Co-Worker Letter – December 28, 1980
Herbert W. Armstrong
Post Office Box 431
Tucson, Arizona 85702
Tucson, Arizona
December 28, 1980
Dear Brethren and Co-Workers with Christ:
Enclosed is your annual receipt for payment of God’s tithes and giving of your freewill offerings for the calendar year 1980. Separate receipts will be mailed for Worldwide Church of God and for Ambassador College.
On behalf of Jesus Christ, and with all my heart, I thank you for your faithfulness and liberality.
We are now off to a flying start on a new year – the second year of a new decade which may well be the last decade of this present evil world. We’re coming in on the final accelerated dash of the great Work to which the living Christ has called us – – preparing for His coming in supreme POWER and GLORY to establish the KINGDOM OF GOD, ushering in the wonderful WORLD TOMORROW!
1980 has been an inspiring year of final preparation for this final leap of the Work preparing for Christ’s coming. During the past two and a half years we have been PREPARING OURSELVES – getting the people of God BACK ON THE TRACK – back where the living Jesus Christ can really USE US in this final phase of His Work prior to His coming!
We are all set now for the greatest leap ahead in the Work since this modern phase of God’s Work started 47 years ago.
This year we hope to greatly increase the power of the Work in television, radio and putting large-space Gospel messages in magazines like Reader’s Digest and TV Guide – both of which we have used in the past – and full-page newspaper messages like those now running in The Wall Street Journal. Also in countries like Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, Holland.
I am now recording ahead at least two TV half-hour programs and two radio half hours every week, except when I am away.
I shall be leaving Friday of this week on a trip to the far Pacific – Tokyo and Manila, Philippines. I expect to speak before important groups at both places, beside our own churches at Honolulu and Manila.
The year 1980 has brought us, before the end of the year, back up to the 30 percent increase in both the power and scope of the Work, and in conversions, baptisms and new members, in the U.S., in Canada, in Britain, Holland, Germany and elsewhere around the world.
To give you just a glimpse of the scope of the Work – in the United States alone – during 1980:
- 15.2 million PLAIN TRUTH magazines went into the hands of subscribers without subscription price, or those who took them free from newsstands.
- 800,000 GOOD NEWS magazines went to members.
- 2.7 million books, booklets, reprints of articles were sent out – FREE of course.
- 7.7 million letters were mailed out.
- 516,000 Bible Correspondence Course lessons were sent.
- More than 200,000 people requested the new updated book, THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN IN PROPHECY – free!
- Our Mail Processing Department received two million letters, plus 170,000 telephone requests on our toll- free line. By these more than 400,000 subscribers were added to The PLAIN TRUTH circulation – and 43,000 new Correspondence Course students enrolled.
- The WORLD TOMORROW program was broadcast on more than 100 television and radio stations, with more than 17,000 half-hour slots nationwide.
- More than 3,000 new members were baptized in the U.S. alone, beside 1,250 in other countries around the world. Fifteen new churches were opened in the United States and 17 new churches were raised up in other countries. Eighty-three new ministers were ordained.
We’re not a big church in membership like the Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist and other large churches. The present era of the Church started only 47 years ago from my preaching in a 36-seat, one-room, country schoolhouse, with 19 members, one ordained minister, one half-hour radio broadcast a week on a tiny station of 100 watts, and with a 350-copy, hand- mimeographed start of The PLAIN TRUTH.
We have suffered opposition, persecution, many setbacks from Satan. But this partial report of accomplishments for 1980 in the U.S. alone (except as mentioned), will match that of the work of the churches great in membership and in finances. We have made every dollar go a long way in carrying the one and only TRUE GOSPEL to the world – and NO ONE ELSE PROCLAIMS CHRIST’S GOSPEL MESSAGE TO THE WORLD!
I know God will greatly bless you for YOUR PART in this great Work. It is appreciated, from the heart. I thank God for you and pray for your welfare DAILY. And I do need your prayers for me. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! And as they say just before a TV commercial, “Stay with us!” – as we work together WITH CHRIST!
With love and gratitude, in Jesus’ name,
Herbert W. Armstrong
