Chapter Two – Being Called By God

Next Part Another Advertising Business Swept Away

While Mrs. Armstrong maintained a steady interest in religion, her husband had stopped regularly attending church when he turned 18. Like many in the world today, Mr. Armstrong’s mind was focused on pursuing a successful career. From 1918 to 1920, his personal annual income grew to today’s equivalent of a six-figure salary. His pursuit of material success left little time for religious interests, other than occasionally attending Sunday services at the corner church.

About a week or so after their wedding, Mrs. Armstrong experienced a dream so vivid—so extraordinary—that when she woke up, it seemed as though nothing else was real for the next two to three days.

Here is how Mr. Armstrong described the mysterious events within his wife’s dream:

“In her dream she and I were crossing the wide intersection… Suddenly there appeared an awesome sight in the sky above. It was a dazzling spectacle—the sky filled with a gigantic solid mass of brilliant stars, shaped like a huge banner. The stars began to quiver and separate, finally vanishing. She called my attention to the vanishing stars, when another huge grouping of flashing stars appeared, then quivering, separating, and vanishing like the first.

“As she and I, in her dream, looked upward at the vanishing stars, three large white birds suddenly appeared in the sky between us and the vanishing stars. These great white birds flew directly toward us. As they descended nearer, she perceived that they were angels.

“‘Then,’ my wife wrote a day or two after the dream…‘it dawned on me that Christ was coming, and I was so happy I was just crying for joy. Then suddenly I thought of Herbert and was rather worried.’

“She knew I had evidenced very little religious interest, although we had attended a corner church two or three times. Then it seemed that, from among these angels in her dream, that, ‘Christ descended from among them and stood directly in front of us. At first I was a little doubtful and afraid of how He would receive us, because I remembered we had neglected our Bible study and had our minds too much on things apart from His interests. But as we went up to Him, He put His arms around both of us, and we were so happy! I thought people all over the world had seen Him come. As far as we could see, people were just swarming into the streets at this broad intersection. Some were glad and some were afraid.

“‘Then it seemed He had changed into an angel. I was terribly disappointed at first, until he told me Christ was really coming in a very short time.’

“At that time, we had been going quite regularly to motion-picture theatres. She asked the angel if this were wrong. He replied Christ had important work for us to do, preparing for His coming—there would be no time for ‘movies’…Then the angel and the whole spectacle seemed to vanish, and she awakened, shaken and wondering!”

She immediately told her husband about the dream.

In his autobiography, Mr. Armstrong warned readers that of those who think God has personally spoken to them in dreams or visions, the overwhelming majority—“about 99,999 times out of 100,000”—actually have deceived themselves. Most dreams mean nothing, he wrote, and false prophets have misled people with false dreams, just as God warns in Jeremiah 23 All, Jeremiah 23:32: “I am against prophets who recount lying dreams, leading My people astray with their lies and their empty pretensions, though I never sent them, never commissioned them; they are no help whatever to this people, says the Eternal” (Moffatt translation).

Mr. Armstrong did not rush to the conclusion that this had to be a dream from God. As a matter of fact, he was embarrassed by it. He did not want to think about it—yet, the dream was so unusual that he could not dismiss it. So he settled on advising his wife to ask the minister at the corner church if her dream had any real meaning. Satisfied, he put the matter out of his mind.

It would only be a handful of years later that God would get Mr. Armstrong’s full and undivided attention.

Flash Depression!

In January 1920, Mr. Armstrong attended an important business luncheon and listened to guest speaker Roger Babson give a startling speech. To the surprise of the leading Chicago bankers and business executives, Mr. Babson, a well-known statistician, proclaimed that they were about to enter the worst business depression of their generation. “I advise you all to set your houses in order,” he said.

Mr. Armstrong glanced around the room and saw that many of these prominent business leaders smirked and looked amused. Because the demands of World War I had artificially inflated the price of food and supplies, the postwar economy was riding a wave of prosperity. Bank clearings, business activity, stock car loadings and stock market quotes were all booming. Therefore, these men did not believe or bother to heed Mr. Babson’s warning.

Yet, by the end of that same year, Mr. Babson’s prediction came true. The economic wave gave way to the flash depression of 1920, which came crashing down, sweeping away many American businesses—including Mr. Armstrong’s. All of his clients went into receivership, and his large advertising contracts were cancelled.

Again, Mr. Armstrong and other businessmen met for a luncheon to listen to Roger Babson, the guest speaker. Mr. Babson explained that he was able to know a depression was coming by looking at the way people lived—how they dealt with one another as a whole.

He said, “I looked to the source which determines future conditions. I have found that the sourcemay be defined in terms of ‘righteousness.’ When 51 percent or more of the whole people are reasonably ‘righteous’ in their dealings with one another, we are heading into increasing prosperity. When 51 percent of the people become ‘unrighteous’ in their business dealings with their fellows, then we are headed for bad times economically!”

Mr. Armstrong never forgot this sobering and insightful explanation.

Though his advertising business had been swept away through no fault of his own, Mr. Armstrong was determined to build it back up again. However, with so many other businesses having been crushed and destroyed, those which struggled to survive were not ready to spend advertising money as they had before.

Some business executives, lacking the strength and determination to cope with their sudden loss of wealth and influence, turned to suicide.

But Mr. Armstrong was no quitter. “I had been knocked down, stunned, made groggy—but not knocked out,” he wrote. “Desperately I clung on, hoping to climb back on top.” He was determined to once again reap the fruits of success. For the next two years, he fought and struggled to revive a dead enterprise.

Standing Up for Integrity

In February 1921, the secretary of the National Implement and Vehicle Association asked Mr. Armstrong to attend an important meeting held by its board of directors, seven corporate heads. The chairman was Mr. Wallis, president of J.I. Case Plow Works, Mr. Armstrong’s largest client.

The mood of the meeting was sober. The flash depression was destroying their businesses. Each man faced financial ruin.

The meeting’s agenda was to find a way to stimulate the farm tractor industry. Mr. Wallis explained that the industry would not survive the depression unless sales were brought back to life.

Since Mr. Armstrong did business with the editors of the national bank journals, these top corporate leaders wanted him to pressure the editors into writing strong editorials urging bankers to advise farmers to start buying tractors again.

An entire industry was at stake! Here were seven of the leading corporate executives asking 28-year-old Herbert W. Armstrong to help them save the national farm tractor industry from bankruptcy!

“What an appeal to my egotism!” Mr. Armstrong would later write. “What a temptation to think of personal importance!”

The unspoken implication was that if he could come through for them, an abundance of advertising contracts would be his. This was a hard temptation to resist.

But no matter how tempting the offer, Mr. Armstrong knew the cold, hard facts. Since his business had put him in constant contact with numerous bankers, he was well aware of the farm tractor situation at the grassroots level.

“Bankers know that one tractor replaces six horses,” he explained. “Tractors have to be fed gasoline, which is expensive right now. Horses are fed on 18-cent corn and oats and hay that have skidded likewise in price. Country bankers know their farmer customers would think they were fools to recommend buying tractors and feeding them on high-priced gasoline, when they have their horses being fed on grain they can’t sell.”

Convincing these farmers to buy tractors they did not absolutely need went against Mr. Armstrong’s conscience. He considered it an act of dishonesty. He told the men at the meeting that he could not help them.

The next day, J.I. Case Plow Works cancelled doing business with Mr. Armstrong. It was his last remaining tractor account.

Mr. Armstrong feverishly stayed the course for another year and a half to bring his advertising business back to life, but things went from bad to worse. By July 1922, his income had dropped tremendously—too low to even support his family. The financial crunch forced Mr. Armstrong to give up their apartment and sell the bulk of their furniture in order to survive. He then entered three of the bleakest, most discouraging months of his life.

That fall, he and his family moved back to Iowa to temporarily live on his father-in-law’s farm. Mr. Armstrong did the best he could to help around the farm, but he was the proverbial “fish out of water.” He lacked farming experience, and could not keep up with shucking corn alongside his father-in-law. Mr. Armstrong felt even more demoralized and defeated.

Back in Iowa

Mr. Armstrong went to the town of Ames, home of Iowa State College, and sold the idea of conducting an opinion survey to the owner and manager of the local newspaper, the Ames Daily Tribune. The survey revealed little known facts about customers’ shopping habits. It also changed business practices for the better, and increased sales. Everyone benefited.

Mr. Armstrong then visited an old friend who was the advertising manager of both the Des Moines Register and the Evening Tribune, and offered to conduct a thorough survey of department stores across the state. The friend and his superiors loved the idea, and were willing to hire Mr. Armstrong’s services. But there was a catch. They needed to hire a full-time advertising manager, and they believed that Mr. Armstrong was the right man for the position.

Mr. Armstrong was surprised by the offer. However, he was not confident that he had the ability to direct the work of a small staff and carry out other administrative duties. Mr. Armstrong knew that he could work with or under men, but he did not believe that he could direct others.

He told them, “But that will kill everything. I am not an executive. I can’t manage the work of others. I’m like a lone wolf. I have to do my own work in my own way. I often work in streaks. When I’m ‘on’ I know I’m good. But on the ‘off’ days I couldn’t sell genuine gold bricks for a dime. I’d have daily reports to make out, and that’s one thing I just never have been able to do. I’d get way behind on the reports.”

Despite his friend’s plea, he refused to take the position.

Many years later, Mr. Armstrong did become an executive. Upon founding Ambassador College, he went on to successfully direct the work of thousands of employees, as well as write, edit and publish magazines, lead an expanding worldwide church, give sermons, produce radio and television broadcasts, and meet heads of state around the world.

Though he may have been a “lone wolf” during his advertising career, Mr. Armstrong grew to be a leader. He was a man who constantly prodded himself to learn, develop and achieve.

Next Part Another Advertising Business Swept Away

Back to Herbert W. Armstrong