Proclaim to the World the GOOD NEWS OF THE WORLD TOMORROW
Box 111, Pasadena, Calif. 91109
Publishing: The PLAIN TRUTH a Magazine of UNDERSTANDING
February 27, 1962
Dear Co-Workers with Christ:
I have BIG NEWS for you!
Are we still AWAKE? Do we realize time is whipping past us, toward hydrogen HOT WAR, the terrifying Great Tribulation, Armageddon—the END OF THIS WORLD, and the glorious APPEARING OF JESUS CHRIST to rule the world? We are streaking toward this supreme crisis of world history even as Astronaut John Glenn was streaking through space orbiting the earth.
The very FACT of this space flight is sober WARNING that we are near the END of this world. Time is short, time is fast running out on us.
And still the BIGGEST part of the great work Jesus Christ is doing through you and me is yet to be done! Our Leader— Head of this Work—the living Jesus Christ—is constantly stepping up the pace of God's Work, even as world conditions speed up. Constantly He is opening new doors before us.
Today my son Garner Ted Armstrong is remaining one more day in England for a most important conference with radio station owners. These men are opening a new radio station, broadcasting from a ship just outside British territorial waters. Already I had contracted for the 8:00 P.M. half hour every night—seven nights a week—on this new station. Then complications set in. The starting of the new station was delayed. My son is working with our London Advertising Agency to assist this project in getting into operation. IF our God does intervene at this juncture to establish this new independent broadcasting voice, it will MULTIPLY MANY TIMES OVER the number of people in England who hear Christ's Message.
Even though the work has grown phenomenally in Britain, we have never been able to broadcast on a British station. We have had to reach Britain from the heart of Europe—over Radio Luxembourg. We have had very poor time—and only twice a week— 11:30 to midnight, after most people have gone to sleep.
Sooner or later I know God will open wide a door for DAILY broadcasting in Britain, at an hour when people are still awake and listening.
Meanwhile, four or five important additional stations in the United States have opened their doors to us—since my last letter to you. JESUS CHRIST IS CONSTANTLY INCREASING AND EXPANDING THE POWER OF HIS WORK!
But probably most important of all, HE HAS OPENED THE DOOR AT LAST FOR CHRIST'S GOSPEL TO GO OUT FROM JERUSALEM—for the first time since 69 A.D., when the Apostles had to flee Jerusalem, just before the siege of the Roman armies under General Titus!
The Israeli government at last has allowed a private independent radio station to operate in Jerusalem. On his way to England Garner Ted Armstrong arranged, with station representatives in New York, for three full half hours every week over this new station. We are not allowed to broadcast in either the Hebrew or Arabic Languages—but we are free to send out God's Message in English, French and German. I think probably we shall decide to use two half hours a week in English, and divide the other half hour into two 15-minute programs—one in French, the other in German.
Mr. Dibar Apartian, professor of French language at Ambassador College in Pasadena—a native of France and Switzerland —broadcasts the WORLD TOMORROW twice weekly over the two super- power stations of Europe, Radio Luxembourg and Radio Europe Number One. Hundreds of thousands in France and in Belgium and Switzerland hear the Message every week. Several of our booklets are now published in French. We even receive letters from people in France asking, "What is this book you talk about—the Bible? I never heard of it. Where can I buy a copy?" But also several are now requesting baptism. Mr. Apartian is scheduled to sail for England and France in June. He expects to visit and baptize a number in France.
We also broadcast twice each week over Radio Luxembourg in the GERMAN language, beamed into Germany, northern Switzerland where German is the official language, Austria, and on east into Russian satellite countries. Mr. Erhard Klammer is the speaker on the German program. He was born and reared in Germany, though now a United States citizen. He is an instructor in German language at Ambassador College. Hundreds of thousands hear Christ's Message every week by his voice. Many of the booklets are translated and published in German, and now there is a German edition of The Plain Truth.
And now—since large portions of the Jewish people in Israel, and Arab and other peoples within range of the new station in Jerusalem, understand at least one of the three languages—English, German and French—we hope to deliver Christ's true Gospel Message to thousands and millions in the Middle East.
Do you realize, dear Co-Workers, what this means?
Not only is this the very first time there has been any opportunity to broadcast in the Middle-East, BUT THIS SIGNALS THE VERY NEAR COMING OF CHRIST! When Jesus Christ does appear in all the POWER and GLORY of the Eternal GOD, to set up the KINGDOM OF GOD, ruling the world from Jerusalem, then, at last, God's prophecies in YOUR BIBLE say this: "...for out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Eternal from Jerusalem." (Isaiah 2:3).
LISTEN, Co-Workers! Even as God raised up John the Baptist to proclaim His Message just before, and preparing the way for, Christ's first coming, SO, NOW GOD HAS RAISED UP THIS WORK OF HIS—He has called YOU, along with the rest of our family of Co-Workers—to proclaim His Message, preparing the way for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!
When Christ comes, HIS MESSAGE WILL GO FORTH FROM JERUSALEM! The very fact that, at last—for the first time since the first-century Apostles—God has OPENED THE DOOR FOR HIS WORD TO GO FORTH FROM JERUSALEM—that very fact means we are now VERY NEAR THE TIME OF CHRIST'S RETURN!
Time is streaking past! Only a few years are now left. And the biggest part of the Work is yet to be done!
Listen further! These additional powerful radio voices cost additional money. Not only that, but God has raised up two colleges—Ambassador College in Pasadena, and Ambassador College in England—to train many active and full-time people for positions in this expanding world-wide Work of God. These past three months our mail response has averaged 100,000 letters per month. It now requires a staff of more than two hundred trained people to open, and to answer, all these letters—to get God's TRUTH mailed out to the hundreds of thousands who request it. And this is the Pasadena office alone. Beside this, we now have a large and growing staff in Sydney, Australia. Our offices there occupy a fifth of an entire floor of one of the two or three largest and newest office buildings in Australia. Also a large staff is required in our offices at Ambassador College in England to handle all the responses from Britain, Europe and Africa.
There are, as you know, THREE editions of The Plain Truth each month in English—Los Angeles, Melbourne Australia, and London—beside the German edition.
This great work could not continue except for these colleges to educate and properly train young men and women for specialized positions in this Work of God. Ambassador College at Pasadena has now grown to more than 300 students. Ambassador College in Bricket Wood in England already has 67 students. We anticipate more than 100 by the fall term.
I have just been reading in the newspaper how Stanford University has reached the 37 million dollar mark in its drive for a 75 million dollar fund for new buildings and equipment. The California Institute of Technology, here in Pasadena, recently raised a similar fund for a great building expansion program. These universities can raise multi-MILLIONS to train men for materialistic service in this dying world.
Ambassador Colleges DESPERATELY NEED additional buildings. We are literally bursting at the seams. Pasadena students do not have enough dining-room space, and some have to eat out-doors. This has been rather inconvenient during our recent record-breaking continuous rains and storms. Our business and accounting department is in dire need of an additional office—but so are our professors and ministers in our small administration building. It seems we now must deprive the business and accounting department of an office in order to provide one for Mr. Roderick Meredith. All these years I have been doing my work in an office too small even to use a regular office desk. I have had to use a lady's dressing-table for a desk. I have had to work without a private secretary or stenographer, because there was no space in the Library building, where my little "cubby-hole" office is located.
So now, at last, we are enlarging my office in a remodelling and building operation. When completed, I will at last have a nice large office, with adjoining filing-cabinet room, two secretaries' offices, and an office for Garner Ted Armstrong. These are in close proximity to our radio studio, giving us quick access for broadcasting.
Plans are on the architect's drawing boards now for a new dining hall, which also must serve as assembly-hall, auditorium, class-rooms, and social center. In England we must complete a major remodelling operation to provide a new dining hall and girls' dormitory before next fall, or we cannot take in any new students for the next year. The County Council visited our college in a body last Friday, while my son Garner Ted was there, to pass judgment on whether to approve and issue building permits for this enlargement. They approved it.
Beside all this, our business managers, both here at Pasadena, and at the college in England, have informed me that they have EXTRA LARGE bills to meet this coming month.
So you see, dear fellow Co-Workers, God's Work is under heavy pressure and great need for an increase in funds through tithes and generous offerings—which it pleases God to supply through YOU and the other Co-Workers. If worldly colleges and universities with only materialistic goals can raise 75 million dollars or more per college, cannot we raise the few hundred thousand we need so desperately—for GOD'S WORK—the most IMPORTANT activity on earth today?
I must ask you to try to increase the amount you send in for the Work for the next months to come.
Let us remain AWAKE to the speeding up of world conditions—and the speeding up that MUST keep pace, in God's Work. We need now to PRAY for this work as never before. We need to really PUT OUR HEARTS INTO IT! We need to put God's Work FIRST, above everything else in our lives! God is BLESSING His work. About 50% more people have been converted through this work, and baptized by our men, during the past year than any other year of the Work. The harvest is greater than the laborers to reap it!
We need YOU as a consecrated, dedicated PRAYER laborer, and tithe and offering laborer. Let us dedicate ourselves to God and His work as never before.
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