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true DOCTRINE and BELIEF in the WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD came from
Christ through me, or was finally approved and made official
through me.
Forty-three years ago, God committed to me His GREAT
COMMISSION
--to carry Christ's Gospel MESSAGE of the imminent coming KINGDOM
OF
GOD into all the world.
Again I say that is a STAGGERING RESPONSIBILITY!
Alone, I would be utterly helpless to carry out that
commission. Therefore, God used me first in raising up HIS CHURCH
of this era, to stand loyally back of me, making it possible.
The parent church was 19 members. That was in August, 1933.
I had really been given the GREAT COMMISSION in mid-July of that
year when I was 40. I was not elected, I was appointed by Jesus
Christ, the HEAD of the Church. HOW may that be known? BY THE
FRUITS--BY THE FACTS, which cannot be contradicted!
My wife and I were then members of No church. We were
attending,
fellowshipping in love, and trying to cooperate with the people
then
known as Church of God, Seventh Day, with headquarters at
Stanberry, Missouri. Their ministers, comparatively uneducated
(only one had a year of college), jealous of the fruit God was
bearing throuqh me opposed and persecuted me from the beginninq,
though the brethren all seemed to love my wife and me warmly. But
we had never become members of their church.
Soon we learned of the distinction, in the 2nd and 3rd
chapters
of Revelation. God revealed to me, plainly, in 1926-27, that in
these
two chapters Christ was speaking of the various conditions in His
Church
all through this age up until His return as King of kings in His
KINGDOM.
But the conditions mentioned in the message to the angel of the
Church
at Ephesus predominated during that first era of the Church. They
had
among them some of the Laodicean lukewarmness. They also had the
apostles and their immediate successors proclaiming the
ANNOUNCEMENT
of the KINGDOM OF GOD. But because of rapidly growing persecution,
and the rise of what later became the Roman Catholic Church, their
people raidly were turning to "ANOTHER GOSPEL" (Gal. 1:6-8; II Cor.
11:3-4, Rom. 1:18, 25, etc.). But the predominating condition in
that
era was that they had lost their first love.
But we in this Philadelphia era have too much of that fault,
also. When first TRULY converted, it is like a ROMANCE, but we