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each day to earnest prayer for these meetings, to be continued
until the close of the campaign. Four or five conversions were the
fruit of that first effort, but I have always believed that even
greater good, if possible, came to the congregation as a whole from
the hour-a-day each one devoted to private prayer. Two or three
weeks of that made them a much CHANGED congregation.
Following this brief campaign, I was invited to conduct
a short four-meetings-in-three-days campaign at the Baptist church
in the next town.
And so, gradually, I was simply DRAWN into the ministry.
I never sought to enter it. Rather, like Jonah, I had tried to run
away from God's commission. But God threw me overboard into the
depths of economic punishment until I learned my lesson. Not that
I ran from it intentionally. I was not really conscious of the
fact God was calling me to His service. My mind was too filled
with material interests to clearly recognize the spiritual call.
But now, during this seven years, all the former pride,
ego, and self confidence was torn out root and branch, painful tho
the process was. I came to the place where ALL confidence was
lost. A strong man may, by sheer will-power, get up again when he
is knocked down. But if he is knocked down enough times, he
finally stays down. I came to the place where I decided I never
had had the unusual ability I had fancied. I looked upon myself as
a burned-out piece of junk, not even worthy to be thrown on the
scrap-pile. The old Herbert Armstrong died, and with him all faith
in Herbert Armstrong. Self-confidence was dead. But now a NEW
kind of confidence was born---a confidence, not in self or self-
ability, but an abiding FAITH IN GOD! Time after time we were
forced to throw ourselves upon God's mercy and depend upon an
immediate and miraculous answer to prayer. Time after time the
ANSWER CAME! Too consistently to be dismissed as coincidence.
Once I had to ask God to SEND to us, at once, a dime for milk for
the baby. In less than three minutes the dime came---was literally
brought to our house. Another time, my wife could not have lived
another twenty-four hours. She was suffering from a combination of
things---blood-poison, a dog-bite, quinsy, internal complications.
She had not been able to drink a drop of water, eat a bite of food,
or sleep a wink in 72 hours---three days and three nights. A
believing couple came and prayed a prayer of FAITH such as we had
never heard before,---simply, believingly, claiming God's PROMISES
as stated in the Scriptures,---and Mrs. Armstrong was INSTANTLY
healed of all these critical ailments simultaneously. Another
time, we had to have $75 at once, and didn't know where to turn.
After 24 hours' FASTING and prayer, the very next mail brought it
from a totally unexpected source. FAITH, like muscle, is
strengthened by EXERCISE---and God has graciously imposed upon us
a very great deal of that exercise, until, like George Mueller, we
have learned that whatever God promises in His Word HE WILL PERFORM
---and if we can be sure of God's will THRU HIS WORD, then we KNOW
we have the answer---and it always comes! We have had, in other
words, to come to really KNOW the Eternal, and we have found Him
GOOD! The writer knows God loves him much, because God punishes
every son He loves---and we have had to suffer a very great deal.
But this suffering, and the thousands of EXPERIENCES we have had to