(NB Headings are not part of original, but are added for clarity)
The World Tomorrow
The 2nd Exodus - Part 2
by Herbert W Armstrong
(PLAY FROM START)
And greetings friends. This is Herbert W Armstrong with the Good News of the World Tomorrow.
Yes my friends, we can know the world tomorrow. We can know what’s going to happen because God alone knows, no man knows, no man can tell anything about the future.
But God and God alone - that’s a proof of God - knows what is going to happen and He has revealed it and a third of your Bible - approximately - is prophecy and about ninety percent of that applies to the present time in which you live and the events that are going to happen in the very next few years in your very lifetime.
Now we’ve been looking forward into the things that are going to happen. We’ve gone on past the next things that are to occur. The things that are occurring right now, that are prophesied, and the next thing to occur and what is going to happen to the United States; and the Great Tribulation that’s coming and the fact that God’s people - and we are God’s people - and God’s people Israel are to be in a condition of slavery and captivity at the Second Coming of Christ; and just prior to that time and the time known as the Day of the Lord, the time when God is going to supernaturally intervene.
We’ve been seeing that He is going to send communist Russia to destroy that power which is now rising up, but which we seem too stupid or too dumb to see in this world in which we’re actually helping to create, the Frankenstein that is coming against us.
A union of ten dictatorships in Europe and in the territory of the old Roman Empire; there is going to be a resurrection of that old Roman Empire. Not very many people believe it. Because people have gotten completely beyond really believing that the Bible means what it says. You’re going to have to live and see it and you’re going to have to know that God was speaking when He said this thing is coming. Even those that profess to understand the Bible prophecies don’t believe it because they don’t understand.
Well now we’ve been in the fiftieth and the fifty-first chapters of Jeremiah looking into the future. A number of other world events, world-shaking events are going to happen prior to this but we’re getting on over just prior to the second coming of Christ and when communist Russia is going to be rolling over this revived Roman Empire that is called by the symbolic name, Babylon, in the Bible prophecies.
As the daughter of the ancient Babylon of 600 years before Christ, it’s the daughter and it's spoken of in the feminine gender always. Because there is going to be a union of church and state and the church is going to sit on the top of the heap.
And so, here we find, coming to verse 34 - that’s where we were - we’ve seen what’s going to happen, "Babylon’s soldiers are going to cease to fight, they stay inside their forts; their strength is gone from them, they are weak as women" (Jeremiah 51:30 Moffatt paraphrased), and so on. And we were reading that in the preceding program in the thirtieth verse and here in the thirty-third verse, Jeremiah 51:
"For this is the sentence of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Babylon to be trampled like a threshing floor, then trampled like the grain upon the floor!" (Jeremiah 51:33 Moffatt) And I think that’s exactly where we ended in the preceding program, and now continuing with verse 34:
"Nebuchadnezzar [the] king of Babylon has been devouring us; he set us down like an empty cup..." (Jeremiah 51:33, first part, Moffatt)
Now this is picturing Israel speaking here. Israel speaking of how this king of Babylon - and of course here it goes back to the Nebuchadnezzar of 600 years before Christ - as it has a number of times, using what happened to the Jewish people back there as the prefigure, as the type and the prediction of what is going to happen to us now. It was merely the foreshadowing event, there is type and anti-type, there is the duality principle in the prophecies of God.
Literally however, it’s speaking of our time now and I’ve shown you so many places it’s the time of the great Exodus under Christ, back to Palestine. An Exodus so great that they will never remember the Exodus out of Egypt by, or under the hand of Moses. And this will be at the time when Christ leads Israel and Judah back to Palestine. As we read back here in chapter 50 and verse 34..."that the world may live at peace" (Jeremiah 50:34, last part, Moffatt), as it will at the second coming of Christ, it’s the time when they will look for the sins of Israel and Judah and they’ll find none (Jeremiah 50:20 Moffatt), because the Deliverer shall have come to Zion and have turned away ungodliness from Israel and from Judah. (Romans 11:26 KJV paraphrased).
And God is going to make a new covenant with His people, and our people are to be converted and begotten of the very Spirit of God and made His own people. They’re going to know that He is the Eternal.
So here they are pictured as saying:
"Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has been devouring us; he set us down like an empty cup, he swallowed us [up] like a monster, he gorged himself with our delights, and then he threw us aside. My torn flesh be avenged on Babylon!" - [that was Israel’s cry] let those who dwell in Sion cry; "My blood be avenged on the Chaldeans!" - let Jerusalem cry. And here is the Eternal’s answer: "I will take your part [says the Eternal God], I will avenge you, I will dry up her lake and drain her springs. Babylon shall lie in ruins , a mere haunt of jackals, a horror and a scorn, where no man lives." (Jeremiah 51: 34-37, Moffatt)
"I will dry up her lake,": is that referring to the Mediterranean? Does that mean that after the second coming of Christ and through the Millennium that the Mediterranean Sea will be solid land? And people will dwell there?
"Babylon shall lie in ruins, a mere haunt of [the] jackals, a horror and a scorn, where no man lives." (Jeremiah 51:37, Moffatt)
My friends, you’re going to see that happen and nobody’s going to live in the territory of this coming-to-be resurrected Roman Empire for a thousand years to come afterward.
Now let’s go back here just a minute. Israel has cried here; "My torn flesh be avenged on Babylon" [and then] let those who in Sion cry [here are the saints, the people in the Church now, let them cry], "My blood be avenged on the Chaldeans!" — let Jerusalem cry. Let my blood be avenged on these Chaldeans!" (Jeremiah 51:35 paraphrased, Moffatt).
The Great Tribulation (PLAY FROM 6:59)
Now my friends, does that remind you of anything? If you know your Bible, and if you have been reading it. Over here in the sixth chapter of the book of Revelation where we come to The Great Tribulation; The Great Tribulation is pictured here, in the sixth chapter under the fifth seal, and beginning with verse 9.
Revelation 6, the first four were the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; first was the false preachers, the false Christs and the false preachers preaching a false Christ; and the second seal then was the red horse that is war; and the third seal the black horse that was famine; and the fourth seal, or the fourth horseman, was pestilence, the pale horse. (Revelation 6:2-8, summarized, KJV)
And now, the World Wars have already started, and the next thing to happen, at the very beginning and approximately at the same time as World War III or the third phase of the World War, when it comes, will be the famine and the pestilence. After that comes The Great Tribulation, in and as a part of World War III. As a matter of fact, World War III is bringing that Great Tribulation, and I’ve been reading to you; it’s the time of Jacob’s trouble and Jacob means our people, and it’s a national time of trouble on our people and Christ is going to deliver us out of it as we’ve been seeing. And it is this modern Babylon, the daughter of the ancient Babylon that is going to put the yoke on our neck that Christ will break at His second coming. (Jeremiah 30:8).
Now, here are the saints pictured in verse 9: "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain [that’s already happened now] for the word of God, and for the testimony [that] which they held:" (Revelation 6:9, KJV). Here are the martyrs of Jesus; here are the ones that had been put to death in past years by this same symbolic Babylon. Because we read over here in Revelation 17 where it describes this Babylon and the name is called Mystery Babylon the Great in verse 5 of Revelation 17, and verse 6 says:
"I saw the woman [it’s the daughter of the ancient Babylon, this is a woman] drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus:" (Revelation 17:6, KJV, paraphrased).
She had them put to death, but she didn’t kill them herself; no, the military, the government put them to death.
Now then, here we find the souls of them that were slain way back there, "...for the word of God and for the testimony which they held: [the martyrs] and they cried with a loud voice, saying [just like Abel’s blood cried to God from the ground, and God spoke to Cain way back there in the time of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel], And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Revelation 6:9-10)
God's Vengeance and Judgement (PLAY FROM 10:00)
Now they knew that vengeance is God’s. God says, "...Vengeance is mine sayeth the [Eternal]" (Romans 12:19, paraphrased, KJV). They knew that these judgments are coming on this Babylon. They had read this book of Jeremiah, they knew what was in the book of Jeremiah, and much of that is repeated here in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of Revelation; the fiftieth and fifty-first chapters of Jeremiah; the forty-seventh and forty-eighth chapters of Isaiah. And here we find in Revelation 18:
"Therefore shall her plagues [speaking of Babylon] come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication [with her] and lived deliciously with her [she’s committed fornication with them], [they] shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come." (Revelation 18:8-10, KJV)
And it’s the judgments of God on her. Now vengeance is God’s. And the last plagues my friends; the seven last plagues are coming at the very time of the second coming of Christ; because they are to be poured out in the presence of the Lamb of God when He comes as the King of kings, at the second coming of Christ, and the presence of all the holy angels. (Revelation 14:10).
And you read in Matthew 25 that the holy angels come to earth from heaven at the Second Coming of Christ. There you read Matthew 25 and verse 31 that:
"When the Son of man shall come in [all His power and] his [great] glory, and all the holy angels with him, [that] then shall he sit on the throne of his glory; and all nations will be before him." (Matthew 25:31-32, paraphrased, KJV) So the angels are then coming at that time.
Well, now they knew that these judgments of God are to be poured out at this time at the Second Coming of Christ. And it was the time of the Day of the Lord and these last plagues, these last judgments on this modern maiden Babylon, this daughter of the ancient Babylon of old, 600 years before Christ.
And so they asked; "How long, O Lord holy and true dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Revelation 6:10, KJV, paraphrased).
Doesn’t that remind you of the way David cries out as you read in so many of the Psalms? David would ask God to do something and God didn’t do it right away. God didn’t answer his prayer right away. And so he said; "Oh how long , O Lord holy and true, how long before you’re going to answer me, how long before you’re going to deliver me from my enemies." It seemed to David that God would never do it. (Psalm 6:3)
You know that you read in the book of James in the New Testament that the trial of your faith, the testing of your faith is given to work patience (James 1:3, KJV), and we need to develop a lot of patience. God doesn’t always answer our prayers just the minute that we ask Him; we’re inclined, when we pray to God - like you hear so many do - say, "Right now Lord, right now, I want you to jump when I crack the whip, Lord I want you to do it when I tell you, do it right now." You know, God isn’t going to answer that way.
God has not told you when He is going to do it. He has made you thousands of promises of things He’ll do provided you conform to the terms and conditions that He lays down in His word, and God will do it. And God wants you to come to Him and bring your troubles to Him and ask Him for the help that He has promised to give you in thousands of promises. So many, many things that we need so direly in our everyday life that God has promised to give us. He will answer; the day of miracles is not passed, it’s only passed for scoffers and skeptics and unbelievers. And you know God performs these miracles nearly always in such a way they aren’t going to convince any scoffer or any skeptic.
Miracles Not The Proof of Christ's Divinity (PLAY FROM 13:55)
You know God does not give miracles as the proof of the divinity of Christ, or the reality of God. So many people think that the only purpose of the miracles of Christ was to prove His Messiahship and to prove that He was the Christ. You know He gave one sign - which means a miracle - to prove He was Christ, and only one. (Matthew 16:4)
Why, the miracles He did were not given in proof of His divinity because the scoffers and the skeptics won’t accept those miracles. They were done nineteen hundred years ago; they are recorded in your Bible, but if you don’t believe the Bible you don’t know whether they happened or not. The only way I know whether the miracles of Christ happened, whether He walked on the water, whether He healed the sick, restored the dead, whether He turned the water into wine; whether He stilled the storm, whether He really did those things, the only way I know and the only way you can know is if you really believe that the Bible is true when it says so.
Now you’ve got to find another proof that the Bible is true rather than miracles. You’ve got to find some other proof that Jesus was the Messiah and He gave just one proof and that was that He’d be three days and three nights in His grave (Matthew 12:40) and you know that nearly every professing Christian in this world denies that one proof that God gave - or that Christ gave - that He is the Messiah that was prophesied to come: that He would be three days and three nights in His grave.
Well, if you doubt that and if you don’t understand how He could be three days and three nights in His grave between Friday sunset and Easter Sunday morning, you'd better write in for our booklet on ''The Resurrection'. That’ll straighten it out. You have to do a little second grade arithmetic and it’s just that simple, a little child can understand it.
Yes, God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes (Matthew 11:25). So if you’re a babe at heart you can understand. And if you don’t understand the one sole proof that Jesus gave and how He was in the grave three days and three nights you’d better read this booklet on 'The Resurrection .'
It’s amazing because He was really not crucified on Friday at all and He did not rise from the dead on Easter Sunday at all. It’s really quite shocking but it’s all factual and it’s all carefully documented, and it’s according to your Bible and you’ll find it there. You write and get the booklet it’ll show you things and where to look and you’ll find things in your own Bible that are going to astound you, that you didn’t know were there. That is, I’m assuming you haven’t already understood it, as I know many of you have, of course.
Well now here are these people, "How long O Lord, holy and true, [these martyrs] dost thou not judge and avenge our blood [like David cried, how long before it’ll happen] ...And white robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet a little season." (Revelation 6:10-11 KJV) Where are they resting? Why, in their graves.
And "...the hour is coming in which when all that are in their graves [that’s where they are] shall come forth, and shall hear his voice, And come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life;" (John 5:28-29, paraphrased)
So it’s speaking of only those that have done good and come forth in the resurrection of life here, and it was told that they had to wait a while, until, something else happened. Now what else is going to happen? "...until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed [yet to happen] as they were, should be fulfilled." (Revelation 6:11 KJV)
Setting of The Book of Revelation (PLAY FROM 17:10)
Now the time setting of this book of Revelation is our time now, and it’s just in the future, it’s coming, just ahead of us.
Well, now there they are pictured as crying out, and right back here in Jeremiah 51, where we were, here it is again - Israel crying out: "My torn flesh be avenged on Babylon [But Israel expecting God to do it, and then] those who dwell in Sion [in other words, the Saints are crying]; My blood be avenged on the Chaldeans [because God is going to take this vengeance, it’s the plagues of the, the last plagues that will come, some of them just prior to the Second Coming of Christ and the seven last plagues at the time of the coming of Christ]! - let Jerusalem cry. And here is the Eternal’s answer: [here’s what God says, or the Eternal, this is Christ’s answer] I will take your part, I will avenge you, I will dry up her lake [Babylon’s lake] and drain her springs. Babylon shall lie in ruins," (Jeremiah, 51: 35-36, Moffatt)
Now, with her springs drained, and all the water gone my friends, there’ll be no rain or there would still be springs and, and lakes and rivers and water. It means that that portion of Europe that is here included, and I do not feel that it includes all of Europe. I don’t believe it includes Northwestern Europe at all. But the portion of Europe that will go together in this thing, and I’m not going to try to name specific nations or set boundary lines, but that portion of Europe it is here prophesied and it’s in your Bible. You may not have the same translation that I’m reading but it’s in your Bible. And they’re going to have drought, they’re going to have it for a thousand years and no man’s going to live there.
"Babylon shall lie in ruins, a mere haunt of jackals, a horror and a scorn, where no man lives." (Jeremiah 51:37, Moffatt).
It’s going to happen, as certainly as you’re grabbing a breath of air, as certainly as the sun rises and sets.
"The Babylonians all roar like lions, growling like lion-cubs over their prey? I [that’s what God questions, He’s, in other words He says they do that do they? Then God says]; I will feast them in my fury, (Jeremiah 51:38-39 Moffatt).
Now the fury, the Day of the Lord, the day of His anger, the day of His fury is the day of these last plagues, the Day of the Lord, it’s the time that comes after the tribulation. Because you read in Matthew 24 {1}, in verse 29, where it speaks of the Great Tribulation; in the twenty-first and the twenty-second verses, in verse 29 it says:
"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be dark, the moon will be, well, like blood [it won’t give out the light that it usually does], and the stars will fall from heaven." (Matthew 24:30, KJV, paraphrased).
Now back in Joel 2:31 you will read that, that is going to happen before the great and terrible Day of the Lord comes. So the terrible Day of the Lord comes after these heavenly signs which in turn come after the Great Tribulation. (Joel 2:31).
So this is speaking of the wrath of God, the wrath of God, the fury of God, the Day of the Lord, the plagues, the vengeance that God is going to take on this evil power that is now rising up in Europe and that we’re actually aiding and abetting and helping to rise up. Oh God, open our eyes here in the United States to see what we’re doing.
Now God’s answers, when He says they’re roaring like lions are they? These people, yes, they’re going to do a lot of roaring too, (Jeremiah 51:38 Moffatt, paraphrased) and you’re going to be dumbfounded when you see it come up in the next five or ten years, as you certainly will. God says:
"I will feast them in my fury [and], make them drunk and stupefied, till they sleep the sleep that knows no waking." (Jeremiah 51:39, Moffatt)
In other words that’s eternal death, that’s eternal punishment and the wages of sin is death. But it’s the second death from which there’ll be no resurrection. He calls it here a sleep that knows no waking, but it's eternal death, that’s exactly what He’s speaking about.
"I will drive them to the shambles, like sheep, like rams and goats [the shambles are the meat markets]. What a downfall for Babylon! The Splendor of the world surprised!" (Jeremiah 51:41-42, Moffatt)
Ancient Babylon was the splendor of the world, and I tell you this thing when it comes up again my friends, it’s only going to last a very, very short time. It’s already being plotted and planned underground and under cover, it’s coming up in Europe my friends. And it’s going to be a thing that will have carnal and material and national glory. And they’re going to have great splendor, but all that splendor and all that glory is going to be dashed down and quickly; because Christ is coming to do it:
"What horror in the world at Babylon’s fate! A sea has burst on Babylon, she sinks below the roaring tides of water; {2} her towns lie desolate [or her cities] unpeopled, waterless, a waste where no man lives [you see, drought, absolute desert it will become] none passes through. And I will punish Bel in Babylon, forcing him to disgorge his plunder; prisoners shall stream from {3} him no more, for Babylon’s walls are down." (Jeremiah 51: 41-44, Moffatt)
And then He says: "Come out of her, my people..." (Jeremiah 51:45, Moffatt) This whole Babylon actually my friends, it’s a way of life; it’s a type of civilization. It includes the military idea, it includes the political ideas. Of course we’ve got different political ideas in the United States, but yet the principle is the same my friends in a way, every...Oh our government is so, so different and all that and so much better. That’s not exactly what I mean, I don’t know whether I can express it, but it certainly is not the government of God. And what we behold on the earth is governments of man by man for man; and the ideas of man instead of the governments of God.
The Government of God (PLAY FROM 23:05)
And the gospel that Jesus brought was the government of God over mankind, God is the Supreme Ruler. But we try to rule ourselves. Now when it comes to man ruling man there isn’t any question about which is the better government.
There are two other very fine governments on earth; the Canadians have a very fine government and, well, and the British along with them, and the Swiss. If you know anything about Switzerland, so far as human-devised government is concerned, they have a very fine government too.
Now, we don’t like Nazism and we don’t like Communism. And we don’t like some of those kinds of government because; well, if you’re going to consider nations like animals of the forest, well, they’re the wild animals that want to spring on us and devour us; where we’re more like sheep that want to be tame and we don’t have designs on other nations. At least apparently we don’t right now, and we think we don’t anyway.
And at least we think we have very altruistic feelings toward other nations and generally we do, although we are at one another’s throats among ourselves here in the United States; trying to beat one another in every deal we can, get the best of everything and make all the profit we can.
And there’s more crime in our country than any nation on earth; just get the statistics, the government will furnish them for you. You’ll find them in some of the almanacs and you’ll be pretty much surprised at what you find.
Well, now we are in the ways of Babylon my friends. Even though some of the variances here are a lot better in the United States; but nevertheless we are in the ways of society that God condemns as Babylon. And God says: "Come out of her, my people, save your lives, every man of you, from the Eternal’s burning wrath." (Jeremiah 51:45, Moffatt) That certainly is the Day of the Lord.
Now let’s go right back here again to Revelation 18 where that is quoted word for word and it’s speaking of this modern Babylon that is rising up; that is going to fight Christ at the Second Coming of Christ; will be ended at and by the Second Coming of Christ. And here it is in verse 4:
"I heard a (another) voice from heaven saying Come out of her my people [it’s speaking about Babylon; you find Babylon mentioned in verse 2 and that’s what it’s speaking about all the way through here - Come out of her, my people..], that ye be not partakers of her sins [and], that ye receive not of her plagues." (Revelation 18:4 KJV)
My friends, you’re going to receive these very plagues of God if you don’t come out of the ways of Babylon. And here it is back here in Jeremiah 51 verse 45:
"Come out of her, my people, save your lives, every man of you, from the Eternal’s burning wrath." (Jeremiah 51:45, Moffatt) That is the plagues of God, that He’s going to send, that you be not a participant in those plagues when they come.
Listen, God is promising you protection. God is promising you that no plague will come nigh your dwelling, if you surrender your life to God; if you seek Christ with all your heart and all your mind, if you’re obedient to God; if you’re living by every word of God. You’re studying the Bible, not for argument, not for just interest, but to show yourself approved unto God; to be corrected and reproved by it, instructed in the ways of righteousness by it, to live by every word of God. Then, my friends, God promises you absolute and utter protection from all of the things to come. (Luke 21:36)
My friends, we’re living in the ways of Babylon today. It’s the way of society that just grips this whole American people of ours by the throat. It’s the way we think is good, it’s the way of this world, and it’s the way of the whole world; the whole western world today. It’s a way that God calls Babylon.
And it’s confusion and abomination to God and it’s time we come out of it. It engulfs our whole social fabric; political, economic, religious, everything. We’re in that kind of a system. God help us to wake up.
I know we think this world is a pretty nice world, it’s a pretty good world, we love this world. My friends if we love the world the love of God is not in us, and we’ve got to wake up (I John 2:15)
Well that’s about as far as we have time to go. I tell you my friends these are warnings of God, and these are prophecies for this very hour, for our generation, for our people.
Jeremiah didn’t write that for the Jews way back there. Jeremiah was writing this - as a matter of fact – this part of Jeremiah was written after most of the captivity. Of course, it happened at different stages, and over different years. It’s for our people and it’s for now, and it’s God’s message to you.
Now listen, if you’re ready to really repent of your disobedience to God, to His Spiritual law; if you’re now ready to surrender your will to God and you want to become one of His children; if you are now ready to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior in real living faith and the life of obedience; then by all means you should write immediately, right now, before you do another thing, for our special booklet on 'Water Baptism.' Because the next step that God commands you to take is baptism.
But here again, the many are all mixed up, confused, deceived. Now this booklet on Water Baptism will make it all clear. You can check with your own Bible and it’ll become clear.
Now to delay getting this booklet might mean your eternity. It’s the most important thing in your life right now. And listen, you had better also ask for the booklet on 'Faith For Salvation.' That’s another booklet, 'Faith for Salvation'.
Now just for your own peace of mind I advise you to send in and get this booklet, and read it, and then read your own Bible. This book will open your eyes, this little booklet: "What kind of faith" - there’s no charge for it. Now I hope you’ve already gotten paper and an envelope, if not, get it right now, and a pen. And then request the booklet on 'Water Baptism,' and the booklet on 'Faith For Salvation?'
So until next time, this is Herbert W Armstrong saying, "Goodbye friends."