The Daily Word of Righteousness

Tabernacles and the Testimony, #3

Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old. (Matthew 13:52—NIV)

Anyhow, I found myself as a young man preaching and teaching about Christ in you and the feasts of the Lord. My listeners used to comment that I had a good spirit but they could not understand me. Small wonder! I hardly understood myself!

Even though I had been called to preach the Gospel, no doors opened to the ministry. I decided to go into public education and so enrolled in college. I earned a B.A, M.Ed., and finally a D.Ed from the University of Rochester in New York. I spent many happy years teaching elementary school, high school music, college students, also as a supervisor of student teachers and an elementary principal.

At about the age of forty, while living in Palo Alto, California and teaching elementary school there, I was praying one morning as was my custom. I prayed, "Father, if no one ever understands me, and all you want is for me to have faith that you have these great experiences for us, I am willing to accept this role."

Soon after, Brother Clyde Pickthorne, a local pastor, suggested to me that I write what I thought God had shown me. Truly the hand of the Lord came upon me and I began to write, and, as you can see, am still writing what I think I have been shown.

About ten years later, when serving as an elementary-school principal, the Lord spoke to Audrey and me that it was time to enter the ministry.

At the suggestion of Brother Leroy Cloud, the Pastor of the First Assembly of God of Fremont, California, we began the Fremont School of the Bible, I think it was called. One evening when I was teaching an angel rose up in the middle of the class, frowned at me, and turned his head southward. I knew then that Audrey and I were to go south to minister.

We ended up in Poway, California. The Foursquare Divisional Superintendent, Carl Purdy, asked us if we would reopen the Poway Foursquare church. We agreed to this and have been there about twenty-three years.

While in Palo Alto, about thirty years previously, I had prayed one morning that God would make it possible for me to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom wherever people breathe the air. There were no personal computers or Internet in those days so it really was a fantastic prayer.

The first opportunity I had to reach out to the nations with the Gospel of the Kingdom was as a teacher in the Morris Cerullo School of Ministry in San Diego. There I was able to contact pastors and teachers from many countries.

Today the fulfillment of that prayer does not seem impossible. We have reached upwards of eighty or ninety countries so far on our Internet site. Our books also have gone to foreign countries. The word is going out on audio and video cassette. Hundreds of people are receiving the daily essay, which is remarkable since we are pointing out that most of what is preached in Evangelical churches is not found in the Scriptures.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. . . . (Psalms 19:1-4—NIV)

I feel the Lord has given me the above as a promise.

To be continued.