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·. MR. RADER'S COMMENTS
This College is definitely, as Mr. Armstrong said, God's
College. Now I assume no one was sent here against his will ....- that
everyone came because they wanted to be here. There was a time when
everyone who was associated with the Work, whether they were students,
faculty, employees, or administrators; they wanted to be here. They
They
'
didn't want to be any place else.
As other elements began to creep in, that attitude began to
disappear. Some people were here for other reasons. They certainly
were not all here with the same kind of zeal that was manifest on
this campus and within the confines of this area here in Pasadena in
the earlier years.
Now Mr. Armstrong talked to you today about the college and,
coincidentally, from ten o'clock this morning until 10:45 I was
having a very similar conversation with our bank which, of course,
has been very much interested in what's happening. Now we've had a
very interesting relationship with the bank, and I think it's worth
telling you about, and that's why I asked Mr. Armstrong if I could
take a few moments.
Back in 1961, the college was some 14 years old, and at that
time Mr. Armstrong envisioned everything that we now have here in
terms of our completed physical facilities, and the kind of school
he wanted. At that time we were very, very small. It was all still
pret�y much a dream, but Mr. Armstrong told me that it was all going
to happen and he told me that he wanted my help to bring it about.
He told me I shouldn't be afraid to make representations to people
because God would see that it took place, and based upon that I went
out and began to talk to the city of Pasadena on behalf of the
college. I began to talk to the lending institutions, including the
bankers in this area, about'. Ambassador College.· I told them what
Mr. Armstrong had planned, and I began to tell them this with a cer
tain amount of fervor, so they began to think for a while that I was
pretty crazy. Our financial data at that time contradicted that
possibility. Besides, banks and insurance companies don't want to
lend money to children and they don't want to lend money to churches
because they don't want to foreclose on either children or God.
We were a small "denomination" living in conservative Pasadena,
and in that sense it made it pretty awkward to get along with our
neighbors. And here I had to go and present to the city grandiose
plans which included the closing of five streets which is not an
easy thing to do under the best of circumstances!
And so these gentlemen here -- the Deputy Chancellor, Mr. McNair
and the Dean of Faculty, Mr. Meredith -- both know how much hostility
there was back in the late 40s and 50s and 60s toward everything we
were trying to accomplish. If our people ran out on the track at
6:30 in the morning, they would call the city attorney's office and
see if they couldn't get some kind of injunctton to stop us from
exercising. It was a very difficult situation with citizens in the
neighborhood all up in arms about this small, religious denomination
that had planned to "take over the neighborhood."