AMBASSADOR FOR WORLD PEACE WHY HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG MET WITH HUNDREDS OF WORLD LEADERS GERALD FLURRY AMBASSADOR FOR WORLD PEACE WHY HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG MET WITH HUNDREDS OF WORLD LEADERS GERALD FLURRY THIS BOOKLET IS NOT TO BE SOLD. It is a free educational service in the public interest, published by the Philadelphia Church of God. © 2017 Philadelphia Church of God All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America Scriptures in this publication are quoted from the King James Version, unless otherwise noted. n the 1970s and 1980s, one private citizen was jetting around the world and meeting with I hundreds of world leaders. He met presidents, prime ministers, kings, emperors, princes, legislators, ambassadors, generals, officers, mayors, judges, scientists, educators, magnates and executives. He talked with heads of state and heads of government in their offices at their invitations. Who was this man? He wasn’t a head of government; he wasn’t even a government official. He wasn’t a captain of industry; he wasn’t even a businessman. He wasn’t a billionaire or millionaire. He was a man named Herbert W. Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong was a man who actually gave up his business to follow what he read in the Bible. He followed God and lived for decades in poverty. He eventually led a church and a college. He did not seek to become a world traveler, a friend of prime ministers, an unofficial ambassador for world peace. Even if he had tried, he never could have achieved a fraction of what he ended up doing. What Mr. Armstrong did in the 1970s and ’80s was nothing short of miraculous. “I have exciting news!” he wrote from Hong Kong in a November 26, 1973, letter to supporters of the Church. “As this new dimension of the great Work of the living God gets under way there is already tremendous accomplishment! Never in the history of humanity has anything like it happened before! Never has the living God carried His message through His human servants in this manner before.” The “tremendous accomplishment” Mr. Armstrong was referring to was his taking the message of God to prominent world leaders. This is an aspect of Mr. Armstrong’s work that we 1 AMBASSADOR FOR WORLD PEACE need to understand more deeply as time goes on because it relates to our time today. When God called him into His ministry, Mr. Armstrong taught God’s message, the good news of the coming Kingdom of God, to only a few scattered people in Oregon. Then the message reached several cities over the radio. Mr. Armstrong dreamed of God’s message reaching the whole northwest region of the United States. By the 1960s and 1970s, that message was reaching millions of people around the entire world. Despite the global reach among the English-speaking peoples, Mr. Armstrong was troubled by something. He wanted God’s message to reach Russians, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Indonesians, Bangladeshis and others. But how could he reach them? In countries like the United States, Canada and Australia, the message could go straight to the people through television, radio or literature. Mr. Armstrong prayed earnestly about it and asked God to help him see how to reach them. God answered that prayer. He showed Mr. Armstrong that in order to be heard by the populations of these countries, he had to reach the national leaders first! An Open Door Sometime after Mr. Armstrong began praying about it, he received invitations to meet world leaders: one from a European king, then another from Jewish leaders. He couldn’t understand what was really happening or why. Gradually, the invitations began piling up. Yet he was still puzzled about why God was opening those doors. Finally, he made the connection: This was how God planned to get the gospel to those other nations! 2 WHY HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG MET WITH HUNDREDS OF WORLD LEADERS Mr. Armstrong frequently visited top government officials, including leaders who shaped the thoughts of their populations. These officials were in charge of communication; it was their responsibility to get information to the people. It is important to realize how much Mr. Armstrong did in those primarily Gentile nations. He visited presidents and kings who wanted to know what his beliefs were! In that 1973 co-worker letter, Mr. Armstrong continued: “Last April 28, I was decorated by the emperor and the government of Japan with the highest honor ever bestowed on a nonofficial non-Japanese. This gave me a very great credibility in Japan. Then I learned Prince Mikasa, brother of the emperor, had asked for me to give a Bible study on my next visit to Tokyo” (emphasis mine throughout). They wanted Mr. Armstrong to give them a Bible study! How unusual for a Gentile nation to ask to be taught from God’s Word! Fifty-eight of some of the most influential people in Japan attended a dinner that they held for Mr. Armstrong. Four speeches were given in Mr. Armstrong’s honor, one of which was delivered by the prince. Mr. Armstrong recalled that they said the “most complimentary things” about Ambassador College and himself! After these speeches, Mr. Armstrong had the opportunity to speak. He delivered a message about the gospel that had not been proclaimed to the world since the first century! Those leaders were given quite an impressive message. After his visit to Japan, Mr. Armstrong carried on to Saigon, Vietnam. There Mr. Armstrong talked to senators, members of Congress and the president. They asked him to stay for four days and give a public 3 AMBASSADOR FOR WORLD PEACE appearance! God was giving Mr. Armstrong special favor in the eyes of these world leaders. Mr. Armstrong said he was moved by their affection for him. After Vietnam, Mr. Armstrong went to Manila, Philippines. He said he was getting bolder all the time. He realized that this was a new dimension to the gospel— it had never been publicized this way before! God doesn’t do everything in cookie-cutter style. Sometimes He does things differently, because that is required to solve a problem. When you study what Mr. Armstrong was doing in these various nations and think about the impact he was having, you begin to see how much God loves this world. This initiative wasn’t from Mr. Armstrong—it wasn’t from a man. This was about God’s love for humanity! Jesus Christ died for all mankind, expressing the highest level of love. Through Mr. Armstrong, He was again showing His love! When you talk to someone about God’s way of life and you express it the right way, they may get excited about it. But usually their mood sours when you begin to talk about the need to change; they don’t like that part of the message. That is part of what made the way these leaders responded to Mr. Armstrong such a miracle. In New Delhi, India, Mr. Armstrong spoke before 100 of the most distinguished people of that nation. He recounted in the same co-worker letter, “This time I spoke with power and authority, until I wondered if I had spoken with such authority that many would be offended. But all comment afterward was very favorable, and I heard of no one being offended.” He gave them “the ‘strongest medicine’ ever to enter their ears,” as he put it. It was miraculous that they were not offended! Mr. Armstrong 4 WHY HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG MET WITH HUNDREDS OF WORLD LEADERS was bold and strong; it is almost shocking how blunt he was. He spoke with real authority! You would almost think these people would never invite him back. And while in a few cases they didn’t, a lot of them did. “I told them bluntly, by authority of the Creator God, Creator of the people of India, that they were responsible for what they had just heard!” wrote Mr. Armstrong. He told these world leaders that it was their responsibility to get God’s message to their people! God’s Spiritual Law in Motion Mr. Armstrong would talk to these people about the terrible state of affairs in the world. And he would show them that there is a cause for poverty, violence, war and everything else that plagues mankind. “[T]he living God had revealed to me the cause of all the world’s terrible evils and the suffering of humanity,” he wrote (ibid). Nobody else understood the source of these nations’ difficulties. But Mr. Armstrong told national leaders the real cause! That cause went right back to what happened in the Garden of Eden. I doubt a message like that would be well received in Chicago, New York City or Los Angeles. The people would probably say, “That’s just a children’s story—mere fables!” But Mr. Armstrong boldly talked about the Garden of Eden where mankind rejected the source of peace, prosperity and the abundant life that all men should be living. For 6,000 years, mankind has rejected that way of life and instead chosen another tree—the tree of death. Choosing that tree has resulted in the world we see around us. Nobody else ever talked to these leaders about that cause! They were fascinated by this understanding. They 5 AMBASSADOR FOR WORLD PEACE knew Mr. Armstrong didn’t come seeking a monetary offering; he didn’t ask for anything. He simply came to explain to them the cause of all the horrific problems, something they had never heard before. “I explained how God’s invisible spiritual law (the law of love—the Ten Commandments) was set in motion to cause peace, happiness, abundant well- being,” he wrote.