Dear Brethren and Co-Workers with Christ,
Greetings from Charlotte, NC! On the day after tomorrow, my wife and I will be flying overnight to London. We will be meeting there with a station representative who helped us get our Tomorrow’s World television program on the Inspiration Network in Britain and Europe—and later in the U.S. Many opportunities are opening up to greatly expand our television coverage around the world. This gentleman is a key player and we look forward to visiting with him.
Later next week, we will help conduct Passover services for our brethren all over the British Isles. We will also conduct Board meetings in Glasgow, Scotland, for our British corporation and in Dublin, Ireland, for our Irish corporation—plus preach on the weekly Sabbaths and God’s annual commanded Holy Days. So it will be a busy week.
In Scotland, we will be meeting fairly near the city of Fife where the fatal strain of the bird flu, H5N1, has been confirmed in a dead swan. However, it has not yet spread to humans anywhere in Britain or Europe, so we will trust God for His divine protection. But this very dangerous avian flu virus is now marching relentlessly across Europe and will soon be headed for the U.S. and Canada! Will it become a pandemic and take the lives of tens of millions within the next few years as many predict? Will it become part of the fulfillment of the inspired predictions of Jesus Christ for these last days? “And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven” (Luke 21:11). Only time will tell when the major fulfillment of this prophecy will occur.
But all who truly believe the Bible should take heed and draw very close to God Almighty! We should genuinely study the Bible to fully understand what God expects of us. We should not be afraid to forsake the “traditions of men” and be willing to do what God clearly says in His inspired Word! And we should learn to put our faith and trust in the great God and in His promises. Please remember, one of those promises is for supernatural healing. James 5:14-15 tells us, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” But few today have either the understanding or the genuine faith to be healed! If your mind is opened to what the Bible says and you would like information and biblical proof on the subject of divine healing, please call or write us and request our eye-opening booklet, Does God Heal Today?. Because of the tithes and offerings of tens of thousands of you, all of our literature is absolutely free upon request.
Meanwhile, as the danger of an all-out attack by the United States or Israel upon the Iranian nuclear facilities increases, as the entire Middle East seems ready to blow up, and as dozens of prophetic events fall into place all around the world, this Work of the living Jesus Christ is moving swiftly ahead! We are doing all we can to genuinely warn our peoples of what certainly lies ahead, preach the Good News of Christ’s coming Kingdom and prepare the way for His triumphant return as King of kings. Our television coordinator and statistician, Mr. Wayne Pyle, has just given me the following report which should inspire us all:
“Our staff here in Charlotte, as well as in our international offices, has been incredibly busy the past three months! Record responses have been piling in from TV viewers, Tomorrow’s World magazine subscribers and spiritually hungry people on our mailing list around the world. Phones have been ringing off the hook in our call-centers in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and in our offices in New Zealand, South Africa and the Caribbean Islands. And if it is not phone calls, mail, email and Internet responses are pouring in. It is a work of love—hard work—but our staff is happy and motivated to do it! Thankfully, we have been able to keep up the pace through the latest technological advances in mailing equipment, computer hardware and software, and out-sourcing to businesses in the television, publishing, telephone and shipping industries.
In just the past three months more than 55,000 TV responses by telephone, letters, Web replies and email from around the world have poured into our offices requesting the Church’s free literature, tapes, CDs, Bible lessons, reprint articles and magazine issues—all made possible by our members and co-workers. TV responses in North America are up 23 percent over last year (and last year was 54 percent over the previous year!), New Zealand is reporting an 11 percent increase, and Australia is reporting a 64 percent increase in its TV response. Our telecast in the United Kingdom is set to reach a new milestone next week when it passes the 6,000-mark—completing our first year ever for the Tomorrow’s World telecast over the British Isles and Ireland.
Our mail room here in Charlotte has sent out more than 160,000 items in the past three months. Most encouraging has been the response to Dr. Meredith’s newest booklet, Satan’s Counterfeit Christianity. He offered it in his most recent semiannual letter to Tomorrow’s World subscribers, and Mr. Richard Ames offered it on the telecast. More than 25,000 subscribers requested the booklet before the end of 2005, and another 17,000 requested it this year. Mr. Ames’ television program drew the highest response so far from a Tomorrow’s World telecast, with 6,000 replies from all 183 TV stations in North America and our other countries where we are able to televise the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We look forward to even more accelerated growth this year. To date, our US master file is showing an 11 percent increase in our co-workers, bringing our total number of co-workers to 2,771, along with several thousand church members. So, as small as these numbers are, an incredible amount of good is being accomplished in fulfilling our God-given commission around the world.
We are most encouraged to see our TV base growing. In the United States and Canada, ratings and response figures show that 300,000 to 500,000 people are watching the Tomorrow’s World telecast every week. We are constantly pushing, as much as God opens the doors and provides the financial wherewithal, to expand our reach to TV viewers as far and wide as possible. God’s will be done!”
Brethren, what an encouraging report! One additional bit of very good news is that ten out of eleven of our recent television programs brought in more than 3,000 responses! This is unprecedented for us—and especially encouraging considering the fact that we are on only about one-tenth the number of television stations that the former World Tomorrow was on at its peak. So, again, we are grateful to God. Let us thank God for His blessing on the Work, and for our opportunity to begin to have an ever greater impact on this world in preaching His Truth to mankind! As our Lord and Savior Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together” (John 4:34-36).
We certainly do want to finish the Work of God just before Christ’s Second Coming. We do want to gather “fruit” for eternal life. And I pray that all of us may continue to work together with increased zeal so that when Christ comes we may indeed “rejoice together” with Him and with one another and be rewarded for all eternity for being willing to step out in faith in an evil and adulterous world and preach the Truth at this critical time in human history.
With Christian love,
Roderick C. Meredith