This week, we kicked off our eleventh year of classes at Herbert W. Armstrong College here in Edmond, Oklahoma. Counting our K-12 Imperial Academy, now into its fourth year, we currently have 107 students attending classes on campus every day. Forty-seven more take classes online as full-timers. Added to this, we now have several hundred part-time students who take one or two classes online every year.

So the little “mustard seed” beginning in 2001 is really growing and producing fruit!

Yesterday, during my freshman “Principles of Living” course, I commented on how timeless the material is in The Missing Dimension in Sex—last updated in 1981. In fact, much of the material in that book appeared in a much earlier work by Herbert W. Armstrong, titled God Speaks Out on the New Morality.

Writing in 1964, Mr. Armstrong said, “Few people stop to realize to what extent the teenagers have taken over. They pretty well dominate the world picture” (emphasis added throughout). This teenage influence, he said, was predominantly sexual and violent. “The fast-growing surge of teenage immorality, drugs and violence is worldwide! Accompanying sexual promiscuity, news dispatches pile up an avalanche of reports of wreckage, destruction of property—especially schools—pillaging, arson, violence and often murder!”

Now that was written in 1964—nearly 50 years ago. And in looking at our society today, can’t we see how this world needs the information contained in these written works now more than ever before?

Why so much violence and bloodshed? Why all the suffering and misery? What is the cause?

“The world doesn’t want to hear the true answer!” Mr. Armstrong wrote. But he gave the answer anyway: “Something has been taken away from this Earth that sorely needs to be restored! That ‘something’ is knowledge of, respect for and obedience to the government and the law of God!”

Therein lies the answer to the many problems that are now rapidly multiplying on this Earth. The government and the law of God! There is no other solution.

Of course, the reason Mr. Armstrong’s works were so timeless is because they were based on the most up-to-date and practical manual that has ever been produced—the Holy Bible!

In Hosea 4:1, God says He has a “controversy with the inhabitants of the land” because there is no truth or knowledge of God in our society. Mankind, as a whole, has rejected revelation from God as the indispensable foundation of all knowledge.

This is the dimension that’s missing from man’s system of education.

And it has resulted in this: “By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood” (verse 2). The sheer weight of our rampant sins and gross ignorance is even now almost too much for this world to continue on its present course. The recent rioting and looting in England is only the latest evidence to reveal a society that is now broken and smashed.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain was struggling to find its moral compass after its cities were recently smashed up by young people—many of them teenagers.

“This has been a wake-up call for our country. Social problems that have been festering for decades have exploded in our face,” Cameron said at a youth center in southern England. He then issued this challenging question: “Do we have the determination to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations?”

We can’t just glance at comments like this and then hurry along to the next news cycle tomorrow morning. Nearly 50 years ago, Herbert W. Armstrong predicted that this downward moral plunge would pose a greater threat to our society—particularly in America and Britain—than even the hydrogen bomb!

And today, a prime minister in Britain is speaking publicly about a grand social experiment that has exploded in our faces! The premier leader in Britain has now accepted the sad and tragic reality that he presides over a morally bankrupt society that has completely collapsed!

Of course, as strong as his words were, Mr. Cameron still believes there is hope for Britain to turn things around. He’ll be spending the next few weeks with his aides formulating new policies intended to reverse these curses. This will undoubtedly result in more government spending on welfare programs.

Whatever the outcome of these meetings, we can be sure it will only result in dealing with the effect of our many problems—certainly not the cause.

Herbert W. Armstrong—the namesake of our small liberal arts college in Edmond—identified the cause of our societal ills. This is why he knew, a half century ago, that it would come to this—what we are seeing happen on our streets today!

The Prophet Hosea also pinpointed the cause in his canonized book. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children” (Hosea 4:6).

Man has produced an awesome amount of knowledge over the course of the last century. But this explosion of knowledge—disseminating from thousands of educational institutions all over the world—has obviously not solved the problems of this world. Our problems instead have gotten dramatically worse!

“All of this knowledge,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in a magazine article in 1970, “yet virtually no happiness—just accelerating troubles, problems, evils. It’s like being stranded on a raft in mid-ocean. Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”

The reason man is “dying of thirst,” while in the midst of oceans of knowledge, is because he lacks the right kind of knowledge. We have forgotten the law of God, Hosea said. We have forgotten about God’s government.

This is the dimension missing from modern education today.

But there is hope for the future! That “something,” which was taken away from this Earth, as Mr. Armstrong said, will soon be restored at the return of Jesus Christ—the government and laws of God. This is when educational institutions like Herbert W. Armstrong College will spring forth all over the Earth!

The Apostle Peter refers to this age as “the times of refreshing” and “the times of restitution of all things” (Acts 3:19-21). Jesus Christ called it the “regeneration” in Matthew 19:28. Through this godly system of reeducation, all of mankind will finally come to a knowledge of and develop a respect for and obedience to the government and law of God!