At the Crossroads-and a Momentous Decision (Chapt. 17, Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong, Vol. 1)

It was humiliating to have to admit my wife had been right, and I had been wrong, in the most serious argument that ever came between us.

Disillusionment

But to my utter disappointed astonishment, I found that much of the popular church teachings and practices were not based on the Bible. They had originated, as research in history had revealed, in paganism. Numerous Bible prophecies foretold it. The amazing, unbelievable truth was, the source of these popular beliefs and practices of professing Christianity was, quite largely, paganism and human reasoning and custom, NOT the Bible!

I had first doubted, then searched for evidence, and found proof that God exists—that the Holy Bible is, literally, His divinely inspired revelation and instruction to mankind. I had learned that one’s God is what a person obeys. The word Lord means master—the one you obey! Most people, I had discovered, are obeying false gods, rebelling against the one true Creator who is the supreme Ruler of the universe.

The argument was over a point of obedience to God.

The opening of my eyes to the truth brought me to the crossroads of my life. To accept it meant to throw in my lot with a class of humble and unpretentious people I had always looked upon as inferior. It meant being cut off from the high and the mighty and the wealthy of this world, to which I had aspired. It meant the final crushing of vanity. It meant a total change of life!

Life and Death Struggle

It meant real repentance, for now I saw that I had been breaking God’s Law. I had been rebelling against God. It meant turning around and going the way of God—the way of His Bible—living according to every word in the Bible, instead of according to the ways of society or the desires of the flesh and of vanity.

It was a matter of which way I would travel for the remainder of my life. I had certainly reached the crossroads!

But I had been beaten down. God had brought that about—though I didn’t realize it then. Repeated business reverses, failure after failure, had destroyed self-confidence. I was broken in spirit. The self in me didn’t want to die. It wanted to try to get up from ignominious defeat and try once again to tread the broad and popular way of vanity and of this world. But now I knew that way was wrong! I knew its ultimate penalty was death. But I didn’t want to die now!

It was truly a battle for life—a life and death struggle. In the end, I lost that battle, as I had been losing all worldly battles in recent years.

In final desperation, I threw myself on His mercy. If He could use my life, I would give it to Him—not in physical suicide, but as a living sacrifice, to use as He willed. It was worth nothing to me any longer.

Jesus Christ had bought and paid for my life by His death. It really belonged to Him, and now I told Him He could have it!

From then on, this defeated no-good life of mine was God’s. I didn’t see how it could be worth anything to Him. But it was His to use as His instrument, if He thought He could use it.

JOY in Defeat

This surrender to God—this repentance—this giving up of the world, of friends and associates, and of everything—was the most bitter pill I ever swallowed. Yet it was the only medicine in all my life that ever brought a healing!

For I actually began to realize that I was finding joy beyond words to describe in this total defeat. I had actually found joy in the study of the Bible—in the discovery of new truths, heretofore hidden from my consciousness. And in surrendering to God in complete repentance, I found unspeakable joy in accepting Jesus Christ as personal Saviour and my present High Priest.

I began to see everything in a new and different light. Why should it have been a difficult and painful experience to surrender to my Maker and my God? Why was it painful to surrender to obey God’s right ways? Why? Now, I came to a new outlook on life.

Somehow I began to realize a new fellowship and friendship had come into my life. I began to be conscious of a contact and fellowship with Christ, and with God the Father.

When I read and studied the Bible, God was talking to me, and now I loved to listen! I began to pray, and knew that in prayer I was talking with God. I was not yet very well acquainted with God. But one gets to be better acquainted with another by constant contact and continuous conversation.

A Doctrine at a Time

So I continued the study of the Bible. I began to write, in article form, the things I was learning. I did not then suppose these articles would ever be published. I wrote them for my own satisfaction. It was one way to learn more by the study.

I had been reared of Quaker stock. The Quakers do not believe in water baptism. But now I wanted to prove, by the Bible, whether I ought to be baptized. So I began to study about baptism—and receiving the Holy Spirit.

As this study of the Bible continued, I was forced to come out of the fog of religious babylon a single doctrine at a time. It was years later before I came to see the whole picture—to understand God’s purpose being worked out here below, and why, and how, He is working it out. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the many single doctrinal parts ultimately fit together, and then, for the first time, the whole picture burst joyfully into view.

It was like being so close to one tree at a time I could not see the forest. I had to examine every doctrinal tree in the religious forest. Many, as I had been brought up to believe them, were felled on close examination in the Bible. New doctrinal trees came into view. But finally, after years, I was able to see the whole forest of truth, with dead doctrinal trees removed.

That is why students at Ambassador College today are able to learn the truth much more rapidly than I could. That is why the readers of The Plain Truth, the regular listeners of The World Tomorrow program, and the students of the Ambassador College Correspondence Course are able to come to mature knowledge of the truth so quickly. The pioneer work has been done. The weeds have been removed. The very trunks of the trees of false doctrines have been chopped down and uprooted.

But I myself had to check carefully and test every doctrine, one at a time.

And so next, after repentance and surrender to God, came an intensive study of water baptism.

Disillusioned About Preachers

During my initial six months’ study, I had studied not only the Bible, but every book, booklet or tract I could get on the religious subjects under study. On the Sabbath question, I had sought out eagerly and studied avidly everything I could find against the Sabbath and supporting Sunday as the “Lord’s Day.” But I had tried to be fair, and searched also the literature on the other side of the question. But always the Bible was the sole authority. Thus I became quite familiar with Seventh-Day Adventist literature.

Never, however, did I attend any Seventh-Day Adventist church service.

Also I checked over carefully the literature of the Church of God, with headquarters at Stanberry, Missouri.

Upon surrender to God, I had lost all sense of animosity toward Mrs. O. J. Runcorn, the elderly lady who had started my wife on the religious “fanaticism” which proved to be God’s truth. We even came to call her and her husband our spiritual parents. Mrs. Armstrong and I visited with her frequently when in Salem at the home of my parents. Through her and her husband we became acquainted with a small group of “Church of God people” in Salem and near Jefferson, Oregon.

One day when we were in Salem we learned that a preacher of this Church of God had just arrived from Texas, an Elder Unzicker. He and his wife were staying at the home of a neighbor, member of the Church of God. Mrs. Armstrong and I walked across the street to this neighbor’s house to see him. I wanted to ask him questions about water baptism.

Questioning Other Ministers

Next I went to a Baptist minister in Portland, to learn why Baptists believe in baptism. He was courteous and patient, glad to explain his church’s teachings.

I went to a Seventh-Day Adventist minister. He, too, was courteous and glad to explain his belief, according to the Bible.

Then, finally, I went to see a minister of the Friends Church.

I asked him why the Quakers did not believe in water baptism. He explained the Quaker belief. They believe in spiritual, not water, baptism.

“Well, Herbert,” he said finally, “I’ll have to confess I can’t honestly justify our church position by the Bible. This very thing bothered me a great deal when I first felt called into the ministry. At first, I felt I could not consistently become a minister in the Friends Church because this stand on water baptism really bothered me. But then, I looked at some of the great preachers of the church (naming several, including my own great-uncle Thomas Armstrong), and they all seemed to be holy men of God. And so I decided that if such great and holy men could preach against water baptism, so could I.”

To me, this was disillusioning and discouraging. It showed me that ministers are human, like other people, after all. As a boy, I had somehow come to assume that ministers of religion are different from other people. Preachers were holy. Other people were sinners. Other people had human nature. But preachers were above the temptation and weaknesses of mortal humans. They were a sort of special species, about half way between ordinary humans and God. I had looked on ministers of religion with a sort of embarrassed awe. I think many people think of the clergy in similar manner.

Of course I was not a minister, and at that time did not ever expect to be. In my Bible study up to this point I had become painfully aware that “the heart [human] is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). This is true of every human, and I had to realize it included me. But I had to come to see that clergymen are human also—and perhaps have even a harder fight against temptation than laymen.

My Experience Utterly Unique

Actually, though I didn’t realize it then, I was, myself, being literally thrust into the Ministry of Christ, though not at all of my own seeking. And I know now that my experience was, in all probability, utterly unique! Most certainly the manner in which I was put into it was unlike any other I had heard of.

How does the average minister come to enter the clergy? I’m sure most choose the ministry in the same manner that other young men choose medicine, law, architecture or science as a life profession. So, naturally, they enter into whatever course of preparation is provided by their particular religion, church or denomination. Probably they enter a theological seminary. There they are taught the doctrines of their particular religious organization.

But I did not belong to any particular religion, church or sect. I did not choose the clergy as a profession. Actually, that would have been the very last choice in my case. But, though it was not yet realized, the profession I had chosen, after thorough self-analysis and survey of professions and occupations—journalism and advertising—provided the very background, training and experience to fit me for what I was now being drawn into.

I did not enter the course of study of some particular religion or church. I was not being taught by man! I had entered on the in-depth study of the Bible to prove my wife was wrong in a new religious belief. Being challenged also on the theory of evolution, my research led me to question even the existence of God and the authority of the Bible. And I had accepted the reality of the existence of God, and the authority of the Bible, only after finding incontrovertible proof.

How do most people come to believe what they do? The philosopher C. E. Ayres commented that few indeed ever stop to inquire in retrospect how they come to believe what they do, or why they believe it. Most people believe whatever they have been taught, or what they have read, or heard, or whatever their particular group, religion, church, political party, or area of the world believes. They simply “go along.” They carelessly assume because others do.

Our system of education encourages this. It fails abysmally to teach growing children to think for themselves, to question, to seek proof before believing. In school and college students are taught to accept and memorize whatever is in the textbook, or given in the lecture. They are graded on how well they have accepted and memorized what has been thus funnelled into their unsuspecting minds. And I know of no seminary that departs from this process, or encourages students to thoroughly question whether their sectarian doctrines are true.

Of course, too, people usually believe what they want to believe. That is to say, they refuse to believe what they don’t want to believe. But in my case I was forced, on thorough examination and research, to believe what, prior to that research, I had definitely and vigorously not wanted to believe. I was forced, to accept, on proof, that which I had started out to prove false. I was forced to admit, under most humiliating circumstances, on proof, what I had hoped to disprove.

And what I was forced, on proof, to accept was probably the most unpopular belief, and the hardest for most people to accept. But I had, against my wishes, found it to be true, and once proved true. I did finally come to embrace it with gladness and joy!

In no other manner, I believe, could the mind of anyone have been opened to see the most basic, vital truths of the revealed Message of God to mankind—the most important knowledge of all—utterly overlooked and unrealized by this world’s religions, churches and sects.

It was in this unique manner that I was brought to discover the missing dimension in education—the truth as to why humanity was put on this earth—the true purpose of human life—the cause of all the world’s unhappiness, unsolvable problems and evils—the difference between the true values and the false—the way that can be the only CAUSE of peace between nations, groups and individuals—the only cause of true success in life with happiness, peace, prosperity and abundance.

No, I know of no one who was thrust into the Ministry of Jesus Christ, untaught by man, but by the living Christ through His written Word, in the manner in which I was. I didn’t realize it yet, but I was being brought into His Ministry by the living Christ in a manner utterly unique, and totally unlike any other of which I know!

But back, now, to my study in regard to baptism.

Begotten of God

Finally the study of the subject of baptism was completed. There was no longer doubt. Peter had said: “repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). To Cornelius and his house, who already had received the Holy Spirit, Peter said: “Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Spirit as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord” (Acts 10:47-48).

It was a command. There was no promise of receiving the Holy Spirit until after being baptized—although Cornelius, the exception to the rule, had been begotten by the Holy Spirit prior to baptism. Yet even he was commanded to be baptized in water. What I had learned in this study on baptism is recounted in our free booklet All About Water Baptism.

And so I was baptized forthwith and without delay.

Immediately upon coming up out of the water, I definitely experienced a change in attitude and in mind generally. I had already repented and surrendered to God’s rule over my life. The natural carnal hostility to God and His Law already had gone.

Yet, now, for the first time, I felt clean! I knew, now, that the terribly heavy load of sin had been taken off my shoulders. Christ had paid the penalty for me. All past sins were now blotted out by His blood. My conscience was clean and clear.

For the first time in my life I experienced real inner PEACE of mind! I realized, as never before, how futile and useless and foolish are the ways of this world, on which most people set so much store. There was a quiet, wonderful happiness of mind in the sure knowledge that now I was actually a begotten son of God! I could really call God Father!

There were no excitable physical sensations or exhilarating feelings running up and down the spine. Nothing of the nervous system. That is physical—not spiritual. Nothing of the senses—nothing sensual, as some people, diabolically misled and deceived claim to experience. But there was a knowing! There was an unmistakable renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2).

For six months I had struggled night and day, with a carnal mind, to learn the truth about one single doctrine in the Bible. Prior to that my wife and I had read the Bible clear through—but I had not understood a WORD of it! Most of the time I asked my wife to do the reading, because she could read faster. We got through quicker. But it was like reading or listening to a foreign language. I simply could not UNDERSTAND the BIBLE!

But now, from this point of baptism on, a strange, wonderful, delightful new thing took place. I could read the Bible and understand what I read! Of course I could not understand the whole Bible in five or ten minutes. I still had to study it a doctrine at a time. But it was understandable! It made sense! Even though it took time, I was now getting some place. But I was comprehending and learning so much faster than during that initial six months’ study!

It was like a miracle! And indeed, it WAS a miracle! The very Holy Spirit of God had come into and renewed my mind. I had been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the true Body of Christ, the Church of God—but I did not realize that fact literally. I was still to search earnestly to find the one and only true Church which Jesus founded, before recognizing fully He had already placed me in it! •

Researching the Bible and Darwin (Chapt. 16 - Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong)

We had moved to the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 1924. My wife’s brother, Walter Dillon, and her sister Bertha, had driven Walter’s Model T Ford back to Iowa in August. Walter finished his junior year at Simpson College in Indianola, 1924-1925 school year, and Bertha continued teaching at the same school where she had taught before the Oregon trip.

During that third college year at Simpson, Walter had married a blonde girl of German background whose name was Hertha. In June, 1925, Walter and his young wife, together with Bertha and my wife’s father, had returned to Oregon. With a new bride to support, it was necessary for Walter to go back to teaching school, as he had done before entering Simpson. Both he and Bertha obtained teaching jobs, and my father-in-law bought a small-town store.

During the following years, Walter attended summer sessions at the University of Oregon, and managed also to take, part of the time, some night extension courses at the university, in Portland. Walter kept this schedule, while teaching, until he earned his B.A. at the university, and later his M.A. He soon moved up to a principalship, and finally became principal at the largest grade school in Oregon, outside of Portland.

Walter’s wife had been indoctrinated with the theory of evolution in college. One day she and I became engaged in a discussion. The evolutionary doctrine came into the conversation. I mentioned that I was not convinced of its validity.

Accused of Being Ignorant

“Herbert Armstrong, you are simply ignorant!” accused Hertha. Her words stabbed deeply into what was left of my ego. “One is uneducated, and ignorant, unless he believes in evolution. All educated people now believe it.”

That accusation came hot on the heels of this Sabbath challenge from my wife. Of course, Hertha was only about 19, and had had but her freshman year in college. She was yet immature enough to be a bit oversold on what had been presented to her as a mark of intellectual distinction. Nevertheless, her manner was cutting, and a bit sarcastic, and I accepted it as a challenge.

“Hertha,” I responded, “I am just starting a study of the Bible. I intend to include in this research a thorough study of the Biblical account of creation. Since it is admittedly one of the two—evolution or special creation—I will include an in-depth study of evolution. I feel sure that a thorough study into both sides will show that it is you who are ignorant, and that you merely studied one side of a two-sided question in freshman biology, and accepted what was funnelled into your mind without question. And if and when I do, I’m going to make you EAT those words!”

And so it developed that I now had a double challenge to go to work on—a dual subject involving both the Biblical claims for special creation, and also a more in-depth study than before into texts on biology, geology, paleontology, and the various works on the theory of evolution.

Actually, this is simply the study into the two possibilities of origins. It threw me directly into an in-depth research of what is perhaps the most basic of all knowledge—the very starting point in the acquisition of knowledge—the search for the correct concept through which to view all facts.

The two subjects—or, rather, the two sides of the same subject of origins—should be unprejudicially and objectively studied together, yet seldom are!

Most believers in the Bible and in the existence of God have probably just grown up believing it, because they were reared in an atmosphere where it was believed. But perhaps few ever studied into it deeply enough to obtain irrefutable proof.

Likewise, the educated, who have gone on through college or university, have, in the main, been taught the theory of evolution as a belief. They have accepted it, in all probability, without having given any serious or thorough study of the Biblical claims.

I had come to the point where I wanted the truth!

I now had the time on my hands. I was willing to pay the price of thorough and in-depth research to be sure!

The reader is reminded that I had chosen, instead of the university, the process of self-education, selecting my own courses of study. I had studied diligently, after leaving high school at age 18, and continuously up to this incident in 1926. But I was now entering on a field of research in which previous study had been minimal.

I began this intensified study by obtaining everything I could find in the way of books, pamphlets and other literature both for and against what was often called “the Jewish Sabbath.” I wanted, not only everything I could lay hands on, on the case for Sunday, and against the 7th-day Sabbath. I wanted, also, the arguments or proponents for it, which I hoped to be able honestly to refute.

At the same time, I found, in the Portland Public Library, many scientific works either directly on evolution, or as a teaching in textbooks on biology, paleontology and geology. Also I found books by scientists and doctors of philosophy puncturing many holes in the evolutionary hypothesis. Strangely, even the critics of evolution, being themselves scientific men, paradoxically accepted the very theory they so ably refuted.

But, reading first the works of Darwin, Haeckel, Spencer, Huxley, Vogt, and more recent and modern authorities, the evolutionary postulate began to become very convincing.

It became apparent early that the real and thorough-going evolutionists universally agreed that evolution excluded the possibility of the existence of God! While some of the lesser lights professed a sort of fence-straddling theistic evolution, I soon learned that the real dyed-in-the-wool evolutionists all were atheists. Evolution could not honestly be reconciled with the first chapter of Genesis!

Does God Exist?

And so it came about that, very early in this study of evolution and of the Bible, actual doubts came into my mind as to the existence of God!

In a very real sense, this was a good thing. I had always assumed the existence of God because I had been taught it from childhood. I had grown up in Sunday school. I simply took it for granted.

Now, suddenly, I realized I had never proved whether there is a God. Since the existence of God is the very first basis for religious belief and authority—and since the inspiration of the Bible by such a God as His revelation to mankind is the secondary and companion basis for faith and practice, I realized that the place to start was to prove whether God exists and whether the Holy Bible is His revelation of knowledge and information for mankind.

I had nothing but time on my hands. I rose early and studied. Most mornings I was standing at the front entrance of the Public Library when its doors were opened. Most evenings I left the Library at 9 p.m., closing time. Most nights I continued study at home until my wife, at 1 a.m. or later, would waken from her sleep and urge me to break off and get to bed.

I delved into science. I learned the facts about radioactive elements. I learned how radioactivity proves there has been no past eternity of matter. There was a time when matter did not exist. Then there came a time when matter came into existence. This was creation, one of several proofs of God.

By the laws of science, including the law of bio-genesis, that only life can beget life—that dead matter cannot produce life—that the living cannot come from the not-living, by these laws came proof that God exists. In the Bible I found one quoted, saying in the first person, “I am God.” This God was quoted directly in Scriptures, proved to have been written hundreds of years before Christ, pronouncing the future fates of every major city and nation in the ancient world. I delved into history. I learned that these prophecies, in every instance (except in prophecies pertaining to a time yet future), had come to pass precisely as written!

Refuting Evolution

I studied the creation account in the Bible. It is not all in Genesis 1. I studied it all! I studied evolution. At first the evolutionary theory seemed very convincing—just as it does to freshmen students in most colleges and universities.

I noted evidences of comparative anatomy. But these evidences were not, in themselves, proof. They merely tended to make the theory appear more reasonable if proved. I noted tests and discoveries of embryology. These, too, were not proof, but only supporting evidence if evolution were proved.

I noticed that Lamarck’s original theory of use and disuse, once accepted as science, had been laughed out of school. I learned that the once scientific spiral-nebular theory of the earth’s existence had become the present-day laughing stock, supplanted by (in 1926) Professor Chamberlin’s planetesimal hypothesis. I sought out the facts of Darwin’s life. I learned the facts about his continual sickness—about his preconceived theory and inductive process of reasoning in searching for such facts and arguments as would sustain his theory.

I researched the facts about his tour on the good ship Beagle. I read of how he admitted there were perplexing problems in his theories and in what he had written, but that he nevertheless continued to promulgate evolution. I learned how his colleagues glossed over these perplexing problems and propagandized his theory into scientific acceptance.

Then I came to the matter of the human mind. As far back as 1926 I was concerned about the vast gulf between animal brain and human mind. Could that gulf have been bridged by evolution? It appeared that, even if the evolutionary process were possible, in reality the time required to bridge this gulf in intellectual development would have been millions of times longer than what geology and paleontology would indicate.

But, most important, I knew that I, with my mind, am superior to anything my mind can devise, and that I can make. Likewise, it became axiomatic that nothing less than the intelligence of my mind could have produced something superior to itself—my mind! Of necessity, the very presence of human intellect necessitates a superior and greater Intellect to have designed, devised, and produced the human mind! It could not have been produced by natural causes, and resident forces, as evolution presupposes. Unintelligence could not produce intelligence superior to itself! Rational common sense demanded a Creator of superior mind!

I came to see that there was only one possible proof of evolution as a fact. That was the assumption that, in the study of paleontology, the most simple fossils were always in the oldest strata, laid down first; while, as we progress into strata of later deposition, the fossils found in them become gradually more complex, tending toward advancing intelligence.

That one claim, I finally determined, was the trunk of the tree of evolution. If the trunk stood, the theory appeared proved. If I could chop down the trunk, the entire tree would fall with it.

I began a search to learn how these scientists determined the age of strata. I was months finding it. None of the texts I searched seemed to explain anything about it. This trunk of the tree was carelessly assumed—without proof.

Were the oldest strata always on the bottom—the next oldest next to the bottom, the most recent on the top? Finally I found it in a recognized text on geology authored by Prof. Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin. No, sometimes the most recent were actually below the most ancient strata. The age of strata was not determined by stages of depth. The depth of strata varied in different parts of the world.

How, then, was the age of strata determined? Why, I finally discovered in this very reputable authority, their age was determined by the fossils found in them. Since the geologists “knew” their evolutionary theory was true, and since they had estimated how many millions of years ago a certain fossil specimen might have lived, that age determined the age of the strata!

In other words, they assumed the age of the strata by the supposition that their theory of evolution was true. And they “proved” their theory was true by the supposition of the progressive ages of the strata in which fossil remains had been found! This was arguing in a circle!

The trunk of the evolutionary tree was chopped down. There was no proof!

I wrote a short paper on this discovery. I showed it to the head librarian of the technical and science department of a very large library.

“Mr. Armstrong,” she said, “you have an uncanny knack of getting right to the crux of a problem. Yes, I have to admit you have chopped down the trunk of the tree. You have robbed me of proof! But, Mr. Armstrong, I still have to go on believing in evolution. I have done graduate work at Columbia, at the University of Chicago, and other top-level institutions. I have spent my life in the atmosphere of science and in the company of scientific people. I am so steeped in it that I could not root it from my mind!”

What a pitiful confession, from one so steeped in “the wisdom of this world.”

The Creation MEMORIAL

I had disproved the theory of evolution. I had found proof of creation—proof of the existence of God—proof of the divine inspiration of the Bible.

Now I had a basis for belief. Now I had a solid foundation on which to build. The Bible had proved itself to contain authority. I had now studied far enough to know that I must live by it, and that I shall finally be judged by it—not by men, nor by man’s church denominations, theories, theologies, tenets, doctrines, or pronouncements. I would be judged by Almighty God finally, and according to the Bible!

So now I began to study further into this Sabbath question.

Of course I had procured all the pamphlets, books and booklets I could find in defense of Sunday observance, and purporting to refute the “Jewish Sabbath.”

Especially I sought out eagerly everything claiming apostolic observance of Sunday as “the Christian Sabbath.” Early in my study, I learned about the many Bible helps—the concordances, which list alphabetically all the words used in the Bible, showing where they are used, and what Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic word was originally written—the Bible Dictionaries, the Bible encyclopedias, the commentaries, etc., etc.

From the exhaustive concordances I soon learned that the command I sought, “Thou shalt keep Sunday,” was nowhere to be found in the Bible. In fact the word “Sunday” was not used in the Bible. That surprised me.

I really became excited, however, when I learned that there are eight places in the New Testament where the phrase “first day of the week” appears. And I read eagerly arguments in tracts or booklets claiming that these established that the original apostles were holding their weekly worship services on “the first day of the week”—which is Sunday.

But I became painfully disappointed on learning by more careful study, that there was not a single instance of a religious service being held on the hours we call Sunday—Saturday midnight to Sunday midnight. The Apostle Paul, after spending a “Saturday” Sabbath with the church at Troas, preached to them Saturday night until midnight. But although, in the Biblical manner of ending each day and beginning the next at sunset, that was—Biblically speaking—on “the first day of the week,” it was not Sunday, but Saturday night, lasting until Sunday began at midnight.

I was further disappointed in this case, when I discovered on careful study, that on that Sunday Paul indulged in the labor of walking some 19 miles to Assos. The others of Paul’s company had sailed, beginning sunset when the Sabbath ended, around the peninsula, some 65 miles to Assos. By walking the 19 miles straight across, on Sunday, Paul had gained the extra time to continue speaking to the people Saturday night.

So my effort to find a command to observe Sunday met with disappointment.

I found there is no command to observe Sunday. Sunday is nowhere called holy time, but to my chagrin, I found this “Jewish Sabbath” is, and is said to be holy to God. There was not even a single example of any religious meeting having been held on the hours called Sunday!

On the other hand, I had to learn, like it or not, that Jesus kept the Sabbath day “as His custom was,” and the Apostle Paul kept it “as his manner was.” Also Paul spent many Sabbath days preaching and holding weekly services, and in one instance the Gentiles waited a whole week in order to be able to come and hear Paul preach the same words on the following Sabbath!

I learned that creation is the very proof of God! A heathen comes along, pointing to an idol made by man’s hands out of wood, stone or marble or gold.

“This idol is the real god,” he says. “How can you prove your God is superior to this idol that I worship?”

“Why,” I answer, “My God is the creator. He created the wood, stone, marble or gold that your god is made of. He created man, and man, a created being, made that idol. Therefore my God is greater than your idol because it is only a particle of what my God made!”

Another comes along and says, “I worship the sun. We get our light from the sun. It warms the earth and makes vegetation grow. I think the sun is God.”

“But,” I reply, “the true God created the sun. He created light. He created force, energy, and life. He makes the sun shine on the earth. He controls the sun, because He controls all the forces of His creation. He is supreme ruler over His universe.”

Then I began to see that on the very seventh day of creation week, God set that day aside from other days. On that day He rested from all He had created by work. On that day he created the Sabbath, not by work, but by rest, putting His divine presence in it! He made it holy time. No man has authority to make future time holy. No group of men—no church! Only God is holy! Only God can make things holy. The Sabbath is a constantly recurring space of time, marked off by the setting of the sun. God made every recurring Sabbath holy and commanded man (Exodus 20) to keep it holy.

Why did He do it? Why does it make any difference?

I found it in the special Sabbath covenant in Exodus 31:12-18. He made it the sign between Him and His people. A sign is a mark of identity. First, it is a sign that God is the Creator, because it is a memorial of creation—the creation is the proof of God—it identifies Him. No other space of time could be a memorial of creation. Thus God chose that very space of time for man to assemble for worship which keeps man in the knowledge of the true identity of God as the Creator. Every nation which has not kept the Sabbath has worshipped the created rather than the Creator. It is a sign that identifies God’s own people, because it is they who obey God in this commandment, while this is the very commandment which everyone else regards as the least of the commandments—which they rebel against obeying!

God is the one you obey. The word Lord means Master—the one you obey! This is the one point on which the largest number of people refuse to obey the true God, thus proving they are not His people!

Law and Grace

I studied carefully everything I could obtain which attempted to refute the Sabbath. I wanted, more than anything on earth, to refute it—to prove that Sunday was the true Christian Sabbath, or “Lord’s Day.”

I read the arguments about “law or grace.”

I was pointed to, and read, Romans 3:20: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight.”

But I looked into the Bible, and found the pamphlet had left out the rest of the verse which says: “for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” That is true, because I read in I John 3:4 that the Bible definition of sin is not man’s conscience, or his church “don’ts,” but “Sin is the transgression of the law.” Naturally, then, the knowledge of sin comes by the law.

And I discovered the pamphlet forgot to quote the 31st verse:

“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

I read in a pamphlet, “…the law worketh wrath” (Rom. 4:15).

I turned to my Bible and read the rest of the same verse: “for where no law is, there is no transgression.” Of course! Because the law defines sin. Sin is disobedience of the law!

I read in one of the pamphlets that the law was an evil thing, contrary to our best interests. But then I read in Romans 7: “Is the law sin? God forbid! Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said ‘Thou shalt not covet.’” And “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” And again, “For we know that the law is spiritual” (verses 7,12,14).

I learned that grace is pardon, through the blood of Christ, for having transgressed the law. But if a human judge pardons a man for breaking a civil or criminal law, that pardon does not repeal the law. The man is pardoned so that he may now obey the law. And God pardons only after we repent of sin!

The Bitter Pill

But do not suppose I quickly or easily came to admit my wife had been right, or to accept the seventh-day Sabbath as the truth of the Bible.

I spent a solid six months of virtual night-and-day, seven-day-a-week study and research, in a determined effort to find just the opposite.

I searched in vain for any authority in the Bible to establish Sunday as the day for Christian worship. I even studied Greek sufficiently to run down every possible questionable text in the original Greek.

I studied the Commentaries. I studied the Lexicons and Robertsons’s Grammar of the Greek New Testament. Then I studied history. I delved into encyclopedias—the Britannica, the Americana, and several religious encyclopedias. I searched the Jewish Encyclopedia, and the Catholic Encyclopedia. I read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, especially his chapter 15 dealing with the religious history of the first four hundred years after Christ. And one of the most convincing evidences against Sunday was in the history of how and when it began.

I left no stone unturned.

I found clever arguments. I will confess that, so eager was I to overthrow this Sabbath belief of my wife, at one point in this intensive study I believed I might possibly have been able to use arguments to confuse and upset my wife on the Sabbath question. But there was no temptation to try to do it. I knew these arguments were not honest! I could not deliberately try to deceive my wife with dishonest arguments. The thought was immediately pushed aside. I know now she could not have been deceived.

Finally, after six months, the truth had become crystal clear. At last I knew what was the truth. Once again, God had taken me to a licking!

It had been bewildering—utterly frustrating! It seemed as if some mysterious, invisible hand was disintegrating every business I started!

That was precisely what was happening! The hand of God was taking away every activity on which my heart had been set—the business success before whose shrine I had worshipped. This zeal to become important in the business world had become an idol. God was destroying the idol. He was knocking me down—again and again! He was puncturing the ego, deflating the vanity.

Midas in Reverse

At age 16 ambition had been aroused. I began to study constantly—to work at self-improvement—to prod and drive myself on and on. I had sought the jobs which would provide training and experience for the future. This had led to travel, to contacts with big and important men, multimillionaire executives.

At twenty-eight a publishers’ representative business had been built in Chicago which produced an income equivalent to some $35,000 a year measured by today’s dollar value. The flash depression of 1920 had swept it away. At age thirty, discouraged, broken in spirit, I was removed from it entirely.

Then, in Oregon, had come the advertising service for laundries. It was growing and multiplying rapidly. After one year, in the fall of 1926, the fees were grossing close to $1,000 per month. I saw visions of a personal net income mounting to from $300,000 to a half million a year with expansion to national proportions. Then an action by the Laundryowners National Association swept the laundry advertising business out from under my feet.

It seemed that I was King Midas in reverse. Every material money-making enterprise I started promised gold, but turned to nothing! They vanished like mirages on a desert.

Yes, God Almighty the Creator, was knocking me down—again and again. As often as I got back to my feet to fight, on starting another business or enterprise, another blow of utter and bitter defeat seemed to strike me from behind by an unseen hand. I was being “softened” for the final knock-out of material ambition.

Now came the greatest inner battle of my life.

To accept this truth meant—so I supposed—to cut me off from all former friends, acquaintances and business associates. I had come to meet some of the independent “Sabbath-keepers” down around Salem and the Willamette Valley. Some of them were what I then, in my pride and conceit, regarded as backwoods “hillbillies.” None were of the financial and social position of those I had associated with.

My associations and pride had led me to “look down upon” this class of people. I had been ambitious to hobnob with the wealthy and the cultural.

I saw plainly what a decision was before me. To accept this truth meant to throw in my lot for life with a class of people I had always looked on as inferior. I learned later that God looks on the heart, and these humble people were the real salt of the earth. But I was then still looking on the outward appearance. It meant being cut off completely and forever from all to which I had aspired. It meant a total crushing of vanity. It meant a total change of life!

I counted the cost!

But then, I had been beaten down. I had been humiliated. I had been broken in spirit, frustrated. I had come to look on this formerly esteemed self as a failure. I now took another good look at myself.

And I acknowledged: “I’m nothing but a burned-out old hunk of junk.”

I realized I had been a swellheaded egotistical jackass.

Finally, in desperation, I threw myself on God’s mercy. I said to God that I knew, now, that I was nothing but a burned-out hunk of junk. My life was worth nothing more to me. I said to God that I knew now I had nothing to offer Him—but if He would forgive me—if He could have any use whatsoever for such a worthless dreg of humanity, that He could have my life; I knew it was worthless, but if He could do anything with it, He could have it—I was willing to give this worthless self to Him—I wanted to accept Jesus Christ as personal Saviour!

I meant it! It was the toughest battle I ever fought. It was a battle for life. I lost that battle, as I had been recently losing all battles. I realized Jesus Christ had bought and paid for my life. I gave in. I surrendered, unconditionally. I told Christ He could have what was left of me! I didn’t think I was worth saving!

Jesus said, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” I then and there gave up my life—not knowing that this was the only way to really find it!

It was humiliating to have to admit my wife had been right, and I had been wrong. It was disillusioning to learn, on studying the Bible for the first time, that what I had been taught in Sunday school was, in so many basic instances, the very opposite of what the Bible plainly states. It was shocking to learn that “all these churches were wrong” after all!

But I did, later, have one satisfaction. I wrote up a long manuscript about the Sabbath, finally tying it up with evolution, and proving evolution false. I gave it to my sister-in-law, Mrs. Dillon. She read it unsuspectingly. Before she realized what she was reading, she had accepted the evidence and proof that evolution was false.

“You tricked me!” she exclaimed.

But she did have to “eat those words”! •

Launching a New Business (Chapt. 15 - Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong)

I shall never forget my first view of the Rocky Mountains from a distance. While I had traveled the Alleghenies and the Blue Mountains in the east, I had never seen any really high mountains. I had always wondered what they would look like. They seemed very lofty and awe-inspiring to me.

We drove several miles out of our way in order to dip down into the state of Colorado, before we entered Wyoming. We wanted to be able to say we had been in that state. At Cheyenne we drove up hill to the north end of town to the largest camp we had seen.

But by this time all my hand-made wooden folding cots had broken down, and the canvas tops had split down the middle. We threw them away. From Cheyenne on, we slept on the ground.

In the higher altitudes the nights became so cold we were forced to spread the bed covers on the ground inside the tent, making one long bed. All six of us lined up side by side in that one bed on the ground, to keep each other warm.

At Evanston, Wyoming, the car broke down. We were detained there 1½ days while it was fixed in a garage.

During our journey across Wyoming, Dorothy’s arm was bitten by a spider. It swelled up, and she was taken to a doctor. It must have been about this time that we had to telegraph my father to wire us additional funds. We had run out of food, gasoline, and money. Dorothy’s arm had to be soaked in hot Epsom-salts water, and held high continually. Mrs. Armstrong, Bertha, and I had to take turns, on one day’s driving, holding that arm, lest it hang down.

We stopped off one full day in Salt Lake City. Walter and I played some tennis on public courts near the camping grounds—we were carrying our tennis rackets with us. We took the guided tour around the Mormon grounds and through the Tabernacle.

Premonition of Danger

At Weiser, Idaho, we visited a day and a half with the families of two of my wife’s uncles, Benjamin and Walter Talboy. Walter later held a high government position in Idaho, and once ran for governor.

Leaving Weiser in the late afternoon, we were winding around the “figure eight” sharp curves of the highway following the course of the Snake River. Suddenly, my wife cried out:

“I’m afraid to go further! For the past hour I’ve been having a terrible premonition of danger! I can’t explain it—but I just can’t keep it to myself any longer.”

“That’s strange,” exclaimed Walter. “I didn’t want to say anything—but I’ve been fighting off the same feeling.”

That was enough for all of us. It seemed foolish, in a way. Yet we were afraid to go on. We turned back toward Weiser.

“I’m simply too nervous to drive any further,” explained Walt. I took over the wheel. Just before entering Weiser, on a short down-hill slope, I made the horrifying discovery that our brakes had gone out! There were no brakes. There was no reverse! I drove the car into a garage. We were kept one more night at the Talboy relatives in Weiser. Had we not heeded those premonitions, we might have been killed crashing down steep mountain grades around sharp curves without brakes. Later we learned that at the precise hour my wife and Walter had been having their premonitions, my mother in Salem, Oregon, was also disturbed by a terrible premonition concerning our safety. It had grown so strong on her she was forced to remove her hands from the dishwater, and go to a bedroom to pray for our safety! I do not try to explain this. I am merely recording what actually happened!

At Last—We Arrive

Finally, July 3, we made our last homestretch lap from Pendleton, Oregon. That was a long day’s drive in a Model T. But that night, after dark, we arrived at my father’s home in Salem, Oregon, on the eve of July 4.

We had been 18 days on the way. It was fast traveling compared to the covered wagon days. Yet, today you can travel from New York to Los Angeles—coast to coast—in 4½ hours, by scheduled passenger jet plane! Allowing for the time difference, if I leave New York at 5 in the evening, after a full day of business conferences with radio stations and our overseas advertising agents, I can arrive in Los Angeles about 6:30 the same evening!

Few people realize the rapid pace at which this world is traveling today—toward its own destruction! It is time we slow down to realize how far this machine age—atomic age—space age has plummeted us in these few short years since 1924!

My Father Had Grown Up!

I had not seen my father, my youngest brother Dwight, or my sister Mary, for twelve years! Dwight and his twin sister Mary had been eight years old when they moved to the west. Now they were twenty.

But the biggest change of all was in my father. In 1912, when I was only twenty, I had felt rather sorry for my father. At that time I knew so much more than he! But I was simply amazed at how much my father had learned in those 12 years. It seems most young men know more than Dad, but they grow out of it later. I could see, now, that he knew more than I! Now I had to look up to my father with respect!

He had a nice home which he had planned and built. It was paid for. He didn’t owe any man a cent. He had a comfortable salary as a heating engineer. When we found ourselves out of money on the way out—buying extra tires and such things—he had immediately wired me $200.

How many young men, getting to “know it all” from age 16 to 20, have to wait until in their middle thirties to learn how much they ought to respect their fathers! And my father was a good man. He never smoked. He never drank, never used profanity. He never took advantage of another man! I honor and respect his memory. He died in April, 1933, in his 70th year.

After a few weeks’ visit with my folks, we drove to Portland to visit my wife’s “Uncle Dick” Talboy, an attorney. Our elder son, Richard David, was named after him. He was an Oregon pioneer, having migrated from Iowa first in 1905. He attended Stanford University in California in 1906 and 1907. He returned to Des Moines to finish his law course at Drake University in 1907, returning to Oregon in 1913. It has been his home ever since.

The very next day Mr. Talboy had to transact some legal business at the courthouse in Vancouver, Washington—just across the interstate bridge from Portland. He invited me to go along. I had not yet been in the state of Washington, and was anxious to add one more state to my list.

Just as we emerged from the bridge, in Vancouver, I saw the plant of the local daily newspaper, The Columbian.

Another Survey

I asked if I might not hop out right there and contact the newspaper regarding a survey while Mr. Talboy went on to the Court House.

The owner and editor was on a vacation at Seaside, but the Business Manager, Samuel T. Hopkins—who was later to become a business partner of mine—was in. Enthusiastic over the survey idea, he felt sure Mr. Herbert Campbell, the owner, would be interested on his return. I said I would call back the following week. We were welcome to remain and visit at the home of my wife’s uncle. The following week, I found Mr. Campbell as interested in the survey idea as Mr. Hopkins.

“I have only one objection,” he said. “I believe it is going to take a man of your specialized merchandising and advertising experience to follow it up and make it pay. We have no such man here. Now what I want to know is, can a newspaper of our size afford to employ a man of your experience and ability permanently?”

Here was a ludicrous paradox.

Here I was, down and out financially, my clothes now threadbare. And here was a newspaper publisher asking if he could afford to employ me! Yet I had had a training and specialized experience such as comes to few men. I had taken a severe beating by the Chicago debacle, but I still had the cocky and confident manner. I spoke with a tone of knowing what I was talking about. Evidently this impressed Mr. Campbell sufficiently that did not notice my rather run-down appearance.

The answer came like a flash.

“No, you cannot!” I said positively.

This was a challenge. Herbert Campbell was cocky,

“Well, I think we CAN! How much is it going to cost us?”

I had to think fast. Was I going to turn down a survey, because I felt too important to take a permanent job on a small city newspaper? I made a quick compromise proposition.

“Tell you what I’ll do,” I shot back. “I’ll put on the survey for a flat fee of $500. That will take a week or ten days. Then I will stay on your staff as a merchandising specialist for six months only, at a salary of $100 per week. Take it or leave it!”

“O.K. I’ll take it,” he snapped. I had my wife’s uncle draw up a legal contract, which he signed a day or so later.

I rented a house in Vancouver, and started on the survey.

Pulling a Clothier Out of the Red

About the time we started on the survey in Vancouver, Walter and Bertha Dillon, my wife’s brother and sister started in the Model T their return trip to Iowa; Walter to enter his Junior year at Simpson College, and Bertha for another year of school teaching.

This time Mrs. Armstrong took part in the survey, and proved very adept at eliciting confidential information from housewives of their attitudes and feelings toward Vancouver stores.

The survey soon was completed, together with a complete typed summary of all data, interviews, and tabulations of statistics, as well as an analysis of conditions and recommendations.

With this data, I began counselling with merchants about individual merchandising problems.

One clothing store, for example, was running in the red. The owner asked if I could help him. I insisted on full access to his books and all information. Finally he consented.

The survey had uncovered special facts about customer attitude toward this store. One line this store carried was Hart Schaffner & Marx clothes. I knew that this firm was prepared to extend considerable dealer-help. At my request they sent a qualified representative to counsel with me and this merchant.

A new policy was inaugurated. Certain changes were made. Until now this store had not carried the more snappy styles young men liked. The owner, past middle age, had bought the older men’s styles of his personal liking. I induced him to trust the Hart Schaffner & Marx representative fully with selections in ordering.

Also I recommended that he stock in addition snappiest young men’s styles in a less expensive line.

Then we began a big-space advertising campaign in the Columbian. I wrote and laid out all his ads. I induced him to spend 7% of sales in this advertising campaign.

“But,” he protested, “You have shown me that Harvard Bureau of Business Research figures show that no retail clothing store ought to spend more than 4% for advertising.”

“That’s right,” I explained, “but this big-space advertising will quickly build up your volume. The amount, in dollars, spent in advertising will remain the same. But, as sales volume increases, the advertising expenditure will become an increasingly smaller percentage of sales.” Also I explained to him it might take six months before his total expenditures would go below his total income, and his books would get out of the red.

It took a lot of courage. But it was a matter of accept my program or go bankrupt. He finally agreed.

It did take about six months. Twice before that time he lost his nerve and wanted to quit. Twice more I talked him into staying with it. At the end of six months his business was showing a profit. The sales continued to increase. So did his merchandising turnover. And likewise his profits. Finally he was able to sell his store at a substantial profit.

Discovering a New Business Potential

Soon I became virtually advertising manager for a leading hardware store, the largest department-drug store, a furniture store, a jewelry store, a dry-goods store, and others.

But my most important client turned out to be the local laundry. The general survey had brought out some startling facts about the laundry situation. I wanted more facts. So a further separate survey was made to get the facts and more definitely learn customer-attitude toward laundries.

I found that very few housewives entrusted their family wash to the laundry. We unearthed many suspicions. Many women assured me that laundries use harsh acids and chemicals which ruin clothes. This, I soon found, was not true.

“They shrink clothes,” said scores and scores of women.

“They fade colored things,” women assured me.

“How do you know?” both Mrs. Armstrong and I began asking women we interviewed. “Has the laundry ruined your things—have your colored clothes been faded or your woolens shrunk?”

“Oh mercy, no!” they would reply. “Why, I would never think of sending my things to the laundry.”

“Then how do you know the laundry mistreats things in this manner?” we would ask.

“Oh, I just know! Why, everybody knows how terrible laundries are on clothes,” would come the confident answer.

Scores of women said laundries would lose things and refuse to make good the losses. “The laundries will never make an adjustment or settle a claim,” women assured us.

We found dozens of things wrong with the laundries—in the public mind.

Then I investigated conditions at the Vancouver Laundry, owned by a man of my name, J. J. C. Armstrong, no relation. Actually, I found that conditions were precisely the opposite of the general public conception.

The laundry washed clothes with a neutral chip soap—I think that particular laundry used Palmolive, a gentle facial soap. To add alkaline strength, without injury to clothes, they used an expensive soap builder—a controlled alkali, which could not harm a baby’s tenderest skin, could not injure sheerest silks or finest table linens, and yet possessed the strength to get greasiest overalls spotlessly clean. This harmless but effective soap builder was not available to consumers on the retail market. It was sold only in barrel quantities direct to laundries. It was the result of then recent and specialized scientific research, manufactured by one of the largest corporations in the laundry industry, a subsidiary of the Aluminum Corporation of America (ALCOA).

Through Mr. J. J. C. Armstrong I met a laundry chemist, Robert H. Hughes, a special technical representative of this company, the Cowles Detergent Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Hughes explained to me the chemistry of laundering—why we use soap to wash our hands, faces, or clothes.

How Soap Cleans

It’s a very fascinating story. Did you ever wonder what causes particles of dirt to cling to clothes—why clothes become soiled? Did you ever wonder how soap removes dirt?

I don’t believe the truth will bore you. Briefly, this is the story:

Naturally, dirt would fall off clothes instead of attaching itself to cloth, were it nor for the fact that an acid, or oil or grease, even in slightest amount, is present. This acid holds the dirt to the cloth. Laundries did not use acids, as so many people seemed to believe. There is acid already present on the clothes, else they would not become soiled.

Chemically, matter is either acid, alkali or neutral. These are chemical opposites.

Soap is made from two substances—fatty acid (oil or fat), and alkali. But alkali, if used alone, would injure and rot cloth. So in the soap factory the two substances, fatty acid and alkali, are mixed by a process called saponification. This converts the two into a new substance, which is neither acid nor alkali, but which we call soap.

If the soap be completely pure—a prominent soap used for faces and even babies is advertised as 99 and 44/100% pure—there is no free alkali in it. All the alkali has combined with the oil, tallow, or fat, and has been converted into soap. The alkaline content is now utterly harmless. Yet it has an alkaline action that will dissolve the acid that glues dirt to your skin or your clothes, so that the dirt is flushed off in the rinsing.

But a pure facial soap is not sufficiently alkaline to loosen the acid on badly soiled clothes. Therefore soap makers at the time of this story put a certain excess amount of alkali in the laundry soaps sold in stores to housewives. This excess alkali was called free alkali. It was not controlled, or neutralized, in the soap. Alkali is chemically a crystalline substance. In other words, it dilutes into and becomes part of the water. In clothes-washing, it soaks into the fiber meshes of the garment. Rinsing cannot remove it—it merely dilutes it. The soap and the dirt are flushed away in the rinsing—but the free alkali remains inside the fiber of the cloth. In the drying process it tends to eat or rot the cloth. It would even destroy shoe leather!

Now why does not a pure soap injure the cloth?

The answer is that, chemically, soap is a colloidal substance. In solution, or emulsion, it breaks up into thousands of tiny particles. But it does not become part of the water. Its thousands of minute particles discolor the water, float around in the water. In the agitation or rubbing of clothes-washing, the tiny soap particles are flushed in between the fiber meshes of the garment or cloth, but never soak into the fibers. They dissolve the acid, thus loosening the dirt. The agitation breaks up the dirt into tiny particles, loosened from the cloth. The tiny colloidal soap particles have a chemical affinity for the tiny dirt particles, which means the dirt particles cling to the soap particles. The rinsing flushes them away. Even if all the soap were not rinsed off, the alkali is not free but controlled by the soap, and could not eat or rot or harm the cloth.

This scientific soap builder sold by the Cowles Detergent Company contained great alkaline strength, but it was chemically in colloidal form, not crystalline, and the alkali was as completely controlled as in a 100% pure soap. Therefore it could not harm silks, woolens, or the sheerest, daintiest fabrics, although, it had the strength to wash clean the greasiest overalls. Also it restored colors, brought them out newer and sharper than before.

Since those days, however, there has been a complete revolution in the manufacture of clothes-washing detergents sold to housewives. Whether our big-space advertising of the dangers of the free-alkali laundry soaps to clothes then sold for home washing machines had bearing on it, I do not know.

But the chemists on the staffs of leading soap and detergent manufacturers have developed new synthetic detergents. Few housewives, if any, use soap in their home washing machines today. The first household synthetic detergent on the market was Dreft, produced by Proctor & Gamble, in 1933. Colgate came out with Vel later in the 30′s. Since, there have been many developments in the field of synthetic detergents. They are not yet perfect or foolproof, but chemists have not yet exhausted the possibilities of improvement.

Our campaigns were in the early days of the home washing machine. These home washers were crude, compared to today’s product. In our ads, and in special booklets, we “figured it out” and convinced many housewives it was less costly to send the family wash to the laundry.

A New Business Launched

I began to write big-space ads for this laundry. Armed with complete information of customer attitude and complete factual and scientific information about laundry processes, I was able to assure housewives that their sheerest, daintiest fabrics were actually safer at the laundry than in their own hands at home.

Soon these ads became an item of conversation among Vancouver women. It took time to dispel suspicions and build confidence. But gradually the laundry business began to increase.

Before this campaign, laundry business had consisted mainly of men’s shirts, and hotel business. But now the family bundle business gradually began coming to the laundry.

I found that the laundry industry was twelfth in size among American industries—yet, in aggressive methods, and advertising and merchandising, it was the least “alive,” and the most backward and undeveloped. I sensed, here, a tremendous field for a new advertising business.

I began to develop plans for a personalized, yet syndicated advertising service for leading laundries—one client in each city.

I learned that not all laundries were using as advanced methods as this Vancouver Laundry. Some laundries were still using as a soap builder plain caustic soda—free alkali. Some lacked efficiency methods of operation. Many were guilty of haggling with customers over claims of losses or injury, and of refusing to make losses good.

I had become closely acquainted with R. H. Hughes and his reputation among laundry owners as the leading laundry chemist and expert on production methods on the West Coast.

So, Mr. Hughes and I formed a partnership. As soon as my six months’ tenure with the Vancouver Columbian expired, we set out to establish a new business as a merchandising and advertising service for leading laundries.

I moved my family to Portland.

I would start off every campaign with a local merchandising survey, to determine the local customer attitude. We would accept no client unless the laundry owner would give Mr. Hughes complete latitude and authority within his plant, to install the latest scientific methods and equipment, eliminate lost motion, and speed up efficiency.

I had to be able to make big claims in the advertising. The client had to be able to deliver what the ads promised. The client had to agree to settle every claim without a question—the customer was always to be right in any complaint.

And Then … BANG!

The general appeal of the ads was syndicated—the same for all laundries. Yet certain factors peculiar to each local laundry were altered to comply with that particular client’s conditions. We ran two large-space ads each week for each client.

The new business started with great promise. Soon we had as clients leading laundries in Eugene, Corvallis, Albany, Salem, McMinnville, Oregon City, and Portland, Oregon; and in Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Ellensburg, Walla Walla, Olympia, Centralia, Chehalis, and Vancouver, Washington.

In six months the business volume of some of these laundries doubled. Our advertising and merchandising service was winning big results for clients.

No matter how many clients we should acquire, I had only one general advertising idea to think up and write for the entire number. The new business promised to grow to be a national, universally used service.

This would mean, in another two or three years, an income larger than I had ever before contemplated. Already our fees were grossing close to $1,000 a month. They appeared to promise to rise between $50,000 and $100,000 per month within two or three more years. I began to see visions of a personal net income of $300,000 to a half million dollars a year!

And then—the bottom fell out!

And through no fault or cause of our making. There was one unusual condition peculiar to the laundry industry. They were highly organized in their Laundryowners National Association.

Some bright advertising man, in an advertising agency in Indianapolis, Indiana, put over on the Laundryowners National Association a $5,000,000 advertising campaign for the entire industry—the entire amount to be spent by this agency in the big-circulation national women’s magazines, such as Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, etc. The campaign was to run three or more years. The Association was to pay for it by assessing each laundry-owner member within 1/2 of 1% of the maximum percent of sales volume a laundry could safely spend in advertising.

Every one of our customers was taxed by this campaign up to the limit they could safely spend. They had no alternative except to cancel out all their own private local advertising. Our field was literally swept out from under our feet.

In Chicago I had built a publishers’ representative business that brought me an income equivalent to well more than $50,000 a year or more before I was thirty. The flash depression of 1920 had swept away all my major clients, and with them my business.

Now, with a new business of much greater promise, all my clients were suddenly removed from possibility of access, through powers and forces entirely outside of my control.

It seemed, indeed, as if some invisible and mysterious hand were causing the earth to simply swallow up whatever business I started.

Reduced to Going Hungry

Soon every laundry client had been forced to drop all local advertising except one. I still had the account of one of the two largest laundries in Portland, running one ad a week in the Portland Oregonian. This supplied an income of $50 per month.

But $50 per month was not enough to pay house rent, and provide food and clothing for our family. We began to buy beans and such food as would provide maximum bulk and nourishment on minimum cost.

One time, a couple days before my monthly $50 check was due, we were behind in our rent, completely out of groceries except for some macaroni—we did not even have a grain of salt in the house; our gas and electricity had been shut off. We had a small heating stove in the living room, and nothing but old magazines for fuel.

My morale was fast descending to subbasement. I was not so cocky or self-confident now. It seemed almost as if I was being “softened” for a knock-out blow of some kind.

Religious Controversy Enters

Some little time prior to this, we had been visiting my parents in Salem. My wife had become acquainted with an elderly neighbor lady, Mrs. Ora Runcorn. Mrs. Runcorn was an avid student of the Bible.

Before our marriage my wife had been quite interested in Bible study. She had been for years an active Methodist.

After marriage, although she had not lost her interest in the Christian life and the Bible, she had not had the same opportunity to express it, or participate in religious fellowship with others. While we lived in Maywood, suburb of Chicago, we had joined the River Forest Methodist Church. The fellowship there had been more social than spiritual or Biblical.

But all Mrs. Armstrong’s active interest in things Biblical was reawakened when she became acquainted with Mrs. Runcorn. One day Mrs. Runcorn gave her a Bible study. She asked my wife to turn to a certain passage and read it. Then a second, then a third, and so on for about an hour. Mrs. Runcorn made no comment—gave no explanation or argument—just asked my wife to read aloud a series of Biblical passages.

“Why!” exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong in amazement, “do all these Scriptures say that I’ve been keeping the wrong day as the Sabbath all my life?”

“Well, do they?” asked Mrs. Runcorn. “Don’t ask me whether you have been wrong—you shouldn’t believe what any person tells you, but only what God tells you through the Bible. What does He tell you, there? What do you see there with your own eyes?”

“Why, it’s as plain as anything could be!” exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong. “Why, this is a wonderful discovery. I must rush back to tell my husband the good news. I know he’ll be overjoyed!”

A minute or so later, Mrs. Armstrong came running into my parents’ home, with the “good news.”

My jaw dropped!

This was the worst news I had ever heard! My wife gone into religious fanaticism!

“Have you gone crazy?” I asked, incredulously.

“Of course not! I was never more sure of anything in my life,” responded my wife with enthusiasm.

Indeed, I wondered if she really had lost her mind! Deciding to “keep Saturday for Sunday!” Why, that seemed like rank fanaticism! And my wife had always had such a sound mind! There was nothing shallow about her. She had always had a well-balanced mind, with depth.

But now, suddenly—this! It seemed incredible—preposterous!

“Loma,” I said sternly, “this is simply too ridiculous to believe! I am certainly not going to tolerate any such religious fanaticism in our family! You’ll have to give that up right here and now!”

But she wouldn’t!

“Doesn’t the Bible say that wives must be obedient to their husbands?” I asked.

“Yes, in the Lord, but not contrary to the Lord,” she came back.

It was amazing how many logical arguments came to my mind. But always she had the answer.

I felt I could not tolerate such humiliation. What would my friends say? What would former business acquaintances think? Nothing had ever hit me where it hurt so much—right smack in the heart of all my pride and vanity and conceit! And this mortifying blow had to fall immediately on top of confidence-crushing financial reverses!

In desperation, I said: “Loma, you can’t tell me that all these churches have been wrong all these hundreds of years! Why, aren’t these all Christ’s churches?”

“Then,” came back Mrs. Armstrong, “why do they all disagree on so many doctrines? Why does each one teach differently than the others?”

“But,” I still contended, “Isn’t the Bible the very source of the teaching of all these Christian churches? And they do all agree on observing Sunday! I’m sure the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt keep Sunday!’”

“Well, does it?” smiled my wife, handing me a Bible. “Show it to me, if it does—and I’ll do what it says.”

“I don’t know where to find it. You know I’m no Bible student, I could never understand the Bible. But I know the Bible must command the observance of Sunday, because all the churches observe Sunday, except the Seventh-Day Adventists, and they’re regarded as fanatics. The Sabbath was the day for the Jews.”

I even threatened divorce, if my wife refused to give up this fanaticism, though in my heart I didn’t really mean it. In our family divorce was a thing unheard of—and beside, I was very much in love with my wife—though at the moment I was boiling over with anger.

“If you can prove by the Bible that Christians are commanded to observe Sunday, then of course I’ll do what I see in the Bible!”

This was her challenge.

“O.K.,” I answered, “I’ll make you this proposition: I don’t know much about the Bible—I just never could seem to understand it. But I do have an analytical mind. I’ve become experienced in research into business problems, getting the facts and analyzing them. Now I’ll make a complete and thorough study of this question in the Bible. All these churches can’t be wrong. I’ll prove to you in the Bible that you are mistaken!”

This was in the autumn of 1926. My business was gone—all but the one laundry account in Portland, where we were living at the time. This one advertising account required only about 30 minutes a week of my time. I had time on my hands for this challenge.

And so it was that in the fall of 1926—crushed in spirit from business reverses not of my making—humiliated by what I regarded as wifely religious fanaticism, that I entered into an in-depth study of the Bible for the first time in my life. •