Incredible Growth
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During the turbulent 1960s, the Work and God’s Church continued to mushroom in size and power. By the end of the decade, The Plain Truth reached more than 2.2 million copies per year. The Radio Church of God exploded in attendance, from approximately 7,000 in 1960 to more than 54,000 in North America by 1969.
The Breathtaking Campus Grounds
Up until 1960, there had only been one Feast site for the brethren to attend God’s fall festival. But in 1961, another site was added. Another came in 1963. By the end of the 60s, there were five major (and two smaller) Feast sites in North America, ranging from 7,602 to 12,250 attendees, with additional sites located in other parts of the world.
In the meantime, with Mr. Armstrong skillfully guiding the master plan, Ambassador College was also growing, acquiring new properties that greatly expanded the scope of the Pasadena campus, including the addition of properties nearby that were not directly contiguous with the 59-acre campus. The college began to take on an extraordinary, even breathtaking, beauty that could only be likened to a very large, perfectly manicured garden. In fact, there were the lower gardens, the Italian sunken gardens, the Japanese gardens, and several others. The 1970s would see the college win national awards year after year, recognizing it as the most beautiful campus in America.
More and more people took note of this remarkable college near the intersection of Orange Grove and Colorado Boulevards, where the Rose Parade began every year. Residents from the community, and Church members visiting from around the world, enjoyed tours that were offered for anyone who wished to see the beauty of what God had placed together on just four square blocks that were eventually integrated into one magnificent campus.
In 1960, a second campus opened, this time in the United Kingdom. Once again, Mr. Armstrong was led to another magnificently landscaped property, located on a ten-acre estate 19 miles northwest of London, in Bricket Wood. With the Work growing around the world in quantum leaps, it was necessary to train more students with an international background so that they could return to serve in their own countries, either in the ministry or in the growing number of regional offices serving an expanding Church, now with members on every continent and in scores of countries.
Mr. Armstrong held a special affection for the beauty and formality of the Bricket Wood campus, taking every natural occasion to fit a visit to this relaxing, stately campus into his schedule.
Also in 1960, Mr. Armstrong completed his first trip around the world, arranging for 39 radio stations to blanket Australia with the program.
In 1964, God inspired Mr. Armstrong to establish yet one more Ambassador College campus, this time in Big Sandy, Texas. This opportunity was presented to the Church as a result of property donated by long-time Texas members.
Because of its unique rural setting, with open fields on rolling hills, this campus allowed for agricultural studies and an experimental station. While it had already served for several years as a Feast location, this property was natural for being developed into the third and final Ambassador College campus. In later years, it included an airstrip and was used as one of the Church’s North American summer camps. By that time, summer camps had to be established in various parts of the world to help in the experience and training of the large and growing number of young people being taught God’s Way.
As mentioned, international offices of the Work were set up and staffed in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, South Africa, New Zealand, Germany, Mexico and the Caribbean. These all allowed for greater efficiency in serving local peoples where they lived.
In 1967, The Plain Truth became a four-color magazine, with 52 pages per issue. By the end of the decade, the magazine had become truly respected and well-known, and was being read by every strata of society across the world, including the “rich and famous” and various world leaders, who understood that it was an absolutely unique publication, unlike anything else they were reading.
With the growing television presence of The World Tomorrow and other amazing developments, and the Work continuing to increase by 30 percent each year, the Church changed its corporate name to better reflect its size and growth. In 1968, the Radio Church of God became the Worldwide Church of God (WCG).
The 1960s were truly the decade that changed the Church and its impact around the world in carrying out Christ’s Great Commission of taking the gospel of the kingdom of God to the world. While the world was undergoing enormous changes in the “turbulent 60s,” none of them for the better, God’s Work was fast-forwarding, enjoying unprecedented unity, peace and growth. Though this was to change later, in a dramatic way, wonderful fruit continued to be borne in virtually every aspect of the Work throughout the decade.
Throughout this period, as big, far-reaching decisions had to be made on an almost regular basis, Mr. Armstrong expressed that it was vital to always seek wide—and wise—counsel before proceeding. Of course, the Work would continue to face major decisions to walk through new doors as they opened to expand the Work. But where God was guiding, and where His servants were pleasing Him, much growth, many blessings and an abundance of fruit continued to be evident. God continued to inspire Mr. Armstrong, even though there was still the occasional persecution or seeming setback.
The following recounts another most painful event to Mr. Armstrong personally and the Church collectively.
Another Great Loss
Sadly, Mr. Armstrong had to experience another death, in this case, of the person closest to him. Loma D. Armstrong, his wife of nearly 50 years, died in April of 1967. Since the college’s founding, students looked up to her, almost as a grandmother-like figure. Mrs. Armstrong had always made herself available to all the female students, who at times came to her when they were feeling homesick or just wanted someone to talk to. She had such a graceful and personable presence, brethren would sometimes write letters to her, and she would answer them. Mr. Armstrong always considered his wife to be one-half of his ministry, yet she stayed in the background, because she did not seek or enjoy attention. Theirs had been truly a wonderful marriage and partnership.
Here is how Mr. Armstrong told the Church about the death of his wife and constant companion through all that this book has but briefly described:
“...I am deeply sorry to have to announce...that my wife’s critical illness has ended in the manner least expected—in her death just after midnight Saturday morning, April 15. In the next second of her consciousness she will awake in the Resurrection, completely healed—and, far more than we beseeched God in our earnest prayers, not in the corruptible body of this mortal flesh and blood, but in an immortal spirit body, in glory in God’s eternal Kingdom!
“Thirty-four years ago, at this same time of year, when my father died having reached his seventieth year, I had to learn that God’s promises are absolutely secure—but not always in the way we expect. For His ways are not our ways. In the ‘Faith Chapter’ of the Bible, Hebrews 11 ALL, speaking of the example of faith set by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—’the Fathers’—and of Sarah, we read: ‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them...that they, without us, should not be made perfect.’ (Heb. 11:13 and 40.)
“Had they received the promises by their faith at that time, then you and I would have been left out. But God’s promises to them are irrevocably secure! They shall receive them in the resurrection—and many thousands or millions of us also with them.
“God has promised to heal the sick, upon real repentance and faith. But God has not promised how, or when! That, we must leave to Him in faith.
“We did fully expect that God would heal her now. True, she was seventy-five and a half years of age. Even King David, who had been rescued from death, and healed from near-death more than once, ‘died in a good old age, full of days,’ at age seventy. (I Chron. 29:28). In I Kings 1:1, it is stated that ‘King David was old, and stricken with years,’ just before his death.
“God already had given my wife five and a half years more of this life than He gave David. She was just a few months older than I, though part of each year we were ‘the same age,’ as they are counted. Yet neither of us have felt or acted in any manner like ‘old folks,’ or ‘elderly’ people. We never thought of her as being anywhere near seventy!
“God had called her, and then me through her. He had chosen us for His Work. He had built His great Work through us, bearing great and rich spiritual ‘fruit.’...
“If you’ll read John 15 All, you’ll realize that God corrects, ‘prunes,’ or ‘purges’ every branch in Christ which is producing fruit—that they may bring forth more fruit. It is only those bearing none that He cuts off.
“This great Work of God not only has produced fruit—but right now God is opening gigantic new doors for His Work to multiply in power!
“In our human thinking, it seemed God would heal her now, that she could continue the remaining few years as my help in the closing years of God’s Work preparing the way for Christ’s coming, and the Kingdom of God, ushering in the wonderful World Tomorrow! But, we know now, God had intended otherwise...
“To all you who have come to a reawakening through her recent illness, let me plead: Carry on, in this spiritually rejuvenated new life! Never slacken! Never lose courage! Now I need your help more than ever!” (Brethren/Co-Worker Letter, April 17, 1967).
A Big Door Opens
The following year, in 1968, Mr. Armstrong’s ministry entered an unprecedented new stage. King Leopold III of Belgium sent word through the Church’s German office that he would like to meet Mr. Armstrong. The two met at the king’s Belgian chateau, and started what became a long friendship. It also led to the opening of a monumental door—one that would put Mr. Armstrong in the presence of kings, prime ministers and other heads of state around the world.
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