The World Tomorrow

Rules of Success - Part 7

by Herbert W Armstrong

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

Now this is the seventh of a series on the Seven Rules of Success. Do you know that everyone could be, should be, happy? You can't be very happy if your life is a failure. Why are most people unhappy? Why are most people failures? Most people do not apply a single one of these seven rules that are fundamental prerequisites to success, the way to success. Well now, how about you? Do you know what these seven rules are? Most people don't. How many of these seven rules have you ever applied? Well listen and see.

The first rule of success is fixing the right goal in life. Did you ever fix a right goal in life? Did you ever fix any goal in life? Have you been striving toward a goal? Have you had one overall purpose in your life toward which you have been working, so that everything you do is drawing you closer to that goal, playing its part in bringing you to it? Did you ever think about it? And do you know a lot of people do have an aim, or a goal in life, which is a false goal? It's not the right goal, simply not the right one, because, having the right goal in life simply means knowing what success really is. I have discussed that at length in five past programs.

You know it's a great deal more that the mere accumulation of money. A lot of people think if a man has made money, he's a success. Why I have known men that had accumulated a great deal of money, and risen to the top, but they weren't successes. I told you of one man, that had been a great manufacturer, head of one of the great manufacturing corporations, whose name every one of you know very well, if I should mention it. And yet in the flash depression of 1920, after World War I, this man was so discontented, so unhappy, so frustrated, so mixed-up in his mind, that he committed suicide.

Now you wouldn't say that man was a success would you? And yet he had risen to the top of his profession. He was the chief employer of many, many thousands of men. He lived in a fine home. He wore the best clothes. He drove the best automobile. But he committed suicide. Money can't buy happiness. Money can't buy contentment. Money is not, in itself, success. Now I think it's true that in most cases, a man who is a success will have at least a moderate amount of money, or at least a moderate income.

It isn't very often that a man who is a success will be poor. Although even that could be true in some cases, probably has been in some cases. Where a man has been a real success, he's helped others, he's been happy himself, he has really achieved some kind of eminence, and still hasn't had a lot of money. Money can be good or evil according to how you use it anyway. But you need to know what is the real goal of life. Well we have covered that, I'm not going back over it now.

Right Education Necessary (Play from 03:31)

The second prerequisite to success is right education. Once you have your goal fixed, once you know where you are aiming, once you know where you are going, now you need to know the way, how you going to go there. If I am going on a trip, what would you think of me if I said, "Well I don't know where I am going, I'm just, oh, I'm just going to go around wherever it leads. Maybe I'll wind up on some dead-end road somewhere lost in the woods."

I want to know where I am going. I'm starting out to New York, I'm going to New York. Well now, how am I going to go? I need a certain kind of education. If I'm driving my car, I want a road map, or a series of road maps, as the case may be. I want to know the way. How am I going to get there. I need to know how to drive my automobile. I need to know a lot of things along the way to get me there happily, safely, and successfully. I need to know some of things about driving an automobile safely, and without accident, or harm to myself or anyone else. You need to know how to get there.

Well in the first place, very few people even have a right aim or a right goal, or know what the real goal of life is. And you can't, let me repeat, know the right goal, unless you know why you were put here on this earth. Are you just an accident? Did you just happen? And are you looking on success as merely getting into any old kind of a job, any kind of a business, any kind of a profession, and then perhaps going to the top in it?

Well, as I say, I've known many men that have done that, but they were failures, they were unhappy. They didn't help others at all, they might have been a curse to other people around them. They never made anyone else happy. I knew a man that had many, many millions of dollars. He was a multimillionaire, and always talking about being a multimillionaire, because he was proud of the fact. But he would never do business with anyone, unless that business deal could actually harm the other person he did business with.

He told me one time, he said, "Mr. Armstrong, there is only one way I ever do business." He said he likened it to plums falling off of a plum tree. He said, "I don't pluck it until it's ready." He said, "I wait until it's ripe, and I have my hand right under it where it can't go any other way, and then I pluck it right down into my hand." He said, "I never make a business deal unless I know, absolutely, by every factor, it's going to profit me."

Now he didn't tell me that he wouldn't make a deal unless it would harm the other person, but I observed that from experience, that I heard, and experiences that I had. He never did business with me, because the only way he was willing to, would be in some way that would have harmed me, or the institutions that I represent. And I wasn't willing to see them harmed, and so we just never did business together. And that man, apparently, didn't prove much of a blessing to other people. I don't know of anyone else that he really made happy.

Except one thing, I will say, there was one saving grace. So far as I could observe, that man was always very kind and loving towards his wife. You know you just can't find a man that is all bad can you? Where everything is wrong about him. No, this man must have had a lot of other good things about him too, but not many of his neighbors ever knew it. Well you need to know what life is all about. What is the real purpose of life? Why were you put here on this earth to know where you are going, how to get there. Now the next thing is the road maps, or education.

The Way to Peace they Don't Know (Play from 07:21)

What is the way? You know, most people are not successful because they don't know the way. We don't have any peace on this earth because people don't know the way to peace. We have our great statesmen. We have great lawyers. We have great statesmen, and men in politics, and men at the helm of great governments in this world. I wonder, do they really belong there, where they are? Wouldn't you think that one of the great prerequisites to being the head of a great government, would be a man that knows the way to peace, and how to preserve it?

Well we think we know the way. Of course here in the United States, we think the way is that we just simply have to keep ahead of the other side of the world. In the production of destructive weapons that can destroy everything, so that it serves as a deterrent, so that they don't come over and destroy us. Well, according to one way of reasoning that may be necessary. But still do we really have peace? We don't really have peace, not when we have other governments, and men in them that are like a lot of wild animals, ready to spring at your throat any second if you don't hold them at bay.

Does anyone know the way to world peace? And how many of you know the way to peace in your own home, and your own households? Most of you don't even know the way. That's part of education, that's part of education. You know that there is something, absolutely, decidedly, wrong with the world today, and that the chief cause is our system of false education. Yes my friends, there is something criminally wrong in our system of education, and what we teach young people, beginning in the very first grade. Or shall I say even little children before they get to the first grade, in their own homes.

How many of you there parents, really know how to teach your little children, before they even start to school in the first grade? Why most of you never gave a thought to teaching your children. If you believe in spanking them at all, you only do it when they get on your nerves. Or they irritate you and make you mad, and you spank them out of anger. A great many of you do. Or maybe you've fallen for this modern whacky psychology, that says you must never spank a child. You must never try to tell a child anything he is doing is wrong, or teach him that it's wrong. You must just let him do what his inclination leads him to do. Whatever impulse leads him to do.

You believe that kind of nonsense? Well you have a lot to learn if you do. And some of our modern, whacky psychologists and psychiatrists, they don't know whether they are going or coming, or which way they're going. Some of them are insane, and pronounce other people insane, that are as absolutely sane as anybody. Do you know that if Jesus Christ were here today, that the average psychiatrist today, I believe, or at least a lot of them, would pronounce Him insane. And yet He was the most intelligent man, the man of the greatest sense and the most rational man who has ever lived on the face of this earth today.

Well listen my friends, give us right education, I mean right education, not the wrong education. Because as I say, there is something criminally wrong in our system of education today. Give us right education, and remove the evil from human nature, which prevents the world from acting on right knowledge, if and when it gets right knowledge, and we would have what? Why we'd have Utopia! You'd have happiness, you'd have peace. There wouldn't be any armies or navies anywhere in the world. You wouldn't need them.

Nobody would go around committing suicide, and we wouldn't have any paupers anywhere in the world either. No, we'd have happiness. We'd have joy. We'd have people that are patient with one another, and understanding, and trying to help one another. And everybody would be smiling, and everybody would just be happy.

But of course we have a lot of human nature. And human nature, first of all, is vanity above everything else. And vanity shows itself in greed, and in competition, and in strife, and in bitterness, resentment, hostility, warring, fighting, anything to hurt the other fellow, and thinking you are helping yourself. And that isn't the way to make you happy at all. It doesn't make anyone happy.

Utopia is Possible (Play from 12:03)

Now fantastic though it may seem, we are yet going to have Utopia. Utopia shouldn't be impossible. You hear about Utopia as if that is absolutely crazy to think of such a thing. But why shouldn't we have it? Why should we have anything else? Do you know, my friends, unless we are violating laws that exist, unless we do things that violate the real rules, and because we don't know what the rules are, we would never have anything but peace and happiness.

If you didn't break the rules of health in your body, you would never be sick, and most people don't even know that. They think that you're just naturally sick, that God made you to be sick. Oh no, He didn't, my friends. God made you to be healthy, and to be happy, and to be prosperous, believe it or not. He didn't intend you to be poor either, or to go around bragging about that, because that's nothing to brag about.

And yet we are going to have prosperity universally. We're going to have happiness and peace, because your Bible says there is a time coming, and very soon, that this generation is going to live into, when this whole earth will be as full of the knowledge of God - which means of the knowledge of the way to peace, the way to success, the way to happiness - as the ocean beds are full of water.

Now that's pretty full of right knowledge. And when we come to that kind of knowledge - well knowledge is the direction, the education, that tells you the way to get what you want. Now what we want is alright, we all want to enjoy life, that's alright. We all want peace, we all want happiness. We all want a full, abundant life that is interesting, and perhaps even supplied with a few thrills along the way. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as they are the right kind. And we're all going to have it, and before this generation has passed on. That's pretty shocking, but happily that's true.

Now listen, if one would really use his mind in thinking, he would ask, "Well why doesn't the gospel point the way, and accomplish this result?" My friends, the gospel, the true gospel does, that gospel is in your Bible. You'll find it in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You'll find it in the Acts of the Apostles. You'll find it in all the epistles, or the letters, of the apostle Paul. You'll find it in the book written by Peter. You'll find it in the letters of John and in Jude. You will even find it in the book of Revelation.

And yes, believe it or not, you will find it in many of the writings of the Old Testament, because the Church, which is the instrument of God, the true Church, the one and only true Church, is given a commission of preaching that Gospel. And the Church, my friends, is founded on the apostles and the prophets (Ephesians 2:20). The prophets, which means Moses, which means Isiah, which means Jeremiah, which means Ezekiel, which means Zephaniah, Amos, Micah, Zechariah and the other prophets. Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone and the Head of the Church. And yet most people don't even know that today.

We haven't heard the seven rules of success that would lead to real prosperity. But first of all to peace, to happiness, to joy, to a full abundant, interesting life that's just so thrillingly interesting that you just love, and enjoy every minute of it. We should all have it, and you can have it, it's possible for you if you will heed and listen.

The Connetion between Religion and Education (Play from 15:42)

Alright, now I happen to be, not only the called and chosen minister of Jesus Christ to preach His gospel, but also an educator and a college president. And I have often been asked, "What on earth is the connection between religion and education?" Now, as an educator and the president of a college, some people can't see any connection whatsoever between religion and education, such as we have in our schools, and our colleges, and our universities.

In our Western world we've become so imbued with the idea of separation of church and state, that we see no connection between religion and government. No connection between religion and business, or religion and education. But right now I am concerned with the unrecognized evils in our system of education. A new and a happier world, my friends, cannot come until there is a drastic change in our system of education.

Something, I repeat, is criminally wrong in the popular system of education that is in force and effect in this world. The most basic and essential knowledge is not being taught today in our public schools, and our colleges, in our universities, and in your high schools. The most essential basic knowledge, the knowledge that first of all is most important of all. That knowledge is being denied and withheld from your children, and from the people of the United States.

Now of course, the three 'R's' as they say, 'readin, ritin, rithmetic', in the vernacular, that's fundamental. That's alright and very necessary. Geography, history, languages, science, all important, if it's true science. But they are not the most important knowledge. Did you know that? The most important things to know are these; so listen.

What we are. Do you know what you are? Are you just a body, or are you an immortal soul inside of a body? Or just what are you? Most of you don't know. You don't even know what you are. The next thing; why are you? That is, whether you were put here on this earth, by design and by plan for an actual purpose, and what is that purpose? Were you ever taught that in school? Of course not, because your teacher didn't even know. When your teacher went to school, it wasn't taught then. And when that teacher's teacher went to school, it wasn't taught in that generation either.

Did you know that the apostle Paul, writing to the people at Rome, that were Gentile born, the people who looked on themselves as superior to the Jews, because they said all of the great men and the philosophers are Gentiles. Did you know, that he said to them, that when your great philosophers and your leaders, when they knew, the men of education, knew God; they didn't look on Him as God, and they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge? They threw God out off the curriculum. They threw God out of their knowledge (Romans 1:28)

And they've thrown God out of the school system today, and they don't teach anything about God. And yet all basic and essential knowledge, my friends, must come by revelation of God, things that man cannot discern, things that man cannot find out or learn for himself.

Certainly God has ordained man with a mind. He has ordained us with ten fingers on our two hands. He has ordained us with powers of exploration and investigation. He has ordained us with minds, and powers to invent. Test tubes, laboratories, means of making many tests, microscopes, telescopes, ways of examining, testing, discerning many, many, many things. And many things we can learn for ourselves. But do you know there is nothing in any laboratory, there is nothing you can see in any test tube, or in any microscope or telescope that will tell you why your were born, and what is the purpose that God Almighty, the Creator had in mind, that He is working out here below. Absolutely nothing.

The True Values in Life are Not Taught (Play from 20:04)

Now why are you here? What's life all about? That's the first thing that you need to know. Well then, we get back to the very first rule of success, which is having a right goal, a right purpose. Education should teach you that if it's proper education. That's the starting point. Where is it being taught, my friends, today? No, God is not retained anymore because, you know, we have separation of church and state. And religion is divided up into so many quarreling, disagreeing groups, and denominations, and sects. Each one thinks that it is right of course, and every other one is wrong. And so, the only way we can avoid offending, because in the school systems, if you teach one idea, you are going to offend those that believe another idea, and so they just don't teach any of it.

And so people have to go along groping in the darkness of superstition. Yes I tell you, modern superstition on the part of those that think they are intellectual and rational. Even those who think they know all about science today, and much of it 'science, falsely so-called', as God says in His own book. We need to know why we are? What we were put on this earth for? What is the real purpose? And then the knowledge of the way as I mentioned before, the way to peace, the way to happiness, the way to joy. In other words, the way to success. Why that is the most essential thing in all education!

Now you go to college. You go to a school of technology. They may teach you even how to break down the atom. They may teach you something in nuclear physics. They may teach you some technology. They may teach you how you can invent things, or how you can do many things in mechanics, or with metals, or with forces of nature, or with chemistry. They are not teaching you how to have peace. They are not teaching you what is the real success of life, or what life is all about. They are not teaching you the way to all of these things that you really want.

They are not teaching you, in a word, to live. They are only teaching you how to earn a living, and there is a great difference. Of course we need to know both. I am not quarreling with teaching anyone how to earn a living. We all, you know, we need to earn a living, we don't want to starve. So that's alright. But what's the use of just earning a living when you don't go on and also teach how to live? What are the real values of life? What are the true values, and what are the false values? Do you know most people are striving after a lot of wind, because they have a false sense of values. They don't know the right from the wrong, the true values from the false.

No, we need the knowledge of the way to peace, the way to happiness, the way to joy, the way to peace of mind, the full interest-packed abundant life, and real genuine prosperity. Which does not necessarily mean great wealth at all. It might mean that, in the case of some people, if they know how to handle that kind of wealth after they have it. Because most people probably wouldn't know how to handle it properly.

And the knowledge of what lies on beyond, what's going to happen when you die. They don't teach you that in college either, because they don't know. They have some ideas, and one man just thinks - he makes up an idea in his mind. Because God gave him a mind that has the faculties of imagination and reasoning. And so he reasons out something. On what kind of a basis? Just nothing, but his own ideas, no basis in fact whatsoever. But he'd fight for that idea once he gets it, and he would almost fight anyone that wants to get in a controversy with him, at least he'd certainly argue heatedly.

The truth about life after death. The question of where we are going and why and how. These, my friends, are the things, that you never learn at school. These subjects constitute the most vital knowledge which is not disseminated in our schools and in our universities today.

If you were hearing the true gospel today, my friends, the very same gospel message that God Almighty sent to mankind by Jesus Christ, but which mankind rejected. Well I want to tell you, if you were hearing that gospel you would realize that real conversion - yes real conversion now - is education, believe it or not. And there is a connection. What's the connection then between religion and education? Certainly the purpose of religion is conversion, and real conversion is education. True education leads to conversion, but the kind of education you are getting in the schools today doesn't lead to any real conversion because they just have lost the way.

Now listen, do you realize how important it is that you know why you were put on this earth, and what it has to do with true education? God's purpose in placing humans on this earth, is the creation in us, of God's supreme masterpiece; perfect, righteous, spiritual characters to be actually born into the very family of God. Jesus taught that. He taught that the Kingdom of God is something we can be born into. And He said it is something that flesh and blood can't see, can't enter into, cannot inherit. You have to be born into it, and He taught how.

Redemption, my friends, is merely the working out, the completing of that spiritual creation, that it now going on. And the only creation described in the first chapter of Genesis is a physical creation of physical things. And it was only the material, with which God began the spiritual creation which is still going on. How many people know that? It's the creation of holy characters as sons of God, in which we share with God in the process, everything that goes into that new divine being - which we may become - we must receive from God.

But it comes only as we abhor the evil in us, and desire the righteousness of God, and beseech Him for it. And we are free moral agents, we must make the decisions. We must 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, and even happiness. It can only come from God, and people have lost God. No wonder then they've lost their way.

The Bible Correspondence Course (Play from 26:47)

And now, finally, listen, the very first business in your life ahead of everything else, ought now to be the study of your Bible, to come to really understand the Bible, and especially its prophecies. You ought to understand, my friends, that most people have never understood the Bible. You can understand it, but you need help. Listen; now you can take the 'Ambassador College Bible Course' by correspondence right there in your own home.

This 'Bible Correspondence Course' is ready for your enrollment. Thousands are already enrolled and going on along with it. So listen, if you want to really understand your Bible, if you are willing to really set yourself to devote a half hour, or more, every day to the real study of your Bible with this wonderful course, then we'll start sending you the lessons by mail. Now there is no other correspondence course like this at all.

Just write and tell me that you want to enroll, that you are willing to spend a half hour or more, and it should be more, every day, seven days a week, in the study of your Bible. Now there will be no tuition, we've decided there will be no tuition charged whatsoever. We're going to send you this course by mail without charge. Remember this is not just something to read over carelessly, this is a course of study, and the text book is your Bible. You already have that I hope. You'll have to really study your Bible. Now write immediately and tell me you want to enroll in 'The Correspondence Course.'

And now write and get this booklet, the booklet on faith; 'What Kind of Faith Is Required for Salvation?' Now there is no charge, just send your request.