Herbert W Armstrong

   Thanks so much for the hundreds of good wishes and the encouragements expressed to me by you fellows and your wives! I appreciate it and will do my very best during this difficult time in God's Work. Please pray for all of us here at headquarters, as we do need extra strength and guidance at this time.

   We did have a wonderful ministerial conference in Tucson, and it was good to see Mr. Herbert Armstrong so active and vibrant and also so positive about the future. I know many of you were able to greet him personally and will no longer wonder about him being "senile!" The great, swelling tide of rumor and verbal garbage about him and Mr. Rader is beginning to subside as the real facts come to light. A lot of people realize they have been "had" in this attempt to discredit God's apostle and the Work.

   We on the P.A.D. team are having long meetings every day trying to get a "handle" on things and, of course, deal with the constant deluge of letters, memos and phone calls asking all manner of questions about various aspects of the current crisis. Things are going well, however, and we are grateful that a small number of ministers who have had doctrinal questions or who have just been overcome with "battle fatigue" have either chosen to go non-career or quietly resign from the ministry in an honorable manner. We want to be as open-minded and fair in all of these situations as we possibly can be.

   But I sincerely feel that the vast majority of God's ministry, worldwide, is stronger now than it has been for some time. Because of the recent challenges and attacks upon God's Work, many of our ministers and brethren have begun to rekindle a zeal and fervency that they have not felt for many years. And in spite of some bad side effects, resulting from the attacks made on the Work, the Worldwide Church of God is gaining national attention and publicity to a degree it might have taken years to acquire by normal means, and this may yet be used by our God to open doors for our message in a virtually unprecedented manner.

   So keep your chins up, fellows! Let's all keep praying fervently for the Work, for Mr. Armstrong especially and for one another. I'll be trying to write you more detailed plans for the future in the next Pastor's Report, but meanwhile we're very busy getting caught up on things here after the conference, as I know you are in your respective areas. May God bless and guide all of you as you continue to walk with Him.

Your brother in Christ,
Roderick C. Meredith