Proclaim to the World the GOOD NEWS OF THE WORLD TOMORROW
Box 111, Pasadena, Calif. 91109
Publishing: The PLAIN TRUTH a Magazine of UNDERSTANDING
May 28, 1970
Dear Friend and Co-Worker:
This is probably the MOST IMPORTANT announcement I have ever made to our Co-Workers in the most important Work on earth today.
We are in the process of intensive preparation for the most POWERFUL worldwide program ever launched to WAKE UP this drowsy, sleeping world BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
NEVER was the world so acutely SICK! Its leaders say we must adjust to living with these fast-accelerating problems and evils for which there is no solution.
BUT THERE IS A SOLUTION! I, personally, have been applying that solution 43 year! We, at Ambassador College, have been applying it for 23 years! WE DON'T HAVE THOSE FRIGHTENING PROBLEMS, ON OUR THREE AMBASSADOR COLLEGE CAMPUSES! We have PEACE! Why should nearly every other college and university campus have dissent, turmoil, rioting? WHY should family and home life be falling apart all over America and the western world? WHY should crime be increasing by leaps and bounds? WHY should people hate those whose skin is of a different color? — WHY race problems and riots?
We don't have these evils on our campuses. Countless THOUSANDS of you Co-Workers and others who listen to The WORLD TOMORROW and read The PLAIN TRUTH and TOMORROW'S WORLD do not suffer these evils within your own private lives — though perhaps we all are affected by them from the world outside and around us.
There is a CAUSE for these troubles. There is a CAUSE that will RID this world of its fast-mounting evils!
We are now intensively planning a massive worldwide program to THUNDER this Message to the whole world — to WAKE UP this world before it's too late.
Don't tell us mankind can't solve its problems. It CAN — IF IT'S WILLING! We have PROVED that! We are proving it every day. We are the LIVING EXAMPLE of the solution! Our three campuses in California, Texas, and England are living examples of PEACE and HAPPINESS in a world of confusion, crime, sickening immorality, violence and killings.
Now let me tell you what is being planned.
It is starting out with PERSONAL APPEARANCE TOURS, and a dynamic, personal appearance "AMERICA LISTEN — before it's too late" campaign in two cities. This is already reaching THOUSANDS of important people by PERSONAL CONTACT. It is preparatory to a dynamic worldwide impact by radio, television, and in print — to reach 150 MILLION PEOPLE on every inhabited continent - in almost EVERY NATION.
Already, in two personal appearances last week and this, my son, Garner Ted Armstrong, has spoken before some 3,500 younger business and professional men and teen-age leaders. Invitations are now pouring in for him to speak before many organized groups in different parts of the United States.
On Wednesday night of last week, May 20th, he gave the principal address at the annual banquet of the Junior Achievement League, a statewide group, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was attended by approximately 1,000 young adults, teen-agers, local and state businessmen and dignitaries. He spoke on this challenging theme with an enthusiastic response.
Next morning, the Tulsa Daily World headlined, on the front page: "BUILD, DON'T RUIN U.S., YOUTH TOLD." The story said "An educator and radio personality told Tulsa Junior Achievement members and sponsors Wednesday night that the earth is a space capsule headed for potential disaster. Dr. Garner Ted Armstrong of Los Angeles gave the warning at Junior Achievement's fourth annual Future Unlimited banquet at the Assembly Center." Ted was comparing the troubles of the Astronauts in the Apollo 13 capsule with humanity's troubles in this world.
Last Saturday night, May 23, Garner Ted spoke before some 2,500 at Tallahassee, Florida. On the Local News front page of Tallahassee Democrat Sunday morning, was a three-column picture of Apollo 13 Astronaut Fred Haise standing beside Garner Ted, presenting an Americanism award to Ft. Myers attorney Joseph Dalessandro.
In the news story, it said, in part: "Guest speaker for the evening was Garner Ted Armstrong, whose voice on The WORLD TOMORROW broadcast is heard by millions daily. Armstrong drew an analogy between the capsule of Astronaut Fred Haise and the capsule of society in which Americans live. 'Our social capsule is just as infinitely limited as Apollo 13,' he said." And so on. I won't take space to reprint the whole story.
Present were businessmen, past and present senators, judges, attorneys and at least 3 mayors.
Next will come the "AMERICA LISTEN" campaign in Nashville, Tennessee and Cincinnati, Ohio. We have booked the 9,000-seat Municipal Auditorium in Nashville for the dynamic four-day campaign starting Saturday night June 20. There will be four evening performances, plus a Sunday afternoon matinee. Students from the Pasadena and Texas campuses of Ambassador College will participate. A college band, selected from members of both bands, and members of the Ambassador Chorale from both campuses will be there. Also our college uniformed ushers.
This will be an inspiring and uplifting rapid-fire four-day program that reaches out on a face-to-face, personal appearance basis in which we take physically and bodily, a sizeable segment of Ambassador College students that thousands in that area may SEE, and EXPERIENCE some of the bubbling-over enthusiasm and happiness that pervades our campuses. Garner Ted's talks will be dynamic — He will "tell it like it IS" — showing the shocking state of conditions today, making plain what CAN be done to solve these problems, as well as what WILL BE DONE to save humanity alive by the living God. After each stirring message the students will mix with the audience, answering questions about Ambassador College, and discussing popular issues. Surveys of the Nashville and Cincinnati areas have been made by mail and by hundreds of telephone interviews, and they indicate a very active interest in this personal- appearance "AMERICA LISTEN" campaign.
The Cincinnati campaign will commence Saturday night, July 4th.
But July 3rd and 4th will be two extremely busy days for Garner Ted Armstrong. On July 3rd our Falcon Fan Jet plane will leave Burbank airport (near Pasadena), with Mr. and Mrs. Red Skelton, Mr. and Mrs. Art Linkletter of television fame, besides some of our people, for Oklahoma City. On Friday evening, as part of the regular news hour on WKY-TV, Garner Ted Armstrong will be interviewed in his hotel or motel room by color TV. Presumedly Red Skelton and Art Linkletter will be similarly interviewed.
Then on Saturday morning, Garner Ted is to give the invocation at the dedication of the new 22-acre Stars and Stripes Memorial Park, and the Dwight David Eisenhower Memorial within the Park. This, of course, will be televised. On the afternoon of July 4th station WKY-TV will air, live, on a network, a two-hour television marathon, 3 to 5 p.m. Central time, as a patriotic 4th of July show, an annual event. Last year three ministers — a Protestant, Catholic and Jewish rabbi — each participated in the invocation. This year Garner Ted alone is giving the invocation at the beginning of the show. Of course Red Skelton, Art Linkletter and others will then participate in the show.
But Ted will have to leave immediately after the invocation, to fly in our Falcon Jet to Cincinnati where the "AMERICA LISTEN" program has its first performance that evening.
Every TV station in Oklahoma will broadcast the "Stars and Stripes" program live, and some 200 to 300 TV stations in from 40 to 50 states will also air it, some at a later time.
These events are all preparatory to the most INTENSIVE radio, TV, and in-print campaign, WORLDWIDE, ever launched in the history of the world. The intensity of its impact will be progressively stepped up during the next year-and-a-half and two and three years.
Meanwhile, I shall be officiating at graduation exercises on the Pasadena campus, Friday June 5th; Garner Ted will officiate at the Texas campus Commencement Monday June 8th, and I again at graduation exercises in England, Friday June 12th. Then on Tuesday June 16th I will fly with 70 students from the three campuses to Jerusalem to get the students off to a summer's work on our great archaeological project in conjunction with Hebrew University of Jerusalem, returning the following Sunday to Britain, June 22nd, and immediately on to Nashville, where I hope to be able to attend the last day of the "AMERICA LISTEN" campaign. It will, indeed, be a BUSY SUMMER for us and for this entire great Work!
WHY should the world be suffering all these evils?
WHY should the Gospel of our very Maker — the living Jesus Christ — be presented as a negative, wishy-washy, message of platitudes about Christ as a historic Person, when He came with the living, down-to-earth, PRACTICAL SOLUTION to all of humanity's troubles?
WHY has not His straight-from-the-shoulder Message about THE WAY that will CAUSE peace, abundance, prosperity, happiness and joy, been THUNDERED to this sick world? It is the LIVING dynamic Message of N O W ! As well as THE WAY to enjoying the real GOOD LIFE forever — the gift of ETERNAL LIFE.
On our three Ambassador campuses we are giving the world A LIVING EXAMPLE of the fact that THAT WAY WORKS! Jesus Christ said, of His Disciples, "Ye are the light of the world. ... Let your light so shine before men, that they may SEE your good works." People who visit any of our campuses DO SEE those "good works" and their result. On these "AMERICA LISTEN" personal appearance campaigns, there will be enough of our Ambassador people to let this LIGHT shine in their community, as a LIVING EXAMPLE.
Co-Workers, this great Work of the living God is coming in on the home stretch. Time is short and growing daily shorter. YOU are having a vital PART in getting this last, vital Message to the world. Not only is the LIGHT shining on these campuses — but thousands upon thousands, ALL OVER THE WORLD, scattered here and there among the peoples of this TROUBLED world, are precious lives that HAVE BEEN CHANGED as a result of this Work — and that stand as BEACON LIGHTS in the dark world around them! Each year many THOUSANDS are following this LIGHT — their lives being CHANGED.
All humanity COULD solve its problems, IF IT WILL BE WILLING! We are showing THE WAY before millions and millions every week — every month. THOUSANDS are responding — their lives being CHANGED — made HAPPY. The world is being TOLD what the living GOD is going to do to save us from ourselves if humanity will not turn to His right ways that cause desired and right results. There IS going to be, yet, the HAPPY and PEACEFUL WORLD TOMORROW!
YOU, by being a Co-Worker in this great Work, are HAVING A PART in CHANGING THE WORLD — in PREPARING THE WAY! And you Co-Workers in the Nashville and Cincinnati areas, remember YOU have already had a PART in these personal appearances — so BE THERE!
As we step up the pace and the impact of this Work worldwide, expenditures are necessarily stepped up also. We must not let the NEEDS outstrip the income! There is no need SO GREAT — so URGENT. There is no place where every dollar ACCOMPLISHES SO MUCH! There never has been a more TRYING TIME, financially, than now. God is BLESSING US for our dedication, our sacrifice, our generosity for His great Work. Please PRAY for this Work, and for your fellow Co-workers in it — as well as for me and my son Garner Ted. Your continued faithfulness will be rewarded. It is sorely needed NOW, and during the months to come.
Sincerely, with love, in Jesus' name, Herbert W. Armstrong
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