Dear Brethren and Co-Workers with Christ,
Greetings from Charlotte, NC! By the time most of you read this letter, I will have turned 80 years of age. God has been very good to me during these 80 years—giving me a wonderful stable family setting as I grew up, and a happy childhood. Now, over the years, He has given me a fine family, with six children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He has given me a wonderful opportunity to serve in the very Work of God for nearly 61 years—counting my student years at Ambassador College. He gave me the opportunity to study directly under Herbert W. Armstrong and to have thousands of hours of personal association with him, and countless meetings, meals, trips together, and other activities over the last 36 years of Mr. Armstrong’s life. I am very grateful for that opportunity—and for the wonderful privilege to carry on the Work which Christ began through Herbert and Loma Armstrong so many years ago. Now, after about 17-and-a-half years in the Global and now the Living Church of God, doing this Work, I can be thankful for the progress we have made in spite of our human weaknesses.
As most of you know, I am absolutely determined to finish the job God has given me to do, as long as God gives me life. Our combined efforts, as small as they may appear to the world—but with God’s blessings—have had considerable effect even in just the past five months! Since the beginning of this year, we have added more than 71,000 new names to our mailing list—people who requested God’s Truth in our free literature. This number pushed to more than 1 million the number of people who have at least once requested our material! In the past five months, we have sent out more than 300,000 booklets, reprint articles, CDs, DVDs, Bible lessons and other items people have requested. In five months, we sent out more literature than we used to send in entire years! This is a growing Work, and we surely hope and pray your part can grow with us. We cannot do this by ourselves.
The Tomorrow’s World television program achieved a new milestone when the 100,000th TV response of 2010 came in on May 16, which is the earliest in a calendar year this has ever happened. As of this letter, we have now received more than 115,000 responses from our TV viewers since the beginning of the year, which makes 2010 our biggest year yet. The response-level is tracking to more than a quarter-million TV responses by the end of this calendar year. We are also getting huge responses from our Web site, www.TomorrowsWorld.org, and follow-up responses from our magazines, booklets, and Bible lessons, as well as word-of-mouth responses from all of you talking to your friends and relatives. Keep up the good work!
The semiannual letter I sent to you and all our subscribers last month is drawing a very good response, requesting the free DVD, “Tomorrow’s World: Behind the Scenes.” Tens of thousands of subscribers are taking us up on the offer, which we are happy about!
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of booklets and other items we have sent since January, we have already mailed nearly one million Tomorrow’s World magazines around the world. Currently the Tomorrow’s World magazine is being mailed into more than 171 countries and dependencies. To date, we have been able to deliver the magazine into 85 percent of the world’s recognized countries and nations. Thank you so very much for your part in helping with this! We all have different strengths, personal gifts and abilities. As Paul exhorts in Romans 12:6, “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them…!” As you support this Work, may God and Jesus Christ bless and enrich your life all the more.
Dear brethren, in addition to doing “the Work” of reaching out to this world with God’s Truth, I am also very grateful that we have been able—with God’s merciful help—to have part in changing the lives of so many thousands of you. We have recently held some of the most loving, unified ministerial meetings that I have experienced in more than 50 years. We have a wonderful group of members and co-workers solidly backing this Work—with more and more of you being willing to fully surrender your lives to let Christ actually live His life within you through the Holy Spirit. Together, through God’s mercy, we are more fully learning the meaning of Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (KJV).
Certainly, as Christ lives in us—the same life He lived 2,000 years ago (Hebrews 13:8)—we will increasingly reflect the “fruits” of God’s Holy Spirit, “love, joy, peace…” etc. (Galatians 5:22). Thousands of you are increasingly showing the outflowing love, the personal kindness, patience and gentleness of Jesus Christ in all that you do. Also, we—as a Church—are certainly growing in absolute faith in our God and in Jesus Christ as our Savior and High Priest at His right hand. More and more are being supernaturally healed. For all these things we are most grateful.
For part of our job is not only to reach the world with the Truth, but to live the Truth. Without the genuine mercy, kindness and love of Jesus Christ within us, we are, in God’s sight, like a “clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1)—like someone beating on a washtub and just making a lot of noise! So I exhort each and every one of you to try to be more sensitive to God’s will and to His Word, and to yield yourself to let Christ truly live within you and to reflect His love in everything you think, say and do. In this way, you will be more fully preparing yourselves to be part of that cadre of individuals who are now being prepared to be those kings and priests ruling—under Jesus Christ—in Tomorrow’s World and bringing about a depth of love, joy and peace beyond anything the world has ever experienced. But we must first surrender to let God build within us that same love, joy and peace, or we will certainly not be able to impart it to others!
As I begin my 81st year of human life, I want—with Christ in me—to do all I can to help “prepare” a people for God. This involves helping each one of you—certainly myself included—to truly reflect the total personality and approach of Jesus Christ in all that we think, say and do. Then, as I stated before, we will be far better prepared to be those individuals to assist Jesus Christ in His soon-coming Government on this earth. For we are truly called to be “kings and priests” on this earth (Revelation 5:9-10). We must never forget that tremendous goal and the marvelous opportunity we have to serve the world and to bring tears of joy to millions of our fellow human beings who will be hurting, suffering and starving when Christ comes back as King of kings. The approach of tenderness and mercy which Christ is now building within us will certainly enable us to reach out to these people as we should when we are made spirit beings in Christ’s coming Kingdom.
God has called each of us to a great and mighty end-time Work. While each of us individually may have only a seemingly tiny role, Jesus Christ makes up the difference! The Apostle Paul was inspired to write in 1 Corinthians 3:9,“…we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building…. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (vv. 9, 11). For God’s good purpose, as only He knows, He has called you to be an integral part of this Work. There are very few of us involved with doing God’s Work in a world filled with more than 6.8 billion people. So we must be filled with enthusiasm and zeal in reaching out to these billions of fellow human beings with the Truth of God! Yet we must do far more than just “lay the Truth out there”—by teaching them God’s laws and warning them about the coming Tribulation and Day of the Lord. We must inspire them with the very love of God, and we must live this love as an example to these people so that all of us may be fully able to comprehend God’s purpose in making us—in His time—God’s full Sons in the coming Family of God (John 17:20-22). This genuine love—“Christ in us”—will carry right on over into the Work we will be doing in Tomorrow’s World. Without this love, our efforts will be relatively empty for, as I explained earlier, we will be like a “clanging cymbal”—unable to practice the very love and outflowing concern which we preach to the world. So may God help every one of you increasingly yield your life to God, literally “cry out to Him” to help you fulfill His purpose in your life, and so prepare yourself for the coming Kingdom of God on this earth.
Dear brethren, you are truly precious to God and to us! For, together, we are being fashioned and molded into one family, bearing the stamp impress of God on our character and personality, as He fashions and molds each one of us to be truly like Him. Thank you for your help in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and sharing this wonderful Truth with the peoples of this world. May God help encourage you, inspire you and abundantly bless you for yielding yourselves to Him and for doing your part in the end-time Work which all of us are carrying on together right now.
With Christian love,
Roderick C. Meredith