Human civilization is more advanced today than at any time in history.
Yet man's problems are multiplying at an alarming rate.
What is the cause of this confounding paradox?
Learn why human civilization is on a crash course for disaster next, on The Key of David,
with Gerald Flurry.
Greetings, everyone.
Herbert W. Armstrong wrote Mystery of the Ages, and he believed it was the second most
important book on this Earth, and of course it was like an outline summary of the entire
Bible, the whole Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Hebrew Bible and
the New Testament.
So it's easy to understand, but it's not EASY to probe and really dig INTO this book where
you understand the DEPTH of it.
There IS a way I think very strongly that you can PROVE this book is the greatest book
in this world next to the Bible, and that is by going through it with an open mind and
studying it very DILIGENTLY until you KNOW that this is a book NOT from the mind of a
man.
No man could write this book as I see it, and I believe you will agree with me on that
if you FOLLOW this instruction.
I KNOW that many people read this book, that don't TRULY understand the depth and I want
to encourage everybody to do just that.
I have a letter here from a person who HAS the book and requested it.
He said: "I just finished reading Mystery of the Ages for the third time.
It is such a WONDERFUL thing!"
That from Texas.
And another one said: "Mystery of the Ages was so good to me!
It saved my life!"
Now, these are REAL people, this one from Ohio, the last one, and they were moved and
it changed their LIVES in dramatic ways, and that's not phony information, and you can
have that SAME reaction yourself if you just read and really study that book.
If you comprehend how profound it is, it's going to make you KNOW this is a rare, rare
book on this Earth.
Now, if you already have Mystery of the Ages, well, I just want to challenge you to read
and study it and meditate on it as deeply as you can.
If you don't have it, I hope you'll order it.
All of our literature is free.
But every single one of you, I don't care if you read this book several times, you will
find that every time you get more out of it.
Let me read to you one more letter, this one from Pennsylvania: "Mr. Armstrong spent a
lifetime accumulating all these truths written down in Mystery of the Ages.
All this truth wasn't just handed to him in one day.
He had to FIGHT for them.
He spent most of his life PRAYING for that wisdom and understanding and truth, digging
into the very Word of God and looking for the truth as if it were gold or silver.
He fought EVERY DAY to stave off all the lies this world has to offer for the true gold,
the true silver, the true rewards for living the way that PLEASES our wonderful and merciful
God."
Another one said, I'll just read this brief one from Texas: "Thank you for filling this
empty space in my life."
And there IS an empty space in the lives of most people in this world, a dreadful, EMPTY
SPACE because they don't know why they're here.
They don't know what the PURPOSE of human life is.
And how can you possibly not have a big empty place in your life if that's the case?
We don't know who and what God is, and how can we not be frustrated and empty when we
lack that knowledge?
One more letter here that I want to read to you: "It is a great testimony of true character
for a man to emotionally proclaim in his 94th year that it was a big day of his life because
of sharing, in the form of a book, the revelatory gift of God concerning the great MYSTERIES
of life that have PLAGUED the world."
Plagued the world!
Plagued this world's civilization!
So today I want to discuss the Mystery of Civilization, mystery number four in the book,
Mystery of the Ages.
I mean how can ANY subject be more of a mystery than that of this civilization?
Here we have all the marvels of science and technology, and yet at the same time you look
at the simple human problems, at least they SHOULD be simple to solve.
But problems in the family, problems in group relationships, problems of peace between nations,
all of our history we've never been able to solve those problems, except for a little
tiny few that God has used in very dramatic ways.
If you look at the developed nations and all the awesome progress that they have, every
luxury you could possibly imagine, and yet at the same time they are CURSED with CRIME,
VIOLENCE, INJUSTICE, FAMILY BREAKDOWN, DIVORCE and PROBLEMS WITH THEIR CHILDREN, PROBLEMS
IN THE FAMILY, and at the same time we have ILLITERACY IN MORE THAN HALF OF THE WORLD.
What is wrong with this civilization and why can't we solve those problems?
We MUST solve them or we can't SURVIVE!
Well, there's a lot of filth and squalor in this world, and it's not God's world.
It certainly has many HORRENDOUS problems, and who is that can solve those problems?
Well, that gets into another subject that is spiritual.
If you realize that we're living in the last days, it's like entering into a movie, let's
say, and here you just see the very END of that movie and you don't know the rest of
the story, you don't know where this civilization really began, and you don't know about the
developments AFTER that beginning that led up to these last days.
You don't know.
Now, look, people can scoff at this if they want to, and there are some that do, but let's
go back to the Garden of Eden, the original Garden of Eden.
Because right there is the FOUNDATION of this world, the very foundation of it!
And really the Bible is the only BASIS for Christians today, the only basis for their
religion, and so we need to prove these things to ourselves.
But can we really BELIEVE what happened in the Garden of Eden?
I tell you it explains EXPLICITLY how this civilization was founded, and there's NOTHING
that can explain it any other way, but being the WRONG way.
There are two trees there with Adam and Eve.
Two trees, one was a tree of life and the other was a tree of the knowledge of good
AND evil, or you could say, the tree of death.
Now, these two symbolic trees explain the very foundation of this civilization.
Adam and Eve had to choose.
They had to choose, the tree of life or the tree of death, and they chose the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, or the tree of death.
That's the one they chose, and they led ALL of their children, the whole family of man,
into this very horrifying civilization.
And Satan took charge and really took Adam and Eve captive from the very beginning, and
he has been holding mankind captive ever since!
That's what this civilization is all about.
I know by personal experience that people in the early days of Mr. Armstrong's, well,
not just the EARLY days, but during the days of his ministry and especially when I was
very much a part of it at college, taking the courses there, that people would wonder
why Mr. Armstrong went back to the two trees so often.
Why did he go back to the Garden of Eden?
Well, it's the FOUNDATION of this world, this civilization!
And if you don't understand that, you're going to be deceived.
You're going to be deceived, and people that sat there and heard him WERE deceived and
95 percent of them turned away when he died because they didn't really BELIEVE about going
back to the very foundation of this civilization and see WHY mankind has gone so WRONG.
What is WRONG with man?
What is CAUSING all these terrible problems?
And now we're facing as our number one problem, that of human SURVIVAL!
And nobody knows how to solve it, except the Bible, and certainly it's all explained in
Mr. Armstrong's book.
But look, this world is just filled with filth and squalor as I said.
And yet if you look at God's Kingdom, His throne up in heaven, and He describes it in
the most, well, saying that it had the most brilliant splendor and quality and beauty
and character that man can even IMAGINE!
And God LIVES in that, and He doesn't BELIEVE in living in filth and ruin.
God wants us to have the very BEST!
But He says, first if you're going to have it, you're going to have to have the beauty
of HOLINESS; that's the beauty that God REALLY looks for.
I Chronicles 16 and verse 29; you can read that.
What has man done on this Earth, if you're just honest about it?
Well, he's polluted EVERYTHING, the water, the air, just about everything you can imagine,
he has polluted it and he has DEGRADED his own character.
Instead of BUILDING the very character of God, Matthew 5 and verse 48, he has degraded
his character.
And ALL of this is because the first man rejected and turned away from God right there in the
Garden of Eden, just turned away from God and God CUT THEM OFF from the tree of life.
Cut them off from that!
And that is the FOUNDATION of this civilization.
We're cut off from God, the world is cut off from God, and God is soon going to change
ALL of that and I mean VERY soon.
We're in the last days, and Jesus Christ is going to open up all the truth as soon as
He gets here to ALL the world, and then later resurrect all those who have lived and never
knew God, and give them a chance to know and understand who and what is God, and The Mystery
of Civilization, remove all of that; the mystery will be gone.
Well, Adam's children have followed in his footsteps.
That's the problem, and that IS the civilization that we have.
Mr. Armstrong had three colleges and he was given all kinds of awards for having the most
beautiful colleges in the United States, as far as the beauty and the landscaping and
all of that, and yet what he praised so much MORE was the Godly character of the STUDENTS!
It was a character-building institution.
Today we have two colleges, and we work toward building character.
Now, we're sinners, all men are sinners.
But we OUGHT to be working FEVERISHLY to overcome those character problems or problems that
we have and BUILD the very character of God.
So Adam and Eve really just took things to themselves and said, "Well, we'll work it
out.
We'll do it our own way."
They just turned away from God.
They didn't want the tree of life; they rejected it.
And you see the result when you look around at this civilization, you see what happened.
The world ever since has been in captivity to the devil.
Now, God had to pay a ransom.
God the Father had to pay a ransom and send His Son to this Earth to be savagely BEATEN
so that we could be healed today and then crucified and marred more than any man ever
was on this Earth so that we could be forgiven for those sins and we could be brought to
God the Father.
Now, you see, there had to be a Lamb, and all those people in the past that have sinned
are going to have an opportunity to get to know God through a resurrection.
The Bible talks about that throughout.
But there is a Satan the devil today who is called "the prince of the power of the air,"
Ephesians 2 and verse 2.
In other words, he broadcasts all the time, just like the sound and the pictures going
out into the air and being picked up by television.
That's really similar to the way Satan broadcasts, and he broadcasts in feelings and attitudes
and moods and impulses, and he reaches mankind THAT way because we don't look to God and
let God empower us to DEAL with Satan, the devil.
Let me just read to you here, something that is phenomenal I think.
[John 8] Verse 44 says: "Ye are," Christ said to these people, "Ye are of your father the
devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning," from the beginning, well, what does THAT mean?
"and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."
Now, THINK about that!
Satan was a murderer from the BEGINNING!
In other words, from the time that Cain killed his younger brother, Abel; that was the very
FIRST son or child born in this world and he killed his brother.
He murdered his brother and God says, "HERE is the cause of that!
Satan did that from the beginning!
He's a MURDERER!"
And he's the god of this world, II Corinthians 4 and verse 4.
How about that bit of truth?
That ought to sober ALL of us!
But Satan stirred Cain and got him into a hostile attitude, and he worked on his feelings
and his attitude and his bad mood and all of that, and he's been doing it from the BEGINNING!
From the first murder to all the others down through the ages, he's been inspiring them
and stirring people to commit murders and then LIE about it, as Cain did!
After God faced him about this CRIME, this horrifying crime, killing his own brother,
he lied about that!
And Satan was there from the beginning, the very first family on this Earth, and they
weren't of God, like they should have been.
But it was all caused by Satan the devil; that's where he took man captive and he's
been captive ever since, and only the blood of Christ is going to pay for our sins.
If there is a law, there has to be a penalty.
Christ paid that.
But here Satan comes as an angel of light (II Corinthians 11 and verse 14), an angel
of light, and he is a MURDERER and a LIAR from the beginning!
He's the father of liars!
And this is our civilization; this is the way it's always been.
It's always continued in the way of Adam and Eve because they chose the wrong tree, and
God wants us to choose even today.
He's offering us to choose from the right tree.
The whole world is deceived, Revelation 12 and verse 9.
Almost nobody believes that, it seems, but it's true.
It's right there in your Bible.
And Satan is the god of this world.
That's a GHASTLY scene when you think about it!
What a HORROR to think, well, Satan the devil is the god of this world, and there's no truth
in him.
No truth!
None!
Not even a little scintilla of truth in that being!
And he's the god of this world; he's the god of this civilization!
And that's ALL about to change, very soon.
When he lies, he speaks of his own, Christ said.
I mean you think about it, that's like a HORROR movie!
To think that this could be our world!
That this could be our world?
He's the father of liars, and he's the father of man's civilization!
Here's the way to change all that.
Notice verse 21 of Revelation 3: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in
my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne."
We have to overcome the way Christ overcame.
In Matthew 4 he had a titanic struggle with Satan the devil, and He overcame the devil,
and He says, "Now you have to overcome, as I overcame.
And if you do that, you see, I'll give you My civilization NOW in embryo."
And that's what's happening, that's what's happening to the very elect of God.
Again, you see, we are here to overcome that way of life, our own human nature, and the
way of this civilization and the way of Satan, the devil.
And we CAN overcome and Christ will EMPOWER us if we make that choice and go that way.
Remember, see today He says in Revelation 19 and verse 7: "...his wife hath made herself
ready."
We're going to be the bride of Christ if we choose to do God's Work today BEFORE the Second
Coming of Jesus Christ.
We're going to be sitting on the throne with Jesus Christ!
Now, He doesn't offer that to any other human beings EVER; that is AWESOME just to think
about!
In the millennium, after Christ gets here, He's going to put the devil away into outer
darkness, but today he's here, and if we overcome him and help God do His Work today, He says,
"I'm going to sit you on My throne with My Son," that is, the Father says that.
[Revelation 3] Verse 22: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto
the churches."
What the SPIRIT says unto the churches.
See, the solution to our problems is SPIRITUAL!
This is talking about the Spirit of God!
We're going to have to get input from God!
This is the KEY to understanding the civilization of this world.
They chose the wrong tree.
They chose the tree of death, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
"Well, yeah, OK, we'll work it out ourselves.
We just don't want God to tell us how to do it!
We'll establish our OWN religion and our OWN science and our OWN education.
We don't need God to do that!"
And God says, "OK.
Go ahead."
Because we have to voluntarily choose His way of life to build character.
Otherwise it isn't character.
But again, see, our problems are spiritual!
They're spiritual!
And we'll NEVER solve them until we understand that and apply that in our lives.
Well, you can go on to see that Noah, after 1500 or 1600 years, it got so bad in that
civilization that God had to destroy ALL the population of the Earth because they were
so evil.
Now, they're going to be resurrected soon and God is still going to reach them, but
look, there was only ONE MAN at that time, ONE MAN that was righteous on this Earth.
The rest were just FILLED with every thought being on evil, and well, Christ said it's
just like that today in this end time.
You can see that in Matthew 24 and verse 38.
They're eating, drinking, and marrying, but they're not doing it God's way.
None of it's done God's way.
Look at Revelation 20, verses 11 and 12.
God is going to resurrect ALL those people, and He's going to give them a chance to know
who and what is God, and why man, and what is his purpose.
Then you get on down to Nimrod, a black man who ruled the Earth at the time, and it says
in Genesis 10 and verse 8 that: "...he began to be a mighty one, a mighty hunter before
the LORD:" but the word "before" should be "against."
He was actually AGAINST God and he was the ruler of the Earth at that time.
Now, that's just the way it's been throughout our civilization.
That IS what happened as a result of what Adam and Eve did, and man has continued that
to this very day.
We need to see the whole movie, and you have to go back to the very beginning to do that.
I want to read to you just one more comment.
This one says: "Mystery of the Ages stirred my imagination to what lies beyond this Earth."
How GREAT is the God who created all these things, and now He's offering us to rule the
Earth and the whole universe.
And this person says: "Look at the stars, moon, and sun, and even beyond!
They are waiting for us!"
That's exactly right!
God wants to give us rule over the Earth and over the whole universe, and those that serve
Him today before Christ's Second Coming are going to be ruling on THAT throne of God forever
with Jesus Christ!
Until next week, this is Gerald Flurry, goodbye, friends.
During his ministry, the late Herbert W. Armstrong spoke frequently about the two trees: the
Tree of Life, and the Tree of Death.
Request our free booklet Mystery of the Two Trees to discover the theme of the entire
Bible: God opening the Tree of Life to mankind.
God opens and closes the Bible by talking about the Tree of Life.
But human civilization was founded on the Tree of Death.
Expose the evil being who led mankind astray.
Understand how God will lead mankind back to the Tree of Life, the only way to lasting
peace, abundance and joy.
To uncover the foundational truth that has been unknown to man for 6,000 years, read
Mystery of the Two Trees.
You will also receive Lesson 29 of the Herbert W. Armstrong College Bible Correspondence
Course.
This free Bible course is now available online or in print.
Request to enroll in this course to discover the solutions to world problems, from personal
and family relationships to national economics and foreign policy.
The Bible was written for this generation.
No book is as up-to-date.
It reveals the events that will shake the world in the coming years.
Yet this incredible book is the least understood of all books.
Study Lesson 29 to understand more about the two trees and man's catastrophic choice.
Request to enroll in the whole course to begin to understand the entire Bible, mankind's
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