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WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91123
HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG
PRESIDENT and PASTOR
June 15, 1984
Dear Brethren and Co-Workers in Christ:
Greetings from Vienna, Austria: It is Friday, June 15. We arrived here
Wednesday afternoon and in the evening had dinner with President Rudolf
Kirchschlager of Austria. I had met him both in Washington, D.C., and in Los
Angeles, California, where he invited me to visit him when in Europe.
I was in London at the time, a week ago, when the Economic Suummit
Conference between leaders of Britain, France, Italy, West Germany, Canada,
Japan and the United States was in session. I had another personal meeting with
Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, foreign minister Shintaro Abe of Japan, and
one of my high-ranking "Japanese sons" Congressman Toshio Yamaguchi. Two of
Mr. Yamaguchi's sons are in Pasadena, attending our Imperial School on the
Ambassador College campus. He is adviser to the Foreign Minister on Japanese
government funding toward developing nations, and has backed one or two of the
projects our Ambassador Foundation has initiated, and has invited my further
cooperation in initiating helpful and needful projects in other countries.
Many of these international contacts are giving me a much closer insight
into the drift of world conditions as they move toward the prophesied Armageddon
and the end of this world.
We had been invited to participate, through the Ambassador Foundation, in
a project of international youth development by UNESCO, the educational and
cultural branch of the United Nations. In Paris earlier this week I had meetings
with the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr. Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, and also with
the French and German representatives to UNESCO, relative to this youth project.
Through such conferences I am learning much more from the inside about the
drift in world affairs.
Actually, we are at present in a sort of lull before the great storm.
There is
the war going on between Iraq and Iran in the Persian Gulf, the Central American
disturbances, continuing tensions in the Middle East regarding Palestine and the
Arab-Israeli struggle, and other flare-ups. Meanwhile controversy continues
between the United States and the Soviet Union regarding nuclear buildups. The
stage is set for a sudden, massive and violent world explosion that will plunge
the
world into the most destructive violence ever experienced by mankind.
I fully believe God is holding back this final global eruption and
Christ's
coming, to allow time for our work to be completed. More and more, God is
moving this Work into prominence among the major nations of the world. But we
are always mindful of our real mission. Just WHY is the world in such turmoil?
WHY are we nearing the very END of this world? The world does not understand.
The world's leaders do not understand. They are bewildered. They know well the
world stands poised for the nuclear war that could annihilate all human life
from
the earth. And they don't know how to stop the nuclear buildup or prevent such