Proclaim to the World the GOOD NEWS OF THE WORLD TOMORROW
Box 111, Pasadena, Calif. 91109
Publishing: The PLAIN TRUTH a Magazine of UNDERSTANDING
October 12, 1964
Dear Co-Workers with Christ:
GREETINGS! We are being literally SWAMPED by an avalanche of mail requesting the new book on sex and marriage. Requests are coming in at the rate of from seven to seventeen thousand a day! Last week we received 65,600 letters. Think of it! In just one week! That is about the number of letters that arrive at the White House in a whole month, according to a magazine article I read some time ago, reporting on the President's mail.
Not all of that 65,600 letters were requests for the new book, however. Several thousand were letters from NEW RADIO LISTENERS who never had written to us before—requesting, for the first time, The PLAIN TRUTH and booklets announced on The WORLD TOMORROW program. These thousands of people know nothing about this new book. Nothing has been said about it over the air.
And now we are in the midst of a REAL PROBLEM—a production problem. Publication of this book is delaying the November PLAIN TRUTH. Our big new printing plant is simply choked with work. Giant rolls of paper, stacked 15 to 18 feet high— scores of these giant rolls—two whole big freight carloads of them are piled up around the big new web press.
Three additional carloads of paper are going into the new book. It is being printed on the new rotary cover press, which prints the covers for The PLAIN TRUTH. This press is running 20 hours a day right now—and still it is going to take many days to print this entire book.
Just last night I took off this press the first 32-page section to be folded. It certainly looks nice. The paper is of good book paper weight, a fine vellum. The type is a special book type, larger than the type used in The PLAIN TRUTH—a very beautiful and easy-to-read type. The book, "GOD SPEAKS OUT on 'The New Morality,'"' will run about 330 or 340 pages—full book size. It is not a booklet or pamphlet—it is a thick BOOK! Its writing, preparation and printing and binding is a huge undertaking—for we are producing 200,000 copies, first edition. Already it is evident there will be a demand far in excess of the 200,000. Those who are slow in requesting it will have to wait for a second edition.
You are going to be surprised when you see how much SEX has to do with God's PURPOSE, His Master Plan for working it out, and the Plan of Salvation. Never has this subject been presented, before, so far as I know, from the approach of GOD'S WORD—of what GOD has to say about sex—of the connection with God's Message to mankind!
Meanwhile this WORK OF GOD is going forward at ever- increasing power and scope, world-wide. I just heard our first broadcast on another super-power 50,000 watt radio station this morning. We have recently added MANY additional radio stations, now broadcasting The WORLD TOMORROW to hundreds of thousands—even millions—of people who never heard God's TRUTH—Christ's ORIGINAL GOSPEL—before. Thousands are being converted—their lives completely changed— begotten as children of God, to be born into His Kingdom! The harvest of precious lives increases by the month!
This takes a constantly increasing outlay of money, and of called, consecrated, trained personnel.
The first unit of our new Master Plan for building expansion on the Pasadena campus of Ambassador College is just being completed—the new Physical Education plant. We hope to break ground for the second unit—the new dining hall—in November. The big new men's dormitory, housing all the men students at the campus in England, has just been completed—all but the large common lounge room—and all men students are now in residence there.
We have about 65 new first-year students at the college in England, a similar number of new students (over 100 total) at the Texas campus—our first pioneer year there—and about 165 new first-year students added to the Student body at the Pasadena campus. They are taking the place of many others who graduated last June and are now out full-time in GOD'S WORK around the world. Some of these men and women have been sent to South Africa, some to Europe, some to Australia—others stationed in Britain, Canada, and America.
Let me put emphasis once again on this very SOURCE of the growth and power and HARVEST reaped by this great Work—the training at the Ambassador Colleges of more and more God-called, consecrated and fully converted young men and women. And we have gone as far as we can go, now, unless and until we can erect additional buildings at these colleges. More students require additional classrooms, additional library and study facilities, additional dormitory buildings and dining halls.
For this vital and basic purpose I have had to ask for extra, additional, and special offerings for this Property and Building Fund, over and above your tithes and other regular offerings for the operation of the great world-wide GOSPEL WORK.
In another month or six weeks the time will roll around again when I shall have to ask you Co-Workers for new statements of intention for this special Building Fund for the year 1965. This special Fund has been slacking off this second half of 1964. CO-WORKERS, let's make up for this slack! LET'S MAKE SPECIAL EFFORT TO INCREASE THIS SPECIAL FUND. The WORK OF GOD as a whole cannot grow or increase without it!
This powerful Work is now carrying Christ's gospel to every corner of this world—every inhabited continent—and to twenty-five MILLION people every week!
Remember, GOD PROSPERS HIS TITHERS. The very first tenth of your income BELONGS TO GOD. He says we are stealing it—robbing GOD—if we use that first tenth for ourselves. IT IS FOR HIS WORK. Read Malachi 3 8-10. Read I Corinthians 9—especially verses 11 through 14. God has ORDAINED that Christ's Work should be supported by the TITHES—even so as the Old Testament ministry of the Levites was supported by the tithes. Every day I receive letters from people telling of how they have been blessed financially, far beyond anything in their lives before, since they began to pay God HIS tenth. Also frequently from some who have stopped or neglected tithing—telling how everything started going WRONG, until they repented and started tithing again. GOD CERTAINLY BLESSES THE TITHER!
But God says "tithes and offerings." The tithe is one- tenth. God does not tell you HOW MUCH your additional offerings must be. He leaves that to your own honesty and generosity, according as you are able. But God does love a cheerful GIVER—and Jesus said it is MORE BLESSED to GIVE than to receive! IT REALLY PAYS! And it gives you that GOOD FEELING inside!
I haven't mentioned special loans for two or three months, have I? THEY DO HELP in a tremendous way! Some of you have a thousand, or several thousand dollars which you may not feel free to just GIVE as an offering. Of course, if you can GIVE such large sums, remember it is deductible on your income tax—up to 30% of your income (and in the case of such large contributions, we advise dividing it between Ambassador College and Radio Church of God—two separate California corporations, yet all working in the same Work of God—and each corporation approved as a non-profit corporation by the Internal Revenue Bureau).
But if you cannot simply GIVE such an amount, but are not using it just now, why not LET IT BE WORKING IN GOD'S WORK, until you need it, on a loan basis? Perhaps later you might see your way clear to turn part or all of it into a donation, and deduct it. If not, we guarantee its return to you at time agreed—if you need and request it. We have repaid quite a large sum in this way recently, and new additional loans would surely help replace this.
God's Work always is in need—for this great Work goes on night and day, AROUND THE WHOLE EARTH! It never sleeps! The sun never sets on our offices around the world! Somewhere, in some part of the world, one of our full-time office staffs is operating full speed ahead in DAYLIGHT! When it's night here, it is day in Australia, or the Philippines, or South Africa, or Europe or England. This is a big and a BUSY Work.
WHAT A PRIVILEGE to be a Co-Worker in it! God IS blessing you!
You may have to wait another two or three weeks for YOUR COPY of the new book—as I said, it is a tremendous undertaking, to produce so MANY copies of so big a book.
When you receive it, I hope you'll write and tell me what you think of it. Tell me if it has really HELPED you—imparted knowledge you NEEDED to know. Actually, you'll get MUCH new BIBLE teaching you never heard or understood before.
I think you're going to be AMAZED at how much you learn you never knew before. I think you're going to be AMAZED, too, at the size and fine appearance. You're going to WONDER how we can afford to publish so fine, so large a book, and send it FREE to 200,000 people!
Let me take you into my confidence and tell you. First, just as I believed for years, more people will write in for a book on SEX than any other subject. Many thousands will ask for and read this book who would NOT request and read a book on Christ's GOSPEL! I think you can understand that! Requests are coming in TEN TIMES more than for anything we ever offered before. Well, in this book THEY ARE GOING TO GET THE GOSPEL from a totally new angle! They are going to see the connection of SEX with Christ's GOSPEL.
This will amaze you! Frankly, I myself never realized this connection, fully, before. It just seemed that God kept opening up and revealing this connection to me in a way I never saw it before! Yes, it was NEW TO ME, too—even as I wrote it. I received thrill after thrill, as I was writing this book, to see THE GOSPEL from a wholly new angle!
It IS preaching the GOSPEL, in the most effective way! We have not mentioned this book on the air. If we should announce it and offer it free, to the whole RADIO AUDIENCE of 25 MILLION PEOPLE, I fully believe at least a MILLION people would ask for it!
Well, WE CAN'T afford to do that, just now—but I hope we may be able, a little later.
Frankly, it is going to cost MANY THOUSAND DOLLARS to send out this book. You received the letter I sent to our whole PLAIN TRUTH subscription list. There was no request for contributions in it whatever. Yet, I do believe that, when these 200,000 copies are mailed out and read, many will be so impressed that they will voluntarily WANT to join you and me as Co-Workers WITH Jesus Christ, our LIVING Leader, in this wonderful Work of God.
Yes, indeed, it is surely costing a lot of money to send this out. But I fully believe that, in the course of the next six months, it will result in adding a great many new Co-Workers who will JOIN US in supporting God's Great Work financially.
I think you know our policy. It's based on GOD'S OWN TEACHING. We DO NOT ASK THE PUBLIC for contributions. NEVER! But God had Moses ask God's own people, Israel, for contributions. God had the Apostle Paul ask those in HIS CHURCH for tithes and for contributions—BUT NEVER THE PUBLIC. When people send in contributions of a dollar or more TWICE inside of six months, then we assume their heart is in this Work with us—for Jesus said that where one's treasure is, there his heart is also. So, at that point, we do send them—as we once did to you—a letter saying we are putting them on our special Co-Worker list, to receive these letters from me every month.
I'm sure you'll want to make very SPECIAL sacrifice and effort for a few months to help me finance the big cost of this book. It is getting out Christ's GOSPEL in a NEW WAY right now— perhaps the MOST EFFECTIVE WAY we have ever known. And it will, in a matter of months, bring in a few thousand additional Co-Workers to HELP us pay these costs so that we may CONTINUE to GIVE the Gospel FREE to the public!
Let me know what you think of the book when you get it. And HURRY your current offering, to help in this additional expense.
God is surely blessing His Work—and I know He is blessing YOU!
Copyright © 2024 Herbert W Armstrong Library