RADIO CHURCH OF GOD WORLD HEADQUARTERS PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109
HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG PRESIDENT and PASTOR
Broadcasting The WORLD TOMORROW Publishers of The PLAIN TRUTH
Monte-Carlo
June 29, 1959
Dear Co-Workers with Christ:
My son Garner Ted Armstrong and I have just visited the superbly equipped studios of Radio Monte-Carlo. YOU are helping send our voices ringing out Christ's own Message over these tremendous facilities twice every week INTO RED RUSSIA!
This is the most powerful commercial radio station on earth—a tremendous 400,000 watts. We were much impressed with their many studios—two of them really large auditoriums for full symphony orchestras and large audiences—others smaller for speaking only.
But our question is: are we going to be able to keep the program on this world's most powerful station? What a miracle it is! —to think God opened this giant door for us direct into Communist Russia! From right here, on the scenic, beautiful blue- green Mediterranean Sea our voices, recorded on tape in Pasadena, California, are put on one of their many tape machines, and, from the high transmitter tower on top of the mountain above Monte Carlo, it is sent instantaneously many hundreds of miles directly into uncounted thousands of Russian ears! We look up from here and see the giant high tower that sends our voices. Of course, on one program a week, it is not my voice or Garner Ted's, but that of a Russian radio speaker in New York who has translated our Message into Russian. One program each week is in my voice (or Ted's) in English—the other in Russian.
Co-Workers, I want to THANK YOU, with more gratitude than I can convey in words, for your good response to my last letter. I am quite sure that as a result we did not have to go off of XEG, our biggest American station—at least not as yet—though we may have had to take the WORLD TOMORROW off of XERB or XELO, and we did have to take it off of one of our stations in Portland, Oregon and St. Louis, Missouri.
But the last report I had from our office before leaving London yesterday was that receipt of tithes and offerings to keep this great work going was dropping down again. So I have to stop right here before leaving Monte Carlo, to write this letter and tell you the seriousness of the situation, lest we do, yet, have to go off some of the most important stations. Dear Co-Workers, we just can NEVER let down or become forgetful of God's work. We must keep it FIRST in our hearts, in our prayers, and in the way we handle our money constantly, and at ALL TIMES!
Now let me quickly tell you what has happened on this trip so far.
In GERMANY: Two very significant things. We saw a completely NEW, vigorous, hustling, prosperous Germany. Everywhere along the autobahns, as well as industrial districts of the cities in the booming Ruhr, we saw continuous columns of giant factory smoke-stacks belching billows of smoke. I was in Germany three years ago, and also five years ago. But today everything is more prosperous. Store windows are displaying expensive mink coats for women, luxury decorative items for homes, electrical appliances of all kinds. On the autobahns as we drove along in a rented car, we counted the high quality Mercedes cars and also the low-priced Volkswagens—and mile after mile it ran 50-50—-just as many Germans today driving their most expensive car (and they cost in America up to $13,000) as the low-priced Volkswagen! What would you think if you saw just as many Cadillacs and Lincolns and Mercedes on American highways as Fords and Chevrolets? To show you how German industry is booming, their highways are literally clogged with big industrial trucks. Actually we found autobahn traffic as heavy and congested as U.S. traffic on super-highways or free-ways between our largest cities; and for every 100 passenger cars there were about 70 trucks.
We stood at Mr. Adenauer's entrance gate and took some pictures which you may see in The PLAIN TRUTH. But while we looked in at his home, Dr. Adenauer was a very worried man—for those were the days when the minister of finance, Ludwig Erhard, who has planned and produced all this German industrial prosperity, was calling him a liar, and starting the campaign to oust Herr Adenauer —THUS PAVING THE WAY FOR THE COMING PROPHESIED FUEHRER—the coming "BEAST" of Revelation! So keep your eye on Ludwig Erhard! He could be that man! GERMANY IS NOW JUST ABOUT READY FOR THIS LEADER YOUR BIBLE SPEAKS OF TO SHOW HIMSELF AND TAKE OVER!
In DENMARK AND SWEDEN: Here are important nations, with Norway, which we are not yet really reaching with the Gospel. We flew direct from Los Angeles to Copenhagen, via the polar route. We flew over the snow-covered mountains of Greenland. This is the shortest route to Germany. We also visited Stockholm. In Copenhagen we visited the offices and studios of the only non-government radio station in these Scandinavian countries. More than a half million people listen regularly to this station. Just while I was writing the paragraph above this one, a telephone call came thru from the manager of the station. When we were there, they told us they cannot consider taking any religious broadcasts, because of government considerations. But just now—while I was writing the words above, the station manager called me and said they have made arrangements so they can OPEN THE DOOR to us! Yes, GOD IS STILL OPENING DOORS that have been closed to all others! This manager has heard our program on Radio Luxembourg, and says if we will send him our programs on tape, with type-written script of the words, they can translate the programs into Danish, and speak them with the same kind of speech we do in English. Garner Ted and I are to fly to Rome tomorrow, and this man said he would try to plan to fly to Rome to see us there.
In LONDON: We spent a very busy ten days in London. We planned for having the British and overseas edition of The PLAIN TRUTH printed hereafter in London. Until now we have shipped the printed copies by air freight. But the circulation mailed from our London office has grown to over 12,000, and the air-freight is now too costly. Also arranged for booking halls for five evangelistic campaigns of five weeks each, six nights a week, from June of next year until end of December. We will send over a complete evangelistic team for these campaigns, with Evangelist Roderick C. Meredith the speaker. The same advertising agency that made all plans and bookings and handled all advertising for the Billy Graham campaign in London is executing our advance plans—halls must be booked about a year in advance.
Also, thru this advertising agency, plans were completed for the purchase of two pages every issue of the British edition of READER'S DIGEST, starting with the October issue. In this double- page spread space we will put a full Gospel Message, just as we now do in Capper's Farmer in the U.S. The Capper's Messages are bringing us an average of FIVE THOUSAND requests for further literature or The PLAIN TRUTH every issue. The British edition of READER'S DIGEST is read by four or five million people. THINK what a powerful new door has opened to us there for PUBLISHING the GOSPEL. Jesus said that we, at this time just before the END of the world and second coming of Christ, are to PUBLISH, as well as to PREACH, the Gospel in ALL NATIONS (Mat. 24:14 and Mark 13:10).
Also plans were made for establishing a second Ambassador College in Britain, beginning September next year, 1960. God opened to us one of England's fine, spacious country estates. Until the owner died a year ago, this was the home of one of England's wealthiest titled ladies—Lady Yule. It is one of the most recently built of such estates—built in 1924, and in superb condition. Originally this estate comprised over 800 acres. When wealthy titled people die in Britain today, the inheritance taxes take almost everything, and their heirs (Lady Yule left no children) are forced to sell the property in order to pay the taxes. In this case, the estate has been subdivided into many smaller farms, and most of it sold, except for the fine big mansion, with its 8 acres of beautifully landscaped lawns, rose gardens etc., and a 2-acre plot containing brick housing units for the former employed staff, the fine brick stables, garages etc. These will make student housing, as also will servants' quarters in one large wing of the mansion. They had no difficulty selling off small farm plots, and even near-by guest cottages. But in England today NO-body could buy such a mansion to live in, and it could only be sold for a college, hospital, or some such institution. The result was, having been unable to sell it in a whole year, the price was reduced to a small fraction of what it cost to build. We obtained it for less than we paid for any of our college buildings in Pasadena, tho this is larger than any of them, and even finer than any except Ambassador Hall. It came to us with a small payment now, a large part of which was paid by our British Co-Workers, and except for small payments which I think British Co-Workers can fully pay, no more to be paid for a year, when we establish the college. This also provides adequate office space for our fast-expanding London office. Our London office manager told me the saving in office rent will more than pay for this fine property.
Thus GOD has providentially opened to us a superb, magnificently landscaped 10-acre college campus, only five miles from the edge of London, walking distance from suburban train, with a fine, stately, 33-room college building, with ample classrooms, and offices and mailing rooms—and without putting any financial burden on our United States and world-wide work from Pasadena headquarters!
Co-Workers, the way God continues to BLESS His work and to lead the way just fills me with awe, with gratitude, and almost chokes me with emotion! Constantly CHRIST shows us that HE is IN this great work—guiding it—blessing it! WHAT A PRIVILEGE for us to have a part in it—to be co-workers WITH CHRIST HIMSELF!
I hope it fills your heart with joy and thanksgiving, too, as it does mine—and inspires you to PRAY HARDER for this great work —to sacrifice more so you can GIVE more if you have not already done that, as I know many of you have—but far from all!!
I am typing this letter in Monte Carlo, and will airmail it to Pasadena, where it will be reprinted and mailed on to YOU! I hope to be back home before you receive this, or a day or so after.
Dear Co-Workers, God gives us a real DEEP-DOWN satisfaction and thrill of JOY with the results HE grants from our efforts and the tithes and offerings we put at HIS disposal! While I have been writing this, SIX of our baptizing teams of two men each have been burying in the watery grave SEVERAL more precious lives that have repented of their own ways and transgressions of God's way, and prayed over them, laying on hands for the receiving of the Holy Spirit, just as the early apostles and disciples did at the beginning of God's Church. More than TWO THOUSAND have written me requesting baptism by these teams of dedicated and called men this summer. IT IS BY FAR THE GREATEST HARVEST OF LIVES SPIRIT-BEGOTTEN FOR GOD'S KINGDOM OF ANY YEAR IN OUR TIME! Rejoice and praise God with me!
Finally, remember the one real trial is to get in enough money to keep these baptizing teams going—to stay on the air around the world—to pay the huge bill for printing some 225,000 copies of The PLAIN TRUTH and mailing them, and all the other expenses of this great and ever-growing work!
Remember the receipt of money began to slump off again. The need is still GREAT—and desperate. We still need LARGE sums from the very few who have that ability—and every widow's mite from those who do not have more. CHRIST makes every dollar produce BIG results for His Kingdom—which is lasting and for ETERNITY! Please PRAY more earnestly and believingly than ever before! WON'T you pray for me, personally, and Garner Ted, and all our staff? Satan would destroy us in a minute if God would allow—and we need the PROTECTION that results from believing PRAYER!
Send by return mail the largest amount God has made possible —send it AIR-mail if possible—REMEMBER to write down every time, which radio station you listen to most—-and I am PRAYING FOR YOU!! God will bless you!
With deep love, in Jesus' name, Herbert W. Armstrong
Copyright © 2024 Herbert W Armstrong Library