time when the seed shrivels under the clods, the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are ruined because the grain has failed. How the beasts groan, he said, the herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them. Even the flocks of sheep are dismayed. (Joel 1:17-18) What's going to happen when that comes, my friends? What's going to happen? That is the next thing now to occur. That and the flight of God's own people.
Of God's people who are now sending His Gospel to the world. A great many people are having a part in this sending of the Gospel to the world whose voices you don't hear. I wonder if you realize, my friends that it's costing a great deal of money and I don't have that money. God took away all the money I had; He took away all of the success I thought I was making in my early life — reduced me to a condition of real hardship and poverty until I learned my lesson. And, ever since that, this work has carried on as a work of faith not through anything that I have had. Not through anything that I have inherited. But there are literally thousands of faithful co-workers who are having their part and through their tithes and their liberal offerings are providing this. They too are working with me. It is through their sacrifice, and their mission of love, this very activity of love on their part, and all of us and all of my co-workers and associates, that you're able to hear this program. That millions of you are able to hear it. That you're able to hear it night after night, morning after morning and noon after noon in different parts of the world. That you can get the Gospel in print through The Plain Truth. Through all these booklets that we send out and now coming through this Bible study course. There are thousands who have enrolled and I hope that you will if you haven't as yet. I hope that you will.
study your bible (PLAY FROM 14:31)
I want to tell you, my friends, that Bible is the most interesting and the most valuable; the most important book. Huh! Well, important? There's no other book that is important, by comparison. Because, in it, you not only find the explanation of today's conditions in the world. You find the way to peace; you find the way to happiness, the way to salvation and eternal life. It's the book that's going to judge you on the Judgment day. And you're going to be there. You're going to be judged and you're going to be judged by it. You need to understand that book. Very few do. I know that very few of you have been studying the Bible. You're guilty of not studying the Bible like you should. You open it and read a chapter here and there but you don't always understand it, do you? Well, it doesn't do you any good if you don't understand it. Here's a Bible study course such as has never come out before — that will make it plain; will open up the Bible so that you can understand it but you'll have to study it and it'll take a half hour every day or more of your time. It should take a lot more but I say, not less than half an hour a day. Don't enrol for it unless you want it. I mean unless you're willing to spend that much time on it. But I do want to say this. Many people are enrolling for this; they realize that they've been neglecting their Bible study. And they realize that they are in very dangerous ground because the time is coming that if we are not close to God, if we don't know what's coming, if we don't how it's coming and in what order and when.
And, if we're not close enough to God in prayer, and remember that, when you pray, you talk to Him but when you read and study your Bible; He's talking to you. Now then, if you just read over the Bible and don't understand it, that's like you open your ear to listen to some one talk but he's talking in a language you don't understand; and you don't hear him very well and you don't know a thing he said; what good did it do?
Is God really talking to you? Unless you learn how to study what He says and to understand it — but I tell you the Bible is so deep and there's so much to it, that no matter how much you've studied it and how much you understand it there is SO much in it for you yet to learn; you have no conception. Not one of you has ever studied the Bible enough you can stop, so don't forget, send your name and address in to enrol if you'll spend thirty minutes every day on it. That means on your Bible, this is merely just words showing you how to study and showing you what to get and where to go and one thing or another. Actually the study is in your own Bible. But if you want this, there's never been anything else like it, it'll make the Bible so interesting you just can't wait until you get at it the very next day again and study your lesson every single day. Now, you're going to have to get some note paper, and it's coming in loose leaf form; you should get a binder everyone of you for it, and put all these lessons so that you'll have then all together as one big book in the end. And, also you should buy loose leaf note paper of the same size with the three holes punched in the side to put in the same binder; we're going to ask you to write down the answers of every question. Write down these scriptures and when you do you'll remember those scriptures. You just, why what have you been doing, you've been carelessly reading over these scriptures. You don't always understand them.
You know you can read one scripture; I've often times I'll take one scripture — you remember when we were going through the New Testament, verse by verse, word by word and chapter by chapter, I would get one verse and sometime just expounding and explaining all that's in that one verse and the other things in other places in the Bible that pertain to it. It would take up a whole broadcast and I'd find I hadn't ever gotten through that one verse by the end of the program. Many of you have noticed how that's happened so many, many times. You can read a verse in the Bible and you put the emphasis or the real stress or accent on one word and it brings out new meaning. You put it on a different word and it brings out an altogether different meaning. Oh, you can spend so much time studying the Bible and when you begin to understand it become the most fascinating, the most interesting, the most thrilling thing that you ever did. Why, it's so much more thrilling than attending a football game or a basketball game or something like that. Yes, I know, I've been excited in my past days you know about those things the same as anybody else. And, I was born and raised back in Des Moines, Iowa, and I was back there when the Drake relays were started and I always use to take in those, and the track meets every Spring; in addition to the football games and the basketball games and everything else. Oh, I used to be thrilled with those things, but I want to tell you I've gotten thrills that are a thousand times greater and more rewarding too, out of the study of the Bible, and the things that you get in it. Well, you just don't know what life is and its rewards, and how rich and full it can be until you learn really what is in the Bible. I hope you'll enrol for this Ambassador College Correspondence Course. There I've taken a lot of time on that again. But, it's been very profitable time if it gets a few more of you people to write in and really in earnest go to work and study this thing and enrol in this course.
Alright, now then, I was mentioning what Joel says here about this time of famine that's coming. You've had a foretaste of it, you've been getting it — that's only just little driplings like a great downpour of a deluge, a cloud burst that is going to come and you've had a few sprinklings of rain. Just a few little sprinkle drops; that's all. Well, you people that have been getting these dust storms and all this drought that you've had, all you've had is just a little sprinkling. I want to tell you there's a cloudburst of famine coming only it won't be a cloudburst; it's just the opposite. It'll be a cloudburst of sun and no rain. Now, here is what we read in Joel again, there's no pasture for these cattle. Even the flocks of sheep are dismayed. They haven't minds to think it out or reason about it or anything they're just going to be — you know their minds are so constructed; God did the thinking and created what brain they have and put it in there that it makes them automatically eat and they know they should eat grass. They should eat the pasture, and here there won't be any. And they won't understand it.
Joel 1: 19-20 "...Unto thee, O LORD, I cry: for fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness," [That's the fire of the sun and hot days and the weather will be such it'll just seem like a fire.] "...and flame..." [the very flame of the sun.] "...has burned all the trees of the field..." What are you going to do when there's no pasture for your cattle, or for your sheep, or your hogs. And, some of you will know what I mean anyhow. And when the trees are burned up. And there's no fruit. And your vines will be dried up and there'll be no fruit on vines.
Joel 1:20 "Even the beasts of the field cry to thee because the water brooks are dried up,..." [Your rivers will be dried up, your river beds.] "...and fire..." [that is the fire of the heat of the sun] "...has devoured the pastures of the wilderness..."(RSV)
That's coming. Now, I want to read to you what Ezekiel says about that thing that's coming. And it's coming on us. Ezekiel is a prophet to our people as you read in the first chapter; not just the Jewish people but to the people that were never called Jews — the ten tribes of Israel. And that's speaking of our people. If you don't understand the identity of the United States, my friends, if you don't understand where we are mentioned in the Bible prophesies; above all things, you must read our booklet, United States in Prophecy. There's no charge at all, we'll be very happy to send you a copy free. My friends, you can't understand Bible prophecy unless you have that key.
That is a veritable key to an understanding of the prophecies. Why the prophesies of the Bible have been grievously misunderstood and no wonder! Because this vital key that is needed to unlock prophetic doors to understanding had become lost. That key is a definite knowledge of the true identity of the American and the British peoples in biblical prophecy. Where is the United States mentioned? Where are we in the prophesies? Here you have what you would get in a large book but it's condensed for quick and easy reading. Now, you'll have to do a lot more reading in your Bible. Search your own scriptures. This shows you where to look. Find it in your Bible. Find it in the works of history if you care to go to the libraries. But right here, in this little booklet, condensed in a nutshell, is the most fascinating story that you have ever read. I don't care whether you're a skeptic, an atheist, a church member, a real spirit-filled Christian. You're going to find here an amazing truth that has been hidden through the centuries. There is no story of fiction that you've ever read, that is so strange, so absorbing, so packed with suspense as this gripping story of the Bible. It makes the Bible the most interesting book you have ever picked up when you come to understand it. And this will open it to your understanding. Write in for that booklet, United States in Prophecy; I'll announce it again at the close of the program. So that you can understand, this is talking about us and our people. And speaking of us and of our land:
a third to die from famine (PLAY FROM 24:14)
In Chapter five, of the prophecy of Ezekiel, and verse twelve, "A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with the famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee:" That means one third of our people are going to die in this famine, this terrible drought — it's going to be, it surely will be virtually nationwide. I don't know that this scripture tells us how many states it's going to cover but it's going to be the greatest thing that has ever hit this earth and the most terrible thing, the most devastating thing and disease epidemics are going to follow as they naturally would, in the wake of a thing like that. And one-third of our people are going to be killed by it. Now, this Great Tribulation, has two phases: It is a martyrdom of saints and it also is an invasion and a captivity that is slated to come on our land unless our people will repent and return to God and I'm giving you the warning now as certainly as Jonah gave the warning to Nineveh. They repented and it didn't happen. It won't happen here. And you people are enough, if you people listening would drop to your knees and if you would repent and if you would do as Joel says to do here.
Joel 2: 12-14 "Yet even now, says the LORD..." [through Joel,] "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning: (13) And rend your hearts, and not your garments. Return unto the [Eternal] your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.... (14) Who knows whether he will not turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, a cereal offering and a drink offering..." [and so on?] Joel 2:17 "With a cry out, "Spare thy people, O [Eternal] make not thine heritage..." [our nation, our people] "... a reproach, a byword among the nations."(RSV)
Then the Eternal will become jealous for His land, He will have pity His people and He would spare us. Does it make any difference whether we serve Him? Does it have anything to have with our happiness and our prosperity? Does it have anything to do with world conditions? Does it have anything to do with your heartaches, your mental fears and worries, your problems and your troubles that beset you so much, my friends. Listen, if you want to know the way to peace. Listen if you want to know the way to happiness and to prosperity.
Well, my friends, where are we now? This Gospel is warning; it's going to the world! Soon the night is coming when no man can work. Soon there'll also be a famine of hearing the word of the Eternal. A spiritual famine as well as this material famine for lack of rain. The next thing to happen then will be that famine coming and, the flight of God's people that are having part in His work. And the people that are sending this warning and this good news to the world will then have been taken in a flight to a place of safety. Then is going to come The Great Tribulation. That invasion that is to come on our land. And I want to tell you it is described as the most terrible, the most horrifing time of trouble that this world has ever known. It's the time the scientist are warning us about. When, if God doesn't step in and supernaturally and intervene — which He will — that no flesh could be saved alive. That humanity would be blasted off of this continent.
Now, what does Ezekiel says about that? And the third part, after a third of our people die in the famine, and the disease epidemic, "...a third part fall by the sword round about thee" (Ezekiel 5:12) and the remaining third are to be scattered into the land of our enemies unless we repent and turn to God. You're getting that warning, my friends — I know of no other voice giving it to you. You'd better repent while there's time. God promises you complete safety. Nothing need happen to you at all but it will happen unless you repent. This warning is going out. And it's going around the world.