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PASTOR GENERAL'S
REPoRT
TO THE MINISTRY OF THE
.
WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD
VOL. 4, NO. 8
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
WHY SOME MINISTERS HAVE FAILED
by Herbert
w.
Armstrong
FEBRUARY 19, 1982
I was just reflecting on why some ministers have reached the top or
close to the top in rank in God's Church, and then found themselves outside,
many working with their hands, unqualified for any outside job, position or
profession.
Two serious mistakes proved their undoing: 1) they wanted "the chief
seat" for themselves and 2), they wanted to be served instead of serving.
And back of both of these reasons is probably the fact, saddening and re
gretful as it is, they may never have been really converted in the first
place. How many think that just being a "Church member" means being con
verted!
They say an alcoholic cannot be cured until he admits he is one. It
seems to me, the longer I live and the more I see and experience of human
ity, the more it seems the two most difficult things .for any person is, 1)
to admit he or she is in the wrong--thinking wrongly, doing wrong, actually
being wrong. And 2), the most rare thing is to BELIEVE Christ--not merely
believe on Christ but to believe Him--believe what He says. He is the Word
--the spokesman--the revelatory thought of God. He is GOD speaking. He is
God's word in person--the Bible is God's word in writin � --the same identi
cal Word. Self-professed would-be "scholars" in "Bibl 1cal research" have
labored long to exalt their own ego and prove the Church in error by dis
torting, twisting, wresting the Bible, using human reason instead of the
Spirit of God, in order to relieve their inner feeling of inferiority and
lift the SELF above the Church. They attempted to discredit and accuse the
Church in order to lift their own vanity above it. Yet they were only using
human reasoning carnally, devoid of God's Spirit.
But some wanted "the chief seat."
They wanted the highest, most
prestigious office. Not so much coveting money as coveting "importance" in
the eyes of the brethren and other ministers.
I know well what this is, because in my early life before conversion, I
was beset by this fallacy of human nature. At age 16, I became fired up
with ambition. I wanted to be "a success" in life. __;t'hat is, I wanted to be
looked upon as "important" by important men. I wanted it so intensely I was
willing to drive myself to work hard and diligently to achieve that state of
"importance" in the eyes of the worldly important. But as God struck Saul
down and molded him into the Apostle Paul, so He struck me down economically
and in self-importance to humble me and replace self-confidence and ego
with FAITH and humility. Once I became merely a "SERVANT" of Christ--a mere
lowly human instrument in the superior hands of the Master Potter--to allow
Him to mold and shape my life HIS way, He was able to use me. For some six
years I was the "tail ena
11
·and lowest of the ministers--and thought of my
self only as such. Then the living Christ started the Philadelphia era of