A Strange Path… So It Seems

SUN., JAN. 7, 1996, 8:08 PM
FARM, STUDY

The snow was an excuse for your not going to your regular service of worship today. You had some discontent about the car, the snowy roads offered an acceptable reason for staying home, but the potentially positive reason was to experience the televised service from the Crystal Cathedral, led by My servant Robert. You had that experience. You were disappointed. Yet it was valuable to you, in some ways I want you to appreciate.

You have little doubt that Pastor Schuller is a servant of Mine. I indicated this already, and I’ll reaffirm it here. He is on a path quite different from yours, and if the two of you could sit down and compare calls you certainly would agree about this difference. And yet there are some similarities, and you weren’t sufficiently aware of these.

The major similarity is you both are called to emphasize the positive nature of your “fields”. You are to focus on health as a positive quality of life, rather than on the various departures from health that are the focus of the medical model. He is called to preach Christianity as an inclusive, positive faith, not on sins, sins, and damnation for these on “judgment day”. If more were known about your view you would be considered a minority extremist, with an unbalanced approach to health. Likewise Robert, much more well-known, is also considered an extremist and, by many fundamentalists, a misguided liberal and, despite his testimonies, not a true Christian. You both have the same first name, but he wants to be called Robert, while you have increasingly preferred Bob. You are in the same age range, with comparable years of service in your professions.

I have called Robert to the founding of this unique church, in that area of the country in which you lived the first 22 years of your life. I have helped in the building of that unique structure and in the developing of the Hour of Power, an almost world-wide television ministry. The Holy Scriptures have nothing to say about such a ministry. But if this is a television age, why is it not a medium in which I am represented… and in a positive way? There are a few others, with somewhat similar calls… and also a few charlatans. (It sometimes can seem good to be “imitated”).

He is an ordained minister, with a partly natural and a partly developed TV personality. He has a big ego, along with a humble sense of having been chosen for this ministry. (He is somewhat like the apostle Paul in this respect). He realizes that this is a costly ministry, and he unashamedly asks for money from those who attend his church and those who are in his television “congregation”. He is famous, and he likes this fame. He has a 10 year goal “to change the world”, through the expansion of the Hour of Power.

In contrast, you have been called to be faithful, in a quiet, non-flambuoyant, private way. You are to come regularly and continually to hear Me offer you Teachings, which are to be written. You then are to keep these in an organized way, and are to re-read them (more often than you do). You are to compose a Letter, of 7 pages, now, each season of the year, based on some of these Teachings, which shall be read by, perhaps, 200 people. You are not called to expand this in any organized way. It is thus almost the complete opposite of the Hour of Power. The technology of your path is, by current standards, rather primitive (much closer to that of Holy Scripture, as originally compiled). You have no call, no desire, and little talent to ask people for money to support what you do. And with this you are comfortable.