History of the Work

Good afternoon, everyone. Good to be here with you. I just enjoyed coming out here and seeing old friends and new friends and young friends. I brought my Bible up today. My sermon today is going to be out of Acts 80. Those of you who know, there's not that many chapters in the book of Acts. I don't know exactly how many there's going to be when Christ returns, but I think there's a lot of history between the first century and now that we'll be in the book. Today, Mr. Call asked me if I could do some of the history in the church. I never thought I'd be old enough to be a relic in the church, but I think I'm getting there.

What I did is I brought a PowerPoint, so you'll probably be looking at pictures up there on the screen, to give a bit of history. At ABC, I realized I started teaching there that most of the kids who were there weren't even alive when Mr. Armstrong died. United, and all the splinter groups out there that came from the knowledge that God gave him.

Understand what's out there, and to understand why we thought that we did. Some of the questions that I get from young people, especially, is why did we think the world was going to end back in the 70s or 80s? Also, why did Mr. Armstrong fly around the world and meet world leaders? Why did the church do what it did?

In looking at it from the people that are old enough, and yet to be at least 40 years old to remember that now and have been in the church, I always go to Haggai with the kids and read in Haggai 2-3 where it says, Who's left among you that saw the house in her first glory? How do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes? In comparison, it's nothing. That's how a lot of the older people see it. I grew up in the church from the age of 2 on, so I watched it happen.

I was always at one of the headquarters. I went to Imperial schools, which was the church's grade in high school at the time. I did 12 years of that, and then I went to Ambassador College on two different campuses, and I've been on all three of them. Watch that grow. Watch the auditorium being built. Watch the buildings being built. Watch the income grow. So I saw everything, and it was huge. We owned our own camps then. We had all sorts of things.

In fact, the income of the work when Mr. Armstrong died was about $150 million or more. It would have been equivalent of a billion dollars today. We had a lot of things and a lot of people. We had 1,500 ministers in the U.S. and regional offices around the world, and we had an airplane in the G3 that cost as much as our annual income today. People ask, why did you have that?

What was the purpose? We see it like, wow, we had all these things. We had three campuses. We had a campus in England, a campus in Texas, a campus in Pasadena, and we won the most beautiful campus award every year because it was beautiful. Part of the problem with that is we started looking at things more than people. I think that's what God didn't intend for us in some way because when people came, they'd say, you know, what are you about?

Well, look at these beautiful campuses. Look at these young people. Look at these things. And really, it's not about things. It's about us. What do you do? Now you've got to have somebody say, what are you about? Well, look at me. Look at the way I live. Look at what I do. That's really what Christ said. Look at me. Follow me. So we should follow Christ and let people follow us in the same way. And so I get a lot of these questions.

Also, I get questions because out in the Internet, there's all sorts of garbage, and part of the reason a lot of times people are kind of afraid to talk about Mr. Armstrong because you look on the Internet and you find all these things that are said that he never answered, most of which are totally untrue. Some have an element of truth. Others don't. And so I've answered all those questions. So my first part is going to be this PowerPoint talking about why we thought that we did.

And when I come back up, if you have any questions that you want to ask, you can ask them verbally or you can write them down and send them up. I never criticize anybody that asks questions. I find a lot of people want closure on things that they've heard. And so I've done that for people, and I've had a lot of people come up to me and ask me questions. Well, I don't want to join the church. I just want to know, you know, within the money, did we do this? Was this true?

And I explain it to them. Why? And they're good and they're bad. I tell them exactly what happened. And it's funny, what I find is three or four years later someone will come up to me in the piece and say, I'm back in the church to cause you. Why? Well, you answer my questions. Because a lot of people, there's a lot of garbage out there that people don't understand.

So that and why we did what we did. And so since I was there, and again, college on graduation day, I was supposed to go out in the field as a trainee to Salt Lake City, Utah. And on Friday of graduation, we'd have a formal brunch, and Mr. Armstrong, the phone rang, and they paged me, which never paged anybody during formal meetings.

And I went up and, hello, do you know who this is? I said, well, yes, sir. I said, what do you want? He said, well, what are your plans? I said, I'm going to Salt Lake City on Sunday. He said, well, I want you to fly on my airplane. And I said, I'm supposed to leave Sunday. He says, they'll understand. And on Monday morning, 8 a.m., I took off on a three-week trip with Mr. Armstrong. Actually served King Leopold on the second leg of that journey. I served Crown Prince of Saan in Jordan on that leg. We already saw one carves of Spain. I mean, it was a three-week trip, supposedly.

Almost all our trips were scheduled for three weeks, and they always last six to eight. Six weeks later, I was in Paris, and I went to Australia. There was a train that was supposed to get married this weekend. And so I flew from Paris to New Jersey to get married.

And that's how close I came to not being married. I mean, but so I was in the plane. I heard and saw everything that happened. I flew with him for 12 years. The first seven, I flew along. My wife didn't fly. I was a steward and crew member. I just set up. I did embassy work, and I did all sorts of things. But my title was actually steward chef. And everything on the plane was cooked from scratch. All the meals and things served on China. So I went on because in college I learned how to cook because I liked eating better than line food. And we had 15 men's clubs and 15 women's clubs, and we had a ladies' night and a men's night every formal, every semester. So you had 30 formal dinners a semester. And I was cooked chatot brion and crepe Suzette and flaming, cherries, jubilee, and all these things. And the teachers in Texas, the two chefs there, came from the School of Culinary Arts. So I just went and asked them, can I learn? Because again, with Pearl, I had all the Bible classes that had all these things, so I didn't really have to study. And so at night, I'd go into the kitchen and cook all these dinners. And like I said, I lived on Chateau Brion and flaming brion and whatever they had left over. And I made a lot of Caesar salad, made it from scratch. So I learned that. But then that's why I ended up on the plane. They asked Mr. Armstrong, the steward that was on before was quitting. Interesting. He didn't want to...

they were to a church visit, and he didn't feel right flying on the Sabbath. Mr. Armstrong didn't challenge him. He said, if you feel that way, that's fine, and let him go. But when he asked for someone that could do it, I was there. He asked me about that, too. I said, Mr. Armstrong, we can fly to New York. You can speak to a church. You can fly home, and you actually get home before ministers have finished their church sergeant. So to me, it's Levitical. I don't have a problem with that. And so he said, well, that's true. It is, but if you did, you know, he'd never try to judge anyone for conscious sake, so I appreciated that. So I ended up on the plane. That's how I ended up getting the job. And when I was on the plane, I ended up doing a lot of setup and meetings, I mean, all sorts of things that, as a 21-year-old who had no knowledge of any of it, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. But God does, and that's thankfully He does. Otherwise, we'd all be in trouble. And so this PowerPoint is kind of a bit of that. For the first seven years, I flew, and we were gone a lot. In fact, in 1975, I went through the airplane log. We were out of the country 312 days. And if I had my wife in Paris, she'd have seen more of me. But he didn't know that start of the year. The last five years, she flew with me. And when I became his aide and vice president, then she flew with us. And she was a stewardess and secretary. She worked, you can see pictures over there in the TV monitor on the plane. And that's what I did, and that's what she did. And again, you know, in the 1920s, that slide you can read it, Armstrong was called, challenged on the Sabbath, tried to prove his wife was wrong. And he realized he was making, in the 1920s, he was making $18,000 a year, which at that time was what would be a million dollars today. And when his wife challenged him, he saw that that was going to, he had to give up that because a lot of things happened on the Sabbath. And he said that the Bible teaches Sunday and not Sabbath. And so she said, does it? And so he set out three-year study to prove she was wrong, ended up living on from going from $18,000 a year to $3 a week with a church. And the church got seventh day. And then before he started, he went through 14 years of really abject poverty, and then 14 years of relative poverty before the church really took off and grew. And so the background of what he did and why he did it, and he didn't start this to make money because he was making a lot of money in advertising and gave that up for the church. And so, again, since I spent 12 years with him, I spent a lot of time talking with him and all the things that he went through. A lot of it you can read in the autobiography, but there's other things that aren't. So anyway, he started flying, and that was kind of unusual how he did it until he realized God was doing a work.

And so you can read the screen, so I can't read it from here. It's too far away from me, but I can just talk through them. So why did UCG come to be? What happened? Why did it splinter apart? What happened in 1995 where United had to start and another group split away? Why did the church apostatize? And why did the doctrine change? So all those history are pieces of there, and again, a lot of it was because of what people thought of that the world was going to end, and it didn't end when they thought it was going to end. So a lot of people left. So I guess the button up here, I can change the slides right. I didn't expect anybody else to do that. I hit the right button. It'll keep going if I hit the wrong button. And just a couple things there. Again, he started meeting all these people up on the top right as President Marcos of the Philippines. Of course, a lot of you recognize Nancy Reagan in the middle. That's Prince Makasa, the emperor's brother at the time, not the current emperor's uncle who was there. And we met all these people and did all these things. And why? What was the purpose of it? A lot of people say he was out autograph hunting. He never asked for an autograph. He said one time, and that was when we were visiting with President, Prime Minister Nakasone in Japan. And we always gave a plain truth to all the people we met and things. And he handed the plain truth to him, and he, before he gave it to him, he ripped it back, and he looks at Nakasone who was on the cover. And he says, well, you're on the cover of this. So actually, that's the one time he signed the cover of the plain truth. That's the only autograph he ever asked for. But that was an interesting fact. I have a copy of that at my house, so if you come visit, I'll show it to you. But so all these people, why did we do that, though? And it wasn't because he wanted a child. It wasn't because he wanted to do all these things. It's just that he felt the church needed that. And why? Okay. Matthew 24.14. This gospel will be preached to the world as a witness, and then shall the end come. That, to him, was a commission, because obviously we're waiting for the end. We're waiting for Christ to return, and the gospel is preaching to the world as a witness. And, you know, but how could we think this was going to end 35 some years ago? You know, it's gone on. Were we stupid and superstitious, or were there a lot of factors that could easily be misinterpreted? And if so, what were they and why? So that's what I'm doing in this thing here, so you can see what it is. Again, finishing the work. And this is, as I said, you can read that up there. I can't read it from here. I guess I can open my Bible and turn to him. But basically, we have the Church of the Revelation, and we have the Sardis era ahead of us, which we termed the Church of God's seventh day. They don't like hearing that.

In fact, I was at their convention this last week. They had it, and the president of the Church of God's seventh day asked me to come. So I was over there, met and had dinner with him in the meeting, and he asked me a lot of questions about these things and what happened. In fact, he told me at the end, he said, you should write a book about all this stuff. Well, probably should, but I was hoping Christ would come first. But I'm getting old enough now that I better do it before I die. So again, and then the Church of Laodicea is hot and cold, and it doesn't do a whole lot. It's lukewarm. And then, of course, in the middle we have the Philadelphia Church of God. And the Philadelphia Church has the doors open to it. And so he thought that he should do it. So again, he was challenged on the Sabbath. He went for years without anything, and then God started showing him that God was a family. He didn't believe that at first. He thought that that was blasphemy to think we could be part of the God family, that we must be angels. But he knew we weren't angels, and he knew that the Scriptures all said, Christ is our older brother, we'll be as he is, etc. And he saw the Bible's pretty clear that we're part of his family. And so that was it. And then again, it said that all the many things would be restored in the Church. You know, with Christ Elijah will come and restore all things.

And so, since God showed him the feast days, which he kept by himself with his wife for several years before he figured out why, just the Bible said to do it, and he started keeping that, and the work started growing. And again, the heirs of the Church, as I mentioned already, I'll jump that slide there, Philadelphia. But Philadelphia, between that is the doors are open, no man can shut it, they can't be closed, and all these doors are opening for him later in life. And since you realize that those things have to be done before Christ returns, and if you believe you're going to be that'll Christ returns, then that means you got to do it. And so that's what he started doing.

And again, in Matthew 24 again, men who will call my name, saying, I'm the Christ, and shall deceive many. And that happened. There'll be wars and rumors of wars, pestilence, famine, you know, you're well aware of sermons on those things. And all those things seem to be happening at the time.

And they're happening worse now, obviously, they've gotten a lot better.

In 1984, it was in his house and some Levites, they were priests actually, that came to the door, knocked on the door, there were four of them. They had the curls and the black hats and black garb, and it was pretty easy to know who they were. And they wanted to see Mr. Armstrong. And so I asked Mr. Armstrong, do you want to see them? And he said, sure. So he came in, they talked to him. And they said they wanted him actually to help fund a temple they wanted to build. They already had all the temple accoutrements, the horns, the silver things, I mean, you can read all the things that they had. They had the red heifer, the garments, you know, they were raising money to build that temple. And of course, temple sacrifices will be stopped, the end time, tying those things together via the scriptures that we have is something that you couldn't deny. I mean, those things were going on. And so we're happening again. Were these things happening?

Were we close to the tribulation? You know, with 6,000 years, we know that 7,000 years, the millennium is the 7,000 years. And we know that we were pretty close to 6,000 years through history. And so it must be happening. And so again, be great tribulation and all those things.

And unless those days are shortened, no flesh will be saved. So if you shorten 6,000 years, and you're already, obviously, if you do the begat chapters, and as a kid in Imperial, we always said Adam was sold, begets Seth, begets Enos. And in 6,000 years, if you do the math, the 6,000 years actually came to 2012. But Christ didn't return in 2012. So obviously, there's some things about the math that are wrong.

But the key is, what I find in doing it, and having done it so many times, when you talk about when they're born, were they born at the start of the year or the end of the year? Did they both get a year for it? There are certain times we know. Solomon said it was 430 years to the Exodus from his time. We know that. We know Abraham to the Exodus because of the promises there.

But we don't know the days before the flood. We know the ages. And we also, some of the kings, you had the king range so many along, and he'd react to this person. Well, did they both get the same number of years? So there's room for about 30 years or so, one way or the other. And if God's trying to hide something, he can make every, you know, if you flip on coin, he can make it heads all the time.

So, and no one knows a day or the hour, so mathematically, you're not going to be able to know exactly what it is. But at that time, adding up the math in 2012, and God cuts the day short, therefore, he could be coming anytime. So we interpret his scriptures the way we want to see them. Nobody I know doesn't want the kingdom to come. And so because of that, we see everything in the light of, hey, come on, let's get this job done.

And there was an urgency in the church back then, too, because we thought the end was coming right away. And if the end's coming right away, then, hey, get ready for it. And so the church was exciting. And we were building buildings, we were seeing all these things, we were growing. And so all this was happening. Again, 1960s and 70s, if you look at property, we had the Six-Day War in Israel. When you read in the Bible about the army surrounding Jerusalem and war and things like that. We had the Vietnam War, which we lost, so the pride of our power was broken, which has spoken up by the prophets, that that would happen.

The economy was in a major recession at that time, like in Jimmy Cartier's era, and we were going downhill. The sea gates that was prophesied for the descendants of Israel to have, Britain, the pride of its empire, the sun never sat on the British Empire, and the sun was setting rapidly on the empire at the time. They were losing the sea gates to other countries and things. That was happening. So again, the European Union. At that time, they didn't have the European Union per se, but they had the common market.

So it looked like Europe was coming together. All the things that we saw in prophecy, which people have thought all along, in some ways, if you were in Europe during the Black Plague, when the depth of there, you thought, wow, the end's here. And it was, locally, pretty much.

But never before had it been around the world at the time. And we also knew the two witnesses would come, and the whole world would see them. And at that time, in the 70s, you'd see these satellite dishes. Mr. Armstrong, those were old enough.

Then we actually broadcast live around the world on the Feast of Tabernacles via satellite. And we thought, wow, the world can see things as they happen. And I visited some African villages in grass huts. Nothing there but the satellite dish and a TV. So even they could see it out in the middle of nowhere. And, of course, today we have cell phones, and everybody can see everything anytime all around.

So it's even more so now than it was then. But there was enough happening then to make us think that the end time was right there with us. And so that was some of the things that were happening.

And it seemed like, wow, plus Mr. Armstrong's getting older. We also had the 144,000 in Revelation 14.1. And the number of them are 144,000. They're the first fruits of the earth, and the church of the first fruits. And because the church got so large, we thought, well, even though the interpretation of 144,000 in the early years of the church, and Mr.

Armstrong had 30s and 40s writings, there's Revelation 7. I'm familiar with that. There's 144,000 there, 12,000 from Reuben, 12,000 from Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, etc., all the tribes. And then the Newer-Multu. Well, early years, that was Israel's country's nation's going into millennium, and the Newer-Multu was the other nations.

When the church got big, it kind of got melded into the fact that the 144,000 was the church. And because the church was getting large. And so now the church, by the 80s, was 100, 110, 20, 130,000 or so. And it looked like, wow, we're almost there. It's time to go. So all these things are happening, and we're excited about it. And people that went to the feast then, I mean, you know, our feast days today were the size of our churches back then. And it was interesting. You know, we didn't even start at a Bible study church.

There was about 300 people, and now we have very few churches with that many people, people scattered. Our feast sites are bigger than Joel's, Stine's, and mega churches. And we had them over the country. For people who were there, they, you know. And so that was what was happening. So Christ must be coming really soon. This was the feast in 1933, 21 people. This is the big sandy metal building that was built, and I was in second grade when that was, or first grade, finishing. I actually attended second grade in that building before we moved to Pasadena in the middle of the year.

And at that time, there were a thousand people maybe that were there at that time, 1960, and in 1986, 136,000 people keeping the feast. So we're getting close to 104,000, and we all want the kingdom to come. We want Christ to return. So it's easy when you want something real bad to, you know, if you've been young and you think, oh, I'm getting married, it's all I wanted, you know?

And then you get it finally. And it's not the millennium, but it's wonderful. Okay, so the growth of the church. And you can't read those, so I can't read them either right there. But the email is 1986. The statistics of the church, the attendance, how much the income was, how many stations we were on, 476 TV stations we bought time on, plus cables, which covered all the cities around like that.

We're the largest group out there, and of course, Mr. Armstrong pioneered radio and TV in those things. And so all these statistics that were there are fascinating, and you can get a copy of that. It's back on your computer, and you can read it yourself. There's no way I can read it from here. I don't doubt you can read it from there either. If I have a big enough screen, you can read it pretty easily.

But it talks about all the people are about to... We had put out 500 million or 50 million US and BCs we had put out up to that time, and that was just one booklet. We were putting out, in the last year's life, we were doing almost 9 million plain truths, and we had 10 issues a month a year. So you're like talking 90 million magazines being mailed out at that time. And again, this was a record for 9 months in 1986 of how much would happen and the size of the church and things listed there.

And every year before the feast, we get a list of all these things to read. How much, you know, a dollar could do. It would pay for two magazines and do this, do that. It was encouraging to see all those things, but exciting to see the work grow and what it was. And again, the church was growing. We're almost at 144,000. Okay, this was another paper was sent to us on the effect of a single average Holy Day offering in 1986.

How much it would do. It listed the TV stations we could be on, the number of co-workers that were added to the list. And I think by that time, it had 50, 60 million people had called in on the Watts lines. I mean, there's so much happening in a given year. We put out more in one year then than the United has in its whole history.

So I'm a big difference. But today, it's not by might or our power, it's by God's Spirit. So the internet, we're doing a lot more. We're doing less a lot around the world through that that wasn't available back then. Again, ways of the gospel reaches millions. It lists all the TV stations and things there. And again, I have copies of all that, but I just put them on the slide so that people can see why we thought, wow, the work is growing, the end's coming, and those of us who see today is so much smaller. And again, I can't read that, but they're all there.

Again, over 50,000 members met in regional churches. This is a listing of the churches. We came to Cincinnati for just a weekend. I remember starting to speak, and there were 6,000 people there that weekend. And so those are lists. We had 4,000 and 5,000 people. This was just a regular Sabbath church visit. Oh, you okay? Earthquake! Christ is coming. But again, that was August 1981, and we had larger visits later on because the church was even growing. Again, by 1986, the Feast of Tabernacle attendance in the U.S.

was 136,000 people. And again, these numbers and prophetic things that you kind of put in your mind, and you hear them, and I heard them from the time I was two years old, and I heard them in three and four-hour sermons, so thankfully I won't go that long.

And when your preacher can talk longer than the kid can sleep, that's too long. I know, I tried. Okay, so why did Herbert Armstrong meet with foreign leaders? Again, back to Matthew 24.14, this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come. He had a vision—you can read about that in his autobiography, in his wife—where an angel came down and wrapped around and said that, you know, you're going to do a work, and he asked, is Christ coming in the dream?

He asked, is Christ coming? And the angel said, soon. And so soon to him, well, it must be going to happen in our lifetime. We've got a work to do, and especially as we get closer to the end, the church was getting big, and all these things were happening, then all of us thought he would be up till the end. I mean, Michelle and I never planned to have children because I'm flying. I didn't want to be an absentee father.

I flew alone, and she got pregnant when we were flying, and that would be the end of that. And so we figured we'd never have kids. And so you're thinking those things and sacrificing for the millennium and for Christ's return and the kingdom to come, etc. But for him, being over the church, that meant that that has to be fulfilled before he comes. And so therefore I have to do it.

Now again, there's a lot of groups out there, some of the groups that you have to believe he was the Elijah to come and things before you can be in their church. And I always ask people, I say, well, how long do you have to be dead before you're no longer the end-time witness? And so it's been 36 years, and so I have no problem. If that's what God had in mind, we interpret the scriptures that way. And frankly, I tell people, if you're in an eight-lap race, Mr. Armstrong has seven laps ahead of everybody else because we are putting out so many magazines, so many things, meeting so many leaders.

If we interpret it right, then he's way ahead of anybody else. But then again, there are the two witnesses that come, and the gospel is going to be preached by them. And so there's other ways to interpret it. It's just kind of like in Revelation when it says when you see the army or Matthew, he says, you see the army surrounding Jerusalem fleet.

Well, I've always thought, there's a war going to be going on, that's it, and you got to get out of there before it happens. And I look at it now, and I think, okay, what if the UN puts a peacekeeping force around Jerusalem? Would that fit the prophecy? It'd be an army surrounding Jerusalem. Now, if you're at war, and they're surrounding you and attacking you, and you leave the city, what happens?

You get killed. So there's a peacekeeping force, you could get out. So it's possible there's a war, or it's possible it's a peacekeeping force or something else. So we look at it from our perspective and interpret it that way. And so there's other ways.

He was interpreting that the same way that others have interpreted in the past, that he thought, I have to do this. And so he started doing that. Again, was the gospel preached to the world? Were world conditions about to bring an end to the world? Was food production keeping up with population? Was the church approaching 144,000? Were 6,000 years about over? Those are the things that everybody's thinking excitedly, that, wow, we're about to finish this thing. And if we had, then a lot of you wouldn't have been born. So you're glad we didn't. Okay. Time magazine and other magazines. The doomsday clock in the 60s has moved to one minute before midnight because we had the Cuban Missile Crisis, and they're going to bomb us all. And kids like me were crawling under the desk with these air raid drills and things, which really wouldn't help you in an atomic bomb that went off, but made you feel good, I guess, to practice. And so again, we had the Cold War at that time. Population was exploding. There were riots. I did on Bellevue run off Orange Grove Boulevard at the time of the Watch riots in the 60s, and they actually came along and torched our palm trees, and they went up like Roman candles with those dead fronds. That's why they started shaving them because they caused fires. And there was all sorts of riots going on then. And again, the war in Israel was happening. Scientific charts were showing that food production was decreasing, and the population was increasing. So you got this cross in the thing. And Time Agata is saying that we'll be starving by the end of the 60s. Okay, well what happened, though? Well, some of the agricultural methods of fertilization produced more grain, and abortion shut down population growth quite a bit. But now we're back to the same point we're in. We're right now, especially with the war in Ukraine, about 40 or 50 percent of the world's grain has grown there, and it's not going to get out because the Russians are saying we'll blow up the ships. So we're close to the same situation now that we were then.

But Time Agata is saying, hey, we're going to be starving. All these things that we read in Matthew 24 are happening, and so we better get ready. And again, there were some large earthquakes along the Ring of Fire and other places at the time. A couple of them in Pasadena, even in the California area where we were. And so again, it was real easy to say, hey, these things are happening right now.

And in 1967, when my armstrong died, and that was his pillar, the funny thing is she did not like to travel. When they went to Europe, and they did a trip in Europe in the 50s, and they went on the Queen Mary and went bus and trains. And so again, in 1968, Mr. Armstrong met King Leopold of Belgium, and actually brought with me the envoy that someone gave him. And that started the travels abroad, really. And Armstrong wasn't even thinking this direction when it all happened, but then I'll tell you what happened with King Leopold. He had a foundation for the conservation of nature, and he did a lot of avid photography. He had some beautiful pictures of the archerfish and all these different things. If you had the plain truth, back in the 60s, a lot of the paintings or the pictures that were in there were King Leopold's. Well, King Leopold had these pictures, and Mr. Snee was over the German office with Mr. Henning, who did the photography developing and things for the King. He happened to have those on his desk when Frank Snee was there. He looked at these and said, wow, these would be great. The magazine has just gone full color. We're doing a series on evolution and creation, and we'd like to have some of these. And Henning said, well, you can't have those. Those are the Kings. He won't let you have those. Well, he happened to talk to King Leopold and mention it when he gave the photographs to someone who liked these for their magazine, and he said, well, who? And Henning said, well, it's Ambassador College, and he asked what it was.

Snee took and gave him my envoy. And the King went through the envoy, and he said, wow, a character-building institution. I want to meet the man who would start a character-building institution that everything's clean, and they have rules and morals and values and things. Because again, the 60s was the time of the hippies, and morals were going out the roof.

And so he asked to meet Mr. Armstrong. And so Mr. Armstrong went to meet King Leopold in 1968, and in Brussels in the palace, and they hit it off. He was about nine, eight, nine years younger than Mr. Armstrong, but they really had a good discussion. The King was very much into trying to preserve nature and things. And so Leopold was about to go down to Singapore and to Indonesia, which is where he was doing a lot of his photography work at the time. And so he asked Mr. Armstrong when it come. And so they flew together in the G2 to Singapore, and he met with Prime Minister Lee of Singapore. And then he went to Indonesia and met with President Suharto, who ruled Indonesia for some 20, 30 years. And at that point, Mr. Armstrong thought, is this how God is going to send the gospel to the world? Because he knew that Jonah was sent to Nineveh, and God sent prophets to that. And if you talk to the king, then the kingdom was warned, and so maybe that's how God wants us done. And so at that point, then he started meeting other people. And they opened up. Again, things all seemed to be poised toward the end.

Everything was happening, you know. The church, the world conditions, I mean, almost everything you can lay out there was coming at that time. And so all of us in the church that have been reading these prophecies for decades and watching all this happen thought, hey, the end is near.

And again, it was real easy to be excited and be ready for it. And the urgency that Mr. Armstrong always tried to instill in all of us to be spiritually ready, because Christ is going to come. And he's going to come as a thief in the night. And so we're watching world conditions. We're seeing all these things happening. The gospel is being preached around the world in all these places. In the 70s, we had three nights in Kenya. The head of Kenya introduced Mr. Armstrong. We had, I think, 13,000 people one night, 15,000 other, and 17,000 the other night. And again, his gospel message was actually printed in about five or six different languages and even crossed borders because the British borders for the countries were not where the tribal borders were. And all of it was translated and put in the paper. So it was being spread around in the Philippines. You know, we were there two or three nights, and again, 10, 12, 13,000 people with those things. A lot of things are really happening, exciting. And in 1977, Mr. Armstrong had a heart attack. And he basically died. They resuscitated CPR, brought him back to life. And he didn't, you know, he thought it was over. Everybody thought, did think it was over. And so again, why was he brought back to life? What purpose was there in that? And so I was going down to Tucson back and forth to see him. I actually flew with 10 Armstrong during that time for a bit before he left the church. And so I saw the things were happening. And Mr. Armstrong was there. And Mr. Armstrong, when he came back, he asked the doctor, will I ever be able to write again? I need to be able to write, because he wrote all the booklets for the church and all the things in the early history. And the doctor would tell him, you know, be encouraging, oh yes, you'll be able to write, you'll be able to do that. And he'd turn around, look back at us, and say, he'll never write again. He's going to die. And people believe the doctor. Well, then he started getting about three months later, he's writing articles and typing. And we're down there, and he asked the doctor, will I ever be able to fly again and travel? Oh, yes, Mr. Armstrong, you'll be able to travel. He'll never travel again. He's going to die. And a lot of the department heads were going down, so I believed he was going to die and started making their little empires.

Because, hey, when he goes, you know, how are we going to divide this thing up? And the money was good, etc., etc. And what's going to happen to the work, and who's here? And a lot of unconverted attitudes at the time. But then in 1979, November, he takes a trip. We go to China and meet with Deng Xiaoping, the successor of Mao Zedong, and met with him. And so all these things are happening, but all these people made their positions known. And so, Mr. Armstrong told him, he said, I don't need to travel. He says, I don't enjoy life anymore. And he was right. He said, food doesn't taste the same. I always told people they're cooking for them. You'll never be as good as the last person, because he couldn't taste it unless he dumped a lot of salt on it. He couldn't taste it. And his taste buds were gone. He was legally blind. He got tax credits for being legally blind. He couldn't hear very well, so he got hearing aids, finally. And so he's done the work, under all sorts of handicaps. And he said, I'm only here because God has something for me to do.

So again, that made us all think, wow, you know, it's the end. And besides, at that time, he's, you know, 80-some years old. And so, therefore, the world's gotta end pretty soon. And so, here are the excitement again going on. And so, he put the church back on track. In 79, the very things that happened in the 90s were happening in the 70s at the college. I came up on a trip. My wife said, hey, do you realize somebody at the church said that Christ really wasn't in the grave three days and three nights? I said, oh, Michelle, you heard it wrong. Because Michelle had no background. She came to college expecting to go on for Christmas. So, she didn't know anything. And so, I thought, she just got it wrong. But it turned out, no, people were saying stuff like that. And so, Mr. Armstrong was brought back and put the church back on track. He got rid of the heresies that were coming and all this stuff like that. It was kind of a prep thing for the rest of us to get ready for what's going to happen, you know, another 10 years. And so, he puts everything back on track. He starts traveling again. He starts meeting world leaders. Everything's growing again. The income is growing 10 and 12 percent a year. You know, when you have a hundred million other income, you're growing 12 percent a year. That's 12 million dollars. And it was growing rapidly when he came back. And again, the excitement there what he had at the feast. And again, he broadcast around the world on the Holy Days for everybody to see at that time. So, the gospel, everything's rejuvenated again. It was kind of a letdown when he had the heart attack, but he didn't die and he comes back. Wow! Time to go on. So, here we are. Again, doors are open.

Globally. All the things. Preaching the gospel. More than ever before. When he came back in 79, the budget for the TV was about three million dollars. The first year back, it went up to 21 million, then 24 million, and it was 27 million the last three years before he died. And so, we're really powerfully doing that. We're growing, meeting countries in the 80s. We saw more countries in the 80s in any given year than we did in the whole decade of the 70s. And so, all these things are happening and the church is excited. Here's a bunch of the magazines that are there. 1980s, some feast there. Biggest one on earth. Again, HWA is meeting world leaders. I usually read them off the slides, but I can't read off the slides today, but they're there. So, again, he meets officials in Europe in the Middle East. That was one. This is only from 1982 on. I didn't even go back before that, and he started traveling in the late 60s, early 70s. So, again, here he goes to Bangkok, and he meets in Hong Kong and go to Bangladesh that year as well, different places we went. And again, writing these articles, I wrote most of the articles. I took most of the pictures, too, so I'm not Indian. That was always nice, because I want people to know what I look like.

And then Mr. Armstrong, again, speaks over from Europe. Talks there.

Here's his meeting with Crown Prince Asana Jordan, and he met with King Hussein a number of times. He tried to do a lot of things in the Middle East over there. Of course, we had the dig for the students from the 60s through the 80s, four and five. That's Bernard Brain, a member of the British Parliament that he was at. There he's meeting with Prince Charles in England. We met with Prince Charles, now King Charles, half a dozen times. We actually spent a whole day with Prince Charles and Princess Diane at the Rothschild estate with the Rothschild brothers. And a fascinating story. Another story I'll tell another time. But interesting to be there with that. This is the planning of the tree to start the university in Kenya. When Kenyatta was alive, and it's interesting, Yoma Kenyatta, who was the first president of Kenya, highly-salosityed the emperor of Ethiopia, who traced his lineage back to Queen Ashiba, supposedly. And Mr. Armstrong were all born in 1892, same year. So they're all good friends. Mr. Armstrong donated $20,000, and Kenyatta gave 500 acres to start a school of agriculture similar to what we did in Thailand. We're going to build little portable buildings, have people come in, teach them how to grow plants and do things. And we did that very successfully in Thailand, and they wanted it in Kenya. So the two of them started that. Well, what happened was the Japanese government and Mr. Armstrong had about 10 diet members who considered themselves his Japanese sons. They weren't in the church, but they really liked them. And they went in, and after they did that, they thought it was a good project, a good cause, and so they put in $29 million and built the Nomokinyata College of Agriculture and Technology. When the buildings were done, they came back in and put $20 million, stocked the library, stocked all the tractors and equipment, and scholarshiped anyone who had 500 acres or more that one of their children or a foreman could go for four years to the school.

In the Japanese, when I went there about seven years, eight years ago, I went to Kenya with John L. Monique Knutzen. He wanted me to go to talk to the church. I also had to check our properties there because a lot of them were stolen by Kago. We wanted to check and make sure we had good title because Kenya at that time was the only African country other than South Africa that had fully laid out all the surveys of land. And so I'm there, and the first day they gave me the arrest, and I said, I don't need to arrest. I'm going to go see the minister of interior. So I went and saw him, and up on the wall was a picture of the president, which they always had in the offices. I didn't know who the president was. It had been 30 some years since I'd been there.

It was Yuhuru Kenyatta, who was about my age. They had cornered Michelle when we were at their estate. After the restarction was there, Mrs. Kenyatta asked us all to be there, and the whole family, all 80-some members of the family, were there. They cornered Michelle to ask her questions because they figured I knew the answers. They wanted to see if she did. After about 10 minutes, I saw her trapped in the corner. I went and rescued her. But the thing is, he was president. And so the minister of interior said, I said, I know you heard of us, so we're friends. And he said, well, really? He said, well, do you want to see him again? I said, I don't have time on this trip. He said, well, if you come back, I'll put you in contact. You can go meet him again, which I didn't necessarily need to, but if it was needed, I could do it. Well, then we went to the school that Mr. Armstrong started, and 10 years after start, I became a university.

And so now it's the Como Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. And that year that I was there with Monty, they were having their 25th anniversary of the school, and the president was on the stage, and 40,000 people. Well, I'm a week after this. I'm there at the college, and they said, why do you want to see it? And I said, well, I was here when I was founded. And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, Mr. Armstrong and Kenyatta, when they started this thing, I was on the plane.

And I actually took the Ambassador for World Peace book that we had, and those pictures were in the booklet. So they knew I wasn't lying about the thing. And they asked me, they said, on the wall, there's a plaque about the university. On the right side, all these Japanese diet members. On the left side, there's shadow places where photos were. Those were photos of Mr. Armstrong doing it. Takach, when he went there, had him take down all the photos of Mr. Armstrong. He did the same in Jordan and the same other places in the world. And so the school was asking me, well, what were the other pictures and why did they give all this money to Kenya? And so I explained to him how Mr. Armstrong started with Kenyatta, and the Japanese diet members liked him. And they wanted to help. And anything Mr. Armstrong did that they felt was really good, they'd take back to the diet and try to expand it. And they did. We raised a lot of millions of dollars from the Japanese for some of these things that people didn't know because they respected him so much. And so I explained to Mr. Armstrong, believing in character and things, and we wouldn't do projects that promoted war, but we would help people to grow food. We'd help people to dig wells. We'd do all these things that we did. And so I did that, and they said, you should have been here last week. You'd have been on stage with the president telling us our history. And they said, if you come back, we'll pull the student body together and have you tell them how the school started. So, I mean, things that happened 30-40 years ago are still remembered, and people wonder about those things. And so that was the university starting there in Kenya. Here's Mr. Armstrong again with Prince Charles at that time, again. And he met with King Hussein on that trip. Again, I just run through these months at a time that covers just this is what the church was saying every month when the worldwide news would come out.

And here he is with King Hussein and Judge Singh of the World Court and Prime Minister Lydas of Cyprus in that. Again, I'm just going off memory now because I can't read those things like I normally do on the big screen. But that's okay. It's there. There he's again meeting with the Supreme Patriarch of Buddhism. The Supreme Patriarch had a... it was interesting what he said up to Mr. Armstrong at one time. He was talking to people like that and he said, if only people do, Mr. Armstrong said we'd have world peace. Mr. Armstrong is for the world what Buddhism is for Thailand. And he recognized, but he said, if you could only teach it. And our projects were designed for people to see our students and realize that you can teach this and you can do it. So that's what that was there. That's the mass meeting with the head of General... Governor General of Bermuda, I think it is.

There we're meeting overseas again. I can't tell that one exactly what that one is. I think it's Mr. Armstrong meeting Constantine Papagnocas from Greece, I believe. That's King Juan Carlos of Spain he met with. And then this is some of the medals and things he was given from Thailand. Down the bottom, I think, is Prima Dasa of Sri Lanka. Again, just a lot of people, all these different people were meeting on the thing. He met with the rotary. He was asked to speak at the rotary in Athens. And the Athens rotary, that's not Cassoni there, but the Athens rotary, the one he spoke to there was the billionaire rotary at the time. That's where NASA was. All the magnets of Europe were on that rotary. And so they asked Mr. Armstrong to come speak to it. And about half an hour before we're there to speak, the president of the rotary calls me up and says, oh, I need to tell you, by the way, we have a rule on a rotary. We do not talk religion. Religion has caused lots of problems over here, so we do not talk religion. What is Mr. Armstrong going to talk about? And I thought for a second and I said, world peace.

Pageant answer. So he goes there and he gives one of the most powerful religious speeches he'd given. He talked about the Pope and the beat. I mean, some of the things I've seen there go great. And the president, as soon as he was done, the president comes running up to me. I thought, man, he's going to cut my head off. And he says, wow, that was interesting. We need to change our rules.

I'm still alive. So, and that happened a number of places. You never knew what he was going to do. If he's going to be a little soft gospel message or a hard-on building what it was going to be, God kind of moved him in different ways to do whatever it was that he did. Again, this is Prime Minister Naka Sony. That's actually Mr. Armstrong giving that plain truth that he signed at that in the meeting. And I took a picture of that. Again, Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan. And also we're going on Jordanian TV. Dr. Kamov is the head of the Broadcasting Association. Mr. Armstrong said he made some special programs for Jordan to air. So now we're sending out programs to the Arab world as well. Again, this gospel he preached to the world as a witness.

We go from there. That's Althorp, Lord Spencer, Princess Diana's father. I met with him.

That's, oh, I think that's von Hausberg. Did I skip a slide? Yeah, I did. Otto von Hausberg is there. He met with him in Europe and Brussels of Belgium. His two sons are real big in putting Europe together. He's the heir to the emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor. He's the heir to that.

Jimin Nasser, his children didn't, so his sons could still take that throne. There's a lot of speculation at the time.

There again, that's one of the British promontarians, I think, I believe. That's also the Danish house. That's the King Berenda of Nepal. He had met with King Mahindra, his father, much earlier on. King Mahindra was there, and Queen Ashwari, we met with them. They actually had our project in there. For our young people, it's interesting, we started the project there because they were friends of the King and Queen of Thailand. The King and Queen had told them about what Mr. Armstrong had done to stop the opium growing in Thailand and all the things that we'd done over there. They wanted Mr. Armstrong to do the same thing in Nepal. We were asked to come into Nepal, and we started a project there and sent three or four students to start the project.

They had a walled in several acres of land, but you had to go through the one gate in our project. They had to go through our project to get to all the other things. After the first year, they were so impressed with our students that when I went and saw the Queen the following year, she asked me, she said, can your students run $91 million dollars, our foreign aid budget, from the other countries? There are Daniels still around today. That's why I tell young people, don't think that you can't do it when you're young. We got asked to do a lot of things around the world that were just shocking. I mean, $91 million dollars? You got these 20-21-year-olds being asked to do this? That's a special gift. You understand how Daniel worked in Babylon, and Mordecai, and other people. You know, a guy's going to do something. He does it.

So don't think because you're young that there aren't things that can happen that you can do. God does all sorts of things with that. That's meeting with the King and Queen of Thailand. They have four palaces. I've been to three of them to see them, and that was the one. Actually, in that meeting, we actually met the Prince of Rolongkarn, who is now the king. He's the same age as I am. It was funny, when I'm traveling with Queen Nuer, or Queen Seriket in Pasadena, we're traveling around, and her son was having a lot of problems at that time. This was, of course, 30 years before. She asked me when we were traveling around, how do I make my son be a good king?

It wasn't rhetorical, either. She was asking. I told her, I said, you need to raise your son the way you were raised. Again, her history, I can tell you that, too.

A lot of history behind her. Her and the king were not supposed to be the king and queen. He's the younger son. He's not the older brother. His older brother was murdered because he was trying to clamp the thing. He became king. So, anyway, long story about that. But the funny thing, she asked me how to raise her son, and her son's a month older than I am. So, unique thing. We met a lot of the prime ministers. This is in Pasadena there. That's the mayor of Los Angeles and one of the, I think, senators from California at that time.

It was Mr. Armstrong meeting with, I think it's Thailand. And again, this was Yamaguchi.

There was a congressman Yamaguchi. This is the businessman Yamaguchi. He had 10,000 or more employees, and he asked Mr. Armstrong if he could print the Seven Laws of Success in Japanese. That's what that booklet is, to pass out to all of his employees that he gave them.

And that was Mr. Armstrong, John Sadat. John Sadat, wife of Sadat, who tried to make peace, and Israel was assassinated for it. Mr. Armstrong told her, if you ever come to California to come and you can stay with me. And she showed up and called him from Los Angeles. He said, I'm here.

So he invites you over, and that night was a night to be much deserved. And so Michelle and I are having 16 people at our house to have it at home for once with our families and some friends. And at six o'clock, Mr. Armstrong called and said, hey, I don't know what to do.

John Sadat's here. You and your wife need to come over. So I left the key on the mat and noted in the door, and all our friends came and had night notes deserved. And we went and had it with him.

So I'm a great host. I may not be there when you're there, but that's what happens.

So we spent the evening—and it was funny—we spent the evening talking about Moses, the Exodus, the Egyptians, you're talking to the queen of Egypt there with it. And she was, of course, familiar with the story. It was kind of an interesting night to observe, probably my list of highlights of odd things that happened. But that was one of them. There, Queen Serica, when she came to visit Pasadena, one of the major guests, when she came, the State Department had to come and approve the campus for her visit. And after that, we were in an approved facility. That's why Nancy Reagan and other people were able to come to the campus later on, because she broke the ice for us by coming there, and the State Department wouldn't let her do it until they approved all of the buildings and all the things that she was going to be at in that thing. Again, that's her visit. We had all these functions in the auditorium. All those people are invited. There are people out there that say, Mr. Armstrong bought his meetings and things. And I'll say, the man, Stan Rader, who was the lawyer at the time traveling with him, did pay for some meetings. I know because someone came up to me and asked for the money that he hadn't paid them. I said, we don't do that. And so, in fact, Mr. Armstrong was really upset because he didn't know any of that was happening. And he made me promise I'd never pay for a meeting, and I never did for any of the ones I had set up before or afterwards. But he learned a lot of things that happened that he didn't know about, that I had to tell him when I was his aide. And that's what got me fired a few times, but he'd rehire me because he couldn't do anything since he was blind and deaf, and he needed me. So that was the one thing. But her visit was really special. And again, Mr. Armstrong couldn't walk around with her, so I had to take her all over the place during the time she was there. But, again, special time. That's Michelle. Michelle's dressed up in the royal tie garb. We thought to honor her, she had some dresses made out of the tie silks she'd been given by them. And so, when she came, the queen was late. Well, Michelle shows up there, and they heard the queen was young and beautiful. So all the journalists were taking pictures of my wife.

Okay, they thought she was the queen. And then the queen showed up 10 minutes later.

And they all moved. But, so my wife almost made the newspapers. But one of those things that happens.

Again, Mr. Armstrong, a meeting, I can't tell you that one, of Chinese officials in China. We met a whole bunch of people in China. We had so many people there. One of the dinners we held, there were 76 ambassadors and 400 people from their government at the dinner. And, unfortunately, he had to pay in cash. So I had to go to the bank and cash get money because they charge Western rates. When they did a banquet, they charged their rates. You know, since it's a person, when we were there, they were charging $20 or whatever. So I had to go to the bank, and the biggest bill they have is about $3. So I had a suit cap. I feel like a drug dealer. I'm carrying a paperless banquet. But we met with all of Mr. Armstrong. Again, there were several TV broadcasts he did out of those meetings that were on the air on TV that he did. And one of the visits happened at that time, too, to say like how some of the visits came about. I was sitting at a table, and all those were hosting tables. We had a slug of tables, and I had to host two tables. Actually, there weren't enough of us to go around. And they were all doing gambe with mutai, which is really strong. It's like quite lightning.

But I had the Zambian ambassador at my table, and he's sitting there telling me how he was raised by missionaries, and the missionaries weren't that good. They were out playing with women. They were doing a lot of bad stuff. And so he was cheering us out. Mr. Armstrong is over at church, isn't he? And I'm getting this third degree. Finally, the dinner came, thankfully, and we ate. And Mr. Armstrong got to speak, and he speaks. And yeah, really strong message. And the Zambian ambassador, as soon as he was done, he kind of leans to the table and he looks at that man.

That's what my country needs. Would you invite him? I'm going, sure. So again, there are things that happened that he didn't know how they were going to happen or what or why. But the people out there that think things were done differently than they actually were, weren't there, and didn't see it.

That picture there, I can't believe where that was. It was for the South America, I think it's Europe. That might be between Newark, I'll tell them that. Not here. Where is that? This is Syria, Jordan. Mr. Armstrong, we went to Syria. He's the only private citizen up to that time. I don't know if they'd done a sense that had a dinner given to him by a cabinet position in their cabinet, and for that, which is really unusual and not easily done. Again, another picture. Mr. Armstrong's meeting with, that might be, not sure if that's Prime Minister Israel, who that is from the picture. I can't see it from here. Exactly. Again, we've met people all over the place.

That's for Abu Odey there. He was the assistant of the king who's saying he came to Mr. Armstrong's house to stay with him again. It was Ramadan during that time. I asked him, we're going to have dinner tonight. I said, we'll go ahead and do it after sunset so you can eat. No, no, no, no. You can go ahead and have it at seven to six o'clock. It's not a problem. I said, well, it's Ramadan. You can't eat that. That's when I learned that almost every religion has ways you can pay for your own sins. I said, well, here's Ramadan. You can't eat. He said, no. All we have to do is give two meals to the poor for each one we eat. If you're rich enough, you can just go and eat and just give meals away. I mean, you know, so I've again in God's God's rule, sin is a sin. You have to repent. Period. There's no way to buy your way out of it, but other religions can all buy your way out of stuff. So I learned that at that time from him and again, unique experience.

And the other astronomer again, let me see if I can figure out where that one is on the listing here. Kind of got ahead of myself with some of the people. Again, just so many different leaders.

Again, this is a list here. Again, you can't read it from there. This is a list of the dignitaries we met. It lists the kings. It lists the prime ministers. It lists some of the senators and things. It lists all the mayors and governors. It lists who they are and where we met them and what their positions were. Again, we made a copy. I got three three-wing, three-inch three-wing binders with all this stuff in it. That's why I copied all this stuff. I stole it out of Pasadena when I left because I knew they were going to destroy everything, which they did. I have more archives in my home than most people have in their places. Those are all things that happened.

I quit knowing some of the lower-level officials because the list got so long. I basically stuck with just ambassadors and world leaders and things that he met. Again, interesting list of people. On HWA's final overseas trip, we visited nine countries in 24 days, 92 years old, legally blind, barely here, and we finished his last book, Mystery of the Ages, in May of 1985. Again, what's the end about here? It's got to be coming pretty soon. Here, he can't see we're meeting all these people and things, and he dies. And a lot of people in the church said, oh, we must have been wrong. This whole thing must be wrong. So a lot of people left when he died. Then, Mr. Gatch came along and he changed the doctrines, and a bunch more people died. Then the heresy came in, the apostasy, and it was sad.

And look at that. We were always in the gun lab. All those things led us to be on the gun lab, and we were all let down because we were looking at a man and things and not God.

And so, that's what God wanted. And plus God, when he's talking to Abraham, what did he say at the end? Now I know. Hey, he'd already left early the Cal D's. He'd already waited 25 years for a kid. He'd already messed up with Hagar, and every time you tried doing something on your own, you're producing H-mail. And then finally, he's about to kill Isaac, and God's okay. Now I know. And so, God wanted to know with each of us in the church where we were. Shrashank, he held my hand. He says, promise me you'll help prepare the bride. I said, how do I do that? Go back to four-hour church services and twice a day at the feast and even in Texas and Big Sandy. We had on-low and bread two services a day in the late 50s, early 60s. And he said, I don't know, but he said, in a few short years, the church will quit keeping the Sabbath. I said, how do they quit keeping the Sabbath? Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Remember the Sabbath. He was holy. It doesn't change.

Is this going to happen? And he said, the church will exist. He said, the foundational clothes, the college of clothes. And I said, well, how does that? It doesn't say that in Scripture. He says, yeah, prophecy. It's going to happen. All that happened. And the thing is, it had to come from the pulpit. Mr. Koch took over and said, you don't have to keep the Sabbath.

Oh, all the people who believed what they believed because of this book, because of Jesus Christ, stayed with it. People who did it because they're following a man, it was wonderful. All these classes, clubs, we had the youth programs, we had the camps, we had the colic, we had all the stuff.

They said, oh, it's over. I don't do this anymore. And so from the pulpit, you were offered, quit going to church, follow the heresy, start your own church, follow somebody else.

Anything you want. God knows whether you chose Christ as your king or not. And I think that was the whole purpose of what God did at that time, was to prepare the bride. And I think that's what's been going on ever since he died. God has been shaking the church and showing whether people believe that Christ is the head of the church or whether they're the head of the church or somebody else, or whether you have to go to church, or is it even real? And again, when you look at man versus God and his truth, that's what happens to you. And it's sad. But the unfortunate thing is because it wasn't exciting anymore, complacency sets in. The sense of urgency isn't near what it was back when I was younger. And I try to get people to have that sense of urgency and to remember what happened. When Jesus died, what did they say? That's John 21 up there, and I paraphrase it there.

It said this saying went out that John would be alive till the end, but Christ didn't say John would be alive till the end. All he says is, if you tarry till I come, what is that to you?

But the church thought that the apostle would be alive. Christ's going to return because the Spirit was sent. And what does Joel 2 say? The Spirit's going to come, and after that, the end. Well, there's a lot of time between those two verses there, but they thought it was coming. And so they weren't there. They're staying in Jerusalem, staying there together because we're waiting for Christ to come. So persecution set in, and they got scattered because they had to go out to the world. And so John wasn't alive till Christ returned. I always thought, how could they be 2,000 years off? At least we're only 35 years off so far. And then you also had the apostle Paul.

Are we wrong? Apostle Paul. Peter, that's the same scripture there. But Paul's writing. Again, that's the only way. Those of us who are alive and remain will rise to meet him in the air.

Well, he wasn't one of the us's. He's one of those who are dead and Christ rise first. And so they thought, for some reason it seems like God gives us that ability, when he picks leaders, to think they'll be able to cry for turns to be stimulated, to have a sense of urgency. And so that's what was happening with the church at that time.

Again, were we right or wrong? Well, the prophecies are still going to happen. The scripture is right, whether that happens or not. My dad, my stepfather gave me some good advice.

I went on the plane. He says, you're going to see and hear a lot of things.

A lot of things won't be right necessarily. And he says, separate salvation from people.

So if you were there when Abraham lied about his wife, I don't want any of that. There, David was killing Uriah and sleeping with Bathsheba. I don't want any of that.

There, Peter denied Christ. I want any of that. But it's not about people. People make mistakes.

Christ is the only one that didn't. And so don't let that happen. And so, yeah, Christ is going to come. All the things we said are going to happen. It's just they weren't happening then. We thought they were. And because we want the kingdom, we want the land, we want these things to happen. But now we're 35 years down the road. How much more time is there? I don't know. When you look at what's happening in the world right now, the governments, the plagues, the volcanoes erupting, the currency, the Bitcoin, there's going to be a current, the currency is going to be something that the world will control. No man can buy and sell. You can turn it off in a minute. You can keep people. I was watching some of the one of the off channels. I was watching the things where they were talking to Kennedy, Robert Kennedy running. All the things he was saying about censorship and not one of it was on the news. They'd basically, even in the meetings, they can shut us up. They can censor us. It says there'll be a famine of the word. It'll be a great falling away. Is that the church? There's been a lot of falling away from the church over the years. I don't know, but those things are happening and will happen, and God knows he's in control of when those things happen. But I don't think it's very long. Again, let no man deceive you by any means for that day shall not come except to come a great falling away.

And the man of sin is revealed. It's unappreditioned. Is that a falling away? How can you fall away unless you have the truth? We've had thousands of people leave the church.

Again, what does God mean by that? Different ways to interpret it. Scripture is true. How we interpret it may not be. I always talk to people and they have a different point of view, and I say, well, you can be right, I can be right, we both can be wrong. We can't both be right.

And so we keep studying. That's where we go with that. Those things are happening.

There's the Council of Elders in 1982. You can see them there.

All of them are dead except myself and Mr. Haughey and my wife, his wife. Half of them went apostasy. These are evangelists in the church. People have been trained in Ambassador College and things. They gave it up. You can't fall away. You can lose out on what God offers in that. I was 25 years younger than the next one up and Mr. Armstrong.

But like I said, to be in the meetings, to be in the room, to know exactly what happened, and to see the men, and to why God appointed Mr. Koch because he wanted us to go through these things. He knows what's happening. I'm sure in the temple in Jerusalem, we have the temple. They're not going to take the Jerusalem and then destroy it and burn it down.

So things are not it, even if it's God's temple.

Again, if you believe the Scriptures, much are told. This is the one where they defrock me. They said, you can no longer be an elder because I told them I couldn't go to church because I might actually say something I believed, which would be very different than what they were teaching. I was causing division, so all the people that weren't allowed to go to the other churches came to my house. We had a church in my house for a while in the last couple of years.

They could not fire me at the college because Mr. Koch, when Mr. Armstrong died, I got removed from the council, removed from being his aide, removed from the vice presidency, and ended up at the college, which is where I wanted to be, have a family. I did have my two kids and moved to Texas with the college.

And so I was there, but I did a business degree, and because of their accreditation, they couldn't fire me for my religion. All the other theology faculty were kicked out if they believed the truth. So I was there as a business faculty, so religion was my opinion, business of my degree, and so therefore they could not fire me. So I had all the students in my house, and I told them all the things that were going on with the church. I had all the pictures on the wall. I got a museum room in my house that has all the pictures and things that people we met, various things.

So I could explain to the students what it was, and all the students who hung onto the truth, you know, I could help them. And so I didn't join United when it started in 95 because I got asked to, but I said, hey, I'm the only one that can help the students here at college, and a lot of parents called me saying, hey, please don't leave. We need to have somebody, in fact, Dr. Hay called me and said, we need at least one converted person in the college, and I thought that was kind of cute.

But it was an interesting time to say the least, but they they said I could no longer serve there, which I was there to. I had a three-hour conference with him, which meant I cheated him out the whole time, told him he was wrong. And he got mad at me, and finally said, well, you can say this, Mr. Kaczadec, Mr. Armstrong, you know, dead. And I said, you want me to show the police records?

Because some of the people, there are things that happened with people in the church that left us that really, I think, probably never converted, that were wrong. And I never used any of the things I knew to hurt anybody. They used everything they knew about people to try to blackmail them or whatever. That's not Christianity. And that was, they were supposed to be the new Christians who were better than the old Christians. That's Old Covenant Christians, which were not Old Covenant. That's not true at all. But the thing is, is these people, they had, Mr.

Dukacz came to a meeting there, a faculty meeting, and he was, somebody said, why are you letting your staff make all these changes? And he said, no, I'm not, I didn't believe this in the 70s.

And I was there, keeping my promise to tell Mr. Dukacz when he's wrong, which Mr. Armstrong made me, made me do. And I read my essay, Mr. Dukacz, you told Mr. Armstrong you believed all the doctrines. Now you're saying you didn't in the 70s. Are you lying today or are you lying to him? Meeting over. Because, yeah, Mr. Armstrong made a promise to him. He said, promise me you'll tell him when he's wrong. Because he made me pastor general. I was pastor general for half an hour to an hour.

And I was smart because I talked him out of it. But, no, the thing is, is he came downstairs and he says, Aaron, you're the pastor general. I said, did God tell you that? He said, no. I said, why are you trying to kill me?

And he says, what do you mean? I told him, I said, look at the people of the Bible, you know, you don't want this unless God wants it. If God told you I'd do it, God would help me, but he didn't. I could have talked about Josiah and Joash and David and Christ. I was 33 at the time. But I knew if God doesn't want you to have it, you don't want it. And if he does want you, you wanted me, I could never talk to him out of it. That's when he decided to appoint Mr. Tkach. And that's when he made a promise, tell him Mr. Tkach when he's wrong. I said, you're asking me to tell my boss when he's wrong? He says, you did me, which is probably the best compliment he ever gave me. I was very honest with him because for seven years I'd seen the things that had gone wrong. And I always said I'd tell him everything. And I did. A lot of it he didn't want to hear.

But like I said, but that wasn't... I mean, he made me his aid again. I promised him some promises. I turned the job down three times and he finally said, I'm not asking you. I'm telling you you're my aid. So I ended up being that. And I told him I saw him handicapped. He pulls his eye up and was looking at me. I said, no, Mr. Marshall. I said, I don't control the money. I don't control the time and I will not lie to you. And he started laughing because he knew what I meant. Because people before had told him lies. They told him partial truths. And all the decisions I saw him make wrong were because people gave him our own information. And if you have bad information, you make bad decisions. And so I wanted to make sure... In fact, Captain Black told me, Aaron, you're his aid now. You give him the right information, he'll make the right decision. I said, no, Captain. If I give him the right information, he'll make my decision. If I give him all the information, he'll make the right decision. And so that's why I played. I told him everything straight up, whether it was good or bad. And I had to tell him a lot of things he didn't want to hear. But that was my job. And that's what we all need to do. Because we've got to be honest enough to know it. This is a thing I use in a sermon once where the world is gone now. This is something written by a man outside. He says, first we overcome, overlook evil, then we permit evil, then we legalize evil, then we promote evil, then we celebrate evil, then we persecute those who still call it evil. That's where we are. We are there now.

How far is the end of the way? Only God knows. But we're in the exponential part of the curve for the world going downhill. It's all coming together. This is a comic I have there. Again, this is a guy talking to him and saying, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

He says those who remember the past are doomed to have to live through those who overlook the past. So another thing we're at, too, is people don't realize where we're at. And that's a listing of some of the people I have on some of the slides. Anyway, I thought I would share that with you to show you why we thought what we did then. It was a magnificent thing, but it's not things and it's not people. It's God's work and it's God's Spirit and His might and His power that do that for us.

And how God looks at down the road all these things we did, He knows what they're doing. He knew what the apostles did. He let them think they'd be alive. They worked hard and they got killed and they died. And the same thing's happened for 2,000 years. And the end isn't here. There's no question in my mind. Isn't there? How near? God only knows. But we are destroying ourselves rapidly. And the thing I would say of anything is, you know, get your spiritual life in order. Make sure you're ready because it's going to come as a thief in the night. Overnight, they can change your money. There's a discussion now of our national debt. In Greece, when they had the problem with their money, overnight, your money, they dropped it so that if you had $100,000, you had $43,000 the next day. They just took it. That can happen here, especially if they change to a digital currency, which they're talking about. They've already done trial runs with it. And it could change anytime in the next few months to a digital currency. At which point in time, they can say, they're already doing it in China, if you have the wrong beliefs, you're going to turn off your bank account. You can't buy anything. Can't sell anything. What does the revelation say? No man can buy and sell. I mean, those things are right here in technology. It can happen anytime. So again, get your spiritual lives in order. Have the sense of urgency. Make sure you're ready, because Christ is coming. With that, I'll give you a bet for the announcements. And if you have any questions or things you want to ask about, or any stories, or any things that I'm sure a lot of things that I threw up there would bring on different questions. Again, if you want closure on some things, I have no problem with any question anybody wants to ask. I've mentioned them all in public forums before, because again, hearing what happened versus going to the internet and reading stuff that is so off the wall in some cases, and why it's out there. Satan wants it out there, obviously. But again, Mr. Armstrong was a friend. I don't worship the man. I know he's false better than anyone. But at the same time, he's a piece of history. I like Moses, too. He's a piece of history. And all of them pointed. Mr. Armstrong chewed out the church once. They applauded when he got me. I'm not here to entertain you. And then people would say, well, I think. I don't want to know what you think. What does God think? And that's where he was. And that's what he would want all of us to be in that same boat. So with that, I will get down and then come back if you want to hear some more things.