Basic HTML Version
improve our surroundings -- even as we improve our spiritual
character.
Did you ever stop to think about how GOD lives -- in what kind
of environment -- what kind of surroundings? And our Living High
Priest Jesus Christ is right now in that GLORIOUS environment, at
the right hand of the Father, on His (the Father's) THRONE. Read
it -- in the 4th chapter of Revelation -- the 1st of Ezekiel.
There is flashing brightness, brilliance, all the colors of the
rainbow in dazzling radiance -- the sparkling brilliance of the
rarest, costliest stones -- and of course, since it is not
MATERIAL, but spiritual and glorious, our minds simply cannot
picture the glorified splendor of it -- probably millions of times
more beautiful than anything we mortals have ever seen!
Is it so strange, then, that God has providentially maneuvered
circumstances so as to set His earthly headquarters of His Work in
an environment that is comparatively nice and beautiful, as things
go here on earth?
Other Side of Picture
But all parts of our campuses are not beautiful and fabulous!
Not by any means!
About half of our Pasadena campus was in an area that was the
nearest thing Pasadena had to a slum section. In order for the
college to grow -- for GOD'S WORK to grow -- we had to buy many
dozens of small 40- or 50-foot-wide properties, most with two
houses on them, one behind the other -- and these houses all very
old, run-down, dilapidated.
WE DID NOT PUBLISH PICTURES OF THESE PROPERTIES!
For years we had to use most of these unsightly houses for
offices -- for student dormitories -- even for school classrooms.
Of course we cleaned them up. We gave them some paint, and even
a slight amount of repair to last until we could erect needed new
buildings and demolish them.
Our new physical education facility -- gym, natatorium,
handball courts, etc., and baseball diamond -- this occupies one
square block which had some 16 or 18 of these old small houses.
The new Student Center building, with its new dining hall,
social center, student bookstore, student post office, student
barbershop, faculty dining room and lounge -- this building
occupies a site formerly occupied by another 18 or 20 small
semi-slum houses.
How Old Houses Used
In fact, Garner Ted Armstrong lived a few years in one of them
-- then David Jon Hill lived there a while, and then visiting
ministers were housed there. A two-story corner house next door
was a men's dorm for years. Three of these houses on that property
were used as classrooms.
We have had to put every available inch of floor space to
active USE. But, naturally we have not published pictures of
these!
In two very old but larger houses, which Mr. Merritt had moved
onto a vacant property one block north in this area, we housed the
offices of the Transportation Department, the campus barbershop,
the campus first aid and infirmary, the News Bureau, our legal