Co-Worker Letter – June/July 1977

In the last issue of the Co-Worker Newsletter we highlighted the Worldwide Church of God, its congregations, services – its warmth and enthusiasm. Now, we would like to share with you a brief view of the current and vitally important mission of the Pastor-General of the Church, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong.

Fifty years ago Mr. Armstrong made a commitment to the way of life this worldwide Work is proclaiming. His commitment came after an agonizing and intensive six-month study into the basic philosophical, religious, and moral arguments on which he had previously built his life.

In June 1927 Mr. Armstrong accepted God’s Way and was baptized. Six years later, in July 1933, he started broadcasting regularly on radio. The response to the broadcast resulted in “The Plain Truth” magazine, which made its humble bow to the world on February 1, 1934.

From the ministry of one man, beginning during the depths of the Depression, has grown a Work of worldwide churches, educational programs, and a charitable foundation that is global in scope and impact!

One of the most exciting developments in recent years has been Mr. Armstrong’s many meetings with world leaders – and international campaigns that have enabled him to bring to multitudes the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God.

Here, in Mr. Armstrong’s own words, is the significance of his travels and the message he is delivering to the world:

“During the past seven years I have had personal meetings with many heads of state – kings, emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and many other officials high in government all over the world. I have talked with them as an ambassador without portfolio for world peace. We discuss domestic and world problems and changing conditions. They all face more and deeper problems than they can solve. All are interested in world peace.

“In addition, I have spoken to thousands of people in many countries about today’s ominous world conditions and the wonderful hope and good news of a better world tomorrow.

“Today we are experiencing an amazing paradox.

“On the one hand, the human mind had proved so superbly capable that it can produce the incredible computer and send men safely to the moon and back, among other marvels.

“But on the other hand, the same human mind has proved utterly helpless before our human problems, troubles and evils here on earth. Human leaders for six thousand years have striven in vain to bring about world peace, and yet science, technology, and industry have produced nuclear and other weapons capable of blasting from off the earth all life – erasing humanity from this planet.

“Does this paradox of human greatness and human impotence make sense?

“Modern science cannot find the answers nor solve our fatal problems. All religions have utterly failed to make this a better, happier world or show us the way to world peace. Higher education, intent on constant knowledge production, does not know, and cannot teach us the answers! Governments supposed to be the benefactors of their peoples, are more and more being overthrown, because dissenters conclude that they have failed!

“Fifty years ago I was challenged – both on a point on religion and the theory of evolution. I was then certainly a “biblical illiterate.” But this dual intensive research took me not only into the writings of Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, and the supporters of evolution, but also into Genesis and other books of the Bible.

“In Genesis I was intrigued with the incident of the ‘forbidden fruit.’ There I read a Creator God revealing basic knowledge to the first two humans He had just created. Connecting the Genesis account with additions revealed elsewhere in the Bible, I saw that their Maker was revealing to this man and woman what they were, why humanity was put on earth, the way to peace, and happiness and joy in material and spiritual abundance. What He taught them, strangely, seems to have been entirely overlooked by all religions. I saw there, also, the cause of all humanity’s troubles, evils, sufferings and woes.

“That message covered the way to world peace – and how it actually will yet come! It revealed the cause of all human troubles and evils. It revealed the purpose for which humanity was put here on earth. It revealed the way that will cause universal happiness and abundant well-being.

“I call it the ‘missing dimension’ in knowledge. This is the basic, most vital, of all knowledge, undiscovered by science, untaught by education, unrevealed by religion, unused by government.

“Everything is a matter of cause and effect, and the cause of evil is revealed and made clear, and also, what will cause world peace. And it must come – in our time.

“The revelation of the cause of the world’s evils is made clear in that Book of all books – rejected by science, not understood by education, overlooked by religion. Actually it is the message the Eternal Creator God sent to humanity.”

It is this message, from God’s revelation, which explains the way to peace, happiness, and joy which will soon be experienced by all peoples, which Mr. Armstrong is carrying to nations worldwide.