by Herbert W. Armstrong
We moved to put ourselves “back on God’s track.” Now God is moving to shower blessings on His Work. IN EVERY WAY THE WORK IS LUNGING AHEAD and God is increasing membership and income.
I have said before that when our lives and performance are pleasing to God, He bestows on us blessings. He is adding conversions. He is prospering us so that financial income is once again increasing as it was during the first 35 years of this Work.
At services on the Unleavened Bread holy days, attendance worldwide averaged around 9% increase over the year before. Holy day offering increases were sensational. First and last holy day offerings increased as follows: In Australia, 57% and 72.4%; in New Zealand, 42.5% and 57.8%; in Canada, 35% and 33.7%; in Germany, 78.1% and 31.9% (the only country with loss in attendance – 1.2%); United Kingdom, 26% and 20%; United States, 26.6% and 24.9%; South Africa, 31.5% and 38.7%. Even considering inflation, these are splendid increases.
In March, 100,000 new subscribers were added to The PLAIN TRUTH subscription list – not counting newsstand distribution. This is United States only. Mail subscribers, 1,090,384; newsstand circulation, 740,000. In the first 3 months of this year we added 206,000 new subscribers. An estimated 130,000 more were added in April. The present trend indicates close to 1,000,000 new subscribers will be added during the current year. Newsstand response – those adding new mail subscriptions – has doubled the past few months. Requests for magazines and equipment are twice what was projected. Newsstand response is 2.35% and growing.
Introductory PLAIN TRUTHS are being sent out three times the usual rate. Normal 6-7 months supply exhausted in 2 months. Cardholder Program has added 24,145 new subscribers, and on the Waiting Room Program 53,000 doctors’ and dentists’ waiting room copies have been added so far this year. Forty thousand new subscribers have been added in 3 months by blow-in subscription cards.
The renewal rate for regular subscribers is 54%.
In all these 48 years of the Work perhaps no other part of the Work has accomplished as much as The PLAIN TRUTH. During these 48 years no other facet of the Work has done as much to spread the Gospel message as The PLAIN TRUTH.
Stop a moment and compare this Work with other professing “gospel” works in the world. Billy Graham conducts crusades. They are usually planned and started a year in advance. Six months in advance local churches, who will join in general with the Baptist doctrines, begin organizing the crusade. At what they find to be the proper time in advance of the crusade, committees start work on all church members, as well as the general public, to work up interest and attendance at the crusade. Of course, many, probably most, of those attending a crusade are church members.
Dr. Graham’s evangelistic association presents limited literature to those who “come forward.” They also send this to those responding from televised broadcasts of the crusades. But they publish no magazine comparable to The PLAIN TRUTH. The crusades are followed up by local denominational churches by inviting church attendance. Mr. Graham closes most of his crusade meetings and telecasts urging people to attend church next Sunday, but their association is not a church and they have no program for continually “feeding the flock,” local ministerial contact, counseling and continual personal contact and fellowship.
Just about all radio and television religious programs are limited primarily to the broadcasts, begging the public for contributions, and a very limited (and usually ineffective) literature follow-up.
Up until about 1968 or 1970 we purchased more radio time – with a DAILY broadcast, on numerous major 50,000-watt stations all over the United States and Canada, besides other countries around the world. We were the BIGGEST PROGRAM ON THE AIR of a religious nature. This was followed up by The PLAIN TRUTH reaching many MILLIONS, and with an Ambassador College-educated ministry – besides many booklets and even books – all sent FREE.
There is not, and never has been, any program like this program of the living GOD for spreading Christ’s message of the Gospel of the KINGDOM OF GOD to the whole world.
No other leader of any religious movement – even though deceived into being Satan’s movement – has had a program that would remotely compare in effectiveness with GOD’S program. No other leader has gone to as many countries, and to personally-invited meetings by kings, emperors, presidents and prime ministers, opening doors to reach their people.
I just wondered if you realized these facts. We should not just take them for granted. We should realize God has planned all this – guided it all – prepared His servant in a very special way even before conversion – for this great and mighty worldwide Work, proclaiming, alone by itself, the real TRUTH of God!
God’s Church is positively UNIQUE, none is like it. Take, for example, our publications. There is no magazine like The PLAIN TRUTH, whether secular or religious. It has the interest of a leading national news magazine, but it views and explains world news and happenings from GOD’S point of view – sees events and their meaning as GOD does, looking down from heaven. No other church or magazine editorship has the KNOWLEDGE to do that.
No other church has a program remotely comparable to ours. In our publications, besides The PLAIN TRUTH, members receive semi-monthly, The WORLDWIDE NEWS, keeping them up-to-date on Church and Gospel-proclaiming happenings, besides so much personal news to keep us all close together in a spiritual fellowship with God and with Christ. Then the new YOUTH 81 magazine for the youth of the Church – and a weekly PASTOR GENERAL’S REPORT. No church – Catholic, Methodist, Baptist or whatever, has a publication program such as God has given us. No church has weekly events, keeping up member interest, like God’s Church. Take our Spokesman’s Clubs, our Y.O.U. and Y.E.S. programs – our basketball and other activities – our annual Feast of Tabernacles and other feasts to hold us together, and keep us growing spiritually. THERE IS JUST NO CHURCH LIKE GOD’S CHURCH! I think we need to realize HOW DIFFERENT – and how much MORE INTERESTING, how much more spiritually stimulating and invigorating is GOD’S Church.
And our publications are a vital and basic part of the Church – its life, and its growth.
Now the way is opened for us to place The PLAIN TRUTH into hundreds and thousands of chain supermarkets – Safeway and others. I will describe this in a letter to members.
So much of this growth and spiritual development has come through our publications. Before my conversion, God trained me in the field of publications, and also in public speaking. I think I had not realized, myself, how vital this early training was in building God’s Church and Work.
