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WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD
WORLD HEADQUARTERS
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91123
HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG
President and Pastor
JULY 20, 1975
Dear Brethren and Co-Workers with Christ:
A month ago I mentioned how for more than 42 years I have felt
it an important part of my calling and responsibility to try to
constantly encourage and inspire all our co-workers who stand back
of me in God's Work. I was just returning from the very successful
campaign in Nairobi, Kenya, in central east Africa. That big
audience of smiling black faces had literally inspired ME -- as did
the man who drove me to my New York hotel. And I realized that I
NEED that kind of encouragement and inspiration, as much as the rest
of you do.
I reproduced portions of about a dozen letters from co-workers
literally surcharged with ENCOURAGEMENT and INSPIRATION.
But I wonder if all of our co-workers FULLY realize and
understand WHY this NEW DIMENSION in the Work -- reaching the great
MASS-POPULATION nations around the world through their heads of
government at the top -- is actually now the MAIN THRUST of the Work.
This was brought forcibly to mind by a letter recently received
from a deacon.
"I was reading one of your letters," he writes. "In it, you
stated that your meetings and subsequent campaigns are now the main
thrust of the Work. You had written that before, and I had read it,
but never really got it. This time it struck me.
"What you are doing," he continues, "is not easy for anyone to
see and understand. We have no biblical examples of similar activity
by God's apostles of the past, or the prophets of old. Meeting as
you are with heads of state, the highly educated, and numerous other
officials? Unheard of! Many of God's people as a result do not
understand.
"Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Daniel appeared before kings, but
not as a means of getting the Gospel to their peoples.
"Secondly," he writes, "what you are doing takes time to see
the ultimate result, unless one has vision and foresight. For I
recall that even you, sir, said that at first you did not realize
why you were being given such favor in the eyes of dignitaries.
How much more is this true of us?"
Let me comment again here that I was positively convinced this
was of GOD -- He was opening the doors -- because such favor in their
eyes seemed completely beyond normal. I knew God was opening doors,
and in His due time He would show me WHY. And He did!