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meeting current expenses. But then it began again to lag. The
next BULLETIN brought just a normal response, but we were not able
to reduce the indebtedness.
Then June 9th I wrote the last BULLETIN telling you it was the
most solemn, serious message I had ever written you. The very FATE
OF THE WORK depended upon the response, for money received was
beginning to drop off again and the deficit was beginning to grow
again instead of being reduced. The response from this BULLETIN
seemed very slow in starting. For several days we thought it was
merely the delay in the mails. But when this past week-end proved
below normal in receipts, the situation became alarming. Tuesday
less than the average day-to-day expenses came in. By Wednesday
morning I knew our co-workers were not responding sufficiently to
meet the imperative need if this great work is to survive. My
heart was heavy as lead. Our co-workers had not failed the work
his way before. A check-up showed that about 10% of our co-workers
were responding nobly---many sacrificing actually beyond their
means in a wonderful expression of loyalty. But almost 90% were
not responding at all! And there's the crux of the trouble!
Almost 90% of you co-workers are NEGLECTING GOD'S PRECIOUS WORK---
the most NECESSARY, most IMPORTANT, most URGENT work in this world
today!
I spent most of the day in fasting and prayer, as I had done
the day before. That morning on learning that the mail was light
and most of our co-workers were failing their God in this crisis
hour, I'm afraid I grew temporarily fretful under the strain. Some
of the girls in the office had not done their work properly, and I
became a little cross---a thing I almost never do. But I am, like
all of you, human, and it seemed the responsibility was too great
to bear, with every visible fact and circumstance pointing to a
solid stone-wall past which it seemed we could not go. I felt like
President Truman said he felt the day Franklin D. Roosevelt died---
as if the sun and moon and stars had descended with their weight
upon my shoulders. I shut myself in my private office, went to my
knees, and earnestly implored God to reveal to me what was wrong---
and WHAT WAS HIS WILL! Was it my fault? Could it be I had gotten
ahead of God? Was any part of his work, after all---for instance,
the founding of AMBASSADOR COLLEGE---a mistaken cause? There is
nothing I try to be more careful about than to be sure we only
FOLLOW where God leads---never to get ahead of Him---never to start
things because they look good to us, but to BE SURE that it is
God's will, that He has led, that we are only following as He
directs. I told Him I was willing to give up this entire cause,
great and important as it seems to me, if I had been misled, and
that was the will of God.
My wife, who also had been fasting and praying for two days,
urged me to ask God out-right to send an angel, as He had done in
days of old, to speak to me direct and reveal in plain language
just what God wants us to do. But I replied that we cannot dictate
to God How He is to answer prayer, or perform the thing He has
promised. I would have to leave to God the METHOD of revealing to
me, and making plain, His will. But God commands us, in James
1:5-6, to ask Him for wisdom when we lack it---and ask IN FAITH.
I did that, leaving to Him the matter of HOW He would keep His