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circumstances worked so that we could make the adjustment. IT HAS
BEEN MADE. Our business office is now current in the payment of
bills. But a work as great a GOD'S WORK has become cannot function
safely without a certain extra margin for safety. We still do not
have a safe margin.
For the past year I have curtailed the, usual rate of increase
in adding more radio stations, and putting Christ's Message in
advertising space in magazines and newspapers. To still further
improve the financial condition of the Work, I am going to
partially continue to curtail this expansion for at least six more
months.
This curtailment has been like the cocking of a gun. But soon
now -- by late summer or early autumn -- WE MUST PLUNGE AHEAD
FASTER THAN EVER by adding more and more radio stations -- buying
more and more advertising space in which to show GOD'S MESSAGE to
the World. We are planning to go into TELEVISION -- if not within
six months, at least within a year or eighteen months.
God's Work cannot stand still. It must leap ahead in power,
as world events leap ahead toward the END OF THE WORLD. We have,
now, only a few more years to go. Our mission must then be
accomplished. First of all, it takes the POWER OF GOD. This comes
only through earnest, believing, and prevailing PRAYER! Are YOU
praying, daily, persistently, for this Work?
But it also requires funds to pay the way. God PROSPERS and
BLESSES the tither. Remember, GOD has decreed that the first tenth
of our income BELONGS TO HIM, for His Work. The whole earth
belongs to GOD. He created us, and so we belong to Him. He lets
us, by our labor, receive an income to live on. Today that income
is in the form of money. But everything that is produced --
everything any of us earns -- comes, in the first place, out of the
ground. That ground belongs to GOD. He lets us work HIS GROUND --
and He becomes our PARTNER -- yet He takes only the first tenth for
HIS SHARE.
Not only that -- when we are honest in paying God's tenth, He
has ways of so INCREASING our income that the nine-tenths He leaves
us becomes bigger than the ten-tenths was before we began tithing.
Mrs. Armstrong and I had to learn that lesson in our personal lives
-- back in 1933. In 1920 God took away my business. In 1924 He
took away another business. In 1926 another, and in 1929 still
another.
We were reduced to hunger and want -- and I mean in a manner
I seriously doubt if many of our Co-Workers ever have suffered.
But, after we began tithing in 1933, the hunger ended. In 1934 God
used us in the very START of His Work. It was so very small at
first. But gradually it grew, and grew.
Co-Workers, we have just suffered the usual January LET-DOWN
in receipt of income. It seems that people over-spend in the mad
Christmas Shopping spree in December. Then, when January comes,
they are behind and have to catch up. The income of tithes and
offerings for GOD'S WORK took a big slump in January. Now it is