Dear Brethren and Co-Workers with Christ,
As 2016 gets underway, we in this Work have much to be very thankful for! Although the world around us is becoming more and more confused and even “crazy” at times, we who understand really can see “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Daily, we read and see pictures of increasing millions of distraught human beings fleeing their own countries in a desperate attempt to get to a place of safety. These people come from Africa, from the Middle East and other countries. Why? Because their human governments are failing. Because their own people are “desperate” to find a place where they and their children can have a reasonably decent feeling of physical safety, enough food and the basics of life such as proper sanitation.
Yet, throughout the Middle East, Africa and many nations in Asia, South America and elsewhere, their governments are failing. Millions are literally starving right now in Venezuela. There are financial upsets and government near bankruptcies in Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere throughout Latin America. Think of the hundreds of people being murdered, raped and tortured by the drug cartels in Mexico. Again, why?
It is because of corrupt local governments and local officials throughout the region. But also—and we Americans need to “get” this—these tragedies would not be occurring if the thousands of illegal drug users here in the United States would learn a little bit about the “meaning of life” and repent and stop buying all of these illegal drugs in the first place! For, we in America are becoming a nation of “spoiled brats” more than any other peoples on the earth. We have been given awesome physical blessings because of God’s promise to Abraham. But we have turned away from that God! We are spitting in the face of the God of the Bible in many, many ways. In an Op/Ed piece in this Sunday’s New York Times (February 14, 2016), I could not help but note a piece about the problems of “same-sex” couples.
As a box inserted in the article states: “Some married same-sexers want to be called wives, or husbands or partners; some ‘hersbands’ or ‘wusbands.’ Ask them.” Early in the article a man “who married his ‘husband’ in California in 2008” states: “‘Secretly, for years, I kept referring to him as my partner if he wasn’t in the room,’ Mr. Valenzuela said. ‘There’s something deeply heteronormative about ‘husband’ that feels like a betrayal of my very queer identity. Like, if I say it, people will picture him wearing a cardigan reading the newspaper by the fireplace. I do say ‘husband’ more now, but a tiny part of me cringes with shame when I do.’”
What a shame for this man to—as he himself says—betray his own “very queer identity!”
My friends, the Jesus Christ of your Bible is coming back to this earth soon! Then, this “queer” fellow quoted above will want to vomit when he finally realizes Who he has actually “betrayed” and his real “identity,” a male human being created in the image of God! We who are “called” now to understand and who fulfill our calling as true Christians will have the challenge and the opportunity to teach, to train and to genuinely help such confused and deluded human beings who will finally understand and want to fulfill their real purpose in life as potential sons of God!
When we read the inspired account in Genesis 6 of why God Almighty “destroyed” all flesh except the family of Noah, it becomes obvious that this present generation is getting very close to the same degree of human degradation as Noah’s period. For in that day: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11).
Brethren, when we read the constant reports in the news about how corrupt governments all over the earth are crashing and hurting their peoples in the process, it is obvious that Almighty God will soon intervene! For the true God tells us in His Word: “For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6). So, Jesus Christ is coming soon (Revelation 11:15). That is truly the only hope for this corrupt generation!
We, my friends and brethren, have the wonderful opportunity right now to reach out to this world in growing power and proclaim the reality of the true God, the reality of Christ’s Second Coming and the real meaning of life which so very few on earth truly understand. We in this Work are driving ourselves to proclaim God’s Truth to this deceived and confused world. This Work of the living Jesus Christ is constantly growing in power and impact.
My friends, I hope you are praying for the continued growth of this Work! We are grateful for the increase in our Tomorrow’s World magazine subscriptions, which reached a new record of 539,000 unique individual subscribers receiving our March-April 2016 print edition. When you keep in mind that many copies are read by two or three people, this means that perhaps more than a million of our fellow human beings are being reached by this powerful message!
Long-time subscribers may notice that this 539,000 circulation will very likely be our “all-time record,” at least for a while, since we know the ongoing “renewal” program also drops inactive readers from the list. We “renew” subscribers from time to time because we seek to be good stewards of the tithes and offerings God provides, and if a subscriber does not want the magazine after a while, we want to provide that subscription instead to someone who is truly interested.
Also very encouraging is that, starting with this March-April 2016 issue, we will be offering a “digital subscription” to the magazine. For the increasing numbers of readers who are “digital natives”—who do most of their reading on a computer or a tablet or even a smartphone—the Tomorrow’s World magazine will be available by electronic subscription for the very first time since we began the magazine in 1999. Of course, we continue to offer the print magazine, and we hope to reach increasing numbers as more and more hear the powerful message proclaimed by this Work.
We also thank God for the many exciting developments that are now taking place with our various Internet initiatives. In addition to it being very important that we reach millions of people in multiple languages all around the world with our Web sites and social media pages, it is also very important that our Internet efforts produce quality results. One very important measurement of the effectiveness and the quality of our Internet efforts is not only how much Tomorrow’s World content is viewed and downloaded, but also how many Tomorrow’s World articles, telecasts, commentaries and other items are read and shared. For example, over the last month roughly, Tomorrow’s World content averages just more than 60 shares per day, and as you can notice in the “Recent Most Talked About” section of the TomorrowsWorld.org home page, many of our individual articles and telecasts are “shared” by many hundreds of people. This produces a “multiplier effect” where if an article is shared with 50 or 60 people, then those people may also share it with their “online friends” who may then pass it along yet again. You may notice that (of the time of this writing) Mr. Gerald Weston’s telecast “The Antichrist Is Coming” was “shared” 690 times, and my recent Tomorrow’s World article titled “Satan’s War on Family Values” was shared more than 300 times. Please do continue to “share” and “like” Tomorrow’s World content so that even more people can be exposed to the Truth, especially as the end of this age draws near.
I would also ask you to join us in praying for the new “apps” that we have recently completed building. As I write this letter, completely new versions of our Android and Apple “smart phone” apps are being loaded to the “Google Play” store and the Apple “iTunes” store. In addition to these new “mobile apps,” as was recently announced, we just launched a new app for the latest “AppleTV.” While we continue to add to our cable and satellite television station coverage when God opens those doors, as many of you know “Internet television” is a tremendous growth medium where the big tech companies such as Google and Apple are investing very heavily. Although historically, the Tomorrow’s World program has been doing very well on Roku, and we have been well within the top 10 percent of all religious channels on Roku, we believe that in the coming years, Apple will become a much bigger player in this space. As Apple CEO Tim Cook somewhat famously stated last year when announcing Apple’s new AppleTV device, “The future of TV is apps.” We are thankful to be on the leading edge of preaching the Gospel through our English-language TomorrowsWorld.org Web site, our French and Spanish Web sites, mondedemain.org and elmundodemanana.org, and our new Dutch-language Web site, wereldvanmorgen.org, and our new German-language Web site, weltvonmorgen.org, as well as our numerous social media pages.
And finally, we are also excited about a new Web site that should be available soon after you receive this letter. This new Web site is called TheBibleSaysThat.org and it is intended to be a topical resource that asks and answers challenging questions facing professing Christianity. While the Tomorrow’s World Web site remains our primary and flagship Web site, this new Web site will be a resource and will also be used to support some new advertising initiatives that we plan to give more details on later. There are truly many exciting doors that God is opening for us in the Internet, so please do join us in praying that God helps these efforts to produce good fruit!
Dear brethren, Jesus Christ commanded His servants: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). This Work is fulfilling that command far more powerfully than any other similar work on earth today! We are grateful that we can be used by God as His servants to carry out His commission. We are very grateful to those of you who have contributed so generously even in the last few weeks to help this Work really “get going” more than ever. Thank you! And most of all, we are grateful to Almighty God that we have this opportunity, that He is giving us the strength and is opening the “doors” (Revelation 3:8) to go through and reach the whole world with the end-time message of Christ and warn the peoples of this world in a way most of them have never heard before. Thank God. So we really do need to look forward with absolute faith and joy to Christ’s Second Coming to truly “finish the Work” which He has begun in this age today.
God is not mocked! All of these virtually insane and vile ideas and practices now circulating in our perverted society will soon come to an end when Christ returns as King of kings! Before that, however, God will have to absolutely shake this world so all will finally be willing to “listen” to His true servants and humble themselves to learn from His servants in Tomorrow’s World.
Referring to the very end of this age Jesus said: “There will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:25-28).
When all of us “see” these magnificent signs of the glory and power of the great God as Christ returns in magnificent glory to rule this world we can truly “lift up our heads” and be thankful and grateful that we have been willing to be the true servants of God at the end of this age! We can thank God for ever and ever that we have been inspired to give of our physical resources to help “feed” God’s flock and reach the over seven billion human beings out there with increasing power as the true servants of the living God!
So I ask all of you—in this spirit—to do everything you can to dig down deep and give liberally to the very Work of Christ right now! The prophetic events are speeding up! We need to move to get this powerful message out as soon as we can as the “darkness” is swiftly closing in on this world. But soon, when these things occur, we can indeed “lift up our heads” and be eternally grateful and filled with joy as we see our Savior and our elder Brother returning to give us the gift of eternal life.
This is our hope. And it is a very real hope! As our long-time readers of Tomorrow’s World know, the events immediately preceding Christ’s return are now well under way! So we can rejoice in Christ’s promise: “Behold, I am coming quickly! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book” (Revelation 22:7). And again: “And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work” (Revelation 22:12). Let us be sure that our “work” will afford us a wonderful reward when Christ comes back to rule over His Kingdom forever! Finally, Jesus promises: “Surely I am coming quickly” (Revelation 22:20).
Let us go “all out” in preparing for this magnificent event that we may “be there” when Christ returns as King of kings and we receive a wonderful reward for what we have done in His service at the end of this age.
With Christian love,
Roderick C. Meredith