Never in history has so much impetus been given to public discussion of sex. Here is the real answer to an ever-growing problem of illicit sexual behavior. Young people need this vital information!

Sex is no longer a hush-hush subject in the Western world. Society now pours forth a torrent of sex discussions threatening to submerge what is left of our nations' morals!

In the early part of this century no newspaper or magazine would have dared publish an article openly discussing the forbidden subject of sex. It was taboo.

Sex was lust, evil, nasty. Nice people never mentioned it. It was shameful. Mothers never instructed their daughters. It would have been too embarrassing, and it would also have been impossible - they didn't know anything themselves.

World War I and its aftermath let down the moral bars. Young people began to dare to discuss the forbidden subject among themselves, even though their parents were unaware of it. They began loving up as it was called more than 60 years ago - they didn't use the word petting then - though gradually the terminology evolved into such expressions as bundling, mugging, smooching and then necking or petting. It's all the same thing under whatever happens to be the current slang name.

World War II knocked down additional moral bars, and since 1940 many books have been appearing on bookstore shelves on the subject of sex. Today many magazines include an article on sex in every issue - it sells magazines on the newsstands.

And now society speaks

Strange as it may seem, today there is more real IGNORANCE about sex than ever before!

Humans tend to swing to opposite extremes like pendulums. From the age of false-modest hush, people have swung to the extreme of universal unblushing discussion, but still in total ignorance of the real PURPOSE and RIGHT USE of sex. Consequently, dangerous misinformation is disseminated and diabolical influence exerted that today is tearing down the very foundation of happy home life.

Like the ancients, this modern world is unwilling to retain GOD in its knowledge. Ignoring the basic truth that it was GOD who made us male and female - it was GOD who created sex - and that God designed it for a wonderful PURPOSE and a USE productive of unbounded happiness.

Society now views the subject biologically and purely from motives of selfish physical satisfactions. In so doing it leads people in the diametrical opposite direction from the wonderful and truly satisfying happiness sex was designed to bring.

NO BIOLOGIST - NO PSYCHIATRIST - NO DOCTOR OF MEDICINE or any other man of a purely physical and materialistic training is qualified to UNDERSTAND and to intelligently teach the people the REAL TRUTHS about sex unless he be also a called and chosen and fully converted child of God, whose mind through enlightenment of God's Holy Spirit has come to UNDERSTAND God's true purposes in sex and how they can be achieved, through the revelation of God's Word, the Holy Bible!

The true authority for the dissemination of right UNDERSTANDING of the subject of sex is the called and chosen minister of Jesus Christ.

Biblical revelation

The Holy Bible is a revelation from God Almighty of basic laws and principles set in motion by the Creator that control human happiness and destiny - a revelation of knowledge essential to our well-being that men are unable to acquire in any other way.

It reveals the purpose of life and the laws governing it. It reveals the purpose of sex, the basic laws concerning it that affect human happiness, and provides the only right approach to the further acquisition of knowledge on the subjects that God has left for men themselves to obtain.

But the carnal viewpoint is always that of selfish interest, sensual gratification, greed or vanity. This is the spiritual principle that travels directly opposite and away from God's LAW. God's law is the principle of LOVE, and obedience to GOD who Himself is love. This law is a way of life that leads to happiness, peace, interesting, abundant, productive and joyful living and life eternal.

The carnal viewpoint seeks to take these desired results, and then the carnal mind wonders why it is discontented and unhappy, filled with fears, sufferings and frustrations. In other words seeking self-gratification, by considerations only of physical sciences and attitudes, constitutes the entire scope of society's thinking.

Now do not misunderstand. I do not discount biological, psychological or other purely physical consideration. They form a vital and most necessary part in arriving at a proper UNDERSTANDING of the sexual relationship.

But SEX involves a spiritual principle that regulates a great deal of human happiness. It is a spiritual principle, or law, associated with physical factors and actions. And the physical considerations in the matter of sex cannot be understood so as to bring the true happiness that God intended and made possible, unless considered in association with and viewed from the approach of the SPIRITUAL LAW that governs it. Complete biological and psychological knowledge, which is physical, is NECESSARY knowledge - but along with, and understood by, the spiritual law.

God's great sex law

This matter of SEX is so important in the SPIRITUAL LIFE of the humans God created, that ONE OF THE 10 PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL LAW is exclusively devoted to it.

The WHOLE law of God is the principle of LOVE - and love is toward God and fellow-human, while its opposite, lust or greed, is toward self. This great law, the spiritual principle of life, is subdivided into 10 BROAD PRINCIPLES. Each of the Ten Commandments is really a broad spiritual principle of life.

One of these 10 BASIC PRINCIPLES OF HAPPY LIFE is: Thou shalt not commit adultery (Authorized Version). Jesus magnified this law, showing that even an evil thought in a man's mind toward a woman violates the principle. Then so do all such acts as fornication, which is sexual intercourse prior to marriage, incest, homosexuality, masturbation or even such partway acts as petting and necking, which deliberately arouse sex organs.

Now if God puts a Thou shalt not prohibition on every violation of the marriage relationship, you may be sure GOD HAS A REASON!

God created sex for a holy purpose

WHY did God make us male and female? One reason is because, as God Himself plainly reveals: IT is not good that the man should be alone, and so God formed WOMAN to be a help to man. God intended the wife to be a companion, a help in every way - as a counselor and adviser sharing life and all its problems.

Consequently God created SEX as His instrument for bringing the male and female together, as the stimulus of physical LOVE, for the purpose of endearing them to each other, for the purpose of solidifying and HOLDING TOGETHER the union, so that the home would be held together in LOVE for the protection of the children and entire family. And this wonderful purpose is just as great in God's order as the purpose of reproduction.

God intended sex to be the source of LOVE between husband and wife. This relationship, while physical in nature, is SPIRITUAL in principle, and is so SACRED that its violation through LUST becomes one of the 10 great SINS.

WHY is adultery such a colossal, filthy, abominable SIN? Yes, WHY?

Listen! Read this carefully. Never forget it! Adultery, fornication and any of the associated sins that violate its principle, are such filthy abominations ONLY BECAUSE THEY VIOLATE A RELATIONSHIP GOD HIMSELF MADE SO HOLY AND PURE AND CLEAN AND GOOD AND RIGHTEOUS!

Let me put it another way. The use of sex as an expression of LOVE in marriage does not rob either party of any enjoyable physical satisfaction, but on the contrary VASTLY INCREASES THAT SATISFACTION, because the spiritual ecstasy of LOVE is then added to the voluptuous physical sensations so as to produce inexpressible delights, in the sure knowledge of God's full approval and richest blessing.

Jesus truly said, It is more blessed to GIVE than to receive. He did not say there is any curse in receiving. Indeed He implied there is BLESSING in receiving - but there is GREATER blessing in giving, because then it comes back with huge interest.

God has set LAWS inexorably in motion regulating this principle in the matter of sex. Sex expressed AS GOD INTENDED in marriage increases love, endears the husband and wife more and more to each other as the years go by, contributes toward filling their lives with rich happiness and joy.

But any violation of this God-ordained love for a mate is always LUST, and it tends to destroy the marriage tie and the home, brings the sense of guilt, robs those involved of the happiness God made possible, and leads often to terrible suffering. GOD'S LAWS WERE SET IN MOTION TO PRODUCE AND PRESERVE HAPPINESS!

Here's what's wrong!

Research indicates that a considerably larger percent of women who entered marriage between 1900 and 1914 were virgins than those who have been married during the past 10 years. Many more than half of all brides have experienced premarital sex relationships. Another fact since discovered is that a much smaller percent of the brides of 60 or 70 years ago received sex satisfaction from their husbands than modern girls who have sex experiences before marriage.

THEREFORE, society's conclusion is, according to erroneous carnal reasoning, girls ought to throw away all religious scruples and indulge freely in sexual intercourse before marriage, as a means of attaining greater personal satisfaction after marriage.

This reasoning is FALSE and it is DIABOLICAL!

First, secular authorities apparently see the only goal of sex as SELF-SATISFACTION, physically received from the mate. They appear to know nothing of the joys and ecstasies of LOVE given to a mate, which, combined with the physical satisfactions God has made possible, multiply the delights and blessings of the experience.

Second, the reason so large a percentage of women of the old prudish days of hush and ignorance received only pain and frustration and sense of guilt in their marriages was not even remotely connected with the fact of their premarital chastity - but entirely the result of IGNORANCE and WRONG MENTAL ATTITUDE.

Those women who found themselves frigid - who found marriage an unhappy experience - who bitterly decided all men were brutes, and wives were victims of their lust - were women who had been falsely taught that sex, itself, is a nasty, filthy, evil thing. Their parents had reared them under the supposed protective teaching that sex itself is evil in the belief that this teaching would keep them pure until marriage.

WHY were they not taught that SEX is so BEAUTIFUL, AND CLEAN AND SACRED AND WONDERFUL that its violation is one of the 10 great sins?

The wives who get personal gratification out of sex today are more often than not those who, because of premarital experience, may have learned that women could receive exactly the same physical sensations and satisfactions out of sex that men can, and who have no mental prejudicial barriers against sex or else they probably would not have entered upon their premarital experiences. What a situation!

The ANSWER lies entirely in MENTAL ATTITUDE toward SEX - and in technical and biological knowledge of the subject itself.

Very few among the wise of this world, smug in their supposed biological knowledge of the subject, realize that the real supreme blessing intended by GOD comes from the right and intelligent blending of the spiritual principle of LOVE with the physical union!

The invisible SPIRIT OF EVIL that sways this world with deception certainly welcomes society's advice. The influence of the devil can say to young women: Put away all outgrown moral and religious ideas. Society now approves sexual intercourse before marriage. You will be happier after your marriage if you gain experience beforehand.

So says society.

Sounds like the same old voice that spoke so coyly and deceivingly to mother Eve in the Garden of Eden! Yes, the argument has the same satanic ring! And millions of teenage girls will listen to that siren song, and plunge heedlessly down the path to their own degradation and loss of the full happiness a loving GOD made possible!

You don't have to be among that number. You are a reader of Youth 85. You have been given precious knowledge. And even if you've made some serious mistakes, you can now set your life aright.

By Herbert W. Armstrong