Basic HTML Version
in England at 9:15 that morning. Ted and several others were at
the airport to meet me. Ted had to speak in a whisper. It was
about 4:00 in the afternoon. Do you believe in prayer? With two
other ministers who had flown from England with me, I anointed my
son and asked the Great God our Father to give him his voice for
the Message that evening. I had the privilege of attending that
one meeting. Ted's voice came strong and resonant, and never have
I heard such speaking! Do you believe in answered prayer? Not
many do today. But SOMEONE heard and gave him his voice not only,
but dynamic and moving INSPIRATION besides!
Ted had been telling the audiences at Nashville about the
fast-accelerating evils that threaten to DESTROY our beloved
country. Let me give you here, a little of the closing words of
WARNING of Garner Ted Armstrong's first Message Saturday night.
He said: "I would rather see America on her knees before her
God than I would on her knees before her enemies!
"It's ABOUT TIME we began to rub our noses and rub everybody
else's nose in the meaning of America -- and that includes the
pornographers and the purveyors of filth. It's time we quit being
the so-called 'silent, uninvolved, detached majority,' quietly
letting the problems and the rest of the world go by. It's time we
got active, and we rolled up our sleeves and we did something about
it.
"You know Jesus Christ was so jealous of that temple, he cast
the money changers out. It's time we weren't afraid to carry a
Bible openly on the streets, time we weren't afraid to read it.
It's time we quit shuffling our feet in embarrassment, looking down
wondering whether to close our eyes when somebody gives the
invocation -- and it's time invocations were not poetry and
speeches and were genuine pleas to God to save this country of ours
too!
"I want to quote something that a great President of this
country said years ago -- and if it was so true then, how much
truer is it today -- a proclamation from Abraham Lincoln, April
30th, 1863. He said, and I quote, 'We have been the recipients of
the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many
years in peace and prosperity, we have grown in numbers, wealth,
and power as no nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God!
We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace
and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us. And we have
vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our own hearts that all
these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of
our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too
self-sufficient to feel the necessity for redeeming and preserving
grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
"'It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended
Power to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and
forgiveness.' Then that President set aside a national day of
prayer and fasting!
"I want you to all rise and join us up here in singing and