Raising the Ruins

The Trumpet staff is thrilled to share an exciting development with our readers. We have just moved into a stunning new office building, freshly completed in January.

To us, however, this Hall of Administration is more than a building. It contains vital prophetic significance. That’s right.

Most of our readers know that this magazine views current events and social trends in the context of Bible prophecy. We submit that an entire third of the Holy Bible is devoted to prophecy, and that about 90 percent of that prophecy is for our time today. That prophecy includes the frightful fate of the American and British peoples, the remarkable rise of the Islamic world, the reemergence of a European empire, and the increasing camaraderie among the nations of the Orient.

But Bible prophecy also includes dramatic details of those who, in this end time, are doing God’s work. The God of all these astonishing forecasts is the same God who foretold the fate of the antediluvian world through Noah, the fate of Judah through Jeremiah, and the rise and fall of world-ruling empires—with specifically named kings—through the Prophet Daniel.

God always has a work. He always commissions a servant to deliver His message, as Amos 3:7 reveals.

We believe we are fulfilling a work God has commissioned for this end time—a work of warning (Ezekiel 33), a work of prophesying again (Revelation 10:11).

To speak only of prophecies related to world events would be ignoring certain, possibly more significant, prophecies about God’s work.

This is where our new administration building comes in.

How We Got Here

To understand this building’s significance requires a brief profile of the Church that supports this magazine.

The Philadelphia Church of God (pcg) broke away from the Worldwide Church of God in December 1989, almost four years after the founder of the Worldwide Church of God (wcg), Herbert W. Armstrong, died.

Mr. Armstrong had performed a powerful work for God. He was a man of prophecy, a philanthropist, humanitarian and educator (he built three liberal arts college campuses called Ambassador College). The message he proclaimed was more than just the doctrinal tenets of some unique religion—it was a beautiful way of life and truth undiscovered by science, not taught by education and misunderstood by religion, and that will one day cover the Earth.

When he died, the church Mr. Armstrong founded wanted nothing to do with any of the legacies he left behind—religious or otherwise. The new administration stopped proclaiming almost all of the prophecy Mr. Armstrong taught.

The pcg was founded to continue the work the wcg had abandoned—work that had become even more urgent because of the shortness of time before Christ’s Second Coming. This Church was so committed to this effort that we printed some of Mr. Armstrong’s literature—publications the wcg had taken out of circulation. wcg officials took us to court for copyright infringement, saying it was their “Christian duty” to keep Herbert W. Armstrong’s writings out of print. Then, miraculously, after a grueling six-year battle, they decided to sell us the copyrights to every work we were requesting.

This victory helped fulfill a prophecy in Amos 9:11 stating that “in that day”—referring to the end time—God would “raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen” and “raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old.” A tabernacle had certainly fallen, and here was God raising the ruins through a group of only several thousand people scattered around the world. That prophecy was partially fulfilled in our attainment of those copyrights from the wcg.

God wants our work to be a replica of the work He did through Herbert W. Armstrong—just with fewer people.

That is why, even while still embroiled in the legal fray, the pcg purchased 170 acres and raised up a small liberal arts college—under the charge of “raising the ruins”—patterning it after Ambassador College. That’s why the pcg embarked on a building program reminiscent of Mr. Armstrong’s.

Our college, founded in 2001, is appropriately named Herbert W. Armstrong College (see article, page 12). In 2004, it became the hub for all the pcg’s mail operations when the Mail Processing Center opened. That structure also houses the television department and the studio for the Key of David program, which now broadcasts weekly on over 200 stations worldwide.

In January of this year, the entirety of pcg operations moved to the property in north Edmond, Okla. The new 41-foot-tall administration building—towering prominently on countryside hosting small ranches and growing residential communities—is the Trumpet’s new home.

A Building With a Message

The Hall of Administration is 22,825 square feet—doubling the pcg’s executive space compared to the office suites where we used to work in downtown Edmond.

The 40-office building, with many open spaces for numerous cubicles, is a tremendous upgrade for our staff. The resources at our disposal will help us get God’s message to this world much more powerfully.

But it’s not just the work being done in that building that is helping God’s message go out. The building itself is a message. This edifice is a testament to our raising the ruins.

What is interesting is that the same week we broke ground on the Hall of Administration in 2004, a story came out in the Pasadena Star News stating that the wcg would be moving its headquarters operations off the Ambassador College campus in Pasadena and into the “smaller, less expensive trappings of an industrial building” in Glendora, Calif. (Oct. 25, 2004). As that formerly great “tabernacle” continued to fall, God showed His mighty hand by raising the ruins in Edmond.

God is building our work so we can deliver His message to this dying world. And even the building itself is a prophecy—it’s an incredible message! The book of Hebrews says about Noah’s work that even just the ark was a message in itself to that evil world (see Hebrews 11:7).

The structures we build send a message about what God is doing today, how He builds, and how He will soon rebuild this entire Earth! That is the greatest prophecy we could proclaim!