Chapter 28

Back into the Ministry

WE SOON LEARNED there was a reason why Mike Helms had come for us when he did. The former president of the California conference, A. J. Ray, had moved to Oregon, near Jefferson. A very small balance had accumulated in the conference treasury, and small amounts of tithes from members once again were beginning to trickle into it. Mr. Ray learned of the Oregon Conference's plans to bring me back into the ministry as soon as funds permitted. He had moved swiftly to forestall that, by sending for a close friend -- I believe he was a former Seventh-Day Adventist minister -- Sven (Sam) Oberg, whom he wanted as the Oregon minister.

The Plots Begin

Apparently Mike had known of Mr. Oberg's imminent arrival, and drove immediately to Astoria to bring me back. We both arrived about the same time.

Now the newly arrived Mr. Ray raised the question of whether to employ Mr. Oberg, or me. A business meeting was called. I believe it was held at the church building in Harrisburg.

Mr. Oberg was a man of 53. He kept himself in vigorous physical condition by strenuous calisthenic exercises every morning, including about 100 push-ups. If Robert L. Taylor had swept the members off their feet, impressing them with his spirituality and preaching power in 1931, Sam Oberg did much more!

In fact, he appeared to be so perfect, so spiritual, my wife and I thought of Hebrews 13:2, stating that a stranger might be an angel being entertained unawares! He seemed too perfect to be human. He was strict in punctuality, spiritual in language and phraseology, immaculate in appearance, glib of speech, powerful in preaching delivery.

Yet, in spite of his almost awe-inspiring effect on the members, they had all liked and loved me, and still looked to me for the leadership to get the gospel going out. I had been ordained by them and employed by them before. I do not remember the details now, but I was employed instead of Mr. Oberg.

$3 per Week Salary

The condition of the conference treasury allowed them to pay me only $3 per week salary. However, most of the members were farmers, and they promised to supply us with vegetables and such foodstuffs as they raised. Also, they paid our house rent -- I believe $5 or $7 per month, and purchased for us a certain amount of food. This consisted of 100-pound sacks of whole wheat flour, large sacks of beans, large bags of raw sugar -- the kind of food that supplied the mostest for the leastest.

The $3 cash salary per week, then, was to cover butter, milk, water and light and clothes -- if any. We were moved into a small house on Hall Street, not far from the state Fairgrounds. There were two fireplaces and the kitchen stove to supply heat. We burned wood altogether.

But I was to be disillusioned, and to learn that a person who first appears to be TOO good to be true usually isn't! Both Mr. Ray and Mr. Oberg schemed constantly to discredit me and get that $3 per week for Mr. Oberg. More of that as we go along.

Starting the Salem Meetings

However, I was still looking on Mr. Oberg with a sort of awe, feeling I had never met a person so perfect and so righteous and so powerful in preaching. True, I had behind me a most unusual wealth of experience, as these Oregon members were aware. But my still comparatively new Christian experience had humbled me to virtual unawareness of that fact and I was trying to efface self. But I did have vision.

I suggested that we try to hold a big city-wide campaign, with Mr. Oberg doing all the preaching -- since I felt I was not worthy -- as a minister of Christ -- to team up with so great a man. My suggestion was that I use my advertising experience to be the public relations man, prepare circulars and newspaper advertising, and draw in the crowds. I had suggested we try to hire the big armory in downtown Salem. I felt that with an evangelist of Mr. Oberg's power, I could really pack in a big crowd.

My suggestions, as became usual with the other ministers, were turned down by Mr. Oberg. I was slightly disillusioned to learn that Mr. Oberg did not think BIG. He wanted to hold a small campaign in a small empty store building out in the Hollywood suburb of Salem -- just a small local neighborhood campaign. And he wanted to share it with me, speaking on alternate evenings.

There were many vacant store buildings. We were now at the very bottom of the great economic depression. We were able to hire a vacant storeroom for $10 per month.

We worked hard making preparations. Mr. Oberg was not lazy. He was a hard worker. I believe we rented folding chairs. I had handbills printed and distributed over that general part of Salem.

The opening night arrived. Immediately I was greatly alarmed -- as also, it appeared, was Mr. Ray. Already I had seen quite a little of that type of religious people who call themselves pentecostal. I had learned that they had no UNDERSTANDING of the Bible, although they glibly quoted certain verses, or partial sentences, usually mis applied and entirely out of context.

Those I had known had never surrendered their rebellious spirit against obedience to God and His written commands. They were always SEEKING -- not to serve, share, or obey, but for those emotional and supposedly spiritual things that would glorify the self and its vanity and please the senses.

Mr. R. L. Taylor, with whom I held my first evangelistic campaign in Eugene in 1931, had started a series of meetings in this same north end of Salem, following our Eugene campaign. The pentecostal people had come, and he had encouraged them. They would keep reasonably quiet until Mr. Taylor, after two or three weeks of preaching, had a few unconverted and non-pentecostal people brought close to repentance and conversion -- and then they would begin to take over with their loud-shouting hallelujah's and ridiculous demonstrations. This immediately discouraged those near conversion, chilled them completely, and they dropped out and quit coming. After this, Mr. Taylor went around that end of town, inviting new people to come, and in a few nights had a new small crowd. The experience was repeated -- until he finally had to quit with no results whatever for his efforts.

In Portland, at pentecostal camp meetings, I had heard women wail and then shriek like a fire siren, audible for three or four blocks.

Our Problem

When we saw about 25 or 30 of these same pentecostal people who had ruined Mr. Taylor's meetings coming into our little hall, Mr. Ray and Mr. Oberg and I went into a quick huddle. Mr. Ray purported to be completely opposed to this brand of pentecostalism.

What shall we do about this? he asked. We've got to get rid of these people, or they will simply take over the meetings and there will be no results.

Just leave the situation to me, said Mr. Oberg. I know how to handle these people.

We were reassured. But by the second or third night, we began to realize that Mr. Oberg, far from discouraging or handling these people, was deliberately catering to them. Gradually we began to realize that Mr. Oberg was pentecostal himself -- a fact he had carefully concealed. Indeed, he had deliberately led us to believe he was opposed to it. Soon I realized these people were definitely IN and firmly established. It was too late to change it.

For the first few nights Mr. Oberg and I alternated, each speaking every second night. But it became apparent that the pentecostal people, now more than 90% of the attendance, warmed up much more to Mr. Oberg's preaching. He encouraged them. He invited their loud amens just as pentecostal preachers do constantly, getting them stirred up to an emotional and excitable pitch. So after about a week, I suggested that Mr. Oberg do all the preaching, and I preached to our own members who came up from the Valley for the Sabbath services.

About the end of the first week word came from the manager of a lumber yard situated very close to our hall, asking if I would stop in and see him. He had attended the first five or six meetings, then dropped out.

Mr. Armstrong, he said, I just wanted to explain to you why I stopped attending your meetings. I was really quite interested in hearing your sermons, but this man Oberg's constant succession of stories, and whooping up those 'holy rollers' into shouting and emotional frenzy and foolishness is more than I can take. I think you were wise in just letting this other man take over the meetings. Not many who are seeking the real truth that you preach will be attending from now on, anyway. I would have continued attending, if you had been conducting the services alone -- but I can't tolerate that senseless wildfire.

My Father's Death

Along about the 20th or 21st of April in that year of 1933 word came that my father was very ill. I asked Mr. Oberg to accompany me, and we hastened to his farm, between Oregon City and Molalla. Apparently we asked Mr. Ray to take the service till we returned.

Dad had suffered an acute attack of indigestion. We anointed and prayed for him. He seemed to recover at once. He also had called for us because he wanted to be baptized.

My father, as I may have stated before, had always been a good man. He had been jolly, friendly with everybody. He never smoked, drank, swore, or indulged in any such vices. He never opposed or harmed a soul, but always was willing to help. He had, as I recounted earlier, a marvelous deep bass voice. Dad had attended church regularly all his life, and had been active -- especially in singing.

But my father was actually so good, humanly speaking, and so void of vices and any of the commonly accepted sins that he was actually in the same category as Job. Job was so righteous that even Satan could not find anything of which to accuse him. Actually Job's one great sin was his own righteousness. It blinded him to his HUMANITY, the actual NATURE of sin in every human. Job was the most difficult man on record for God to convert. Finally, God brought Job to the place where he did REPENT, and come to completely ABHOR himself!

My father had come to that same place. He came to realize that mere human goodness and uprightness is not, after all, the true RIGHTEOUSNESS of GOD, which is received only from God's Holy Spirit after the painful and suffering experience of repentance. But now he had repented. And now he had come to recognize his real NEED of Jesus Christ as personal Saviour. He had thrown himself on God's mercy, in faith believing.

That afternoon, his acute indigestion healed, but still needing rest and sleep to recover strength, we planned to go down to the river at the edge of his farm and baptize him the next day.

Late that afternoon, we all sang Praise Him! Praise Him! with my father's deep melodic bass voice ringing out. It was to be the last time he ever sang.

When we finished, he had tears in his eyes, and his face literally illuminated in a happy smile.

It's just wonderful! he exclaimed. It's absolutely WONDERFUL!

What do you mean, Dad? I asked. That God at last has forgiven all my sins! he exclaimed. It seems like a load of many tons has been rolled off of my shoulders -- and I don't have to carry that weight of guilt around any longer!

We left him to rest. A while later we were called back into the room. He had sunken into a coma, not from indigestion, but a heart attack. We anointed and prayed for him again. We put him to bed in an adjoining bedroom. We noticed his feet were swelling. He did not come out of the coma. We kept up an all-night vigil of prayer. The swelling continued up his legs.

Dawn came. We continued praying. I know that I continued believing. By this time we had been granted many miraculous answers to prayer, and I felt I never had more faith in my life.

Yet, at 9:40 that morning, the day after he entered his 70th year, my father died. I was stunned. This I could not believe!

Suddenly I was confused, bewildered. I knew that God had given His written PROMISE to heal. Always before, since learning this truth, God had healed all in our family. I realized that there are two conditions -- obedience, and faith. But I had surrendered fully and unconditionally to God's commandments, given my life to Him and His service. And I had believed with positive conviction. There had been no wavering -- no doubt -- just calm ASSURANCE.

For three days I was in a mental fog. Not that I began to lose faith in God, or the reality of Biblical promises. Not that doubts began to be entertained. I was still quite a babe in Christ in the new Christian life, but we had been put through enough experiences -- and I had studied and PROVED the Scriptures sufficiently -- that I did not allow doubts to begin to arise. When one permits DOUBTS to enter his thoughts and reasonings, he is on dangerous ground. He is thinking negatively. Whoever DOUBTS is damned. I want the reader to learn that lesson.

If one is not certain -- if he has not PROVED a doctrine or a fact -- then the teaching of God is, with open mind free from prejudice, to seek all the facts -- to PROVE it. This is not negative, but positive thinking and procedure. Doubting is not proving. Doubting is not intelligent! It is negative thinking about something one does not know enough about to warrant this form of unfounded disbelief.

Strengthening FAITH

I knew that God could not break a promise. I knew God has promised to HEAL -- that Jesus took the penalty of physical sickness and infirmities and paid it for us by having His perfect physical body broken by being beaten with stripes!

But WHY, then, did my father die? Through James God instructs us that if any lack wisdom, he shall ask of GOD asking in FAITH, not wavering or doubting -- and God promises wisdom shall be given. I prayed earnestly. I asked God for UNDERSTANDING.

And I searched the Scriptures for the explanation. I did not doubt -- but I did seek an explanation. Faith must be based on UNDERSTANDING, and I knew there was something I had not yet come to understand. Naturally I soon came, in this search, to the faith chapter -- the 11th of Hebrews. Then the answer became plain.

God gives us many examples of faith in that wonderful chapter. I noticed the example of Abraham -- the father of the faithful. He, with Isaac and Jacob and Sarah all died, not having received the PROMISES. My father, like them, died, not having received God's promise of healing -- AS YET! Did the death of Abraham, before he received what God had unconditionally PROMISED, nullify that promise? Did his death mean that God failed -- that God's promise was worthless, not to be kept? NOT AT ALL!

No, it simply meant that, for God's own reason and purpose, the fulfilling of the promise is delayed UNTIL THE RESURRECTION!

In like manner, I could now understand that God has PROMISED to heal -- but He has not promised how immediately, or by what manner, He will do it. I knew, now, that my father's healing is still absolutely SURE. He will be resurrected -- HEALED! I saw, now, that our days are indeed numbered. God has not promised that we shall live in this mortal existence eternally. It is appointed to men once to DIE -- and after this the resurrection. I read how the TRIAL of our faith is allowed to work PATIENCE.

God, then, does give us tests of faith. Faith is the EVIDENCE of that NOT seen, NOT felt. Once we FEEL and SEE that we are healed, we no longer need the invisible spiritual evidence of faith. Faith, then, is our evidence -- our PROOF of the healing -- which God gives us to be exercised and utilized BETWEEN the time we ask, and the time the physical evidence is granted.

We should not go to God, asking, unless we have FAITH that God will do what He has promised, and what we are ready to ask. Then, after we ask, we should still have faith -- just as before -- that God WILL do as He has promised.

Now I understood! Some people, in the clutch of fatal DOUBTS in their faulty reasoning, will try to REASON that unless God heals instantaneously, either God has not kept His promise -- or that the one who asked is guilty of such sin that God will not hear him. Such people are wresting the plain teaching of God to their own destruction.

The net result of this shocking experience of my father's death was a great strengthening of FAITH. I hope sincerely that the recording of this experience will strengthen the faith of many readers. God's very purpose in giving us this temporary physical existence is to build righteous spiritual character, through EXPERIENCE. In the Bible God gives us many EXPERIENCES of those He has dealt with, that we may learn by reading of their experiences. The only reason I am continuing with this autobiography is the hope that many readers may learn lessons God intends them to learn, through these recorded experiences.

Was It GOD's Spirit?

As the meetings in Salem continued on, after the first week or so, almost the only people coming were these pentecostal people. Their antics drove away most others. Though it is rare among this type of people, many, or most, of them were Sabbath keepers. But, aside from the fourth commandment, there did not appear to be any desire to obey God, or to live by every Word of God. Their whole desire was a good time during meetings. They came for the temporary thrill and enjoyment of going on an emotional spree of excitement, shouting, and bragging in testimony meeting about how glad they were they had their baptism, and how much better they were than others, for precisely the same purpose that other people attend a football game to shout and yell, and work up sensations of excitement.

They were definitely not SEEKING the KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, but they were continually SEEKING physical and sensual pleasure and thrills and excitement, under the deceptive illusion that all this was pleasing to God. One of these women, some months later, after the close of the meetings, who had received her baptism as they term it, became disgusted with it and told my wife in private that what she and they all got from it was what she termed sublimated sex thrills. She said frankly it was plain lust of the flesh. Yet the people in it are deceived into sincerely believing that they are seeking, and receiving, the Holy Spirit of God!

One night while Mr. Oberg was preaching, one very fat woman, who must have weighed 250 pounds, arose and with short, jerky, staccato steps, slowly waddled up front to the piano, shaking her fat hips at each jerky step. She sat down on the piano bench and began to hit the keys with the palms of both hands in a discordant jumbled manner about like a one-year-old baby might do. There was no chord, harmony, tune -- no regularity of beat or rhythm -- just a spasmodic discordant POUNDING in utter CONFUSION.

As she began, the one other big fat woman in the hall, of equal horizontal proportions, arose and began a sort of awkward dancing jig, her arms floundering around, uncontrolled, overhead, her very fat hips waddling and shimmying. For some two to five minutes these two women continued their unrefined duet.

Mr. Oberg stopped his preaching, with expressions of Praise the Lord! Glory Hallelujah! Praise you, Jesus! -- to which the whole pentecostal attendance immediately joined in until the place was a bedlam of din and confusion.

As we were walking home that night after the service, our elder daughter, Beverly, then of junior high school age, asked:

Daddy, was that the Holy Spirit making those women do those things?

I was well familiar with Christ's saying that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit -- accusing the work of the Holy Spirit of being the work of the devil -- was the unpardonable sin. Although I was by that time quite aware that these practices of pentecostal people were not in conformity with either the teaching or example found in God's Word, nevertheless I was afraid to take any slight chance of committing the unpardonable sin.

I just can't answer that, Beverly, I replied. I suppose those women were sincere in believing they were being moved by God's Spirit. Most people are deceived, today. But I don't want to try to judge.

A few paragraphs back, I quoted the lumberyard manager as referring to Mr. Oberg's succession of stories. We soon learned that his preaching consisted more of telling various stories than of expounding the Scriptures. He was one who believed Jesus spoke in parables in order to make his meaning more clear. Actually, Jesus Himself said He used parables for precisely the opposite reason -- to HIDE the true meaning, so they could not understand. Mr. Oberg had made it a practice to memorize just about every story he ever heard -- or could read.

He constantly used stories to illustrate his points. He had stories in his memory by the thousands. As he himself claimed, he had stories to produce laughter, stories of pathos, tearjerkers to make his audience weep -- and these especially he told with great acting ability. He continually urged me to acquire a large stock of stories. But, as Will Rogers might have said, I just couldn't see it that way. That is not the way the original apostles preached.

NO Fruit Borne!

When the meetings came to the end of the planned duration, and absolutely NO fruit had been borne, except for the nightly emotional jamboree, Mr. Oberg was reluctant to stop.

Sam Oberg and his young 25-year-old wife had been living with Mr. and Mrs. O. J. Runcorn. I believe it was Mr. Runcorn who put up the $10 for one more month's hall rent. The total duration of the meetings ran either three or four months.

But even after the extended month, there were no conversions -- no members added to the Church -- absolutely no visible results. The pentecostals had been enjoying a continuous nightly show. There was nothing else to show for it.

I have stated before, that never once, when I was working with any of these other ministers, were any results apparent. Never, in all those years, did I know of a single conversion resulting from the work or preaching of any of those ministers! Yet never did God fail to grant good results, with people converted and baptized, when I was working alone. I do not say this with any joy -- for while I do rejoice and am grateful for the harvest God has produced through my efforts, I have sorrowed and not found any pleasure or rejoicing in the lack of fruit borne by the others. That has truly been one of the dis appointments we have had to suffer.

However, God has now changed all that. Today, as I write, thirty-nine years later, God is abundantly blessing ALL His ministers whom He now graciously has added to His Church, with conversions, changed lives, healings, and continuous blessings. God's Church TODAY is going forward in constantly accelerating POWER -- the true power of GOD!

The Plots Progress

All through this campaign in Salem, personal relations between Mr. Oberg and Mr. Ray and me were, on the surface, very friendly and cooperative. At least that was my attitude of heart. But, under cover, their plots began to thicken.

After my father had died, at his farm north of Molalla, in April of 1933, my wife had gone to the farm for a visit with my mother. I do not remember the exact month, but I believe it must have been along in late May or early June.

One night she was disturbed and frightened to be awakened from a startling dream, in which it seemed an angel was telling her! GO to Salem at once! GO to Salem at once! Enemies are plotting against your husband.

She was so alarmed that she was afraid to chance the dream possibly meaning nothing. She came immediately that day to Salem. At the same time, Mike Helms had come to tell me that Mr. Oberg and Mr. Ray had gone around to a number of the brethren in the valley, and set up an accusation against me, in a secret plot to get me out of the ministry. They wanted the $3 weekly cash salary, and the benefit of the other money being spent for our house rent and beans and flour, etc.

They had brought enough pressure to force Milas Helms, as president of the Conference, to call a business meeting for the following Sunday at the church in Harrisburg.

They plan to discredit you, explained Mr. Helms, by charging that your wife is not a neat housekeeper -- and then turning to the Biblical qualifications for an Elder, for ruling well his own household. Since they will claim that you are not ruling your wife sternly enough to be a better housekeeper, they will claim that you are not Scripturally fit to be a minister, and must be put out of the ministry.

This came as a shocking surprise! Their accusation was false. My wife was a good housekeeper, and I did rule my own family and household, and have my children in subjection. But these men knew that most members did not know all about our private family life, and would believe their lie.

These men had been so very friendly -- to my face! I had not realized they were enemies, speaking lies about me and my wife behind my back! Mike saw that I was deeply hurt.

The only thing I know that I can possibly do to help you, continued Mr. Helms, is to give you the opportunity to speak first, if that will be any benefit. I will be chairman of the meeting, and I can give you the chance to speak before they do.

I accepted the offer. You may be sure I prayed a great deal over it. Actually, Mrs. Armstrong has always been a very clean housekeeper, and a very neat one, with the exception that, during the years when we had four growing children in the house -- and at this time the youngest was 3, and the eldest 15 -- children did leave a few things misplaced, on occasion, of course. But the charge Mr. Oberg planned to make was simply an outrageous LIE!

Defending My Wife!

Sam Oberg made a fetish of stern neatness, punctuality, and certain OUTWARD mannerisms designed to lead others to think him righteous. Actually, although he was unreasonably stern with his little 3-year-old daughter, he knew about as little of proper child rearing as anyone I ever knew. He went to the extreme on stern demands for certain mannerisms of decorum, and punished his child with over-severity, while at the same time he completely neglected her in most other ways, failed to properly teach and train her, and allowed her to do other things that should not have been done.

There have been times, since I have been changed by God's Spirit, that righteous indignation arose instantly to white-hot heat. This was one of them.

But I prayed, and God helped me to put down anger. Also it came to mind what to do. You may not think God put it there, but I do.

At Harrisburg on Sunday, Mr. Helms, after opening the meeting with prayer, gave me the floor first. I think this was a surprise to Messrs. Oberg and Ray. I told the Board members and other brethren assembled that I understood this meeting had been called as an inquisition, to crucify me by false charges. I told them I did not wish to defend myself. I told them I knew I was full of faults and weaknesses, the same as each of them. I told them I had been striving, and with God's help, overcoming many of these human frailties and weaknesses and habits since my conversion, some six years before -- but I had not yet reached perfection. I felt that each of them -- and Messrs. Oberg and Ray -- lived in glass houses, also, in case any had a hating spirit of wishing to throw stones.

I stood there and confessed many specific faults and weaknesses, and asked them if they would PRAY for me that I might have help in overcoming them. Their eyes began to fill with tears -- all but Oberg and Ray.

Then I quickly ended by saying that Mr. Oberg and Mr. Ray might say anything they wished against me -- but that I understood they planned to accuse my wife falsely, and I then told them with all the power I had that God made me my wife's defender, and that if either of them dared to utter one word against my wife, I would -- if need be CLOSE their mouths before they could finish the first sentence. I did not specify the means. This was said with blazing eyes, and a sharp voice!

I sat down. Mr. Helms then called on Oberg and Ray. I do not remember what they said -- if anything. I do know that there was NOTHING left for them to say against ME -- for I had said it all myself before them. And they somehow must have known that I MEANT IT when I said I would defend my wife's honor. They were silent about her.

I do know the result. Their plot backfired! I was not discharged. Rather, the brethren were still looking to me for leadership. But Mr. Oberg and Mr. Ray were not through gunning for me. There was much more to come later!

Chopping Wood

I began to realize that Messrs. Oberg and Ray were secretly carrying on a propaganda campaign against me. In talking privately to church brethren they would drop little suggestions implying, at least indirectly, anything possible against my character.

One day Milas Helms came to me with the offer to give me a very large tree on his farm if I would chop it down, saw it up and split it for our winter's fuel supply. This tree was six feet in diameter at the trunk -- a huge fir.

Some of the brethren, he said, are getting the idea from Mr. Oberg and Mr. Ray, that they have to do hard physical work on their farms, but that you have it pretty soft merely preaching, visiting members and prospective members, holding Bible studies, getting out the news bulletin. If you will spend the next several days splitting up a year's wood supply, I will see that the word gets around about how energetically you are working. This will counteract this propaganda better than a million words of denial.

Somehow, it never seemed to dawn on the brethren, who listened to these subtle innuendoes suggesting I was lazy, that Mr. Oberg devoted his time, also, to the ministry and had no time for hard manual labor.

Gladly I accepted the offer, happy of the opportunity to provide fuel for my family. I counted the rings on the tree. That tree was growing there when George Washington was a boy! I was glad of the chance for the exercise and the fresh country air, as well as the wood.

Again, the plot was foiled.

Cackling Hens

During the course of the Salem meetings Milas Helms brought us a number of eggs one day -- perhaps a dozen or so. We have decided to start tithing our eggs, as well as money income, he said to us.

It was the off-laying season. This incident has been reported before in The Plain Truth, but it properly belongs at this point in the Autobiography. Even though it was out of season for Mike's hens, they immediately went on an egg-laying campaign. Never, it seemed, had they laid so many eggs.

After this incident was reported in The Plain Truth, one reader wrote that she had begun to tithe her eggs and received the same result. Experience repeatedly proves it pays to tithe!

Blessings in Disguise

Very shortly after our return from Astoria -- possibly even before the meetings began in Salem, or very soon after they started, the Santiam River -- on whose banks bordered the farms of Mike Helms and his brother-in-law, Yancy McGill -- went on a rampage, overflowing its banks in a complete flood.

It happened on a Friday or Friday night. Mike told me of it when he came for church on the Sabbath. In fact, we attended a meeting with other brethren at some town west of Salem that day. En route, Mike told me of the calamity. His crops had been all planted. They were all under the water.

The reader can understand by this time that I felt a very deep affection for Mike Helms. I felt as badly about this as if it had been my own fields. I continued to express my deep concern and regret and sympathy.

Mr. Armstrong, said Mike in what seemed like a half gentle rebuke, you seem to be taking this a lot harder than I am. God says everything works together for GOOD, to them that love the Lord. I love the Lord, and I try to serve Him and obey Him and I BELIEVE Him. I am faithful in paying tithes. Right now I can't see how a thing like this can work together for my good. But I don't need to see how. I know God means what He says, and, in a way I can't see right now, this is going to work for my GOOD. I'm just praising the Lord for it!

I hope that God used me in teaching Mike many valuable lessons, but this was a time when God used Mike to teach me a lesson I shall never forget. Perhaps, in this way through The Plain Truth, Mike can be used to teach many thousands of our readers a valuable lesson today, more than a quarter of a century later.

After the flood subsided a very strange thing became apparent. On adjoining farmland, without even a fence between, the crops were completely ruined. But the damage stopped at the very line of Mike Helms' and Yancy McGill's farms -- all except one small patch of Mike's land, which it was not too late to replant. And because the floodwaters had ruined the crops of so many vegetable gardeners, Mike's and Yancy's crops brought a higher-than-usual price that year! And THAT is how this calamity worked for GOOD!

Chapter 29

The Real Beginning of Present Work

THE MEETINGS held by Elder S. A. Oberg and me in the Hollywood district of Salem, Oregon, ended on July 1st, 1933. Just prior to this date I received an invitation that was to result in the start of the great worldwide Work of today.

This invitation came from Mr. and Mrs. Elmer E. Fisher. They were the couple who had been brought into the church by our private Bible study in my room, the night the storm prevented the meeting, during the tent campaign in Eugene, in the summer of 1931. The Fishers were successful farmers, living seven miles west of Eugene. Mr. Fisher was a member of the school board of the one-room Firbutte school, eight miles west of Eugene on the old Elmira road. The Fishers asked me to hold meetings in this country schoolhouse, inviting me to be their guest in their farm home during the meetings.

Organizing Another Church

But I was still in the employ of the Oregon Conference of the Church of God. The salary, as stated in the preceding chapter, was $3 per week. The Conference was to have paid our house rent in Salem, and they supplied us with bulk foods -- whole wheat flour, raw sugar, beans. Farmer members supplied us with vegetables and fruits. However, part of the time the Conference was unable to pay our house rent, which was $7 per month, and my wife had to make up the deficit by doing the washings for our landlady. In addition to this, I raised a vegetable garden on our lot that summer.

Decision about the Firbutte school meetings near Eugene required a special Conference Board meeting. About the same time the Fishers' invitation came, the way opened also for a series of meetings to be held in the little church building we had rented in Harrisburg. The Board wanted to decide which assignment was to go to me, and which to Elder Oberg.

But since the Harrisburg church seated about 150 people, and was located in a town, while the Firbutte schoolhouse seated only 35, and was located 8 miles from town, in a sparsely settled rural district where farmhouses were a half-mile apart, the Board readily agreed to assign me to the country schoolhouse. Elder Oberg was assigned to the church building in Harrisburg, at his urgent request.

Meanwhile, the Salem meetings, after three months, ended on July 1st, 1933, with no results. Mr. Oberg left immediately to make preparations for his Harrisburg meetings.

After he left, Mrs. Armstrong and I visited a number of the people who had attended regularly. They had not come into the church because of a few doctrinal differences. Mr. Oberg, as explained earlier, had done nearly all the preaching after the first week. The meetings had become altogether pentecostal -- or, as some might have stated it, inspirational. These doctrinal differences had not been explained. I felt that I could explain them. As a result of nearly a week's work with these people in their homes, a number of them did accept the truth. We thereupon accepted them into fellowship as members of the Church.

During these four or five days I rented a church building in the same general part of Salem, at 17th and Chemeketa, for Sabbath services, and Thursday night prayer meetings. After conference with the Board, it was arranged for Mr. A. J. Ray to act as pastor of the new church at Salem. The members from the Jefferson area agreed to attend at Salem, and this formed a church of around 30 or 35 members.

The church there lasted only a few months. The new pentecostal members apparently dropped out after a few weeks, and the older members around the Jefferson area went back to meeting in a country schoolhouse southwest of Jefferson.

The START of the Present Work

As soon as arrangements were completed for starting the new church at Salem, I hurried on down to the Fisher farm to start the new campaign west of Eugene.

Mr. Oberg was starting his new meetings in Harrisburg on Sunday night, July 9. The Fishers and I decided to start the meetings at the Firbutte school the same night. I arrived at the Fisher farm, leaving my wife and children at our home in Salem, about July 5th or 6th.

This was the small -- actually infinitesimal -- start of what was destined to grow to a major worldwide Gospel Work reaching multiple millions of people every week.

But if small, it started with a burst of energy and inspiration. First, it started with intensive and earnest private prayer. To the rear of the Fisher farm home was a fair-sized hill. Running over this hilltop for exercise I discovered a rock about 14 inches high. It was in a secluded spot. It came to mind how Jesus had dismissed the multitudes, and gone up into a mountain apart to pray -- alone with God. I dropped to my knees before this rock, which seemed just the right height to kneel before, and began praying earnestly for the success of the meetings. It became sort of a daily pilgrimage, during my stay at Fishers', to this, which became my prayer rock. I'm sure that I drank in much energy, spiritual strength and inspiration at that prayer rock.

Preparing for the meetings, I borrowed a typewriter. I think the Fishers arranged this for me through one of their relatives. With carbon paper, I typed out some thirty notices, announcing the meetings, and the topics of the sermons for the first week or ten days.

There was no local newspaper in that localized school district. We could not have afforded to purchase advertising space to announce the meetings, had there been one. We could not afford to have handbills printed. But I took these typed notices, and part of the time walking, part of the time with Mr. Fisher driving me, and part of the time driving his car which he let me use, I visited all the homes for some five miles around -- farther, toward the west -- telling the people about the meetings, inviting them to attend, and leaving the typed announcements.

Then we anxiously awaited Sunday night. Would the people come?

Twenty-seven people filled 27 of the 35 seats that first night. I spoke on prophecy.

The second night attendance dropped to 19. But that night we had a bit of excitement. An event occurred that greatly stimulated interest.

Heckled -- Put on the Spot

In this neighborhood, near the schoolhouse, lived an elderly Bible scholar with quite a reputation in the community. His name was Belshaw. He owned the most extensive theological library in the district -- probably the only one. The neighbors regarded him as something of a Bible authority.

Mr. and Mrs. Fisher had warned me of one of his habits which was traditional in the neighborhood. In Eugene, adjoining the University of Oregon campus, is a theological seminary. Frequently advanced students were sent to one of these country schoolhouses to hold a short series of meetings as part of their training. It was Mr. Belshaw's custom to attend one of the first two meetings, and to put the speaker on the spot by heckling with a trick question.

It was Mr. Belshaw's contention that these young men did not really have a thorough knowledge of the Bible. He was sure that he did. He was adept at asking questions the answer to which he was pretty sure the young preacher, or preacher-to-be, did not know. If he could tangle the speaker up and expose his ignorance, the neighbors would have a good laugh -- and then fail to attend any further meetings.

If Mr. Belshaw can trap you with a trick question, no one will attend your meetings after that, warned Mr. Fisher. He nearly always has a question these young men can't answer. But if you can answer him, or turn the tables on him, the news will spread all over the neighborhood and the attendance will increase.

Mr. Belshaw had not put in an appearance the first night. Apparently he had decided to first see whether I had a good crowd. But the second night, he was one of the 19 present.

He interrupted my sermon. Mr. Armstrong, he called out, May I ask you a question? Yes Sir, Mr. Belshaw, I replied, you may. Have you been saved yet? Instantly I knew what his trap was. He expected me to say that I had been, of course. Then he would have asked me if I did not know what Jesus said in Matthew 24:13. So I immediately quoted this scripture to him.

Jesus said, in Matthew 24:13, that he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And in the very next verse, Jesus also said that HIS gospel of the KINGDOM -- which is the RULE of God -- the keeping of His commandments -- shall be preached in all the world as a witness. That is what I am doing here tonight. Why do you not OBEY the Commandments, as Jesus said, Mr. Belshaw?

I knew that Mr. Belshaw argued against the Ten Commandments. I would, if I could see any LOVE in them, he replied. Then you must be spiritually blind, I said. The Ten Commandments are merely the ten points of the great Law of LOVE. The first four tell you how to love God; the last six how to love thy neighbor. The Bible says LOVE is the fulfilling of the Law. The Commandments came from God, and God is Love. He gave the Commandments. Do you think God ever did anything that was not done in LOVE?

Mr. Belshaw had no answer. He was silenced for the night. But he was not through. He tried to trap me with the Scriptures three more times, in later meetings.

The news did spread. Tuesday night 36 were in attendance -- one having to stand through the service. Thursday night 35 came -- every seat filled. Our highest attendance was 64 -- with 29 standing in the crowded little room. Attendance for the six weeks averaged 36 -- one more than seating capacity.

Heckled Again -- and Again!

The final Sunday night, beginning the last week of the meetings, a young minister who also fought against God's Law came as a visitor. It was the custom to ask visiting ministers to lead in prayer -- a custom from which I have long since learned to depart. I asked him to lead in prayer.

My sermon topic had been announced. He knew I was going to speak on the subject of God's Sabbath. In his prayer this young preacher did his best to belittle me, discredit everything he thought I could say in my sermon, and give the impression I was not preaching the gospel.

I thank Thee, O Lord, he prayed in a strong voice, that we have a CHRIST to worship, and not a day! Help us, O Lord, to preach CHRIST, and Him crucified -- not about days and laws. Help us to be like the Apostle Paul, who said, 'I am determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.'

As he prayed, I realized he was trying to knock my sermon into some kind of a cocked hat before I could start preaching it -- and that unless I had the right answer his prayer would cause many to be prejudiced, and to reject everything I would say. As he prayed, l prayed desperately, asking God to put the right answer in my mind. God did! Instantly I knew what to say.

This is another incident that has been mentioned before, on the air and in The Plain Truth -- but it properly belongs at this point in the Autobiography. After his prayer I said to the audience:

I am glad to know that Mr ....(I don't remember his name) says he is determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, for I, too, am of the same determination. I am going to PREACH Jesus Christ, and Him crucified tonight! But to do that, one must first know WHY Jesus Christ had to be crucified!

I have just received a letter from my wife in Salem, I continued. She wrote me that our elder little son, Richard David, 5 years old, has just preached his first sermon. He, too, preached Christ crucified. He and another little boy were playing by the side of our house. The window was open, and my wife overheard the conversation. The other little boy had been using a lot of slang. Our Dickey was exasperated. He picked up two sticks, crossing the longer with the shorter one.

'Now you look here, Donald,' said Dickey with flashing indignation. 'Do you know what this is?'

'No,' answered Donald. 'Well, this here is a cross. And they had to put Jesus Christ up on a cross, and drive nails through his hands and his feet, and nail him to that cross so he would die, just because you have been saying gosh and darn and gee-whiz! Don't you say those words any more!'

And I wonder, I continued, if people realize that SIN is the transgression of God's LAW -- and that Jesus Christ was CRUCIFIED because you people have been transgressing His holy Sabbath! DON'T YOU PROFANE WHAT IS HOLY TO GOD ANY MORE! And now I propose to preach to you Christ CRUCIFIED tonight -- and WHY He was crucified!

My young preacher guest, in white-hot anger, stomped out of the schoolhouse, to the accompaniment of the laughter of the audience, all of whom apparently delighted to see the tables turned on one who took a hostile advantage of a friendly invitation to lead in prayer.

He had merely provided me with the most effective possible introduction for my sermon

Belshaw's Last Stand

The elderly Mr. Belshaw tried twice more, during those meetings, to entrap me with the Scriptures. But each time, God through His Spirit put the correct answer in my mind, and the right scriptures with which to reply.

Much later, after the meetings had closed, and we were holding meetings three times a week at the next schoolhouse, 4 miles farther west -- the Jeans school -- he made one final attempt. He staked everything on this, his last stand.

He waited until after the close of my sermon. He accosted me in the rear of the schoolroom just as people were starting to leave.

Mr. Armstrong, he said in a loud voice, May I ask you a question?

This acted like an electric shock on everyone present. Mr. Belshaw's question had stirred much excitement. The two or three who already had gone out the door rushed back in. All circled around Mr. Belshaw and me.

Yes sir, Mr. Belshaw -- you most certainly may try once again, I responded, and by this time with a confident smile.

Well, Mr. Armstrong, have I not heard you mention the scriptures stating that the Apostle Paul told the Gentile converts that he had not shunned to declare unto them the whole gospel -- and that he had not held anything back that was profitable to them?

That is correct, I smiled. And have you not also said that no nation ever kept the Sabbath, except the Israelites -- that is, that these Gentiles had not been Sabbath keepers before Paul taught them?

That is also correct! All right, pursued Mr. Belshaw confidently. He was sure he had the best of me this time. IF the Sabbath law is binding on us today, then it was binding on those Gentiles as soon as they became Christians. They were never Sabbath keepers prior to conversion. IF it is binding on us, then it was necessary for Paul to teach them to keep it. Now can you show me any scripture where the Apostle Paul ever taught or commanded the Gentiles to keep the Sabbath? He felt he had delivered a telling blow -- unanswerable, that would finally discredit me and what I preached once and for all! He was shocked at my answer.

Yes sir, Mr. Belshaw! I answered without any hesitation. I certainly can! But before I do, I will now ask you a question: If I do show you where the Apostle Paul commanded the Gentile converts to keep the Sabbath, then that is irrefutable proof that YOU are commanded to keep it today. Now before I show you this command, I demand to know this: IF I show where Paul commanded the Gentiles to keep the Sabbath, WILL YOU NOW GIVE UP YOUR REBELLION, AND SURRENDER TO KEEP IT ALSO?

He looked at me completely dumbfounded. He had been sure there was no command in the New Testament from Paul to Gentiles to keep the Sabbath. My answer caused him to back up, so startled, he almost fell over backward. It literally staggered him. Now he was not so sure of himself. I appeared very confident. He wasn't sure whether I was bluffing. But he was afraid to take the chance.

NO, I WON'T! he snapped, and angrily stomped out of the schoolhouse.

I do hasten to add, however, that aside from these four skirmishes where Mr. Belshaw, as was his custom with all preachers coming to the neighborhood, tried to trap me, he was most friendly toward me. He respected me. He refused to agree, but he did respect me. We had many friendly visits together. Mr. Fisher and I called on him three or four times, but, much as he liked to argue Scripture, he usually avoided the subject when we came around.

After he left I did show the rest of the people present where Paul did command the gentiles to keep the Sabbath. My challenge to Mr. Belshaw was not a bluff.

Chapter 30

The World Tomorrow Broadcast Begins

THE IDEA of a literal, yet invisible devil of supernatural powers is looked upon askance by the liberal clergy, and by most of the so-called educated of today. But you can PROVE that the Holy BIBLE is in actual fact the inspired very WORD of the Eternal God and Creator. And the Bible reveals that there is an existent devil! It reveals also that he is, in these last days, exceedingly angry and stirred to action against the true servants of God, who keep God's commandments, and have the faith of Jesus Christ (Rev. 12:12,17).

An Angry Devil

It is also revealed that Satan's method is to deceive, and that he and his demons have power to put thoughts, suggestions, or impulses into unsuspecting human minds -- unless we are alertly on guard against it.

The unseen Master Competitor had instilled into the hearts of associated ministers a spirit of competition against me, even before the actual start of this present Work of God in that little Firbutte schoolhouse.

The very second time in my life I ever preached -- if those early efforts could be called that -- an opposing minister had appeared, and devoted most of his sermon to an effort to tear down what I had preached in the first sermon of the day, just before his sermon. Another minister had tried to prevent my articles from appearing further in The Bible Advocate organ of The Church of God. A plot had been hatched by two ministers, during the Salem, Oregon, meetings, by false accusations, to discredit me and get me off the payroll of the Oregon Conference of this church.

And now, at the very start of what was to continue steadily expanding into a worldwide force directed and empowered by God, Satan tried, more viciously than ever, to stop this Work while it was still small. Surely no activity could have started smaller. The things of God, when the Eternal works through human instruments, must start the very smallest -- like the grain of mustard seed. But they grow. No power, no grouping of power, whether satanic or human, can stop or prevent God's PURPOSE! Satan may be far more powerful than man. But God is incomparably more powerful than Satan, and the devil can do no more than God allows.

I suppose these opposing ministers thought they were doing right. There is a way that seems right to a man. God says these ways are wrong, and end in death. But a deceived man cannot comprehend that. I do not wish to impute motives. I could not read these men's hearts. But I do know that, regardless of intent, their actions sought at every turn to DESTROY what has proved, by its fruits, to be the true WORK OF GOD! Today, far more powerful and formidable human powers are being marshalled against it. Today, just as the Pharisees and Sadducees hated the Gospel Jesus was preaching, so modern organized churchianity hates that same identical Gospel now pouring like an avalanche over every continent on earth, preparing the way before Christ's coming to RULE all nations with GOD's LAWS.

Thus prophecy is being fulfilled!

The Pork Obsession

The opposition through the spring and summer of 1933 had come through the two ministers who had moved up to Oregon from California, Elders Sven (Sam) A. Oberg, and A. J. Ray. Mr. Ray was developing, through the summer, a sort of obsession against the eating of unclean meats -- pork, ham, bacon, seafoods, and those labelled unclean in Leviticus 11. The emphasis he continually put on this doctrine, almost with vehemence, rather gave the impression that, in his eyes, the eating of pork, which came in for his greatest condemnation, was the greatest of sins.

About the time the Firbutte school meeting started, July 9, 1933, Mr. Ray began aiming his anti-pork guns directly at me. He demanded that I state definitely my stand on this question. I had written him a Biblical exposition of the subject, showing that it was a physical FOOD question, rather than a spiritual or Gospel subject. Unless a man broke the tenth commandment by lusting after it, the eating of pork did not violate the Ten Commandments, which constitute a SPIRITUAL law.

I quoted Mark 7:15-23, where Jesus explained that sin is a spiritual principle -- that which is coming out of the heart of a man -- evil thoughts leading to actions of adultery, murder, theft, deceit, blasphemy, pride -- violations of the Ten Commandments; but that nothing from without, entering in his mouth, defiles the man spiritually. Jesus was speaking of SPIRITUAL principles, and SIN as a spiritual offense.

I explained that I was well aware that the unclean animals were unclean even before the Flood -- not suddenly pronounced so by Moses. I also explained that I was well aware of the fact they are still unclean, and unfit for the physical digestive process; that Peter's vision of the sheet was given, not to cleanse unclean animals, but to show Peter that he should not regard a Gentile MAN as unclean (Acts 10:28).

Also that I well understood that I Timothy 4:1-5 did not make unclean foods digestible and healthful, but only those which are creatures of God, and sanctified which means SET APART by the Word of God and prayer. The Word of God does NOT sanctify the flesh of swine, or set it apart for holy use -- but rather forbids its use for food. Undoubtedly millions of people have contracted disease from eating unclean meats.

But, I pointed out, it still was a PHYSICAL violation, not a spiritual sin. The Kingdom of God (Rom. 14:17) is NOT meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit -- SPIRITUAL things.

And, I explained, I was commissioned to preach to the outside world The Kingdom of God, which is NOT preaching meat and drink. I explained that neither I nor any of my family ate unclean meats; that I taught all converts not to eat unclean meats, as a matter of good health. But I asked him if he could show me by the Bible where I was in error, or any Scriptural commission to preach sermons to the unconverted on the eating of pork. I told him I refused to make this food question a subject for sermons to the unconverted, unless he could show me Scriptural grounds for so doing.

He was unable to reply. Instead, he set out with renewed zeal to discredit me and get me ousted from the ministry.

There was a ministers' meeting one Sunday afternoon, about four weeks after the Firbutte school meetings had started, at the Jeans schoolhouse, four miles west of Firbutte. Both Mr. Ray and Mr. Oberg came to talk to me. They were not friendly. Mr. Ray, especially, was wrathful.

Hatching Another Plot

Then a general business meeting of the state Conference was called for the following Sunday, at the church building in Harrisburg. I was instructed not to let the Fishers or any of the people in the Firbutte or Eugene district know about it.

I well knew the purpose of the meeting. I was having, in the one-room country schoolhouse out in this sparsely settled rural district, a larger attendance than Mr. Oberg was having in the larger church building in the town of Harrisburg. I already had three or four conversions, he had none.

At this meeting with Mr. Ray and Mr. Oberg, they strenuously objected to my baptizing new converts before I had preached to them against pork, and had evidence they had given it up. I knew that Messrs. Oberg and Ray intended to use this against me in the business meeting, as their latest try to get me ousted from the payroll.

I must repeat that I was receiving a salary of $3 per week! The farmer members provided my family in Salem with a certain amount of food, in addition to the salary.

I have not mentioned it before, but in April, 1933, during the Salem meetings, I had started the issuing of a monthly Bulletin for members of the conference. It was mimeographed. At Salem, I had hired the Bulletin printed at the local mimeograph shop. At the Fisher home, after starting the Firbutte school meetings, I had borrowed a typewriter, and the Eugene mimeograph dealer permitted me to use one of his mimeographs without charge -- though I had to buy the stencils and paper. These costs were paid by the Conference treasury.

After we started the meetings west of Eugene, some people in that area had begun giving me small amounts of money occasionally, which I began to use for the expenses and mailing of this conference Bulletin.

A Letter to My Wife

During this week, between the conference with the two ministers and the business meeting at Harrisburg, I wrote a letter to my wife. I was temporarily discouraged, and I was exasperated and indignant at the tactics of these ministers, professing to be the ministers of Jesus Christ. I simply felt I had to blow off the steam of righteous indignation. Some of the human nature asserted itself.

I really got it off my chest in a 6-page single-spaced letter I typed to my wife on this borrowed typewriter. Then, after getting it out of my system I folded up the letter. But I did not mail it. I must have neglected to destroy it, for I have run across the letter in an old dusty file. I had refrained from sending it to my wife, for I knew she would reprove me for griping. I felt I had murmured like the grumbling children of Israel being led out of Egypt under Moses.

Nevertheless, although some of this letter reflects a humanness of which I was ashamed, it does give an account, written at the moment, of the very feeling of the situation.

I did go up the hill to my prayer rock, and get the complaining out of my heart. There it came to my mind that I should prepare a written defense of my action in baptizing the four so far converted at Firbutte.

But the truth is, God did prosper the work started in the Eugene area. With the Church then being raised up at Eugene, He DID start a work through us which He could, AND DID, PROSPER! He is still prospering it in a mighty way!

The All-Day Wrangle

Mr. Fisher drove me to the business meeting at Harrisburg on Sunday morning. But he, being excluded, returned home.

Both Mr. Ray and Mr. Oberg had their fighting tempers on. This time they were determined to have me put out of the Conference. One of them preached an hour and a half or two hours in the morning -- until noon -- in one long tirade against me. The other followed in the afternoon session, with another two-hour denunciation of my baptizing people on repentance and faith, before they had been given a complete education about God's Law, and before they had been instructed against eating pork. As usual, not much Scripture was given -- but emotional arguments based on human reasoning, and worked up to a high pitch.

I knew they had swayed some of the brethren into believing I had done wrong in baptizing these people according to the Bible teaching.

I then asked to be allowed to defend myself, and present the Scriptural reason why I baptized as I did, according to SCRIPTURAL TEACHING. Immediately Messrs. Oberg and Ray were on their feet in protest.

If Brother Armstrong is allowed to speak, he will take up too much time, they argued.

I anticipated that, I replied. I have my reply to these long speeches by Brother Ray and Brother Oberg typewritten. I have timed it. It takes exactly 15 minutes to read it. Are you going to allow these men hours -- all morning and afternoon -- to accuse me, and then refuse me even 15 minutes to answer their accusations, and show BY THE SCRIPTURES, who is right?

On promise I would not take up more than 15 minutes' time, I was allowed to read my defense.

In brief it was this: The natural, unconverted mind cannot understand the Bible, and is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be. There is no promise in the Bible God will give His Holy Spirit to anyone prior to baptism -- even though He did in the case of Cornelius (Acts 10:44-48). God's order is, 1) REPENT, 2) BE BAPTIZED as a symbol of FAITH in Christ, and 3) receive the Holy Spirit. Repentance means unconditional SURRENDER to God, and to God's will and His way, or whatever He commands. It means having the rebellion in the human heart against obedience to God BROKEN. It means utter submission to GOD, and to whatever He instructs in His Word. Those I had baptized had REPENTED.

In Matthew 28:19-20, God's order is 1) go and preach the Gospel (compare with Mark's version, same words of Jesus, Mark 16:15); 2) baptize those who REPENT and BELIEVE; then, after that, 3) teach them to observe the COMMANDMENTS. Since people cannot fully comprehend the truth of the Commandments and the teaching of the Bible until AFTER they receive the Holy Spirit, and since there is no promise God will give the Holy Spirit until after baptism, therefore I baptized them after repentance and faith, just as the Bible instructs -- and then, after laying on hands with prayer for their receiving of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:12, 14-17; Acts 19:5-6; I Tim. 4:14; II Tim. 1:6, etc.), I taught them God's Commandments, and not to eat unclean meats, etc. Every convert I had ever baptized had obeyed all the truths as soon as I taught them. They were submissive, teachable, yielded to God, hungry for His truth. The KNOWLEDGE of the Lord is something to teach converted people whose minds are opened by God's Spirit. We must continually GROW in this knowledge.

The Double Cross

As soon as I finished, Mr. Fisher's car had arrived to take me back to the Firbutte schoolhouse for the evening meeting. I was forced to leave immediately. Under the circumstances, I asked the Board members and ministers if they would postpone any action until another meeting when I could be present. To this they agreed.

About half of the brethren present were very plainly on my side. As I left the church, this half rose and walked outside to assure me of their sympathy, and that they would resist any action against me.

But as soon as I and all who would support me had gone outside, Messrs. Ray and Oberg broke their word! They immediately offered a resolution that I be required, if I remained in the conference, to baptize people their way instead of the Scriptural way, and those remaining inside the church building were swayed into voting for it.

As soon as I heard of the action taken, I immediately wrote a letter cancelling the $3 per week salary, and suggesting they give it to Messrs. Oberg and Ray. I did not resign from the Conference. But I refused further salary.

My wife was in complete accord with me. As for me and my house, I then said firmly, we shall serve the Eternal our God, and Him ONLY shall we serve. If MEN pay us a salary -- even as small as $3 per week -- we have now learned we must preach only what MEN order us to preach. If we are to WORK FOR GOD we must look to God as our EMPLOYER, AND TRUST HIM TO SUPPLY OUR EVERY MATERIAL NEED. And then, I added, if we fail to serve Him as HE commands, He will stop our income. I wrote my wife to this effect.

It may seem like a step that required great courage to give up even a $3-a-week income, when that was all we had. Of course, a few offerings were by this time being handed to me personally -- but they were usually a dollar or less, and averaged less than the $3 weekly salary. But it really did not require any real courage. My wife and I knew we were obeying and serving God. We knew He was using us. The FRUITS being borne were loud testimony of this. God had prepared us for relying solely on Him by many miraculous answers to prayer. Therefore we knew, in perfect faith, God would supply our need.

The Crucial Test

Actually this was the turning point of my whole life -- far more crucial than I realized at the time.

This was the crossroads -- the final pivotal, crucial test before the living Christ began opening the doors of mass communication through which GOD'S WORK at last could come to life after centuries of sleeping, and go forth in mighty power to all the world, preparing the way before Christ's return to earth as Ruler over all nations.

I did not fully realize, then, that this was a crucial turning point in the history of the Church of God. My wife and I did not leave the Church. This was God's Church. Of that I was not, then, completely sure. They came closer to Biblical truth than any other -- but I was seriously disturbed by their lack of power and accomplishment.

What actually was happening, though we did not understand it then, was that a NEW ERA was dawning in the history of the Church of God. The words of Christ are quoted in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of the Book of Revelation, foretelling the history of God's Church in seven successive eras, or phases. Events since that time have revealed this to be the era in which Christ's message is to go worldwide just before the end of this age.

Mrs. Armstrong and I continued to fellowship with these brethren. I continued to work with them, and with their ministers, as far as that was possible. The lay brethren continued to look to me for the leadership for getting the Work of God going to the world. But from that all-day wrangle I was independent of them and their ministers, financially. From that time I was dependent, solely, on God. We did not ask or solicit financial contributions from any except those who voluntarily became financial co-workers with us. And that has been the policy ever since.

But, from that moment when we began to rely solely on God for financial support not only, but also for guidance, direction, and results, the Work began a phenomenal yearly increase of nearly 30% for the next 35 years. It doubled in size, scope and power on the average of every 2 2/3 years. It multiplied eight times every eight years -- 64 times in 16 years. Today it is an immensely larger and greater Work than then.

WHY has this Work leaped from virtually nothing to worldwide power and scope, multiplying itself continually over and over again?

Certainly I had not the ability, the resources within myself, to have planned, directed, and accomplished anything remotely like the phenomenal development into the worldwide enterprises that is reality today.

In my twenties I had been ambitious, self-confident -- conceited, supposing I would be doing great things. But that SELF-inflation had been punctured and utterly deflated. I had been brought down to earth with a sickening thud. I had been forced to realize, in retrospect, that I had been merely running around in circles, unable to develop any organization or take an executive job requiring the management and supervision over others. I had come to see myself as a hunk of burned-out junk, unworthy to be cast aside on the scrap pile.

Conversion had deflated ego and replaced SELF-assurance with the CONFIDENCE that is FAITH IN GOD!

And this crisis was the turning point when my wife and I actually, in practice, began RELYING SOLELY ON GOD -- no longer on either self or MEN!

Until those two milestones had been hurdled, God could not OPEN THE BIG DOORs! The DIFFERENCE between THIS Work of GOD and others is just that -- this is the Work of GOD and not of MEN. It started, and continued, to rely on GOD, not on MAN.

I had been changed; I had seven years of intensive Bible study and growth in Biblical KNOWLEDGE behind me. I had five years of experience in preaching. I had become quite experienced in relying on God, instead of on self or on humans. Yet, notwithstanding, as long as I was EMPLOYED by men who were over me, and who had proved to be susceptible of being influenced and swayed by false ministers, into acting contrary to God's Word, I was not yet free to RELY ON GOD ALONE, and to be completely FAITHFUL to His Word!

The living Christ simply could not start opening the doors for HIS WORK, until I was free to RELY SOLELY ON HIM!

I was now FREE! This final crucial test had proved that I would be FAITHFUL to God and His Word, even at cost of giving up everything!

I know of evangelists who probably are sincere in supposing they are serving God -- and who would like to be free to proclaim many truths they now hold back. They reason something like this: If I go farther, and preach those things, I'll lose all my support. I'd be cut off from the ministry altogether. Then I could preach NOTHING. Better serve God by preaching as much of the Biblical truth as possible, than to be prevented from preaching anything.

They are relying on the financial support of MEN, or of organizations of men. Anyone in that predicament is the SERVANT OF MEN, and NOT OF GOD, whether he realizes it or not.

A man accosted me as I was walking along the gravel country road, between the Firbutte School and the Jeans School in the fall of 1933.

You won't get far, he said. You're preaching the straight truth of the Bible. That offends people. The Bible is like a sharp two-edged sword. It cuts -- it reproves, corrects, rebukes -- people won't support that kind of preaching! You won't get far.

But I was not relying on the support of PEOPLE. If PEOPLE paid me, I would have to serve people. If I were to serve GOD, I would have to look solely to GOD for support!

Of course God does work through human instruments. But I had to rely on GOD to lay it on the hearts of people to support the kind of preaching that obeys Isaiah 58:1 by crying ALOUD -- lifting up my voice and showing the people their SINS!

NEVER was a more important decision made than that decision to cut loose entirely from relying on MEN, and instead, relying solely on God -- not only for truth, and for direction, but also for SUPPORT! That's why we never solicit the public for contributions.

Very quickly after that decision the living Christ began opening doors! Very small ones at first. Then additional small ones -- then a BIG door -- then more and more of them!

And, to finance what He opened before me, He added, slowly, gradually, but consistently to the little family of Co-Workers who voluntarily wanted to have a part in GOD'S WORK -- in changing hearts, changing human nature, preparing for Christ's coming to CHANGE AND SAVE THE WORLD! But I could not invite people to become Co-Workers. I could welcome them with gratitude when GOD caused them voluntarily to become Co-Workers with Christ -- but until they took the initiative I could not ask them. No other activity on earth is operated like this -- and perhaps none has grown so surely.

The First Broadcast

The six weeks' meetings in the one-room Firbutte schoolhouse came to a close on Sunday night, August 20, 1933. A total of more than 20 had come with us -- but this apparently included the ten members of the Fisher and Ellis families, members of the Church before the meetings started.

The October 1, 1933 Bulletin carries the report that with the Fisher and Ellis families, more than 20 signified their desire to establish a new Sabbath-keeping Church of God in this district.

In September -- very soon after rejecting a salary and being controlled and muzzled by MEN, the living Christ began opening doors for the MASS-proclaiming of His Gospel. It was then that someone brought to my attention the fact that the local radio station at Eugene, KORE, then the very smallest minimum-power of 100 watts, had a morning devotional program scheduled, but that they were having difficulty getting local ministers to conduct the program. It was free time, carried by the station as a public service sustaining program of 15 minutes, 7:45 to 8:00 a.m.

Immediately I went to the radio station. A woman secretary told me she felt sure they would be glad to have me take the program for a week. I was to call back later for the exact date.

On my second call I was assigned the week of October 9th. October 9th was surely a great big day in my life -- the day of my very first experience before a microphone, ON THE AIR!

I took this opportunity very seriously. It was an opportunity to speak to several HUNDRED people at once! I had never spoken to that many before.

I spent the preceding week preparing rather extensive notes and script. I might never again have such an opportunity, so I decided to strike directly at the very heart of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Since the Kingdom of God is based on the promises made to Abraham, I began, on Monday morning's program with the PROMISES made to Abraham.

Mike-Fright

I had heard a lot about everybody getting mike-fright the very first time on the air. I wondered if I would experience this. It was probably the most exciting adventure of my life.

On Monday morning, I arrived at the radio studio early. The announcer did not come into the studio until ten or fifteen seconds before 7:45.

Mike-fright? Why, I thought to myself, I'm calm and cool as a cucumber!

Listen! I said quietly but quickly to the announcer. I've never been on the air before. If you have any instructions, you'd better give them to me in a hurry. We have only 10 seconds!

He looked at me disdainfully, and a little bored. Just stand up there in front of the mike, and start talking as soon as I announce you, he replied.

About three seconds later he announced me. While he was giving this very brief announcement on the air, I thought, Well I don't have any mike-fright. I'm sure glad of that!

Then, for the first time in my life, I said into the microphone:

GREETINGS, friends! But suddenly something had happened! Before those two words were finished, something had hit me like a jolt! Something had started my heart pounding like a sledge-hammer! I felt myself gasping for breath! During those opening two words, MIKE-FRIGHT had seized me!

I struggled with all my might to control my hard breathing so it would not be audible over the air. It was agony, but I concentrated my mind with all the strength I had on two things -- to carefully say the words of my typed script as naturally as I could, and to control my hard breathing so it did not sound.

After two or three minutes I was making good progress in gaining control. After some five minutes my breathing had returned to normal, and I was so absorbed in getting this vital message over to the largest audience of my life -- even though that audience was invisible -- that I forgot all about the mike-fright.

The Surprising Response

The second morning there was no mike-fright. I was beginning to gain assurance, and able to speak a little more naturally.

It must have been about Thursday morning that the announcer told me the station owner, Mr. Frank Hill, wanted to see me in his office later in the morning.

He had received several letters and telephone calls from listeners, requesting copies of my talks. I had offered no literature of any kind. I had invited no mail response.

This is rather surprising, said Mr. Hill. We never had any response of any kind, before, from this morning devotional program. They told me you had not invited any. Yet it has been coming. I listened in on you this morning to see what was causing it. You have an excellent radio voice, and a way of delivering your message that arouses interest and holds an audience.

Now, Mr. Armstrong, he continued, I want to suggest that you work out a regular Sunday morning Church service, condensed into a half hour. I'd like to put that on as a regular sustaining program -- free time -- but I can't do that without offering equal time to every church in town. However I will sell you the time at less than bare cost of operation, $2.50 per half hour.

And THAT suggestion from Mr. Frank Hill is what put the idea of the WORLD TOMORROW program in my mind!

Altogether 14 letters and telephone calls came in to the radio station requesting copies of the messages I had broadcast.

I thanked him, and told him I would see what I could do. But, $2.50 every week! WOW! That was almost as much as my entire salary had been! And I had just previously renounced even that small salary!

Today, $2.50 per half-hour broadcast seems incredibly small. We have to pay far more than that per minute on stations today! But it seemed like an insurmountable barrier then.

Yet I knew this was GOD'S WORK, not mine. I was only an instrument. God had promised to supply every need.

God had OPENED THE DOOR OF MASS EVANGELISM! I knew He wanted us to walk through that door. I knew He would somehow supply that $2.50 every week. I knew also that we had to do our part, not lie down, do nothing, and expect God to do it without any effort from us.

I was continuing to hold meetings at the Firbutte schoolhouse, twice weekly -- Sabbath afternoons and Thursday evenings.

Then, on October 21st, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Smith, just across the road from the Jeans school, 4 miles west of Firbutte, a new Church of God was organized, with Mr. E. E. Fisher as deacon, and myself as Pastor. Meetings continued from that date, three times a week, Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and Sabbath afternoons. Attendance was averaging 22. A first action of the new Church was the decision of whether to go ahead with the broadcast. These new members and the lay brethren of the Oregon Conference all approved it joyfully as an effective evangelistic activity of the Church.

So I sent out a letter to the small mailing list of members we had for The Bulletin. I asked for pledges from brethren to help raise this $2.50 per week. But I asked this only of God's people -- brethren in Christ -- NOT OF THE PUBLIC! In due time pledges came back for just HALF enough -- about $1.35 per week! We decided we would trust God in faith for the other $1.15 per week!

It was arranged with Mr. Hill to start the new half-hour program every Sunday, in the new year, 1934.

Chapter 31

The Plain Truth Is Published

SURELY NOTHING could have started smaller. Born in adversity in the very depths of the Depression, this Work of God was destined to grow to worldwide power.

But I did not realize its destiny then. There were no illusions of grandeur. It was not through any planning of mine that the little three-point campaign then being launched was to expand into its present global scope and influence.

Divinely Planned

Most people are conscious only of what they see -- of that which is material. They fail to see the invisible Hand of GOD in the working out of things.

All I had in mind, as The World Tomorrow program was being planned late in 1933, was to serve God faithfully wherever He should lead in that local territory of Lane County, Oregon.

It is true that where there is no vision, the people perish. But few people realize that the source of true vision is GOD. There has been vision behind the planning and phenomenal growth of this great work. But this is the WORK OF GOD, not of man; and the vision and the planning has been that of Jesus Christ, the active, living HEAD of this Work, not of man.

Even in earlier business experience, I had always looked ahead. It had become habitual with me to think of expanding. I had envisioned my laundry advertising service becoming national in scope. I did have a vision of this broadcasting being expanded.

But, I most certainly did not sit down, in the fall of 1933, and lay out detailed plans in my human mind for a great, powerful, earth-encircling program to reach and influence the millions in every nation. There was no thought, then, of a gigantic radio program, and a publishing enterprise, starting in Eugene, Oregon, but soon expanding to every inhabited continent; there certainly was no thought of the massive television program of today (television was virtually unheard of until some 12 years later, after the end of World War II); nor was there the remotest idea that we should, at the proper time along the way, organize and build a college for training the personnel for a rapidly growing organization.

No, this Work, in the sense of the magnitude to which it has developed, was not of my planning or vision. This is THE VERY WORK OF GOD, and the vision behind it has been that of Jesus Christ -- the planning HIS! I was merely His instrument.

A Powerful DOOR Opens

What actually was happening has been written for almost 1900 years. Of course no one -- least of all myself -- had the remotest realization of it then. Jesus Christ said: I will build my Church. He built it for a purpose -- to become God's instrument in carrying on GOD's WORK fulfilling His PURPOSE here below.

God began the Work of His Church through Christ. Jesus said that He Himself was powerless -- it was the POWER of God's Holy Spirit working in His personal human body which really did the work.

But after His ascension to heaven, that same WORK OF GOD was carried on through the Spirit of God working in the collective body of God's CHURCH. That is why the true Church is called the BODY of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23).

God sent His Message -- the GOOD NEWS of His Kingdom -- of His REIGN -- His GOVERNMENT -- His divine FAMILY -- to mankind by Jesus Christ. Jesus taught this Message to His disciples, who became the apostolic leaders of His Church as it started out.

This Message from God -- Christ's GOSPEL -- was also recorded in the Scriptures of the New Testament. A few accepted that Message, and it changed their lives.

But men generally rejected the Gospel -- they crucified Jesus for teaching it! Those who preached it were persecuted -- martyred!

During the first 19-year time cycle of the preaching of the Gospel -- A.D. 31 to A.D. 50 -- the Gospel was being preached primarily to Jews. The Jews had understood about the Kingdom of God. They were familiar with the prophecies of Isaiah 9:6-7, of how the Messiah would come to set up the Kingdom and government of God over all the world. What the Jews did not understand was that Jesus' First Coming, as a babe born of the virgin Mary, was to qualify, by resisting and conquering Satan, to replace Satan on the throne of the earth as well as to announce that Kingdom to appear some 1,900 years later. And to pay with his own life's blood for the penalty of human sins.

Consequently, the twelve apostles devoted their preaching to the Jews primarily to proving that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. The opposition against the spread of the Church was almost wholly from within the Jewish community, denying the messiahship of Jesus. The twelve apostles were eyewitnesses to the fact that Jesus was the true Messiah. They had been with him continually for some three and a half years before His crucifixion and forty days after His crucifixion until His ascension to God's throne in heaven.

But the preaching of the Apostle Paul and other apostles to the people of the Gentile world was the very gospel Jesus Himself had proclaimed -- the good news of the future coming of the Kingdom of God and world rulership of Christ. The Gentiles had not heard of the Kingdom of God before.

Somewhere around the middle of the first century, a violent controversy had begun to develop as to whether the gospel to be preached was merely a gospel about Christ -- of His Messiahship and death as our Savior -- or the very message God sent by Jesus as the divine messenger with the message of the true gospel (good news) of the coming Kingdom of God.

Evidence of this is the letter the Apostle Paul wrote about this time to the churches in Galatia, in which he warned that they had already turned to a different gospel (Gal. 1:6-7).

At that time a most amazing thing occurred. The history regarding the Church -- its Gospel and its development -- seems almost totally to have dis appeared. It was as if a curtain had been rung down on all historic accounts of church history until about A.D. 150. When this curtain was lifted after that lost century, in the records of church history, an altogether different gospel was being preached -- merely the so-called gospel of men about the Christ, the Messenger, but not proclaiming His message.

Except for the one true Church, persecuted, falsely accused, condemned, subjected to martyrdom over the centuries by the rising great false church (Rev. 17:5), the true gospel -- the good news of the coming Kingdom of God was not preached to the world for 100 19-year time-cycles. Then, in 1953, God miraculously opened the door before me of the most powerful radio station on earth -- reaching all Europe and Britain, Radio Luxembourg.

Christ foretold that, just before the END of this world -- this age -- this man-built society rejecting the laws and ways of GOD -- His very same Gospel of God's KINGDOM shall be preached (Matt. 24:14) and also published (Mark 13:10) in all the world for a witness unto all nations.

In the light of fast-developing, world-encircling events, it became apparent that what was actually happening in 1934 was precisely this: Jesus Christ was opening the gigantic mass-media DOOR of radio and the printing press for the proclaiming of His same original GOSPEL to all the world!

On that tiny-powered radio station KORE -- in that infant mimeographed Plain Truth -- was going out an astonishing Message! Just as the public, 1,900 years before, had been astonished at Christ's Gospel (Mark 1:14-15,22), so were those who began to hear this SAME GOSPEL in 1934. It was so utterly different from what had been palmed off as Christianity.

The Three-Point Campaign

And so it was, that when Mr. Frank Hill, owner of KORE, urged me to produce a half-hour Sunday program, consisting of a regular church service condensed into a half hour, using radio techniques, that I went to work on the idea with zest and enthusiasm.

This seemed BIG, compared to past activities. I saw in it immediately an opportunity to reach many more people with God's TRUTH.

Not only did I set out with a will to produce the radio program, but I realized there must be follow-up (and I do not mean a money-soliciting follow-up) if this new effort were to be resultful.

Immediately the idea came of realizing, at last, the dream I had cherished since 1927 -- the publication of a magazine, to be called The Plain Truth. Back in 1927 I had made up an entire dummy of this proposed magazine. I had even written articles for it. I even had a professional letter artist design a front cover idea in 1927 -- and I had tried designing one myself. But we had never had the wherewithal to start publishing a magazine.

This ambition to publish The Plain Truth was the natural outgrowth of earlier business experience. Much of my 20 years of advertising experience had been spent in the class magazine field.

Now, at last, I realized that this magazine was a must as a follow-up for the radio broadcast. Yet we were no more able, financially, than we had been in 1927.

Necessity is the mother of invention. If we could not afford to publish a high-quality, professional-appearing magazine, I would simply convert the mimeographed BULLETIN I had been issuing for our scattered church brethren in the Willamette Valley into The Plain Truth.

My idea for this magazine, from the start, had been to publish a magazine, not for church members, but for the general public -- the unconverted and unchurched -- an evangelistic-type publication to bring to the world God's TRUTH -- making it PLAIN!

So now, even if it had to start with about 250 copies done by hand on a mimeograph, I would start it! Like the grain of mustard seed, it started, very possibly, the smallest of magazines. But it has grown into a professional-appearing 32-page magazine of over 8,000,000 circulation.

Also I saw at once that the broadcasts should be followed up by continued public evangelistic services.

Therefore, I wrote to the small number of members on the mailing list I had -- perhaps less than 60 -- the news of the forthcoming THREE-POINT CAMPAIGN: (1) The half-hour Sunday radio program; (2) the new mimeographed magazine for interested listeners, The Plain Truth, and (3) personal public meetings.

The broadcast, and idea of the Three-Point Campaign, had been completely approved, of course, by the brethren of the Church.

ON THE AIR!

On the first Sunday morning in the new year, 1934, precisely at 10 a.m., we were ON THE AIR. The program has been continuously on the air, without missing a single week, ever since.

Mr. Hill had suggested that we produce a regular Sunday morning church service, condensed into 30 minutes. I had planned it according to his suggestion. In our new local church, then meeting out at the Jeans school house, 12 miles west of Eugene, we had a young couple, Claude and Velma Ellis. Claude was a very good tenor. His wife Velma sang alto. They sang duets. They supplied the music.

I do not remember the exact format of the program, as it started, during those first few months. Very soon the duet was replaced with a mixed quartette, with our daughter Beverly singing soprano, Mrs. Armstrong alto, Claude Ellis tenor, and Alfred Freeze bass, with Mrs. Ellis at the piano.

As the program started out it was called the Radio Church of God. It was, indeed, a church service on the air. There has been a gradual evolution in the format of the program. We were to learn, later, that an abbreviated church service appeals only to a very few church-going people, who may want to listen in on a church service -- or to attend church without leaving their homes. It attracts only what is called the religious audience. Through the years the program changed, until it became a program pointed toward the NON-churchgoing public -- people who are not religious and may never attend church.

Gradually, we learned that it was the MESSAGE which attracted listeners. Radio station managers began to tell us that we really had a SPEECH-type program, and a Message and type of speech which would attract and hold a bigger audience than music.

But back, now, to January, 1934.

The Plain Truth's Modest Bow

Just as the 15-minute morning devotional programs had brought an unexpected mail response, so did the half-hour regular program of our own. Only it now brought a larger response. I began with the first broadcast, that first Sunday in 1934, inviting listeners to write in for the new magazine, The Plain Truth.

At the same time I began work on producing Volume I and Number 1 of this magazine of my dreams. I did not even have a scope for hand-lettering the headlines. I was still living with the Fishers on their farm seven miles west of Eugene -- my wife and children still at the Hall Street house in Salem. I had to hold the mimeograph stencils up against a window, and try to cut the headlines with my right hand while I tried to hold the stencil without slipping against the window pane with my left. The headlines were a little shaky. That first issue of The Plain Truth was somewhat amateurish, and homemade looking. Probably no one but myself would have dignified it by calling it a magazine.

No publication could have had a more humble, or a smaller start. But it was a start. It grew. It was improved, as scanty funds permitted. It took years before we were able to have it printed on a printing press. But through the years it has been instrumental in making drastic changes in thousands of lives!

It was some time later, in 1934, that a few special offerings made it possible for us to purchase a very old, used, outdated Neostyle. It was predecessor to the mimeograph. It was entirely hand operated. The sheets of paper had to be fed into it one at a time by hand. There was nothing automatic about it. It cost $10. We had also finally been able, before or shortly after the first issue of The Plain Truth, to raise enough money to purchase a secondhand typewriter for $10.

And so finally The Plain Truth, homemade at Fishers' farm on the mimeograph I was permitted to use at the office of the local mimeograph dealer, but containing priceless plain TRUTH, made its humble bow to the world February 1, 1934. I have no record of the exact press run of that first edition, but it was in the neighborhood of 250 copies. I think we still have one copy somewhere in some old files.

Looking back now, we are a little amazed to see how far the broadcast and The Plain Truth have gone since then. That grain of mustard seed is multiplying mightily under the guiding power of God!

Chapter 32

Campaign Gets Under Way Despite Opposition

YOU'LL never get far, Mr. Armstrong, said a resident of the Jeans neighborhood whom I met on the roadside one day. It was during the time I was holding three meetings a week at the Jeans school house, 12 miles west of Eugene, Oregon. This followed the six weeks' meetings at Firbutte school and formation of the new local Church of God which met at the Jeans school.

Why do you say that? I asked. Because you are preaching exactly what the Bible says. The Bible corrects and reproves people. People don't want to be told they are wrong. People don't like correction. What you preach is too strong for them. People will never support it.

I smiled. If I looked to people for support, I would have to preach what people want to hear, I replied. I have learned that by experience. But I was not called to this ministry by people. I was not taught the Gospel I preach by people. People did not put me in the ministry -- Jesus Christ did. I am not employed by people, or any organization of men. I have been called, and sent with His Gospel, by Jesus Christ. He is my employer. I rely on HIM for support. He has given me the written promise that He will supply all my NEED. I believe He is able, and will do it!

The man stared at me incredulously. He was speechless. But now, nearly 40 years later, I can report that Jesus Christ did support His work through His servant. He did supply its needs (almost infinitesimal at first, increasing gradually, yet always increasing). True, God works through human instruments. He has moved on the hearts of those He could make willing to become Co-Workers with Him and with me in this work, now grown great and world-encompassing.

Eugene Campaign Starts

During the July-August meetings at the Firbutte school, and on through the winter with the new local church continuing meetings at the Jeans school house, 12 miles west of Eugene, my wife and children had remained in Salem. I had lived with the Elmer Fishers on their farm seven miles west of Eugene.

But by late March I had rented a house on West 4th. I think the rent was about $7 per month. I had arranged for meetings to start in the Old Masonic Temple on Seventh Avenue. Then one evening my wife and children arrived in Eugene with our household furniture and furnishings on Ed Smith's truck. That night we arranged for my family to sleep on mattresses on the second floor of the Old Masonic Hall.

The year and three months spent in Astoria, averaging perhaps less than five hours sleep per night -- with one ordeal of three days and three nights with no sleep -- had left me in a condition which made it difficult to get to sleep at night. On this particular night, I had procured barbiturate sleeping pills, desperate for a full night's sound sleep. At this time these sleeping pills did not require a doctor's prescription. I shall never forget the experience. It was my first and last with the sleeping pills.

I had a good full night's sleep, all right. But it was a peculiar sensation. It was not a natural, but an induced sleep. It left me frightened. As I had sworn off chewing tobacco at age five, I now swore off barbiturate sleep-inducing forever.

A few busy days followed, cleaning up this virtually abandoned Old Masonic Temple auditorium. Beside my wife and children, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, and one or two others in the Church joined in the cleanup.

The Three-Point Campaign was ready to leap ahead on all three points. The broadcast had started the first Sunday in January, 1934. The Plain Truth, mimeographed, made its first appearance February 1st. And now, the first of April, the meetings were started in downtown Eugene, in the old Masonic Temple.

As mentioned before, meetings still were being held three times a week out at Jeans school house -- Tuesday and Thursday nights and Sabbath mornings. Consequently the meetings in downtown Eugene were held on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday nights. This was our first experiment in holding public evangelistic meetings three times a week. These meetings were carried on for five and a half months.

We learned by this experience that meetings held only three times a week are not as fruitful as meetings held consecutively six times a week.

Later, we were to learn that the same is true in broadcasting. A once-a-week broadcast, or even three times a week, does not produce results comparable to daily broadcasting six or seven times a week.

For this Eugene campaign I mimeographed handbills and announced it on the radio program. An attendance of approximately 100 was maintained up until the final two weeks. But this was much lower than later campaigns with consecutive six-nights-a-week services.

Here, as in the Salem meetings with Elder Oberg, the whooping, shouting, aggressive pentecostal people were much in evidence at the beginning. But by this time I had learned that they were primarily concerned with working up an emotional demonstration. They were not interested in learning Biblical TRUTH, obeying God's commands, and yielding their lives to be changed and transformed according to God's Word by a living Christ who does His saving work within us. A few vigorous sermons on obedience to God, and on overcoming, and living by every Word of God soon discouraged them. Most of them stopped coming.

Pentecostal Incidents

A large pentecostal church carried a full hour and a half broadcast on KORE of their Sunday night service. During one of these broadcasted services, their pastor said that if any of their members desired to visit any other church it would be quite all right, with the exception of the services I was holding. But he warned them against attending our meetings.

Shortly after we had moved into the house on West Fourth Avenue, three of the pentecostal people who had attended the tent meetings held in 1931 by Elder Taylor and me came to our home. They were a middle-aged husband and wife and the sister of one of them. One of the women claimed to have a disease or sickness of some kind. They asked me to anoint this woman and pray for her healing.

I invited them into the house. Why, I asked, when you people claim to have the baptism of the Holy Spirit and say that I have not -- when you claim to be on a much higher spiritual plane than I -- when your pastor and your church denounce me, and say I am not God's minister -- when you claim that your 'pentecostal' preacher has God's spirit and power and that I have not -- WHY do you come to me for anointing and healing instead of your own pastor?

Hmm! they snorted, who'd we go to over there? Well, I pursued a little further, in I John 3:22 God says that whatever we ask we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. This obedience to God's commandments is a distinct condition to being healed. You people do not obey God's commandments, although you attended our tent meetings in 1931 almost every night for six weeks, and you heard the truth about this made very plain. Now either you are deliberately rebelling, and refusing to obey God, or else you have been so blinded in your carnality that somehow the truth never really got through to you although we made it very plain -- and you just never did really see it. Which is it?

I guess we just didn't see it, brother, came the answer. All right, I said. I can't read your mind and heart as God can. I have to take you at your word. Since you claim you have not come to consciously understand the truth, and have not knowingly rebelled and disobeyed, I will anoint you.

The minute I began to pray all three, true to pentecostal heathen and unscriptural custom, began to try to drown out my voice by their loud expressions of O praise you, Jesus! HALLELUJAH! Glory to God! etc. etc., in a babylon of noisy confusion. Then immediately the woman I was anointing went into a wild, loud, uncontrolled laugh. This seemed to be a new fad at the time among pentecostals in Oregon. They called it the holy laugh.

Instantly I put my hands on her head, and in a loud voice called on God, by authority of Jesus Christ, to SILENCE this work of Satan, and cast the demon spirits out of my home!

Instantly, as if struck by a bolt of lightning, the woman's hysterical unnatural laughter was silenced, as were the shoutings of the other two. All was quiet.

They rose to their feet. Well, anyway, sneered the supposedly ill woman. I'm healed, so there! And quickly they left the house.

On another occasion a member of this pentecostal church came running up to me on a Eugene street one Sunday morning.

We've had a dozen men out looking everywhere for you, he gasped breathlessly. Please come quick! Our pastor's wife fell over backward 'under the power' during prayer, and she's unconscious, and we can't revive her. Our pastor sent us out scouring the town to find you. Please come and pray for her, that she will revive. We're afraid she is dying!

I hurried over to this pentecostal church. There they were, probably four or five hundred of them, wringing their hands in despair, all crying out in confusion for God to revive the stricken woman.

I called out in a loud voice of authority for them all to be quiet. Then in very brief and few words I asked God to have mercy on their foolish heathenism, and revive this woman. I leaned down, laid my hands on her, and she revived. I took her by the hand and lifted her up, and then strode out of their church while an awed silence reigned.

I have never been quite able to figure out why so many, through the years, who have denounced me and claimed to be spiritually superior themselves, have come to me for prayer when they needed someone close enough to God that a prayer would be answered.

Visiting Jail

During the meetings in the old Masonic Temple, someone told me of a man in the county jail who requested that I visit him. The prisoner was the black sheep brother of a very respectable man.

This prisoner seemed to welcome my visit. He was scheduled to be released from jail in a couple of days, and promised to attend the services. Two nights later he came to the meeting, with a girl he introduced as his wife.

As I believe has been mentioned previously, in those days I followed the evangelistic custom of giving altar calls. It was one of those things I thoughtlessly took for granted without checking for proof of any Biblical or divine origin. All of us have carelessly assumed, taken for granted, accepted and followed more customs, ideas and ways than we realize. As the years have raced by, I have learned to be much more careful to check and prove all beliefs and practices. Later, when I researched again over the ministry of Jesus, of Peter, Paul, and the other apostles and evangelists of the New Testament, it became clear that they never practiced or instituted any such custom. So we dropped it immediately.

But at this time I was still learning, and giving the usual evangelical altar calls. And this young man and woman both came up. They appeared quite repentant. I spent some time with them afterward. They exhibited a spirit of willingness to obey God completely, and to embark on a new life of overcoming through faith in Christ, living by every word of the Bible. Next day I baptized them.

But I learned a serious lesson through this experience. Later we discovered that these two were not married. Actually they had gone through a ceremony of marriage, but it was bigamy. The girl had previously married another man in another state, from whom she had not been divorced. She had a little two- or three-year-old daughter whose father was a third man to whom she had never been married. From that time we have been very careful to check the marriage, divorce, and remarriage status of all candidates for baptism. God intended that we learn by experience, beside direct instruction.

I told this girl she would have to leave this man. Well, she replied, I will, then, as soon as I can get a job.

No, I said firmly, you must leave him now! But I can't leave him now, she protested. I have no other place to go.

You come along with us, then, I insisted. Mrs. Armstrong will put you in our spare bedroom for tonight, and tomorrow we will help you make permanent arrangements.

She was a weakling, and so was this man. So she gave in to our firm insistence. Next morning Mrs. Armstrong went into her room to call her to breakfast. The bed was empty. The window was open. The girl had climbed out the window and gone back to her man.

However, they were soon forcibly separated again. They had bought furniture and furnishings for a cheap rented house on contract at a local furniture store. This young man had then sold much of it for cash, and failed to pay his installments at the store.

Helping a Weakling

This fellow was in jail again. He called to me for help. On visiting him again in jail I learned what had happened. He promised to be good this time, if only I'd get him out. The furniture merchant said he understood the fellow had a brother of some means.

If you will go to his brother and get him to pay up the furniture bill, we will withdraw the charges, said the furniture merchant. We don't want to be hard on the boy. We are business men. We only want our money.

I had no automobile in those days, but I traveled some distance to see the fellow's brother.

Mr. Armstrong, he said after I explained the situation, you may think I am a hardhearted brother, but I'm not. I'm going to do what I know is best for my brother's own good. If I pay this and get him out of jail, it wouldn't be thirty days until he would be back in jail again. My brother hasn't had enough punishment to learn his lesson yet. I think he needs this thirty days in jail to think it over.

He did think it over, and managed to keep out of jail for a year or so, after which I lost contact with him. But he and the girl were too weak to remain apart. They quarreled and fought when together, but they could not resist being together.

Rejecting all advice and counsel from me, the girl obtained a divorce from her first husband, and then had a justice-of-the-peace second wedding with this ne'er-do-well fellow, which at least legalized their adulterous living in the sight of man's law.

Whatever finally became of them I do not know. Mrs. Armstrong and I spent a lot of time trying to help them get straightened out, but they were the type Jesus spoke of in Luke 8:13 in the parable of the sower. They listened to and received the Word of God gladly, but had no root or backbone of character, and as soon as temptation came along were too weak to resist.

The quotation God helps them that help themselves is not found in the Bible, as many believe, but is a saying of Benjamin Franklin. Yet it does express a Christian principle. Long ago I learned that I cannot carry others into the Kingdom of God on my shoulders, or drag them in. I can only point the way, proclaim the truth, give counsel and advice, aid in many material ways, and pray for others. I can give aid and help -- but each must stand on his own feet before God, and by strong motivation yield to allow God to transform him and mold him into God's own holy character. God does it by the power of His Holy Spirit. But we also have our part in denying ourselves, in overcoming, and in DOING! It is the DOERS, not those who hear only, who shall enter finally into His Kingdom (Rom. 2:13).

Nevertheless, this experience I have just related did cause a deal of reflection and study of the Bible to inquire how God is going to deal with human weaklings such as these. We find the answer in the parable of the pounds, and the parable of the talents.

In the parable of the pounds all ten of Christ's servants appear to have had equal ability, and each was given an equal portion from God at the start. The one who by overcoming and growth in grace and knowledge of our Lord multiplied what he started with ten times was given the reward of ruling over ten cities. He who multiplied five times, over five cities.

But in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) God gave to each, at the start of his Christian life, according to his natural ability. To one He gave five talents, to another two, and to another only one -- according to the natural ability of each. The man with five talents doubled his spiritual stock-in-trade. Likewise, although the man with two produced less in number than the one with five, he also doubled what he started with. He did as well, in proportion to his ability!

Consequently we find it revealed that to whom much is given, much is required. To whom little is given, less is required. In other words, God judges each individual according to how well he overcomes, yields, develops and grows, according to what he has to do with!

This unfortunate couple of weaklings were not born with as much intelligence and strength of character (potentially) as many others. Consequently God does not require as much of them. But He does require of them as much effort in proportion to ability! We do have our part in the developing of the Christian life and character.

So Called Bible Organization

During these late winter and spring months of 1934 the opposition of Elders Ray and Oberg did not cease. I had rejected receiving further the $3 weekly salary from the Oregon State Conference after the memorable All-Day Wrangle meeting in early August, 1933. But this alone did not appease their wrath against me.

At the biannual General Conference meeting of the Church at Stanberry, Missouri, which probably was held in August, 1933, Elder Andrew N. Dugger had lost his previous iron control of the church by one vote. Thereupon Mr. Dugger promptly bolted the Conference and organized a competing Church of God under what he termed the Bible form of organization.

He managed to induce half or more of the ministers in the church to join him in this new Organization, on the argument that they were now re-establishing the Bible form of organization. Among those joining with him were Elder C. O. Dodd of Salem, West Virginia, an Elder McMicken, Elder Alexander of Kansas, Elder Severson, and Otto Haeber of Hawthorne, California whom I knew as a good friend. Mr. Haeber had not, I believe, up to this time been ordained as an elder but was an influential member.

Mr. Dugger had been accused of dictatorship, bossism, and even crookedness. I had not as yet met him, and did not judge. Nevertheless his new form of organization tended to divert criticism. He claimed the original Twelve Apostles were intended to form the top governing permanent Board of the Church as Christ organized it. He called this Board the Twelve. Mr. Alexander, Mr. Haeber, and Mr. McMicken, I believe, were put on the Board of the Twelve (although there never were twelve). But Mr. Dugger kept his own name off of that supposedly governing Board, thus avoiding the accusation that he was running things as the head.

Next, taking the seventy which Jesus appointed for a one-time special mission (Luke 10), Mr. Dugger, with Mr. Dodd and Mr. McMicken, set up The Board of the Seventy leading ministers. On this Board they appointed as many names as they could. There never were seventy, however. On this Board they had placed my name, and also those of Elders Oberg and Ray of Oregon. Elder Severson was, I believe, also on that Board.

Finally, noting that the early apostles had appointed seven deacons to take care of the business of waiting on tables and serving proselyte widows (Acts 6:1-4), Mr. Dugger devised a Board of Seven to handle the BUSINESS of the Church, making himself Chairman of that Board. The difference was that the early Apostles' seven deacons merely relieved the Apostles from the physical business of waiting on tables, serving food, and otherwise serving physical needs of widows; while Mr. Dugger's Board of Seven handled all Church income and finances! Therefore it actually carried all the real power to govern. Mr. Dugger had control over the salaries of the Twelve. The word business appears in the King James translation. But both the RSV and Moffatt translations have duty.

Persecution Continues

This Bible form of Organization appealed to most of our brethren in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. There were still two factions in the valley -- one of them still loyal to Stanberry as it was called, the other -- which had incorporated as the Oregon Conference -- being somewhat enamored of the new Organization.

Mr. Dugger claimed World Headquarters as Jerusalem, Palestine, with United States Headquarters at Salem, West Virginia. Thus this became known as the Salem church.

In those days one Biblical subject I was completely befogged on was the matter of church organization and government. I knew the Stanberry pattern of a General Conference was not scriptural. I knew that voting by human preference was unscriptural. I saw plainly that Christ chose His Apostles -- that they and the evangelists, in turn, chose and ordained elders in local churches. Consequently in the church now meeting at Jeans school house, since I was the evangelist God used in raising up this church, I chose and appointed Mr. Elmer E. Fisher as deacon, remaining as Pastor myself.

But just what truly was the Biblical form of organization I did not at that time see clearly. I was really confused on the question. I had grave misgivings about Mr. Dugger's professed Bible form of organization. I talked it over with Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, Mr. Claude Ellis, and others of our Church at Jeans. Mr. Fisher was not sold on it, either. He advised going slow.

Meanwhile Messrs. Ray and Oberg were exerting every effort to urge the Oregon Conference to go in with, and to keep me out of, the new Organization. One of the basic doctrinal points of the Salem organization was abstaining from pork and observing rigidly the food law of the clean and unclean of Leviticus 11. Mr. Ray now tried to discredit me with the new Organization with his anti-pork argument.

Consequently, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Ellis, the other members at Jeans and I decided we would simply leave the answer in God's hands. We would pray and ask God to show us in this manner: If the Salem re-organization did accept me as one of the 70 in spite of the opposition of Messrs. Ray and Oberg, we would go in. Otherwise we would remain independent.

The Test

For some months the status quo remained. Neither acceptance nor rejection came from Salem. Then one day Otto Haeber came to the office I had set up in an anteroom in the old Masonic Temple, accompanied by Elder Alexander from Kansas.

I had never met Mr. Alexander before. But since I had heard a great deal about him, and read much about him in the Church paper, the Bible Advocate, I was happy to meet him. I was steering the conversation along the general lines of getting acquainted, asking about the work in Kansas and general conversation.

Suddenly Mr. Haeber interrupted, rather sternly. Mr. Armstrong, he said abruptly, apparently you do not quite grasp the importance of this meeting. Mr. Alexander is one of 'the Twelve!' Mr. Alexander is a very important man! His time shouldn't be wasted by mere friendly conversation. Mr. Alexander is the man who has the power to bring about your acceptance on the Board of the Seventy, if you can satisfy him about your stand on the 'clean and the unclean' meat question.

I had known many important men in the business world, and I had not sensed anything in Mr. Alexander's appearance or personality that was overawing.

Well! I exclaimed. I had not realized! I beg your pardon for wasting your valuable time. I will tell you my stand on this question in one or two minutes.

Point number one: I read in Scripture that sin is the transgression of the Law. In Romans 7 Paul says the law it is sin to transgress is spiritual -- a spiritual, not a physical law. Point two: Jesus Christ, speaking of spiritual defilement in Mark 7, says that physical food entering a man's stomach from without cannot defile him spiritually, but that which comes from within, out of the heart -- adulteries, murders, thefts, covetousness -- transgressions of the Ten Commandments -- defile the man spiritually. Point three: The 'clean and unclean' laws of Leviticus 11 are physical, not spiritual laws.

Point four: Christ preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. He commanded the Apostles, and us today, to preach the KINGDOM of God. That is the GOSPEL I am commanded to preach. Point five: Paul says plainly in Romans 14 that the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, which is obedience to God's Law.

Point six: Therefore I do not preach to the unconverted meat and drink because it is not the Gospel. But, on the other hand, the physical body is the 'temple of the Holy Spirit,' and we are taught not to defile it, even physically.

Finally, point seven: I realize fully that there were both the clean and unclean animals long before Mosaic Law -- even prior to the Flood -- and therefore from creation. God did not create the unclean animals for food. Just as many plants and weeds are poison and not food, so unclean animals were not made to digest properly or nourish the human body. They are not creatures of God intended for food. They are not sanctified -- or set apart -- by the Word of God. Peter's vision of the unclean animals in the sheet was given, it is distinctly stated in Acts 10, to show him that he should not call any man unclean -- not to make unclean animals clean. Therefore I do teach every convert and every church member that they should not eat the unclean meats. We do not eat them in our home. Not one of our church members -- not one of my converts -- is eating unclean meats. But I teach it as a physical matter of health, not as a spiritual matter of the true Gospel.

That, in few words, Elder Alexander, is what God's Word says and teaches and what I believe. Now I'm very sorry I wasted your valuable time, and since it is so valuable, I shall not take up more of it. Good day, gentlemen.

And I opened the door. Actually, I snapped out this explanation of my stand probably at a faster pace than most readers have been able to read it. It left Mr. Alexander a little bewildered. But he could not deny, refute, nor question a word of my explanation.

Well, Mr. Armstrong, he managed to say as they were leaving, it seems to me you believe the same way the church does, only you may have a little different way of stating it.

A short time later, I learned that they did consider me as one of the Seventy.

Co-operating -- Not Joining

Thus we of the Church of God meeting at the Jeans school-house, along with our brethren of the Oregon Conference, decided to go along with it in co-operation, but we of the new local church near Eugene did not join in the sense of becoming an integral part of it.

I then began to send in regular minister's reports. We co-operated fully as brethren in Christ. But I did not accept salary or expense money from them. None in our local church put himself under their authority. We kept ourselves free to obey God as set forth in the Scriptures, should any differences come up. And they did later come up!

After the experience of being ordered to baptize contrary to the Scriptures and the renouncing of the $3 weekly salary, we were firm never again to be placed in a position where we might have to obey men rather than God.

Result of Eugene Meetings

The meetings continued for two months in the second-floor hall of the Old Masonic Temple, just off the main street, Willamette, on West Seventh Avenue. But Mr. Chambers, owner of the building, had made arrangements for remodeling and permanent occupancy of the hall beginning June 1st. I managed to rent a hall on the second floor, on the east side of Willamette Street between Seventh and Eighth, beginning June 1st. Meetings continued there for three and a half months, closing the middle of September.

The downtown meetings had continued in Eugene five and a half months. Results actually were less than in other five or six weeks' campaigns where services were held six nights a week. Definitely we learned that holding meetings three times a week on non-consecutive nights does not build up or sustain an interest comparable to every-night services. This was an important lesson.

Nevertheless, there was a harvest. There always was a harvest. That was the main reason for the opposition from the other ministers. No one in the Church of whom I could inquire knew of any fruit whatsoever having been borne at any time by any of the other ministers then in the Church. Their jealousy, antagonism, competitive spirit, opposition against the only work God was blessing, eloquently testified to the reason -- carnality -- lack of real conversion and yieldedness to God. God can use only those who have surrendered to become instruments in His Hands.

I do not remember now how many had appeared to have repented, and believed, and how many had been baptized during and at the end of these meetings. It seems it was around ten to fifteen. But several of these were of the type Jesus referred to in His parable of the sower: the largest number compared to the wayside. Jesus Christ sowed the seed -- the Word of God -- by my voice. There were the ones who came and heard, but did not understand nor believe; and Satan took the truths they heard out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved (Luke 8:12). Those stopped attending before the close of the meetings. Some compared to the stony ground, including the young man and woman already mentioned. They received Christ's Gospel with gladness and joy -- but had no depth of character, and endured only for a while. Others compared to the ground covered with thorns -- the cares of this world and desire for worldly amusements caused them to drop out.

Nevertheless, even though few of those brought in during those meetings proved to be the good ground which endured, there were some ten or fifteen additional ones making the start of a Christian life. A new Sabbath School was organized for these, meeting at our home on West Fourth Avenue on Sabbath afternoons. The Sabbath morning services continued out at Jeans School house. Often several from there came in to Eugene for the afternoon class at our home.

Chapter 33

Early Evangelistic Campaigns -- the Trials and Tests

THE ACTIVITY that was destined to expand steadily into worldwide power and scope was now fast getting under way. No activity could have started smaller. None could have had a more humble and unpromising beginning.

But, with an insignificant $1.35 per week pledge for the radio broadcast, and what appeared then as a monumental additional $1.15 per week to be received purely on faith, The Radio Church of God had started on the air the first Sunday in 1934. It was the very bottom of the great depression.

Faith was rewarded, however, and the other $1.15 per week always came, sometimes only a half hour before broadcast time.

I had devoted some years to experience on newspapers and national publications. Now, at last, my dreams of a magazine of understanding making PLAIN the revealed TRUTH of the Bible -- to be made available to all who requested it without price to them -- had become a reality. Promptly on February 1, 1934, Volume I and Number 1 of The Plain Truth was published, or should I say published?

No publication ever made a more humble entrance before the public.

After the first issue had been mimeographed, through courtesy of the local A. B. Dick Company dealer on one of his mimeographs, we had managed to purchase -- for $10, I believe -- an old second-hand Neostyle -- ancestor of the mimeograph. It was entirely hand-operated, hand-cranked, hand-fed. Surely it was the most humble of printing presses! For the next few years The Plain Truth was to be run off on this ancient Neostyle, before we could afford a secondhand mimeograph -- and then some time longer before we could afford to have it printed.

The Three-Point Campaign had at last gotten fully under way with the downtown Eugene evangelistic meetings. These meetings had continued five and one-half months until mid-September.

Now, mid-September, plans were under way for another campaign.

Alvadore Next

Some 12 to 15 miles northwest of Eugene was a little community of Alvadore. It was not even a village. There was probably only one full general store. But there was a two-story school house. The Alvadore school consisted of two classrooms on the ground floor, and an assembly hall upstairs.

Mr. Elmer Fisher and I felt this was the site for the next campaign. We were able to engage the use of the assembly hall -- practically without cost.

I do not now remember whether these meetings were conducted over a period of six, or eight, weeks. The only record now immediately available to me affirms that the campaign started in November, 1934, and ended in January, 1935. Probably we started in late November and finished in early or mid-January.

At any rate we had learned the sober lesson about holding services three times a week. In Alvadore we were back on the six-nights-a-week schedule.

Attendance was good. Interest was very good. By this time I was gaining in speaking ability due to the experience of speaking virtually six to eight times a week since July, 1933.

Learning to Speak Publicly

One learns to speak before the public by speaking. I remember how one asked Elbert Hubbard how he learned to write. He replied that he learned to write by writing. A pianist learns to play the piano by playing the piano eight hours a day, if one is to become a concert pianist.

If there was anything I had never expected to become, it was a preacher or an evangelist. I have explained early in this autobiography how at age 18 I had put myself through a self-analysis with the book titled Choosing a Vocation. This self-conducted test indicated that I had an analytical mind, an intellectual curiosity, a desire to UNDERSTAND, and some natural aptitude for writing. The test pointed to the advertising profession. Those years of experience in advertising and news-gathering, editorial writing, and the writing of magazine articles, had prepared me for the calling to God's ministry.

But it was two or three years after conversion before I realized I was called to preach. I have just come across a carbon copy of a letter that I had written, dated July 11, 1928 -- even before our first son was born -- to Mr. A. N. Dugger, at that time principal leader of the Church of God, at Stanberry, Missouri. It shows that at that time a little more than a year after my conversion, I did apparently realize that God was calling me for some definite mission, for which I was being prepared. I did not know what it was to be. I realized I was not yet ready. And I supposed, at that time, that it would be in the field of writing, not speaking. I feel that many who are reading this life history may find a few excerpts from that letter interesting.

Elder Dugger had invited me to join their church. I have explained previously that I never did formally join it. Here are portions of that letter:

I appreciate your kind invitation to affiliate actively with the Church of God organization. Elder Stith approached me on the subject, also ....

However, for the immediate present, until further developments, I do not feel led to join any organization, and feel that I should not take matters into my own hands, or rush, or hurry. I believe the Lord is dealing with me, preparing me for a very active and definite calling and mission, and that until matters have developed further I should do as Jesus commanded the Apostles -- tarrying until I have received full preparation and power ....I feel it is absolutely necessary that we should permit ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, and not try to launch into something half prepared, by taking matters into our own hands before we are sure it is the will of the Lord. I do not know exactly, yet, what my mission or calling is to be, or what the method of carrying it out is to be. Unquestionably it will require organized effort, rather than attempting to carry out the mission alone and unaided.

Writing -- Not Speaking

I can say this much -- I feel that it is along the line of writing rather than oral speaking or preaching.

I believe the Lord bestows gifts and callings upon men mightily according to their natural talents and experience, giving spiritual gifts along these same lines ....

My whole business experience has been along the lines of investigating, analyzing, and gaining an understanding of business problems and rectifying the situations, and in writing. Whatever natural talent I have is along those lines. I know something about public speaking, for I have studied textbooks on it, had contacts with professors of public speaking at the Universities of Illinois and Michigan, who are authors of the texts used in most colleges, and coached a brother-in-law into winning a big oratorical contest .... But he had the voice, and other necessary personal attributes for public speaking.

If I am being given any of the gifts, it is that of UNDERSTANDING of the truth of scripture .... But I am not fully prepared as yet.

Little did I realize then that God could, and would, use my voice to reach worldwide audiences of multiple millions every week. But I did sense, somehow, that God was preparing me for some definite mission and He had given me sufficient insight to realize that I did not yet know what it was and that I was not yet prepared or ready, and that I should not rush in until it became certain that GOD was leading the way. I knew I must not take things into my own hands.

Actually, my first sermon, Mrs. Armstrong has assured me, was not preaching -- but just a kind of talk. It did meet enthusiastic response, not because of any speaking ability, for there was none -- but because I did have something vital to say. It was three years after the above letter was written before I was ordained a minister.

Even then I did not speak with any drive or fire or power. I still more or less just talked. But there was, always, a vital message. After all, the MESSAGE, which comes from God, is the thing! Not the speaker or even oratory. I remember that it was either during, or shortly after, the first Firbutte campaign in late 1933, that the message began to pour forth with some power. It was during one of those all-day meetings held about once a month at the little church house in Harrisburg, Oregon (long since torn down). I was probably more surprised than the congregation that day. I did have a burning message -- and I did feel it intensely -- and suddenly the message began to pour forth in power. I did not put it on -- rather I had to try to hold it in check. They told me afterward that for the first time I gestured with my hands and arms. I didn't realize it. My mind was on the audience and the message I knew they sorely needed.

Today I try to teach young future ministers to be natural -- to quit thinking of themselves, their gesturing, their oratory or speaking ability. I tell them never to try to turn on the power -- but wait until after the experience when dynamic power is there naturally.

Heckled Again

In this Alvadore neighborhood were three or four families of Seventh Day Adventists. They attended the meetings. I soon learned that one of them was coming for the sole purpose of learning what I was preaching, so he could visit the others in the daytime and try to refute everything I was saying. He didn't seem to be succeeding very well. The others continued to come with increasing interest.

Then there was Elder Day of the Christian Church and his wife and two late teen-age children. Elder Day was then about 84. He was a quiet, soft-spoken, rather scholarly gentleman. After two or three nights, he smiled as he shook hands with me at the door, and said, Well, I have learned something new tonight.

This continued through the rest of the meetings. My heart surely went out to elderly Brother Day. When a man well advanced into his 80's is learning something NEW every night, he is a rare and precious individual, indeed. Always his face lighted up happily in this new knowledge!

But as we came into the final two weeks of the meeting, the one Seventh Day Adventist finally became vocal. I was just beginning the sermon one evening, speaking on the truth that Jesus was three days and three nights, exactly as He said, in the tomb after crucifixion -- and then, therefore, the crucifixion was not on Good Friday and the resurrection was not on Sunday morning!

Now it so happened that, since their Mrs. White had a dream or vision in which she claimed the resurrection did occur on Sunday morning, Seventh Day Adventist doctrine cannot accept anything contrary.

I had hardly begun the service when this ill-advised man arose and began to heckle.

That passage in Matthew 12 verses 38 to 40 does not mean that Jesus was in the tomb, he said. It means he was in the hands of the Roman soldiers three days and three nights. Besides, the Bible plainly says Jesus ROSE early in the morning on the first day of the week!

I immediately accepted his challenge. You mean you think the expression 'in the heart of the earth' means 'in the hands of Roman soldiers? I asked.

Yes, it does! he lashed back. And you say the Bible plainly states that Jesus actually ROSE early on Sunday morning?

Yes, it does, he affirmed. Well, I said. Now I'll tell you what we'll do. You just be seated until the close of the sermon, and start hunting for that passage in your Bible. You won't need to listen to the sermon, because you won't believe a thing I say anyway, and you only listen in order to go around the neighborhood trying to confuse others and to refute everything I am preaching. Now I strongly advise you to utilize every single minute between now and the end of the sermon hunting that text -- because you are going to need a lot more time than that to find what simply isn't there. Then at the close of the sermon, I am going to call on you to stand up again and to read to us out of the Bible where it says that Christ actually ROSE on Sunday morning.

At the close of the sermon, I called on my heckler and bade him to rise, and to read his text. He arose, and began thumbing through the New Testament of his Bible.

I had become a little provoked by this man's persistent opposition and determined to make an example of him and end any influence he possibly might have once for all.

Come, now! I said. I noticed you did not heed my advice to devote all the time of the sermon hunting for the text that is not there. You should have been searching, then you wouldn't keep us all waiting like this. Come, now! Read it! Read where the Bible says Christ ROSE on Sunday morning.

He merely stood there, confused, flushed in the face. We are waiting! I prodded. I let at least three minutes of dead silence elapse. It seemed more like an hour. I purposely let it become embarrassing, to let the truth of this scripture sink deep in the audience.

Finally, I said, Well, while this man stands there and hunts for the scripture that isn't there, let's look now at what he said about 'in the heart of the earth' meaning 'in the hands of the Roman soldiers.' Notice, this scripture says: ... 'for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.' Now see how Jonah was a type of Christ. In the great fish's belly, Jonah says (Jonah 2:2): 'I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell [margin, Heb., sheol -- the GRAVE] cried I.'

Now, Jonah was in this GRAVE -- for had he not been vomited up, it was a grave of DEATH -- three days and three nights, after which he was supernaturally resurrected by being vomited up -- to become the human saviour from physical destruction of the city of Nineveh. Likewise, Christ was in a tomb hewn back into the heart of the earth, three days and three nights, after which He was resurrected to become the spiritual Saviour of all mankind. The analogy is plain. The meaning is plain and simple. Christ was resurrected from the TOMB in the heart of the earth -- He was not resurrected from the hands of the Roman soldiers!

Now, I continued, how many of you in the audience believe 'in the heart of the earth' means the TOMB from which Christ was resurrected? Let me see your hands!

Every hand, except that of the very confused man standing, went up!

Well, I said to him. It sort of looks like we are all out of step but you. Have you found that scripture that isn't there, yet?

He merely looked helplessly confused. Everyone was laughing at him. It was well-deserved and ought to have been profitable punishment.

We can't wait longer, I said. I do hope this will be a good lesson to you. You may sit down.

This was the only time I have ever made a laughing stock out of any man before others, to my knowledge. But this man had been spending weeks trying to discredit me and God's truth, and I felt it was the way to defend the truth for the good of all.

Meeting More Opposition

One family attending the Alvadore meetings regularly, and accepting the truths taught, was the W. E. Conns. Mr. Conn was a farmer in the neighborhood, doing quite a dairy business. One truth which seemed of tremendous importance to them was the fact the resurrection was on late Saturday afternoon, and not Sunday morning.

The following Sunday after preaching on that subject, Mrs. Armstrong and I were invited to their home for dinner. After dinner two men called. One was a preacher -- apparently an independent, or of some small local sect, who had been serving as pastor to the Conns sometime before when they had lived in Salem, Oregon. The other was a man, also from Salem, who appeared to be associated with the preacher religiously. They had heard that the Conns had accepted the truth of God's Sabbath, being influenced primarily by the fact that the resurrection was not on Sunday. This knocked out from under Sunday observance the only prop which human tradition used to support it.

This preacher apparently came for a fight. He was angry. He was ready to get tough.

The Bible says Christ rose from the dead on Sunday morning, he snapped, angrily.

I handed him a Bible. Read it to me, I said, simply. He turned, as I knew he would, to Mark 16:9. But to my utter surprise, he did not read it as it is printed. He MIS-read:

Now when Jesus rose early the first day of the week. My dear sir, you did not read that as it is written. Will you read it once again, and this time, read exactly what it says? I demanded.

Now when Jesus ROSE early the first day of the week, he repeated with heavy emphasis on the word rose which does not appear in the text.

I saw he was going to persist. I decided to maneuver this dishonest man, intent on deliberately deceiving, into a trap.

The expression 'the first day of the week' is merely describing when Christ appeared first to Mary Magdalene, I said. Punctuation was not inspired, but added by uninspired men long after the Bible was written. This was translated from the Greek. The comma belongs after the word 'risen,' I said deliberately appearing to argue.

He took the bait, hook, line and sinker! Oh, no, you don't, he exclaimed angrily. You can't go changing it.

Do you mean we must accept the King James, or Authorized Version, just as it is, without changing a single comma, or any translation? I inquired.

I do! he snapped. You can't change a thing. Well, then, why don't you read it as it is, without changing it? Now I want you to read Matthew 28, verse 1.

He turned to read it. His face grew red with anger. It reads: In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.

Yes, now read verses 5 and 6, and remember, this is in the end of or late on the Sabbath -- NOT SUNDAY MORNING.

I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified, he read. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.

Yes, I added, while it was still late in the end of the Sabbath, which ended at sunset.

Oh, he began to explain. But that is a mistranslation. It doesn't mean in the end of the Sabbath, but dawn Sunday morning.

Didn't you just say that you cannot change the King James translation? Didn't you just say that I have to take it as it is, without changing or retranslating a thing?

He was beginning to lose face. He had no answer. Now, I said, turn back to Mark 16:9, and let's see whether you are honest enough to read it honestly.

Now when Jesus ROSE early the first day of the week, he shouted.

I turned to Mr. Conn. I dislike to do this, I said, but I had to show you how dishonest this man is, and how he had been deliberately deceiving you these past few years as to what the Bible says. Now, Mr. Conn, this passage tells what state Jesus was in early the first day of the week. It tells whether He was rising, or whether He already was risen, because He had risen the evening before. I want you, Mr. Conn, to read this. Does it say Jesus ROSE -- or, early the first day of the week, that He already WAS RISEN?

I handed the Bible to Mr. Conn. His hands trembled until he could hardly hold it. He was extremely nervous.

He read, Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week.

The preacher and his companion strode angrily from the room, picked up their coats and hats and went out the front door without a word. Mrs. Conn broke down weeping.

I hope I was not too harsh with those men, I said apologetically.

Oh, you were not, sobbed Mrs. Conn. They were harsh with you. But I tell you it hurts, to have to completely lose confidence in men you have looked up to as almost holy, and representing God, all these years. To see them show that they are deliberately dishonest and trying to deceive us is a terrible blow.

Another New Church

The Alvadore campaign ended. Fifteen had come with us, including the Days and the Conns. A new local church was organized, to meet in the Alvadore school auditorium Sabbath mornings. I ordained Elder J. M. Day as Elder, and W. E. Conn as Deacon.

Now I was forced to alternate between Alvadore and Jeans, every other Sabbath morning at each one, and Sabbath afternoon at our home in Eugene.

Chapter 34

Steady Growth of Work at Eugene

IT WAS now spring, 1935. Holding Sabbath morning services alternately at the Jeans school, twelve miles west of Eugene, and at the Alvadore school fifteen miles northwest of Eugene, and Sabbath afternoon services at our house in Eugene soon became untenable.

Purchase of Church Building

Usually, members at Jeans would drive over to Alvadore, or attend at our home in Eugene, on the odd Sabbaths after I was unable to preach at Jeans. Likewise, Alvadore members usually drove to either Jeans or Eugene when I was not at their school. But this situation was not very satisfactory.

The need of a church home in Eugene to combine these three small groups focused our attention on the place that our people had built in 1931.

The building of this little church house had begun immediately following the close of the tent campaign held in Eugene in the summer of 1931 by Elder R. L. Taylor and myself.

Mr. Taylor had, prior to this campaign, owned a small retail lumber business in Eugene. Apparently, he had failed in business, but came out of it with a small amount of lumber on hand. He now proposed to donate that lumber toward the erection of a small church house in Eugene. He only had part of the needed amount of lumber, however. So church brethren were induced to contribute funds for most of the construction costs. A few donated labor, including a carpenter and an electrician.

They had never completed the construction. Siding had not been put on the outside, and plain slabs of wallboard had been nailed up inside, with quarter-inch spaces unfilled between slabs. And there were no seats or pulpit or furnishings of any kind.

While I was at Astoria in the newspaper business, in my final detour from my life's real calling, Mr. Taylor had written me that we had lost the church building.

He was correct in saying that we -- the church members -- had lost it. But HE had not. He had traded it and a small piece of land he owned to a Mr. Powell who lived next door to the little church, for Mr. Powell's house. This, in turn, he had traded for a small island in the Willamette River opposite Eugene.

Because of the partial amount of lumber he had donated to the church house, Mr. Taylor had insisted on holding the deed to the property in his own name. Although church brethren had contributed much more than he, they had allowed it to be held in his name. He had sold them down the river, and come out with a little island in the river for himself.

Late in May, 1935, Mr. Powell was living in the little unfinished church house. Mr. Elmer Fisher, Mr. W. E. Conn and I approached him about the purchase of the place. The purchase was made, for $500. Mr. Fisher put in the first $100 to bind the deal. Various church members put in, later, another $100 or slightly more, and most of the balance was contributed by elderly Mrs. S. A. Croffoot.

Now came the question of how the new property was to be deeded. Mr. Taylor's action had given church members cause to question the honesty of a minister who had the church property deeded in his name. I was determined that no such suspicion should have grounds for being directed toward me. I insisted that my name should not be connected in any way with the deed to this property.

In this particular case, as subsequent events proved, it would have been safer for the church if control of the property had been in my hands. But I said, then, If we can't trust such men as Mr. Day, Elmer Fisher, and Mr. Conn, then nobody can be trusted. Perhaps I didn't realize as thoroughly as I do today that God says we can trust no man.

On my own recommendation, the property was deeded to J. M. Day, Elmer E. Fisher, and W. E. Conn, as trustees for the Church of God at Eugene, Oregon. Actually, as I learned from attorneys later, this was a loose and unsafe way to protect the property of the church, legally. Anyway, the purchase was made late in May, 1935, after some four months of the unhandy functioning of those three little separate churches.

Completing the Building

Immediately we set out to put the building in shape for holding services. I asked the members to contribute special offerings to purchase necessary lumber and paint. We purchased the siding lumber, which was put on by volunteer labor. I filled in the quarter-inch spaces between plaster boards with the proper plaster cement, myself, then the inside walls were painted and the outside also.

I looked into other church buildings for ideas about the seating. The most economical way proved to be to build our own seating in the form of benches, with a center aisle and two narrow outside aisles down the side walls. I designed the pattern after observing various more costly benches in larger church buildings. I sat in various ones, to determine what design would give the most comfort. Then, with some of the men of the church helping, we built the seats. They were comfortable with contoured backs the entire length of each bench.

Mrs. Armstrong and Elmer Fisher painted those church seats in an attractive brown color while I worked on other things. In the new church at Alvadore, one of the members was a cabinet maker by profession. He built the pulpit and an altar rail around the front of the rostrum.

On June first, 1935, The Church of God at Eugene, Oregon, held its first service in the new building, consolidating the three groups into one church.

Convincing Atheist Communists

Soon after occupying the new little church building, I began holding every-night evangelistic services there. We mimeographed handbills and had them delivered to front porches all over town. We called it The Little Church at the end of West Eighth Avenue. Its location, then, was a half block beyond the city limits.

While these meetings did not attract thousands, the little church house was usually fairly well filled. One night my subject was the prophecy of Daniel 11 -- the longest prophecy in the Bible. It begins with events of Daniel's time, in the first year of King Darius. It foretells the swift conquering flight of Alexander the Great, his sudden death, the division of the Empire into four divisions. Then the prophecy carried along the events of the King of Egypt and the King of Syria or the Seleucidae -- as King of the South and King of the North.

One ancient history covers the details of those events and those following in this long prophecy. That night I read a verse of the prophecy, then a paragraph showing its fulfillment from Rawlinson's Ancient History, carrying straight through to the time of Christ, the early Apostles, and on to our present, and the immediate future.

At the close of the service a young lady who had come for the first time, with two companions, waited to speak to Mrs. Armstrong. Her friends went on out. She asked if she could make an appointment to talk to Mrs. Armstrong and me.

I'm an atheist, she said. Or at least I thought I was when I came here tonight. But now I feel myself slipping. To tell the truth we three girls thought it would be good sport to come out here and laugh at the ignorant medieval religious superstition we expected to hear. I've always believed religion is a silly superstition -- the 'opium of the people.' But tonight we couldn't laugh. I never heard anything like this. I have to admit no human writer could have written that long prophecy and made it come to pass, step by step, over so many years. What I heard tonight makes sense. It is not like any religious teaching I ever heard. I want to ask you some questions.

Mrs. Armstrong arranged a private talk with her for the next afternoon. She jabbed sharp questions and pointed questions at us, but they were all promptly answered. She continued to attend the meetings, and after a couple of weeks she believed, repented, and was baptized. We learned that she was the secretary of the local Communist Party! She resigned from the Communist Party forthwith.

This young lady was jeered and ridiculed for taking up with medieval superstition, of course.

One day she walked into the small front room of the old Masonic Temple which I was still using, rent free, for an office. She was actually leading a half-reluctant man by the arm.

Mr. Armstrong, she said, this man is a Communist -- one of my former associates in the Party. He's an atheist. He says he knows there is no God. We encountered each other across the street just now. He said he would like to meet that weak-brained idiot of a preacher that hypnotized me into believing foolish superstitions. He said that he would prove that evolution is true and there is no God by making a monkey out of you. So I grabbed his arm and said, 'Come right along. Mr. Armstrong's office is just across the street.' I have marched him over here, and I have come along to laugh at the show, as he proceeds to make a monkey out of you.

At the moment I had a Bible in front of me. I pushed it aside.

This was a challenge that inspired fast thinking. I gave a quick silent prayer for guidance.

Sit down! I said to the man in a commanding voice, and taking immediately the initiative before he had a chance to utter a word. So you're going to make a monkey out of me by proving there is no God. First, I'll shove this Bible out of the way because you couldn't believe anything it says, anyway. Now you must be a very highly educated man, with a brilliant intellect. I want to find out just how bright you really are, and how much you know about some of the laws of science. Do you know something about radioactivity and radioactive elements?

Well, yes, he stuttered. Evidently my fast and sharp attack caught him by surprise and he was on the defensive before he could recover.

I asked him if he agreed with certain laws of science. Of course he had to answer that he did. I followed up the attack, snapping questions at him forcing him to answer and commit himself. Before he realized what was happening he had admitted that science proved there had been no past eternity of matter -- that there was a time when radioactive elements did not exist -- and then a time when they did exist. He had also admitted that life could come only from life, and not from the not-living. Before he realized it he had admitted there had to be a First Cause, possessing LIFE, able to impart life to all living organisms.

Now, I pursued, you're a real intelligent man. I'm sure you won't deny that! You have a MIND. With it you can think, imagine, reason, plan. You can make things. But you cannot make anything that is superior to your mind! Do you agree to that, or can you show me that you can originate and produce something superior to your mind?

He was getting more confused by the minute. Of course he could not demonstrate that he could produce something superior to his own mind, so he was forced to admit it.

Then you have admitted that whatever can be produced must be devised, planned, and produced by an intelligence GREATER and SUPERIOR to whatever is produced. Do you know of anything that is more intelligent, and superior, than your mind?

I knew his vanity could never admit of anything superior to his mind.

I guess not, he admitted weakly. And yet you acknowledge that something less intelligent than your mind could never have produced your mind and that it must of necessity have been devised and produced by an Intelligence GREATER than your mind. So you see you have admitted a First Cause having LIFE, and of intelligence superior to the most intelligent thing you know, in order to bring YOU and YOUR MIND into existence. Look at all the forms of LIFE on this planet -- the way each is constructed -- the way each functions -- the way each needs certain things like water, food, sunshine, and a certain range of temperature, in order to function and exist. Could YOU, without any pattern to go by, think out, design, produce, set in motion, and impart a functioning LIFE to all these life forms of the fauna and flora of the earth? Or do you think it took a GREATER POWER, a SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE, a LIVING CREATOR, to design, plan, and create and sustain this earth and the entire vast universe?

He could take no more. W -- W -- Well, he stammered pitifully, I won't worship God even if you DO make me admit He exists! This was a last attempt at defiance.

That's a decision God compels YOU to make, I replied. He won't make it for you. He will allow you to rebel and refuse to worship Him. But He did set laws in motion, and whatever you sow, that shall you reap!

The young lady did not laugh. It was not funny! A few weeks later I met this man on the street corner. He made one last effort at brave retaliation to salve over his wounded pride.

I'll never bend MY knees to your Christ, he said. Oh, yes, you will! I replied firmly. There is a judgment day coming for you, and the Creator that lets you breathe says EVERY knee shall bow to Christ -- even if He has to break the bones of your legs!

I encountered this man many times on the street after that, but he never again discussed religion. He always treated me with respect.

My First Wedding

I must go back a bit now, to recount an incident that occurred in February or March of 1934. It was shortly before my wife and children had moved to Eugene from Salem.

I was asked to perform my first marriage ceremony. Ernest McGill, one of the twelve children of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. McGill, whose names have appeared before in this autobiography, asked me to perform the ceremony for him and Ora Lee Wilcox.

It caught me by surprise. It was the first time, since my ordination, I had been called on for such a ceremony. I was totally unprepared.

My first thought was to go to the pastor of some church in Eugene and ask him for his form of marriage ceremony. But on the heels of that thought flashed in the next second the thought that I had found the Bible entirely different from modern-day religious beliefs, forms and ceremonies. I realized then that instead of going to MEN to learn how to perform a marriage ceremony, I should go direct to the Bible. Instead of learning from men, I should learn of GOD.

Immediately I studied all I could find in the Bible about marriage. I did not find the words of a specific ceremony written out, but I did find God's PURPOSE in marriage -- that God had instituted it -- and God's requirements of both husband and wife. The wording of the specific ceremony, itself, came naturally by putting together the essential scriptures concerning marriage.

When the wedding day came, the ceremony was simple, plain, taken from the Scriptures. I had seen that it is GOD and not man, who joins husband and wife as one flesh. Therefore they were married, not by me, but by GOD during a prayer. Everyone thought it was the most beautiful wedding ceremony they had ever seen. God's ways are beautiful! That same ceremony, with very few alterations, is still being used today, in our hundreds of churches worldwide.

But I must recount here an accompanying incident. I had, of course, written my wife that I was to marry Ernest and Ora Lee. A little later she found our elder son, Dickie, age five, missing. When he didn't show up she became frantic. Finally she found him hiding under a bed, sobbing as if his little heart would burst.

Why, Dickie, she called, what's the matter? I don't want Daddy to marry Ora Lee, he sobbed. He married you, and he's my Daddy, and it's wrong for him to marry another woman.

Of course his mother explained. Later he, himself, performed marriage ceremonies, and I performed his wedding ceremony.

Our New Office

Following the evangelistic meetings in the old Masonic Temple in downtown Eugene, April and May, 1934, I had retained for some time, as mentioned above, the use of one of the smaller rooms as an office. I do not remember just when, but later -- probably early autumn, 1935 -- Mr. Frank Chambers, owner of the building (and somewhere near half of all downtown Eugene, it was rumored), told me he had a tenant for the entire building, and I would have to move. Up to that time he had not charged any rent for this smaller office room. He said he had a vacant room in the Hampton Building, across from the Post Office (a new Post Office has been built since) on the southwest corner of Sixth and Willamette. However, he would have to charge me $5 per month office rent.

Well, we seemed to be getting up in the world. From no office rent we now advanced to paying $5 per month office rent!

However, it was an inner room, without windows for ventilation. There was a transom over the door leading into the hall. There was another transom over a locked door leading into the Labor Union Hall adjoining. But instead of fresh air, the stale tobacco smoke wafted regularly through this transom on mornings following a union meeting. There had been a skylight in the ceiling, but it was so dirty very little light filtered through.

During the years we occupied this office we were able to work only about two hours at a stretch, then having to vacate the office for an hour or so while the air changed a little. After some months we did manage to afford a small electric fan which kept the stale air circulating.

There were two or three old tables in this room. Unable to afford a desk these were used as office desk, and tables for printing, folding and mailing the mimeographed Plain Truth. There were also a couple of old chairs in the room.

For filing cabinets in which to keep folders of correspondence and records we went to a grocery store and asked for some cardboard cartons. The ones they gave me apparently contained bottles of whiskey, since they had big whiskey labels printed on the sides. I pasted plain wrapping paper around the outside to conceal these labels.

Into this office we moved the very old second-hand Neostyle -- ancestor of the mimeograph -- and our old second-hand ten-dollar typewriter. This constituted our entire printing equipment, on which The Plain Truth was printed for the first few years.

I wrote the articles, then cut the stencils. The local mimeograph representative permitted me to visit his office once a month and cut the headline on one of his scopes. It was Mrs. Armstrong's job to grind out the sheets on the old hand-cranked Neostyle. Every sheet had to be fed in by hand, then slip-sheeted by hand after each sheet was printed. She then assembled the pages, folded them, and addressed them by hand in pen and ink. She maintained the mailing list -- all written in ink on sheets of paper.

What a far cry that was from the way The Plain Truth is printed and mailed today! But in one respect we did have an advantage in those days. Mrs. Armstrong and I were able to carry the entire mailing of the mimeographed Plain Truth in our arms across the street to the post office -- and before we did, we always knelt and prayed over them, laying our hands on all the copies asking God to bless them and those who received them.

Chapter 35

Uphill All the Way

WE HAD come, in the previous chapter, to the spring of 1935. Now I should like to backtrack briefly.

The broadcast had started the first Sunday in January, 1934. The first issue of The Plain Truth, mimeographed, came out February 1, 1934. The third point of the Three-Point-Campaign got under way the first of April, with the small-scale evangelistic campaign in downtown Eugene, Oregon.

Old Notation Discovered

In an earlier chapter I mentioned that the broadcast was started with pledges for slightly more than half of its $2.50 weekly cost. That $2.50 per half hour on radio station KORE was almost a donation from its owner, Mr. Frank Hill. He probably gave the $2.50 to the announcer as a slight bonus for opening the station 30 minutes earlier. KORE had been going on the air with its Sunday programming at 10:30 a.m. To clear time for my half hour, Mr. Hill simply moved his operating schedule up a half hour earlier.

Now $2.50 per week may seem a little ridiculous today, as the price of a half-hour broadcast. It was not a bit absurd to me, in those days! We were at the very bottom of the depression. I had, only a few months earlier, given up the $3 per week salary I had received. A single dollar was a considerable item to us then.

When I stated, earlier, that almost half of that $2.50 radio charge per week had to be undertaken on sheer faith, I was quoting from memory. The last few chapters were written in England.

Since returning to Pasadena, I have researched in the dusty old files of the years 1933 to around 1940. The papers in filing folders are still intact in the cardboard cartons I obtained without cost at a grocery store. We could not afford the luxury of steel filing cabinets in those days. In those old files, stored in a basement store-room of one of our buildings on the Pasadena campus, I have culled out a number of interesting papers, letters, bulletins, and copies of mimeographed Plain Truths. Among them I found an old yellowed sheet on which I had penciled notations of the pledges for the beginning of the radio program.

Under Pledges for Radio are the following: J. J. McGill $.50 Ernest Fisher 1.00 Mrs. C. A. Croffoot 2.00 T. P. Madill 1.00 John Davison family .50 Edgar W. Smith 1.00 Mrs. J. W. Snyder .25 Mrs. Gemmel .25

------ $6.50 It may seem a little strange today that some were able to pledge only 25 cents or 50 cents per month. Perhaps we have been spoiled by today's prosperity. Perhaps we have forgotten those bottom depression days. But at that time 25 cents or 50 cents per month, over and above tithes and regular offerings, as a special pledge, may have meant considerable sacrifice. Anyway, those are the names that made possible the start of the broadcasting work that now covers every inhabited continent that has, today, probably become the most powerful broadcasting work on earth, worldwide!

And today, I say, all honor to those people for that initial sacrifice! It was not so little as it might seem, at first glance, today! God has multiplied that many thousands of times over!

When Almighty God does something Himself, by His own power alone, He does it in a manner so mighty and so vast our minds cannot comprehend it. But when God does a work through human instruments, He always starts it, like the proverbial mustard seed, the smallest. But it grows to the BIGGEST!

And so I honor those eight original Co-Workers. Most, if not all, are now dead, but what they helped to start lives on -- in multiplying POWER!

On this same yellowed sheet of paper is the notation of tithes and offerings received of $11.75 -- probably an entire month's income for my family's living! Also special offerings for the Bulletin I was then issuing, $4.25. But under it appear the notations: Spent for Bulletin: stencils $1.75; 1 ream paper, $1.35; ink, $1.25; brush, $.15; postage, $1.50; miscellaneous, $1.52; total, $6.02. That was $1.77 more than offerings received for the purpose. I presume the $1.77 was paid out of the $11.75 family income, leaving less than $10 for a month's living.

I have taken this brief flash-back because I feel that few readers, adjusted to the prosperity and luxuries of today, would otherwise realize the rough going under which this work of God was forced to start.

Actually, at $2.50 per Sunday broadcast, I did have a little over half of the amount pledged. When there were five Sundays in the month, the broadcasting cost $12.50, and when four Sundays it was $10.00. The average cost was $10.83 per month. The $6.50 pledged was actually 60%. But taking that additional $4.33 per month on sheer faith was a bigger test of faith, in those days, than it is easy to realize today!

I had no idea, then, where that additional $4.33 per month was to come from! But I felt positively assured that GOD had opened this door of radio, and expected me to walk on through it! And I relied implicitly on the PROMISE in Scripture that my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. And although God has allowed many severe tests of faith, that promise has always been kept!

Smashing Your Idol

I think it well that the reader be given some idea of the financial hardship under which God's present worldwide work got under way. Some persecutors imply that I was in it for the money! Perhaps it is well to set the record straight.

And further because an advanced student here on the Ambassador College campus expressed great surprise, the other day, to learn that I had been forced to labor along for 28 long and lean years in economic hardship. He had heard that I had been knocked down by God economically, somewhat as the Apostle Paul was by blindness, and plunged into God's service. But he had supposed that the financial test of faith had consisted of some three or four comparatively short periods of perhaps a few weeks or a few months.

So let me say right here something about conversion I find most people do not understand.

The REPENTANCE required as a condition to being truly converted by receiving God's Holy Spirit is something far different than most people suppose. It is infinitely more than merely seeing God's TRUTH, or some of it, and being good enough to embrace and accept it. It is something altogether different from merely agreeing with certain doctrines.

Whoever you are, YOU HAVE, or you have had, an IDOL. You have had another god before the true living Almighty God. It might be your hobby or your habitual pastime. It might be your husband, or wife, or child or children. It might be your job. It might be your own VANITY, or the lipstick you paint on, or your business or profession. Very often it is the opinion of your friends, your family, your group or social or business contacts.

But whatever it is, that idol must first be CRUSHED, SMASHED -- it must be literally torn out of your mind, even though it hurts more than having all your teeth pulled out and perhaps a jawbone, too! I don't believe that many people experience this painlessly. I don't know of any anesthetic that will render it pleasurable. Usually it seems like something more excruciating than the agony of death by the cruelest torture.

Now I had an idol. My whole mind and heart was set on that idol. I had worked hard, night and day, for that false god. My false objective was the intense desire -- the desperate, driving, overpowering ambition -- to become successful in the eyes of important business men -- to be considered by them as outstandingly IMPORTANT in the business world -- to achieve status. I did not have a love for money as such.

After establishing my publishers' representative business in Chicago, I aspired someday to own, or build, one of the finest and largest homes in the north-shore aristocratic suburb of Winnetka -- with large spacious grounds constituting an important-appearing estate. I wanted to be considered important by the important.

Crashing Down to Reality

I was so zealously set on that accomplishment that it became the god I worshipped and served.

God could not use me as long as I had another god that was more important in my eyes than He. Yet tearing that ambition out of me was like yanking out, root and branch, my very life itself. It was smashing dead everything I felt I lived for, and worked for.

So God first took away my business in Chicago by bankrupting every major client. Twice, later, He again swept businesses that promised multi-million dollar rewards right out from under my feet. He brought me down to poverty and to hunger.

But the bigger they come, the saying is, the harder they fall! And all this swelled-up EGO came crashing down, down, DOWN! I had been so big -- so important -- in my own sight, there was no room left for GOD! But God whittled self-righteous Job down to size! God drove strutting King Nebuchadnezzar out to eat grass with the beasts! God struck down Saul with blindness, changed his direction, and then his name to Paul. And God was certainly able to knock me down off my imaginary high perch -- again, and again, and again! I had to come to realize that all this self-IMPORTANCE was pure illusion! I was brought down to earth and reality with a THUD!

Instead of ego, vanity, and self-IMPORTANCE, God fed me, for 28 long years, on the raw and scanty diet of humiliation and poverty!

Had God merely let me suffer financial reverses, even to the point of experiencing real hunger, for short periods of a few weeks, I would have bounded back and quickly set back up my idol to serve again! Had God let me suffer that kind of humiliation and poverty even for a period of a year -- or even six or seven years -- I probably would have resumed the same sense of ego once back on my financial feet.

But God had in mind, as life-long events have since proved, using me as His instrument in preparing the way for the World Tomorrow -- for world peace -- for universal happiness, joy and prosperity, for a growing worldwide work involving tremendous expenditures in HIS SERVICE. And He knew that He could never entrust me to handle HIS money, in the administration of HIS work, as long as I set my heart on money or the things money would buy.

Please do not misunderstand. It is not wrong to have or enjoy the good material things of life. What is WRONG, and therefore harmful to our own selves, is setting our hearts on these things, instead of on the TRUE VALUES! The LOVE of material things -- the VANITY of wanting to exalt the SELF instead of God -- of wanting the worshipful praise of MEN by being considered IMPORTANT -- these are the wrong things to set our hearts upon. When the heart is set on such false values, the soul shrinks inwardly and dries up! THANK GOD! He saved me from such a fate by that 28 years of poverty and humility!

Dying to LIVE

I was never converted until I was brought to the place where I realized my own nothingness, and God's all-encompassing GREATNESS -- until I felt completely whipped, defeated. When I came to consider myself as a worthless burned-out hunk of human junk not even worth throwing on the junk-pile of human derelicts, truly remorseful for having imagined I was a somebody -- completely and totally and bitterly SORRY for the direction I had traveled and the things I had done -- really and truly repentant -- I told God that I was now ready to give my SELF and my LIFE over to Him. It was worthless, now, to me. If He could use it, I told Him He could have it! I didn't think, then, it was useable -- even in God's hands!

But let me say to the reader, if God could take that completely defeated, worthless, self-confessed failure to which I had been reduced, and use that life to develop and build what He has done, He can take YOUR LIFE, too, and use it in a manner you simply cannot now dream -- if you will turn it over to Him without reservation and leave it in His hands! What has happened since gives me no glory -- but it magnifies again the POWER OF GOD to take a worthless tool and accomplish HIS WILL through it!

But don't ever suppose it came easy. If a mother suffers birth pangs that her child may be born, most of us have to suffer that WE may be born again of GOD -- even in this first begettal stage we call conversion!

And what does all this mean? It means that millions of professing Christians have been deceived into believing in a FALSE CONVERSION! It means, as Jesus said, whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. Or, in another place, He that loveth his life shall lose it.

It means that the individual must be CHANGED! It is a change in what you ARE! Jesus Christ never pictured the way of salvation as the broad and easy and popular road. Rather, He said, that popular road is the way that leads to destruction -- and the MANY are traveling that road. He said that many would desire to enter the Kingdom of God, and should not be able! Why? Because they are not able to give up this world -- this world's WAYS -- to give up being concerned primarily with what will my friends -- my club -- my associates -- my relatives say?

Repentance means GIVING UP your way -- the world's way -- the world's opinion of you! It means turning to the WAY OF GOD -- the way of His law! It means SURRENDER -- unconditional surrender -- to live by EVERY WORD OF GOD. Since the Bible is the Word of God, it means to live by the BIBLE! It means utter voluntary submission to the AUTHORITY of God, as expressed in HIS WORD!

When you come to fully realize what is the full implication of your rebellion against the AUTHORITY of God -- of the Bible -- it is not so easy to give up! It is much more than a change of direction. It is a change in what you ARE! That old SELF doesn't want to DIE! This true repentance is excruciatingly painful. It is agony! Jesus said FEW find that way!

It wasn't easy for me. How about you? The only people of God, going His way, that we knew at that time were at the opposite extreme of human society from the great and the near great I had been proud to associate with. I thought immediately, of course, of what my former friends and business associates would think of me. They would regard me as a fanatic embracing superstition. It was humiliating. I knew it meant giving up all such associations. I knew it meant giving up my life's ambitions. It meant giving up everything I had driven myself so hard to attain. But now I was disillusioned. All that had been pure ego -- pure inflation of VANITY. It was a blown-up balloon -- and the balloon had been punctured.

When I literally gave my life over to God, I meant it! I did not count it mine any longer. Yet, had God brought me merely to this agonizing experience of conversion, and then restored me to economic ease and prosperity, I probably would have reverted back to the same goals and ways. The old cocky SELF-confidence probably would have returned. I probably would not have endured as a Christian.

So God not only brought me low. He kept me that way for 28 long years!

Yet living without this former god was no longer painful, once I gave it up. I had found the true GOD instead. I had found the overflowing JOY of receiving new UNDERSTANDING of God's TRUTH out of the Bible. I now plunged into the study of the Bible with an energetic zeal surpassing any efforts I had expended in the quest of material success. I found a new happiness and joy in the fellowship of those humble and lowly folk that was infinitely greater than any enjoyment experienced before. Mrs. Armstrong and I were now seeking first the KINGDOM OF GOD, and His righteousness. We learned that happiness does not consist of material acquisitions.

When God Opens Doors

Among old papers, letters, bulletins in those dusty old files I find a mimeographed letter addressed to co-workers. Our little family of co-workers making possible this work of God was still very small -- perhaps a couple dozen or so. The letter is dated December 20th, 1934.

It started out: I am overjoyed to be able to make a most wonderful and important announcement. The Lord has very graciously blessed the work .... And now He has opened the way for far greater influence during 1935 .... A wonderful opportunity has come for The RADIO CHURCH to go on the air IN PORTLAND! This may be done by a hook-up between our present station, KORE in Eugene, and KXL in Portland.

A few other excerpts from this letter should prove interesting.

Here is one -- and how true this is, still today! But there is one fact I want you to realize. It has been said that if a minister would DARE to stand before his congregation and preach the PLAIN TRUTH OF THE BIBLE, he would not have a dozen members left. That is about true, for God's Word is profitable for REPROOF, for CORRECTION (II Tim. 3:16), and the minister who will use it to reprove and rebuke (II Tim. 4:2) as God commands, will find the time has come when people have adopted FABLES! We have DARED to preach the TRUTH! We have not minced words, nor toned down the Word of God. And but FEW will support such preaching.

Yet, continuing the letter, we have found a peculiar paradox. We have learned that people WILL LISTEN, over the radio, to the straight truth that would cause them to get up and walk out if their own ministers preached it in their own churches! They will LISTEN, over the radio, but they WILL NOT SUPPORT SUCH PREACHING! We cut ourselves off totally from their financial support -- yet they LISTEN! And do you know, there are MILLIONS over the United States who will never listen to the last Gospel warning in any way EXCEPT OVER THE RADIO? They can be reached BY RADIO -- and by radio ALONE!

How true that has been! That is one reason GOD ALMIGHTY opened the door of mass evangelism by radio and, later, by television. Today, scores of millions listen every week -- yet the numbers who support this great worldwide work, even today, are only a few hundred thous and worldwide, and many of them in the lower income brackets!

Yet, even from those early days in 1934, we have made financial needs known only to those FEW who had voluntarily, without solicitation, become active co-workers! We have never begged for financial support over the air. We have never taken up collections in evangelistic campaigns. We have never put a price on any Gospel literature! People must send in offerings or tithes, voluntarily and without solicitation -- or else tell us they wish to become co-workers -- before we consider them as such, or acquaint them with the financial needs of the work!

That financing policy was in effect from the very first broadcasting year -- 1934! Every co-worker who helps support this work of God is individually responsible for reaching THOUSANDS with Christ's Gospel -- because only one in thousands is a co-worker!

But the point I wish to make is that, by the end of our first year on the air, CHRIST opened another door! He opened the door for us to go on station KXL, Portland, then only 100 watts.

But at that time I was afraid to walk through that door -- until after co-workers had PLEDGED enough money to pay for it. This very letter quoted above went on to ask co-workers for those pledges -- totalling only $50 per month, for the year 1935. A coupon form of pledge was mimeographed at the bottom of the second page of the letter.

Our co-workers failed to pledge the needed $50 per month. As I remember, they pledged only about half that amount. And I failed to walk through the door Christ had opened. We had to wait almost two more years before God gave us another opportunity for His work to expand into Portland! Later other doors were opened, when I wanted definite pledges before walking through those doors. But definite pledges was not FAITH.

We had to learn, by experience, that when God opens doors for CHRIST'S GOSPEL, He expects us to start walking on through, IN FAITH, trusting HIM to supply our every NEED!

Whenever we have done this, God has always supplied the need -- though He has given us severe tests of faith. Whenever we have refused to follow where Christ leads until the money is on hand, the money has never come!

And so the entire year 1935 went by and we were still on only the one little 100-watt station in Eugene, Oregon!

My First Car

During the year 1935, we continued grinding out a hand-made Plain Truth on the antiquated Neostyle. The mailing list had started with 106 names. But through 1934 and 1935 it continued to grow as a result of the radio program.

Evangelistic meetings continued, Sunday nights, through most of 1935 at our Little Church at the End of West Eighth Avenue. I had taken out time for a short six-nights-a-week campaign of perhaps two weeks at the Clear Lake schoolhouse between Eugene and Alvadore. Also I had conducted a two- or three-week campaign at a schoolhouse near Globe, Oregon, some 40 miles north of Eugene.

A Bulletin dated March, 1935, announced the addition of 200 copies to the Plain Truth circulation, and a radio listening audience estimated, by the mail response, at 8,000 every Sunday.

By August, 1935, the radio audience was estimated at 10,000. I find a letter dated September 19,1935, sent out by three members of the Eugene church, telling members and co-workers of our dire need of an automobile. I had not owned a car since leaving Salem for Astoria in December, 1931. For all these meetings I had held 8 miles, 12 miles, and 15 miles west of Eugene, I had been forced to hitch-hike a ride or be taken by someone attending who had a car.

A few excerpts from this letter may throw additional light on the circumstances of the time. Here are a few:

Dear Friend: We want to bring to your attention a few facts that have not been known, about the work, ministry, and circumstances of your radio pastor and editor .... He started this work of Bible evangelism without any money or income of his own. He has received no salary or income from any organization, but solely on sheer faith in the Lord to supply his needs and those of his family .... To do this, Brother Armstrong and his family have sacrificed in a way you little dream of .... Most of the time Brother Armstrong has been preaching six to nine times a week. He and his wife do all the work of printing, folding, addressing, stamping and mailing out The Plain Truth, themselves, to save expenses .... We are three of the many who have been converted by his preaching during the past year. Now this work is expanding .... He has urgent call to open evangelistic meetings at once near Salem. The way is opening for him to go on the air in Portland .... But Brother Armstrong is severely handicapped, and may be prevented from expanding this great work, because he has no car. The time has come when he must take quick trips back and forth between Portland, Salem, and Eugene. He must also have a way to get around to visit more of his radio audience, especially the sick and afflicted who call upon him for prayer. So we, the undersigned, have taken it upon ourselves as a committee of three, to try with the Lord's help and blessing, to provide a car for this great purpose .... We have in mind not even the lowest priced new car, but a used car, the lowest priced car that will serve the purpose and cover the mileage he now will have to cover. One of the undersigned is an experienced mechanic and automobile man, and will select the right car for the purpose. We three are starting this fund, at a sacrifice to ourselves.

As a result of their letter, a fund of $50 was raised. We purchased a used 1929-model Graham-Paige, in Portland. The price was $85. We signed papers for paying the additional $35, with the understanding I was to have ten days to pay it in cash and save the carrying charges of a year's payment contract. I borrowed the $35 and paid for the car. Afterward the man from whom I borrowed it -- and I believe it was Ernest Fisher -- figured that he owed that amount of tithe money, and cancelled the note.

Back in the proud old Chicago days, it would have been a very painful blow to pride to have accepted a car in that manner.

Along in those early years, 1934 to 1936, I sometimes laughingly boasted that I have a suit of clothes for every day in the week -- and this is it! But that one suit finally became threadbare. It became a handicap to the work. Mr. Elmer Fisher decided I had to have a new one, and took me to the Montgomery-Ward store and bought me a new $19.89 suit. It may have been a year and a half or two years later when that one was looking equally unpresentable. At that time Milas Helms, near Jefferson, formed two committees, one headed by him at Jefferson, and the other at the Eugene church, to solicit contributions from members for another new suit. They raised $35.

Through these years my wife wore used clothes her sister sent her, and how we shifted to keep our children clothed I do not remember -- except that one woman at Alvadore stopped tithing by saying:

Well, I'm not going to let any of my tithes go to buy silk stockings for those Armstrong girls. She said cotton stockings were good enough for them. Yet ALL other girls in high school wore silk stockings! This was before the days of nylons. Had our girls worn cotton stockings, they would have been ridiculed and laughed at by the other girls. Mrs. Armstrong did not want this to happen. She prevented it by accepting worn silk stockings from others, with runs in them, and sewing up the runs -- for both her daughters, and herself.

It was incidents like this that soured and prejudiced our children against God's truth. Through those years most of the members of the church in Eugene lived better, economically, than we.

I have a letter written November 13, 1935, showing that at that time, after almost two years on the air with the radio program, the income of the work was running around $40 to $45 per month.

It was sometime during 1935 that opportunity came to purchase a small house of our own on West Sixth Avenue in Eugene. Certain of the church members raised the down payment. On this I have to trust memory. No figures are at hand, as I write. But I believe the price was $1,900, with 10%, or $190 down and 1% of the $1,710 balance, or $17.10 per month payments. The church members agreed that if I were able to keep up the payments, the property, when paid out, should be deeded to me. It was deeded to the three officers of the church and myself, as trustees for the Church, which made it church ownership.

More Persecution

There had come a request for me to hold evangelistic meetings of about three weeks in the Eldreage schoolhouse on a country road 12 miles north of Salem, Oregon.

In previous chapters I have had a great deal to say about Mr. and Mrs. O. J. Runcorn. We had come to regard them as our spiritual parents. They lived in Salem during these years. Their son, Fern Runcorn, and his family lived in this community close to the Eldreage school, and Mr. Fern Runcorn was a member of the school board. It was through him that permission was obtained by the board to hold the meetings. I was invited to be his guest while they were being held.

This school was one of the newer two-room schools. The rooms were divided by folding or sliding doors. These could be opened so that the two rooms became one larger auditorium room.

While it was a country community, we had an attendance running from 50 to 70 each night. Among them were some 15 teenagers, including a few husky 16-year-old overgrown boys. They did not come because they hungered and thirsted for God's Truth. They came for mischief. They sat in the rear seats, making loud cat-calls and weird noises, trying to disrupt the preaching.

Mr. Runcorn had warned me about them in advance. He said that if I attempted to quiet them or discipline them in any way, I would find all the adults resenting it, and attendance would stop. I could not understand why, but he warned me that the people there were accustomed to this noisy confusion, and would resent any effort of mine to stop it.

Consequently, when the nuis ance started, I stopped my preaching long enough to say that I had been warned against trying to stop it.

Now, I said, if that's the way you people want it, that's the way you may have it. These boys are sitting at the rear. They are closer to you people than they are to me. If you can stand it, I can. But if and when you get tired of it, and want it stopped, I shall STOP IT!

When these young rowdies saw they could not break up my meetings that way, after a few nights they broke into the school one night after midnight, breaking a window, and stealing a number of books.

Next evening Mr. Runcorn said the chairman of the school board had called a board meeting, and he and the third member had voted to refuse permission for the meetings to continue, on the ground that my presence there was endangering school property. But I learned also that the chairman of the school board was a member of a certain church, of which about half of all the residents of the neighborhood were members, and that he, himself, had deliberately instructed these boys to break into the school building, in order to give him the opportunity to deny the use of the building to me.

That rather aroused my indignation. I was to be allowed this one more service that same night. At this service, I announced to the congregation what had happened. I told them I did not want to be a party to a religious war in this religiously divided community, but I believed God would give me wisdom to handle the situation. I felt confident the board decision would be reversed before the following night, and advised all to come.

Next morning I drove to the Sheriff's office in Salem. I asked him if his office was willing to uphold the Constitution of the United States which guarantees the right of peaceful assembly.

Mr. Armstrong, he said, if there is anything this office will stand firmly behind, it is the right of peaceful assembly. What's your trouble, and what can we do for you?

I explained what had happened. I asked for two deputy sheriffs to be present each night, beginning at the time of the meetings, until about two hours after midnight, to prevent further breaking in or destruction of school property. He assured me his men would be glad to put down the disturbance of these young ruffians by arresting them and taking them to jail if they disturbed the meetings further, provided I would prefer charges. It was agreed. The deputy sheriffs were to remain in the school play-shed just outside the school.

Next, I went immediately, with two witnesses, to the home of the chairman of the school board.

Now, Mr. X, I said when he came to the door, I understand that your only objection to my meetings is your fear of destruction to the school property, and your desire to have the property protected. Is that correct?

Oh, yes, of course, he replied. And of course, I pursued, there is no religious persecution or bigotry in your action, is there? You are not trying to start a religious war in this community where half are of your religion and half of the other kind of Christianity?

Oh, no, of course not, he said, his face turning red. Well, then, since you are not doing this as a matter of religious bigotry and intolerance, but only to protect school property, I'm sure you'll change your vote on this, for there will be no further danger to the school property. I have seen to that. The sheriff's office is sending two armed deputy-sheriffs out every night from here on. They are going to guard the school property until long after midnight -- as long as there is any danger. So you have no other objection, now, have you?

Well, he stammered, I - I g-guess n-not! Thank you, I said. These men are my witnesses that we now have your permission to continue the meetings.

We left, and drove to the home of the third board member. I told him what had happened.

You might as well make it unanimous, I said, since the other two board members have given permission, anyway.

He was glad to do so. That night we had a good crowd. At the outset tonight, I said, I want to say that I am sure, after this breaking into the school building and the robbery, that you people will be with me in demanding the constitutional right of peaceful assembly. There are two sheriff's deputies just outside this door. The first one of you young bullies that makes a single disturbing sound is going to be yanked right out of your seat, and thrown in jail for the night, and I will appear against you and demand the severest penalty of the law!

At the end of three weeks, the interest had increased, and the meetings were continued for six weeks.

Chapter 36

Broadcast Work Expands

WE COME now to the year 1936. The meetings being held 12 miles north of Salem, Oregon, had started around the 12th of December, 1935. Originally scheduled for three weeks only, they were continued an additional three weeks because of local interest -- especially after the episode of bringing two sheriff's deputies from Salem to guard the school property every night.

Going to Heaven?

One night I spoke on the reward of the saved. Most people, of course, suppose it is a matter of destination -- going to heaven. In other words, a matter of where, instead of what we are to be.

I had shown that Jesus Christ came to confirm the PROMISES made unto the fathers. Whatever the PROMISES made to the fathers, Jesus confirmed them as the reward of the saved. Then I showed by both Old and New Testament Scriptures that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the fathers.

Next, starting with the 12th chapter of Genesis, I showed that Abraham was not promised heaven, but rather this earth for an everlasting possession. The words everlasting possession simply mean ETERNAL LIFE. The same promises were re-promised to Isaac and Jacob. This was confirmed by Christ, who preached ETERNAL LIFE as the gift of God.

Of course most people have been taught, and carelessly assumed, precisely the opposite of the Biblical teaching on this, and many other basic truths. The BIBLE says: The wages [reward of] sin is DEATH; but the gift of God is ETERNAL LIFE, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6:23). Yet nearly every professing Christian believes exactly the opposite. Most believe the wages of sin is ETERNAL LIFE -- in hell fire. They do not believe eternal life is the GIFT of God -- the REWARD of the saved. They believe we already possess eternal life. They believe the pagan Plato's teaching that we are immortal souls living in a fleshly body which is merely our temporary cloak we have put around us.

The original Hebrew word translated soul is nephesh which MEANS animal life -- mortal existence, subject to cessation in death. The very word soul has the opposite meaning to eternal life. The expression immortal soul is as impossible and self-contradictory as that silly poem circulated some 50 years ago, about the barefoot boy with shoes on who stood sitting in the grass, while the rising sun was setting in the west as it rained all day that night.

The BIBLE says positively, and TWICE: The soul that sinneth, it shall DIE (Ezek. 18:4, 20).

Teaching the Teacher

Many do not realize that the idea of going to heaven did not come from the Bible, but from pagan superstitions. Anyway, in the course of the sermon, I offered $5 to anyone who could show me any place in the Bible where it gives any plain statement or promise that the saved shall go to heaven.

After the service, one of the two teachers of that two-room country school house came to me, and with a tantalizing grin said, Mr. Armstrong, I'm just mercenary enough to take that $5 from you. Here, read this.

She had a Bible opened to the Beatitudes in the sermon on the mount. She pointed to verse 3 of Matthew 5: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I smiled, too. Well, I exclaimed with a glint in my own eye, now please read verse 5.

She read: 'Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.'

Now that is a plain statement of what they shall INHERIT -- the earth. I said. Doesn't that contradict your idea of going to heaven? How do you explain that?

Well, I don't know -- unless, she said, suddenly jumping to an explanation, unless the people who are meek have to stay on earth, but the poor in spirit get to go to heaven.

Now, come you know better than that, I smiled. Are you not one of the teachers in this school?

Yes, I am. Well, now, I persisted, teasing her a little, do you think you are qualified to be a teacher, when you don't know the difference in meaning between the simple little words of 'in' and 'of'? You have heard about the famous Bank of Morgan in New York, haven't you?

Oh, yes, of course. Well, is that bank inside of Mr. Morgan? I see what you mean, she smiled. The word 'of' denotes ownership -- it is not the bank in Mr. Morgan, but the bank he owns.

Right! And the Kingdom of heaven is not referring to a kingdom that is in heaven, but one that is to be on earth and OWNED or RULED by heaven. Now turn to Luke's account of the same saying: 'Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.' Here the expression is 'Kingdom of GOD.' It is not speaking of a kingdom inside of God's person -- but the earthly kingdom GOD RULES and POSSESSES!

Then I explained how Matthew consistently employs the phrase Kingdom of Heaven, where Mark, Luke and John, often quoting the same words of Jesus, always use the expression Kingdom of God. Both expressions mean the same.

Now do you still think I should give you the $5? I asked. No, she replied, thanks for the free lesson. As always in the evangelistic meetings I held through those years, we reaped a harvest. There were conversions. The little group was formed into a small local church -- but there was no pastor to leave there to feed the little flock.

The details of what followed that campaign are very dim in my memory now. A general mimeographed letter to Co-Workers dated March 30, 1936, shows I had been continuing to spend some little time visiting converts and interested people in that vicinity.

But it was the same experience as other evangelistic efforts. There were results -- converts baptized -- but without a local minister, the flock was soon devoured by the world, the flesh or the devil. Few seem to be able to endure without a minister to feed them spiritually, counsel with them in their problems, and keep the wolves away. So far as I know, just one of that group who attended the Eldreage school meetings continues to endure at the time of this writing!

Still, this voice of experience did not sink into my consciousness sufficiently to produce the solution until ten years later. It was in 1946 that the Eternal God finally got through to me the fact that He intended to use me in founding His own college, out of which were to come forth the ministers and pastors so direly needed for the growth of God's Work!

This same general letter also records the fact that there had been no issue of The Plain Truth for several months -- since starting these meetings. Still, I find in this mimeographed letter the statement: As you know, I have never begged for money over the air. And, For more than two years we have conducted this Radio Church on SHEER FAITH.

The latter part of May or early June Mrs. Armstrong and I drove our aging second-hand car to Hawthorne, California -- a Los Angeles suburb -- to pick up a tent which the Sardis people had purchased the year before. We towed it back on a trailer. I set it up in a good location on the edge of the downtown district in Springfield. Springfield adjoins Eugene to the east -- a somewhat smaller city.

Of course we had a good radio following in Springfield. The tent seated around 400. We had a nightly attendance that must have averaged 150 to over 200. However, just as interest was increasing, at the end of two weeks, the Sardis people needed the tent. One of their men was going to hold meetings in the little town of Stayton. They had a small tent, maximum seating capacity fifty people, which they brought me to replace the bigger one.

For the remainder of the Springfield meetings we were forced to raise the side flaps straight out, with 50 people seated inside, and 100 or more having to sit outside -- except the night it rained. Then only the first 50 obtained seats. The others had to return home. Meanwhile, it was privately reported to me that most nights over at Stayton there was no attendance whatever -- one night two people came, and another night there were four, who had a full sermon preached to them. This was just another of the many experiences trying to co-operate with these people.

A Tough Lesson in Faith

In the preceding chapter, I quoted penciled notations from an old now-yellowed sheet showing that $6.50 per month was pledged by eight Co-Workers to start off the radio broadcasting. Actually, the original pledges were only $5.50. Three others, totalling $1 per month were added a little later.

When the first opportunity came to go on the air regularly, the owner of station KORE, Eugene, Oregon, offered me a Sunday morning half hour at the astonishing low rate of $2.50 per half hour. During a four-Sunday month that totalled $10, and in a five-Sunday month, $12.50. Actually, before starting, only $5.50 per month was guaranteed by pledges. That is, roughly, only half the required amount. But, in active faith, I did walk right on through the radio door Jesus Christ had opened.

And I have explained how, in those bottom-depression days, this took real living faith! When 25 cents, 50 cents, and $1 per month was all that people felt they could afford to pledge, you may realize how big the unpledged balance appeared.

At that time Jesus Christ opened the door! I walked through it. I trusted Him to keep the balance coming. HE KEPT IT COMING! Sometimes the necessary $2.50 was not on hand up to 30 minutes before broadcast time. Then one of the brethren might knock at our front door and just happen (?) to leave some tithe money, or an offering, at that psychological minute!

Never once did Christ fail to provide. Never did we have to miss a broadcast! Real faith requires the courage of believing, and acting on it! This, let me explain, was not like going in debt for something consumed and unpaid for. We didn't go into debt. We trusted Christ to send the money to pay before each program, in advance.

But I had not yet fully learned this lesson of active faith. By December that first year of broadcasting -- 1934 -- Christ OPENED A SECOND DOOR. His time had come for the broadcast to leap to Portland, with ten times the potential listeners. In fact, a hook-up was opened to us for two additional stations, KXL, Portland, and KSLM, Salem -- both at that time only 100-watt stations. The cost was to be $50 per month.

But I had grown more cautious, apparently. I wanted more than Christ's assurances -- I wanted tangible pledges in black and white that I could see! In the preceding chapter I quoted from the letter sent out December 20, 1934, asking for those pledges. Not enough was pledged. I let the opportunity slip. Then it was too late!

On September 3rd, 1936, after almost three years of broadcasting, I sent out a letter to Co-Workers. One paragraph said: Do you realize that KORE, our present radio station, is only a small local station of 100 watts? That it reaches only 50 to 75 miles from Eugene? Did you realize that people north of Salem, south of Roseburg, east of the Cascades, are never able to hear the message being broadcast? Yet, over this local station, in this small territory, we have established a regular weekly audience of around TEN THOUSAND people.

Did God reject me because I had not yet learned that lesson in faith? No, I had exercised faith in other ways many times, and answers had been miraculous. But He let me pay for this mistake! I had to wait two more whole years before Christ again opened the door to Portland! Here we were, September, 1936, and still on only that one little local station!

Yet, on the other hand, I had worked hard and remained faithful. I had held repeated evangelistic campaigns. I had kept up the publishing work, with Mrs. Armstrong's full-time help. Scores had been converted and baptized. I had preached God's TRUTH fearlessly.

From another paragraph in this general letter of September 3, 1936, I quote: Nero fiddled while Rome burned! Many churches and religious broadcasts are today giving the people a sleeping potion in the form of nice, soothing, pleasing, comforting programs -- lulling the people to sleep -- while the JUDGMENTS OF GOD ARE FAST COMING UPON THEM! Why, in Jesus name, do they not wake up and fearlessly SHOUT THE WARNING? This is no time for soft and smooth platitudes. It is time to AWAKEN people! It is time to WARN THEM!

And that is precisely what this program was doing then -- and is doing on many thousands of times greater power, TODAY! Even then, in that little section of one state, it was like a voice in the wilderness -- the ONLY voice on the air fearlessly proclaiming CHRIST'S OWN GOSPEL MESSAGE of the Kingdom of God!

No, God did not reject us. But He did try us. He did let us suffer to learn lessons. He did let us go along on that one low-powered station, unable to leap out into greater fields, for two additional years!

At Last -- Into PORTLAND!

This same letter of September 3,1936, told Co-Workers of how I planned now to get on Portland's most powerful station. Actually, CHRIST had not opened that door. Herbert W. Armstrong tried to open it. Here is another excerpt from that letter:

Consequently, the Lord willing, we plan now to extend the radio broadcasting to a powerful Portland station -- if possible the most powerful station in Oregon. This station has FIFTY TIMES the power of KORE. After sundown this station reaches out all over Oregon, Washington, Idaho. After 6 p.m. the cost is just double, but if we are able to secure a 30-minute period between 5 and 6 p.m., Sunday evenings, which will be after sundown in the months just ahead, we can send the program out over this large territory at a cost of only $110 per month.

But again the pledges fell short -- less than half! Christ had not opened that door. I had to learn to wait until He did, and then to walk on through the doors HE opens!

But by November 8, another letter to our Co-Workers shows that Christ finally had opened the door once again in Portland. Not the door of the biggest, most powerful station in Oregon. The same identical door HE had opened two years before -- the smallest power of only 100 watts, as it was then, KXL!

Here are portions from the letter dated November 8, 1936, which tell the story:

I was in Portland this week, and learned that, beginning November 1st, KEX (the station I had wanted) goes off the air on a silent period at 4:45 in the afternoon, before dark. We cannot afford to pay their high rate for a day-time broadcast. We now have subscriptions for only about $40 per month, and it began to look like we would have to give up the whole program.

And so I am sure you will rejoice with me to know that the Lord has opened to us a BETTER broadcast than would now be available on station KEX, and at half the cost. The owner of another smaller station, KXL, who also owns the Salem station, made me a proposition for hooking up by wire hook-up with both these stations, at our regular Sunday morning time, 10 a.m., over KORE, at Eugene, at a reduction of one-third from the regular rate. These three stations form the Oregon Network, and are connected by wire hook-up .... It is not as big a program as we had hoped for, but it is what the Lord has provided, and will multiply the number of listeners to between seven and ten times the number we now reach .... It is a stepping stone. Often the Lord does not let us progress as rapidly as we would like, and HE KNOWS BEST. I believe that this will soon lead to other larger stations, so that soon we shall be covering the entire Coast, and later the entire nation .... We can now hope to start off this extended program by next Sunday.

The next Co-Worker general mimeographed letter in my files is dated December 9, 1936. It tells its own story:

GREETINGS in Jesus name! I know you will rejoice with me that the extended broadcast over the Network is already bearing fruit!

We are now in the second month of this broadcast, and are receiving letters from listeners every day.

I have just returned from Portland, with good news that I know will cause you to rejoice as it did me. The way is now open, as soon as finances permit, to extend the broadcast still further, into Washington.

Once we broke out of Eugene, and learned to follow through where CHRIST leads in HIS work, we were allowed to begin expanding with increasing momentum.

Chapter 37

A Costly Lesson Pays Off!

BEFORE going on to the year 1937, I'd like to backtrack again for just a moment to point out some very important lessons.

Our Sons Start School

By September, 1935, we were living in a small church-owned house on West Sixth Avenue in Eugene, Oregon, as I have recorded earlier. At this time my wife decided to start both our boys in school together.

Dicky (Richard David) was then six, and to reach his seventh birthday in October. Ted (Garner Ted) had reached five the preceding February. We might have started Dicky, as we then called him, in school in September of 1934. He was then within about six weeks of reaching six. But Mrs. Armstrong had her mind set on starting the two boys in school together. They each had little sailor dress suits -- whites -- and of course we thought they looked very cute together. They really were pretty sharp in those neat and immaculate white suits.

I did not think well of putting both boys in school together. The matter had first come up in August of 1934. We discussed it a great deal. Both Mrs. Armstrong's sister and one of her brothers were school teachers -- her sister of first grade. They advised strongly against putting the two boys in school together.

I am mentioning this, because the problem might confront some of our readers, and I should like to help them to profit from our experience.

My wife's brother and sister advised definitely against starting little Teddy, as he was then called, when he was barely past 5½ years -- and also against putting the two boys in the same grade when one was a year and four months older than the other. Had they been twins, it would have been different, of course.

Although I thought it unwise, it seemed to mean so much to Mrs. Armstrong to see the two boys starting off to school together that I acquiesced. So, on what probably was the morning after Labor Day in September, 1935, I saw my very pleased wife walk with her two smartly attired little boys on the way to school.

However, we did come to feel, later, that it had been a serious mistake to start the two boys, more than a year apart in age, in school together. Most of the reasons for this I shall relate farther on. Little Teddy, during the growing years, was much shorter than his brother Dicky. Richard David was at least of normal height for his age -- but Garner Ted was short for his age -- until maturity, when at last he grew up to exactly the same height as his elder brother.

Because he was so little during those years, his women teachers thought Teddy was cute, and he was continually pushed to the front. This, naturally, resulted in giving Dicky an inferiority complex.

Later, during noon hour the day the boys started Junior High School, they themselves changed their names to Dick and Ted. And at age 13, I took Dick in tow with me at the time we were starting on the air daily, in Hollywood, and managed to apply a treatment that snapped him completely out of his feeling of inferiority. That, however, I shall leave to be related when we come to it. It was a most interesting experiment. And it worked!

The Costly Lesson

I have already mentioned how Jesus Christ, the real HEAD of this work, had said in advance (Rev. 3:8) that, at this time, He would OPEN DOORS that His Message might go to the world IN POWER! And, further, how, after first opening the MIGHTY DOOR of radio -- just the narrowest start of an opening first, in January, 1934, on one smallest-powered station -- I had lacked the FAITH to walk on through when it opened a little wider, in November of the same year.

Instead of trusting God fully, I wanted the assurance of MEN. I sent out letters to our few Co-Workers, asking MONTHLY pledges. I have mentioned how that door then swung shut, and did not again open to us for two and a half years.

But that was not all. We were really punished much more than that. I didn't recognize it as punishment at Christ's own Hand, then. It seems plain, looking back on what happened, now.

God says, plainly, Whatsoever is not of faith is SIN (Rom. 14:23). And without faith it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6). Of course this was not knowing or deliberate sin -- but it certainly did not please God, and He impressed the lesson.

Not only was the expansion of the broadcasting withheld two whole years, but The Plain Truth was suspended from publication, also! After I failed to TRUST GOD by going on KXL when He opened its door to us, we were allowed to print and send out only two more issues of The Plain Truth -- March and July issues, 1935 -- AND THEN The Plain Truth WAS ENTIRELY SUSPENDED FOR TWO AND A HALF YEARS!

After the issue of July, 1935, there was not another issue that year. There was not a single issue of The Plain Truth during 1936. There was not one number of The Plain Truth all during 1937. Not until January, 1938, did The Plain Truth appear again!

We were dramatically reminded of the lesson that GOD EXPECTS HIS PEOPLE TO TRUST HIM IN LIVING FAITH!

The Lesson Applied Before YOUR Eyes!

We learned our lesson! That is one reason why, today, the radio log shows many very powerful and leading radio stations broadcasting The World Tomorrow, worldwide.

Our living and guiding HEAD, Jesus Christ, has begun opening radio doors more rapidly than ever before. He has also been opening other doors for the expansion of this work in an amazing, breathtaking manner! Even in times of economic recession -- WHEN OUR FAITH HAS BEEN MOST SEVERELY TRIED! Even when we have felt the imperative need of reducing expenditures in the work, not increasing them. God has provided the means.

When a radio station agrees to accept our program, and clears a definite time, that means TAKE IT -- walk through that opened door NOW -- or the door will be slammed SHUT -- perhaps forever! Forty years of experience has taught that stern lesson. Every time I glance at the current volume number of The Plain Truth and see those two years missing, I have to be reminded that GOD TAUGHT ME A STERN LESSON -- when He opens such doors He expects me to walk on through, TRUSTING HIM!

Would you say this takes COURAGE? Well, not exactly. Not after so many years of experience learning that GOD CAN BE TRUSTED!

It's a mighty PRACTICAL lesson!

Chapter 38

Work Grows -- Despite Hardships and Persecution

Now we come to the year 1937. I've explained how, in about mid-November, 1936, we started on KXL, smallest-powered 100-watt station, in Portland. With it, using Postal Telegraph wires for a hook-up, we included station KSLM, in Salem. This was our first network!

Truth About Networks

I think it will be interesting here, to give our readers a few facts they probably do not know about radio networks. The telephone companies have a very efficient system of network broadcast lines feeding the various major network stations -- CBS, NBC, and ABC -- coast to coast.

These are very special lines, specially engineered, and of far greater efficiency than ordinary telephone lines. They are specially boosted at intervals of about every fifty miles. This is necessarily a very costly service -- but the quality is as near perfection as human technology can make it. Sound is carried instantaneously from originating stations in Hollywood, New York or Chicago, to all parts of the United States with no detectable loss in tonal quality. The voice is transmitted as naturally as if the speaker were in your living room or your car. Music, at both highest and lowest frequencies, is transmitted just as naturally.

The installation and maintenance of these special lines is a costly operation. In 1936 and 1937 we were not able to afford such perfection in network lines.

But at that time the Postal Telegraph company offered far less costly lines. These were just the ordinary telegraph wires -- far, far from the quality of telephone special network lines. There were no boosters along the way, and even the lines themselves were inferior, for our purpose. Often they would fade down or out. Frequently they didn't work at all. The reception at the other end was far from perfect. But we were on our first network, nevertheless! We called it the Oregon Network.

Everything God starts through humans must, it seems, start the very smallest -- and sometimes the crudest. BUT IT WAS A START! And, once started, the WORK OF GOD never stops! Not only that, it never stops growing!

We were to use Postal wires in immediate future years to Seattle and Spokane. Later, the Postal company was absorbed by Western Union. But they helped us get a start while they lasted!

Even at that time I had my sights on extending the broadcast into Seattle and Spokane, though I was forced to learn patience, and wait until God opened those doors. I knew we could not call it the Oregon Network when it extended into Washington, so, in my mind, I had it named already the Liberty Network, ready for the future!

Gospel to the Holy Land

Meanwhile, I was continuing to hold regular Sunday night evangelistic services in our little church building at the end of West Eighth Street, in Eugene. Interest and attendance gradually were increasing.

It was either the last Sunday in December, 1936, or the first Sunday night in January, 1937, that a former leader of that Church of God we find described in Revelation 3:1 as the Sardis church -- with which I was trying, in those days, to cooperate -- appeared with a professed converted Jewish evangelist.

This particular church leader, whom I will not name since I can say nothing good about him as an individual, had a scheme to get the Gospel to the Jews in the Holy Land. They had arrived a day or two before, and explained their plan to me. It sounded real good. In fact, the idea, itself, was good.

The reason evangelists generally were failing to convert the Jewish people to Christ, he explained, was their wrong approach. This may not be the whole reason -- but the approach of most evangelists assuredly had been wrong! They customarily started by trying immediately to preach the name of Christ to the Jews. But, explained this Jewish evangelist, all Jews have been taught from babyhood to virtually hate, despise, and reject the name of Christ. To mention this name was to set up immediate prejudice. It raised an immediate impenetrable barrier.

This evangelist, being Jewish, said Jewish people would not be prejudiced against him, but would listen. Instead of preaching Christ, direct, he proposed to approach them with the Jewish Scriptures -- Old Testament only. After arousing their interest with prophecies being actually fulfilled today, he would then turn to a few passages such as Isaiah 53, Micah 5:2, Isaiah 7:14, describing how the Messiah was to be born as a baby, of a virgin, in Bethlehem, to grow up as a child, to be despised and rejected and crucified.

He said that when he approached Christ from the Old Testament Scriptures -- from the Jewish point of view -- they would listen.

Whether or not many would listen very far, this was the only possible approach, I knew, that had a chance.

The plan was to raise enough money to send this man to Jerusalem, from where he would work throughout the Holy Land in getting the Message of the Saviour to the Jewish people there. I agreed to help.

The Deception

On that Sunday morning I interviewed both this church leader and the Jewish evangelist on my radio program, and announced public meetings where the converted Jew would speak at our little church on Sunday night.

That night our church building was filled. I sponsored the idea of the tour of the Holy Land, and asked for liberal donations. Never, except for something very special like this, did we take up offerings in any service. The response was liberal.

The next night we had a packed house at Harrisburg. Again, the donations were liberal, and the evangelist was on his way.

But a year later, after other unpleasant experiences with this church leader during 1937, the Jewish evangelist again visited our home in Eugene.

He had a sad report to make. His effort had not been altogether honest and sincere. It had weighed on his conscience. He knew he ought to return the money I had helped raise, but he didn't have it to repay.

He had gone to Jerusalem, all right. But he had found that the church and church members supposed to exist there were nonexistent, he said. The man whose name was used as a representative of the church also proved, he reported, to be a representative for other churches, drawing financial compensation from all of them.

The converts being made in the Holy Land, he reported, were not Jews at all, but Arabs -- who were not really converted.

The procedure used in the Holy Land, he reported, was this: These supposed missionaries, evangelists, or representatives who drew money from several Protestant denominations, and reported large harvests of converts, each had a small tent, in which they served tea and cookies. Like a barker at a circus sideshow, they shouted, beat tin pans, made noises to attract a crowd, announcing free cookies and tea. When the crowd gathered, the missionary went through a short two- or three-minute spiel, after which he offered the free cookies and tea to all who would raise their hands and say they accepted Christ.

The natives all raised their hands, partook of the tea and cookies, and then proceeded to the next tent where they got converted all over again!

Well, as the saying goes, Live and learn! I have learned many lessons, in more than half a century in Christ's ministry -- and I have been completely disillusioned in regard to the sincerity of a lot of professed religion in this world!

Radio Audience Grows

In a letter to Co-Workers who were regularly supporting God's Work with tithes and offerings, dated February 12, 1937, it was estimated that the listening audience had grown to some forty or fifty thous and, every Sunday. It was steadily growing toward our goal of 100,000 the letter reported!

WHAT A GOAL! That looked mighty BIG, then! Yet today our listening audience is immensely larger.

But the point is, as I mentioned once before, I did not, in those days, have any remote idea that this work ever would reach even a fraction of its power of today!

I think I have stated, before, that I did have vision. I did, at that time, look forward to going on small stations in Seattle and Spokane. My horizon had expanded to include the entire Pacific Northwest -- and at times I even envisioned the entire coast. But the vision of a God-empowered work on the vast worldwide scale of today was that of our living Head and Chief Director, Jesus Christ -- not mine! This is His work. I, and our Co-Workers with me, have been merely instruments in His hands! But the present size and scope and power of this great work is testimony to the POWER of GOD to build, and increase HIS WORK, and keep it growing until, like the grain of mustard seed, it FILLS THE WHOLE EARTH!

Whatever plant my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up! But God says He will never stop the work HE has begun! Whatever is of MAN is destined to come to naught! But whatever is of God cannot be stopped! Through the years we have met hardship, persecution, disillusionment -- every obstacle! But none could stop us, or prevent this work growing and MULTIPLYING in scope and power!

Compare the mail response of the broadcast today with 1937. A general letter sent Co-Workers on March 19, 1937, reported the following BIG mail response: In the past 2½ weeks, 26 letters from KXL, Portland; 20 from listeners of KSLM, Salem; and 12 from KORE, Eugene. Total 58. The letter then asked: Brethren, is this worth while? That seemed BIG then. Today, we receive tens of thousands of letters per week. And that is from the UNITED STATES, only. Besides this there is a receipt of mail at our offices, worldwide, much larger per day at each office than we then had in 2½ weeks back in 1937.

This letter of March 19, 1937 started out: I am more than gratified at the evidence of rapidly increasing audience, growing power, and mounting influence. This mail count inspired us to increased activity then. And, by comparison with what God now grants us, that same report gives all of us, whose hearts are in God's Work, great inspiration to further increased activity, today!

I wonder if the reader can realize, as I read over these letters and reports from dusty files of long ago, how much deep down satisfaction and inspiring GRATITUDE to our God it gives me, today! It was a real struggle, then. It always has been! But the results with which we have been blessed -- the assurance of continued MULTIPLYING growth from here on -- mighty gratifying and worth all it has cost many thousands of times over!

There is a REASON for this rapid and consistent growth over the years. That reason is partly stated in a letter dated April 8, 1937: This is not just another religious broadcast. It is utterly DIFFERENT! as I'm sure you realize by this time. It DARES TO PROCLAIM THE BIBLE TRUTH straight from the shoulder! It dares to WARN people of the fast -- approaching dread DAY OF THE LORD, and to preach the only true Gospel -- the Good News of the KINGDOM OF GOD! It dares to correct modern fables!

The same remains true today!

More Persecution

On Sunday, May 2, 1937, the program on the three network stations was dedicated to high school students. By arrangements with the Principal of Eugene High School, the combined boys' and girls' glee clubs of that school furnished the musical portion of the program. The Message was directed to high school students, in their own language, captioned: Getting a Real Kick Out of Life. A special notice was sent on the Monday preceding to Principals of the High Schools of Oregon and southwestern Washington, asking them to announce the program to students in assembly.

About the first week in July, another six weeks' campaign was started in Eugene. The attendance was good -- averaging 150 to 200 per night. As usual, there were a number of converts.

August 20th to 29th, inclusive, a camp meeting was held in Cabin City, on the highway just north of Eugene.

This particular camp meeting was the last of our cooperation with the Salem, West Virginia branch of the Church. The son of one of the so-called 12 apostles of that church informed me of a plot, hatched at a meeting he attended with his father, in which the so-called leading ministers of that group intended to use this camp meeting, of which we at Eugene were hosts, to attempt to discredit and ruin the radio broadcast.

I had announced the camp meeting over the air, weeks ahead, and invited all listeners to attend. Immediately, on learning of the plot, I appointed a Committee to be in charge of the camp meeting, and had them go to the leading ministers who already were in Oregon, demanding that all antagonisms and derogatory insinuations against me personally and the radio program be withdrawn from their plans. They refused, saying other ministers from the east coast were coming, whom they could not muzzle, and they were determined to ruin the broadcast if possible.

Thereupon, I announced there would be no camp meeting. In two days the apostle customarily in charge of these annual camp meetings arrived in Eugene from Southern California. He came straight to our home.

What was this, he asked, about my threatening to call off the camp meeting?

That's right, I said, explaining to him the conspiracy to defame the broadcast and ruin it.

But you can't stop the meeting from being held, he exclaimed.

But I can, and will, I replied. You see, I have rented this camp grounds in my own name, and I alone control it. I will not allow the grounds to be used. I have the entire member mailing list. I shall send out notices informing all of the FACTS, telling them it is cancelled, and not to come. About 85% of all expected to attend are members of the two churches at Eugene and up at Jefferson, of which I am Pastor -- and they will do exactly as I say. There is no other possible place where such a meeting could be held. On next Sunday, I shall announce to the radio audience that the camp meeting, to start that night, has been cancelled. NOBODY WILL COME! Now tell me, please -- how are you going to stop me from stopping the camp meeting, and saving the broadcast?

His wife intervened, and advised him to realize that I had him over a barrel.

He then begged me not to stop it, promising there would be no attacks against me or the broadcast from the pulpit or otherwise during the meetings. But I remained adamant.

Do you question my word? he asked, a little indignant. It isn't your veracity but your ability to stop this vicious and evil attack that I question, I replied.

He reminded me that he was a cousin of the leader in the church, who held all these ministers under his thumb. He said he would GUARANTEE that nothing hostile would occur. Finally, on this, I relented and agreed to let the meeting go on.

But there was an undercurrent of bitterness and hate. Whenever I preached, the next minister to preach devoted his sermon to an attempt to refute, dis agree with, and tear down everything I had said. I tried hard to preach on subjects that could not be disputed or dis agreed with -- yet they found a way to twist what I had said and attempt to cast reflection against me.

Then, at a ministers' meeting, this very apostle who had always appeared so friendly to me, proved himself willing to give a Judas kiss. Having the floor, he said, in pretended sympathy, that dear Brother Armstrong had worked so hard, and was so overworked, that they decided to help me by relieving me of some of my burdens. Therefore, they had decided to appoint another of their ministers (one totally hostile to me), as pastor of the church up at Jefferson. He almost wept crocodile tears of pretended sympathy.

One elder and one deacon of the Jefferson church, shocked and thoroughly aroused at this so EVIDENT subterfuge and bit of deceitful hypocrisy, as a plot to take over that church, and thus rob the broadcast of its tithes and offerings, resigned immediately.

All of us at Eugene church, and half the members at Jefferson severed all connection and effort at cooperation with those who had proved themselves willing to serve Satan and their own personal greed, and to injure the very work of GOD! I am going to END all comment about that group here, with the epitaph that -- like a dead tree -- they have since split and resplit into so many little tiny groups, all hating one another, that no one seems to know where all of them are.

These harassing events were unpleasant. It really did hurt Mrs. Armstrong and me, and all loyal to God's true Work, very deeply to see some we loved very much willing to be misled by greedy and self-willed little powerless preachers. But such is life, and such is this world!

Jesus Christ said the gate is narrow, and the road hard, difficult, that leads to LIFE, and only the FEW find it. We certainly have found His words true! It has not been an easy road. I know WHY Jesus was a man of sorrows. It was not because of persecution against Him, or personal suffering, but the anguish of seeing those He loved reject the truth and be willing to turn the wrong way to their own perdition! It hurts, deeply, to see people drop by the wayside!

But in the Work of God, the great blessings outweigh the sorrows 100 to 1.

Chapter 39

The Plain Truth Revived!

USING Postal Telegraph wires, we continued on the local network, feeding the 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning program from KORE, Eugene, Oregon, to two additional stations, KXL, Portland, and KSLM, Salem.

These, like our original KORE, were the smallest-powered commercial stations in operation -- a mere 100 watts.

Weekly Portland Jaunts

But we stayed, at that time, with KXL for only about ten months. On September 5,1937, we moved up to a 500-watt station, as it then was -- KWJJ. The new time on KWJJ was 4:00 p.m. Sundays. We continued on KORE and the Salem station.

This not only was another increase in power, it started weekly trips to Portland that were to continue several years. Later these trips were extended on to Seattle.

At this time I put the program on KORE, broadcast simultaneously by wire hook-up over KQLM, Salem, at 10 each Sunday morning. Then came the 123-mile drive to Portland for the 4:00 p.m. broadcast.

By this time we were using a mixed quartette on the program. As the program started out, our concept had been to condense a regular church service into a half hour, using radio techniques. The program started with a fast-moving theme hymn, then two verses (never more) of a lively hymn, followed by prayer during which the singers usually hummed -- or followed it with a threefold Amen -- then announcements about the program, The Plain Truth or other free literature. Then followed a sermon of about 22 minutes, then sign-off with a closing theme hymn.

In using this type of programming, in those early days, I was merely following the custom of religious programs generally. Nearly all other religious programs on radio have continued that format to this date. But later, as we branched out onto larger stations in larger areas, we began to learn that this style of program is all wrong.

It is based on the assumption that a regular Sunday church service is being brought to people in their homes. It assumes one of two fallacies: either, 1) that all radio listeners are church-going people who want to sit in a church service -- which is true of not more than 2% of radio listeners, or, 2) that radio is the proper medium for holding a church service with our own particular church members.

We discovered later that such type of programming causes about 98% of radio listeners to tune to some other station, or tune out. The minute the average person hears a hymn, he says: Oh-oh! There's another one of those sentimental, pestering religious broadcasts! -- and he flips the dial.

It was some years later, but eventually we learned. Then we began programming for the other 98% -- the people who are not religious -- the unchurched -- instead of what radio men call the religious audience. Years ago we dropped off hymns and singing altogether.

But in those days, and for some years to come, we did use singing. Our mixed quartette was hardly of Metropolitan Opera quality -- yet, as religious programs went, it was very creditable. Some of the time we used eight voices in a double mixed quartette.

Customarily, however, we used the four singers, which included my wife and eldest daughter. The quartette, a pianist, and I drove directly from the studios of KORE to Portland, usually taking lunch along to eat in the car en route.

Portland Tabernacle Offer

Shortly after going over to KWJJ, opportunity came to purchase a tabernacle in Portland. This brought us to the crossroads decision for the entire future of the work.

I had to learn, here, that all that glitters is not gold. This offer glittered. It flattered. It was tempting.

A Portland radio evangelist, Willard Pope, had built this tabernacle a few years earlier. He had now built a new and slightly larger tabernacle and vacated his former one. He was conducting one of these local religious broadcasts, holding nightly evangelistic services in his tabernacle and regular Sunday service for his church members which this program brought him.

The idea of having what then appeared to me as such a nice large auditorium of our own in Portland was enticing. This tabernacle seated 800 people.

But soon I began to realize that, although this tabernacle was offered on terms that amounted virtually to rent, with no down payment for about a year or so, it would change the entire direction and future course of our work.

It would mean tying me down to Portland -- preaching in Portland six nights a week to those attracted by the radio program. It would mean trying to BUILD A LOCAL CHURCH. It would have tied me down, locally, in Portland. I had from the start realized that the first and major commission to which I had been called, was not to build up a church and to bring in members, but to proclaim the true and original Gospel of Christ, which the world had rejected and lost for 18½ centuries. I saw our commission, in Christ's prophecy of Matthew 24:14. The Gospel was to go out, not to cram it down people's throats -- not to try to force conversion on them, but as a witness -- perhaps even a witness against them!

Of course I did see that Christ had said it was to go into all the world, and as a witness to all nations; but I had no delusions of grandeur -- I never thought of myself as reaching more than a segment of the whole earth. I assumed God would raise up others to reach the rest of the world. But I did realize I was called to preach that very Gospel to as many as God made possible.

This tabernacle offer, I began to realize, would mean diverting the work from that path. I began to realize that it might prevent the radio work and The Plain Truth from expanding into wider areas. And already I envisioned a program expanding to reach the entire west coast -- and possibly even, in time, the entire United States.

For some three or four months I weighed the matter, prayed over it, sought advice and counsel from those whose judgment in such matters I respected. And finally, on the grounds it would divert us from our divinely ordained course, which I felt sure I realized at last, the tabernacle offer was turned down.

It was a wise decision. It was a test in wisdom. I think I have mentioned before that I had discovered, very early in my ministry, that I lacked natural wisdom. I had always craved UNDERSTANDING. I had absorbed a reasonable share of KNOWLEDGE. But WISDOM is ability to put both of these together and form a right DECISION. I had read God's instruction in James 1. If any man lacks wisdom, he is to ask God for it; and, believing, he shall receive it. I had asked God for wisdom. God granted it. But, even though it comes as His gift, He lets it develop gradually, and through experience. This was one more experience in WISDOM. I have always been sure the decision was God's. The work would not be where it is today, otherwise.

Atheists at a Funeral

In February, 1937, I had sent out a letter to Co-Workers saying that the mail response indicated a radio audience of between forty and fifty thous and each Sunday -- growing toward our goal of 100,000. By April the mail response indicated 60,000 listeners. By November 26th we had reached our goal -- 100,000 weekly listeners was announced! We set new goals -- and continued to grow!

On November 30, 1937, the father of the former atheist Secretary of the local Communist Party, whose conversion was recorded in a preceding chapter, died. This precipitated a nerve-testing experience.

The mother of the young lady ex-Communist had also come into the Church. But it was a fairly large family, and nearly all the other members of the family were professed atheists. There was some kind of a controversy within the family concerning who was to officiate at the funeral. The professed atheist members were violently opposed to me. They wanted a Mr. Herbert Higgombotham, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Eugene. However, in deference to their mother, they acquiesced.

Oh, well, they said, we'll sit there and endure the ignorant, superstitious, medieval mouthings of this stupid God-believing minister, and then we'll have a good laugh picking to pieces his ridiculous 'funnymentals' after it's over.

I realized what I was facing. I spoke on the meaning of death, and the question of life after death. I mentioned that among men there are various IDEAS -- the immortality of the soul, which is pagan; conditioned immortality and the resurrection of the dead; and the atheist idea that death ends all. Then I pointed out that the reasonings and inventions of human imagination carry no weight of authority -- they are only ideas -- and other people have different ideas. Nobody has ever yet come back to tell us his experience, except the resurrected Christ whom they deny. Science can contribute NOTHING. We, therefore, have one of two choices: 1) accept the revelation of the Creator God -- who knows -- in the Bible, or, 2) admit we are absolutely IGNORANT!

The pagan, I said, is IGNORANT -- he has only his imagined and superstitious ideas. The atheist, I affirmed, is even MORE IGNORANT -- he has only his prejudiced refusal to accept truth, without any proof or scientific knowledge whatsoever; he has no authority; he, like a fool, ignorantly believes what he wants to believe, because he is unwilling to believe the truth.

Then I said that I would now read to them what GOD says, and that we have the choice of accepting this AUTHORITY or confessing that we are ignorant.

En route to the cemetery from the mortuary, I rode on the driver's seat of the hearse, and with us was a cousin of the sons of the deceased.

Mr. Armstrong, he said, you probably didn't know it, but you had several professed atheists and scoffers before you today. They came to ridicule and scoff, but you certainly closed their mouths! They intended to go home and pick your sermon to pieces -- but their home will now be as quiet as a morgue!

Of course, I did know what I was up against. I had prayed to the God they denied for wisdom. I believe He granted the request. They fell into the pit they had dug for me -- being labeled IGNORANT. They had no answer.

Our Car Gives Out

By December, our old second-hand several-year-old Graham-Paige car laid down on the job, like a worn-out, tired old horse ready to lie down and die.

At this time we had one secretary -- Mrs. Helen Starkey. She was working without salary. Later, I think, we managed to pay her $5 per week, but even that was only a fraction of a salary.

Without my knowledge, she sent out a letter over her own signature on December 21, 1937, asking Co-Workers for a special love-offering for a new second-hand car to enable us to continue the weekly broadcast trips to Portland. It was that or go off the air.

Enough came in to purchase a 1934-model used Graham -- on monthly payments! It lasted until 1941.

Helen Starkey died in 1959, faithful to God's work to the end. But a year or two before she died -- having moved to Pasadena -- I learned that she and her husband were trying to purchase a small home, but lacked a few hundred dollars of being able. It was a very rewarding privilege for Mrs. Armstrong and me to be able now, at last, to pay her the few hundred dollars as back salary she had really earned, some twenty years before. She lived in the home they bought the short remainder of her life.

More Tests of Faith

There had been no issue of The Plain Truth since July, 1935. The reasons have been fully explained before. During this period, I did manage to turn out, frequently -- though not monthly or with regularity -- printed sermons that had been broadcast.

These had been months of trial and hardship, persecution, plots by the very ministers I was working with to wreck the broadcast, struggle to meet rising expenses and keep the work alive.

I will mention briefly one such incident. On November 22, 1937, I had managed to afford enough paper and ink to mimeograph a printed sermon. But we lacked enough to pay for postage to send it out until November 26. Here are a few brief excerpts from the letter I sent along with it. This letter was sent only to those who had become regular Co-Workers:

Again, with the printed sermon, I send greetings in the Lord. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your interest in God's truth. But this month I must take you into my confidence about some of the problems we are facing in this work. Right now Jesus Christ is opening up the most wonderful opportunities for the expansion of the work. And yet, instead of taking advantage of these opportunities, I am faced with having to stop what we are doing, and going off the air altogether, after next Sunday's broadcast!

Most of you must have thought that with our vast radio audience, so many people would be sending in money that we do not need YOUR help. A HUNDRED THOUSAND listen, every Sunday, but only a very FEW of them send any money. And I have never asked for money over the air! We preach the Word of God -- and the Scriptures are profitable for reproof, correction, and instruction in God's way. It is not a popular Gospel. People do not pay to be told their sins -- to be reproved and corrected. They would walk out of church if their pastors hit them with the Bible TRUTH. Their pastors would lose their jobs. Yet we have found that people who would not tolerate such preaching in their churches, where their friends see them being told their sins, will listen privately, in the secrecy of their own homes by radio. For some reason, they cannot resist LISTENING -- over the radio! But they will not support it with their money.

The cold facts which I must face are that we have not been able to send out this printed sermon earlier because there has not been enough money to pay postage -- we do not at this writing even have enough money on hand for the trip to Portland for the Sunday broadcast, and must trust God to send it before Sunday morning. I do not like to tell you these things. Brethren in Christ, this is one of the discouragements I must face -- the responsibilities I must carry -- in order to bring YOU the spiritual benefits and blessings so many of you have written you are receiving from this work.

I wish you could sit at my desk a few days, and read the letters that come in. Some of them would tear at your heartstrings! You would come to really REALIZE the wonderful amount of real good this great work is doing -- already on a large scale, covering most of Oregon and southwestern Washington. Thous ands are hearing the true Gospel and God's warning, WHO NEVER HEARD SUCH THINGS BEFORE! Conversions are actually taking place while our program is coming in over the air!

When I look at this world and see the people hurrying here and there, absorbed altogether in their worldly cares and pleasures -- yet really miserable and unhappy and LOST -- heedless, knowing NOTHING of the terrible things soon to come on those who have not put themselves under God's protection; and when I look into my Bible, and see how REAL these things are, and how SOON they are coming, I am appalled, and my heart BURNS to shout out the warning to more and more people, before it is too late!

I felt it might be worth the space to reprint the above portions of that letter -- just to show what we faced, and how we felt, at that time.

AT LAST -- a Plain Truth

But, patience, faith, and struggle were rewarded -- as they always are.

January 1, 1938, we finally were enabled to bring The Plain Truth back to life! It was the first issue in two and a half years!

But it still had to be a hand-produced mimeographed magazine. A letter sent out with it said: We cannot, yet, afford to have it printed. So we mimeographed it ourselves. This work has been done mostly by Sister Helen Starkey, Mrs. Armstrong, and myself, with a few of our good friends coming to the office for volunteer work the past few days, to help with the folding, addressing, stamping, . Mrs. Starkey was still working daily without salary.

A bulletin sent to local Oregon church members, dated January, 1938, announced the Plain Truth mailing list was now 1050.

It had outgrown Mrs. Armstrong and me. It was becoming too large to mimeograph. In February, 1938, we were forced to reduce The Plain Truth down to 3 pages -- its smallest size ever. There were two sheets of paper, and the back page was devoted to a letter!

At this time I learned that we could have the March number printed, at a local printing plant, on cheap paper, 8 pages, for $30 more than the cost of mimeographing. But we didn't have the $30!

So the March and April numbers were still mimeographed. March 18, 1938, I sent out a letter showing that the expenses of the work (including our family living) had risen to $300 per month. But we were running behind on part of the family living. Legal action was being instituted to foreclose and take from us our small home! In some manner I do not now remember, this trouble was met, and we managed to keep the home. But this only added to the harassing discouragements in the struggle to keep the work going.

First PRINTED Plain Truth!

Finally, after more than four years on the air, we managed to produce the first really printed Plain Truth!

This was done by combining May-June into one number! It had to be printed on inexpensive newsprint paper. The page size was larger than the present magazine, but it contained only 8 pages.

This was the first issue that carried under the masthead the slogan I had always wanted: a magazine of understanding.

(To be continued in Volume 2.)

NEXT PAGE