Proclaim to the World the GOOD NEWS OF THE WORLD TOMORROW
Box 111, Pasadena, Calif. 91109
Publishing: The PLAIN TRUTH a Magazine of UNDERSTANDING
November 24, 1968
Dear Co-Worker with Christ:
Probably I have NEVER written you a letter as important — as URGENT — as this!
First, this morning's news is MORE SERIOUS than most people will realize! I tell you soberly, it means we are now right on the very DOORSTEP of the MOST SERIOUS CRISIS, and WORLD TROUBLE that has ever happened in all history!
It's going to threaten our very lives — YOURS as well as mine! You've probably read, or heard, of the tremendous monetary crisis in Europe these past three or four days. France is in serious financial trouble. So is Britain. TEN NATIONS have collaborated together in Bonn, West Germany, to try to save the French franc and pull France out of her crisis. These are NOT the same ten nations that will go together in one POLITICAL UNION of European nations. I have been telling the world that this resurrection of the old "Holy Roman Empire" is coming, to form a new WORLD POWER greater and stronger than either the U.S. or Russia.
But it is significant that there ARE ten nations collaborating in Germany! This morning's news reports that President De Gaulle of France has rejected the devaluation of the French franc. The ten nations had based all their plans to refinance Europe, including France, on a 10% devaluation of the franc. Once again De Gaulle throws monkey wrenches in the gears, blocks the move toward POLITICAL UNION in Europe. But just as soon as De Gaulle is removed from power in France, THE NEW UNITED STATES OF EUROPE WILL GO TOGETHER QUICKLY!
But there is ANOTHER SERIOUS CRISIS — and even more important! That one affects YOU and ME also — and the whole WORK OF GOD!
All I can do to avoid CALAMITY to this Work is write you — and all our Co-Workers — and P R A Y, and ask YOU to PRAY that in this crisis coming up GOD will move to SAVE HIS WORK!
We are now entering the wild Christmas shopping spree. Last year this almost proved fatal to this Work! People were SO BUSY and EXCITED, joining the MOBS in Christmas shopping. EXCHANGING PRESENTS back and forth with relatives and friends, that MANY FORGOT ALL ABOUT A GIFT FOR CHRIST!
The receipt of tithes and offerings for God's Work, last December, was ONLY ABOUT HALF of the income that should be usual for that month! At the beginning of this year I had to call a conference in my office of all our division heads, and department heads, and go carefully over the budget that had been set for this year of 1968 — and slash it down in one department after another. As a result, I have had to pass up several leading radio stations whose doors the living Christ opened to us. A million or more people might have heard Christ's dynamic message if we could have gone on those stations!
I want you to think seriously about that, dear Co-Workers! TIME IS SHORT. The advance news reports, which we call prophecy, in the Bible, say flatly that this emerging giant NEW WORLD POWER IN EUROPE is going to DESTROY OUR CITIES.
Notice what God says: "In all your dwellingplaces THE CITIES SHALL BE LAID WASTE." (Ezekiel 6:6.) That could be done ONLY by NUCLEAR destruction! Listen to what God warns us through Jeremiah! "Wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail (childbirth), and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is GREAT, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's (UNITED STATES and BRITISH PEOPLES) trouble." (Jeremiah 30:6-7.)
The time of the GREATEST trouble — none other so great — so terrible! It's the SAME TIME Jesus reported to come in OUR TIME, when He said, "For then shall be GREAT TRIBULATION, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved (alive)! But for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." (Matthew 24:21-22.)
But God promises, in another Scripture, that all of us, faithful in HIS WORK, are to have special divine PROTECTION from this.
Listen, Co-Workers! Time is mighty short, and beginning to run out on us! Do you know that the living Christ has chosen YOU and me as HIS Co-Workers, and that through THIS VERY WORK He is raising up that "ELECT" for whose sake HE WILL INTERVENE AND SAVE HUMANITY ALIVE? Otherwise the coming NUCLEAR war would erase every human life from this earth!
Yet Co-Workers, last December — too many of them — FORGOT the living CHRIST, and TRADED PRESENTS back and forth, supposing they were following the wise men who gave their gifts to Christ. But the wise men did not arrive until MANY DAYS after Jesus' birth. It WAS NOT HIS BIRTHDAY. They were NOT giving "birthday presents" but it is always customary to present a gift when visiting a KING — and Jesus was born to become KING OF THE WORLD — in just a FEW short years from now! But THEY gave their gifts to CHRIST. They did not exchange them among themselves, like people do today!
Some might say — "Yes, but Jesus was living then." WELL ANSWER ME THIS: IS NOT THAT SAME JESUS ALIVE TODAY? Did He not RISE from the dead? You have a LIVING Christ to whom to GIVE YOUR GIFTS — and ALL ought to go to HIM, for HIS WORK, which HE is directing, and blessing, using US as His instruments! And I tell you, dear Co-Workers, if many of us SNUB HIM again this year giving gifts to friends, relatives, and PEOPLE instead of to HIM, it will be a TERRIBLE setback to HIS WORK. You have a LIVING Christ to give your gifts to!
Today, in this commercial frenzy of Christmas, people embark on an ORGY of spending! Dollars flow by the multiple MILLIONS in payment for gimcracks, plastic, tin and tinsel, while the precious Work of Jesus Christ in SAVING LIVES must suffer serious setbacks!
What a SHAME that is! And think of THIS. In this urgent international monetary crisis it is being once again made plain that our DOLLARS are in potential jeopardy.
Co-Workers with Christ — BEFORE these world-shaking tragedies occur, the most important place on this earth you can place your dollars is in the hands of JESUS CHRIST'S OWN WORK, to be used in spreading this last-minute WARNING to a war-sick, wretched world!
With this new advertising campaign, ANOTHER MILLION PRECIOUS LIVES ARE BEING DIRECTLY AFFECTED BY THE WORK OF CHRIST! We're able to give them the TRUE gift of a lifetime — GOD'S TRUTH — only as YOU give liberally of the gifts of the mammon of THIS world!
Last month I gave you a report on just HOW MUCH every dollar placed in this Work accomplishes! WHY? Because this living Christ is the HEAD of this Work — I'm not! HE directs it! HE opens doors before it. HE blesses it with TREMENDOUS results. Many THOUSANDS have been converted, just this year, through this Work — their lives CHANGED - to be saved FOREVER!
Do I sound like I'm a bit emotionally aroused? Well, I AM! That was a REAL TRAGEDY that happened last December! I ask you to go to your knees and PRAY with me it won't happen like that again this year!
In the semiannual letter going to nearly a MILLION AND A HALF subscribers to The PLAIN TRUTH, I have explained the TREMENDOUS INCREASE in the power and scope of this Work that has come in the past six months through this worldwide advertising impact.
I will have to CANCEL these ads — and many radio stations — if we fail our living Savior and HEAD of this Work again this December. We are reaching MILLIONS of people now we never reached before.
NEVER has this Work leaped ahead in power and scope as it is doing NOW. DON'T LET IT SLOW DOWN, GO BACKWARD, or DIE! PRAY FOR IT!
Next letter I expect to have a TREMENDOUS report to make to you. Right now it is top secret. I was supposed to have left this morning on another flight to Jerusalem — taking with me Dr. Herman L. Hoeh, dean of our faculty here at Pasadena campus, and Mr. Stanley Rader, our general legal counsel and financial adviser. We are just about to finalize a fifty-fifty collaboration with one of the world's great universities in the most important archaeological excavation ever made, TO UNCOVER 3,000 years of history, that will PROVE the authority and authenticity of the BIBLE — will DIG UP things described in the Bible that have been covered up for many, many centuries.
But this letter was SO URGENT I had to delay our flight in order to get this, and the general letter to OTHERS out. REMEMBER, of the nearly MILLION AND A HALF PLAIN TRUTH subscribers to whom we will mail the other letter (also being sent you), far less than one in ten has ever sent a penny to support this great Work. I cannot ask THEM for financial help. Not unless they VOLUNTARILY start sending in contributions, like YOU did! But you can help by PRAYING God will lay it on many hearts to join us as Co-Workers. The PLAIN TRUTH is now fast becoming one of the largest mass-circulation magazines in the world!
NEVER has our living Savior BLESSED His Work as He is doing now! Let's not FAIL HIM. We have OUR part to do. WE OUGHT TO BE VERY, VERY THANKFUL FOR THE PRIVILEGE! Be sure to write in for the booklets offered in the other letter!
Copyright © 2024 Herbert W Armstrong Library