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Herbert E. Douglass, Th.D. |
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To
Our Dear Loved Ones, including our circle of Friends, from Herb and
Norma Douglass, Christmas 2005 Last
January we surely thought that the race of 2004 was over
and that we could sit back and try to copy our illustrious friends who
play golf, sleep till 8:00 A.M., and just putter around.
January started that way for a few days.
And then the urgencies to preach here and there from old
friends who had special programs for their churches—and who can say
No to these old buddies! And so our promise to take on one assignment per
month evaporated into wonderful experiences with those who valued
serious themes such as “Should We Ever Say,’ I am Saved?’”
and “It’s Never Been This Late Before.” We
are preparing this letter differently
than in years past when I would get up early, very early, Christmas
morning, look at my old friend, the North Star from my study window,
and let the meaning of Christmas flow through me.
But not this year. On
Christmas morn, we will be in Brooksville, Florida, at Chip and
Judy’s home. Our son Chip is a senior critical-care nurse who
refuses management—he has seen too much of the infighting! Judy is
also a nurse who is cooking madly already—planning for the big day. Their children and their children (that’s right,
great-grand children!) will make up the circle where we will be for
two weeks. So many old friends in the area are on our visiting list.
One of them will be Phyllis Cosimi who is missing her husband,
Zip, who died a few months ago. I
spoke at his funeral—a celebration of a great life and a great
friend. Take
a little trip with us around the country. Daughter Donna,
a nurse in Belgrade, MT, is home base for Britney, now a freshwoman
(!) at Union College, Lincoln, NE; Reatha, a nurse, and Rand, an
attorney, live near Collegedale, TN, and home base for Cady, a
newspaper reporter in Dalton, GA., and the twins, Ryan and Randy,
barreling their way through the University of Tenn. with full
scholarships; Vivienne Sue, a legal nurse who wows them in court,
never losing a case (so far), living in Palm Springs, CA and home base
for Emily Sue, in nursing at PUC after finishing her AB in Business;
Herb and Mavis, in Weimar CA and home base for Candi and Kelly, both
students at PUC, Angwin, CA. Herb
is balancing his Real Estate plate with remodeling homes with the
other hand, while Mavis is bravely continuing her teaching after a
year of chemo and radiation treatment for cancer—she is doing very
well, thanks to the good Lord and the support of her many friends;
Janelle, our oldest, recovery nurse, and decorator for her Bakersfield
Church, CA. That covers the country! Unfortunately! We
started out the year
continuing 4-5 hours at Amazing Facts, Roseville (five miles exactly
from our home), as a consultant in development.
Wish I had the time and energy to give them 12 hours a
day—what a unique ministry! Frugal, powerful in planning, enormously
skilled men and women doing almost incredible work, many of them there
because of hearing Doug Batchelor on TV and following him into this
ministry, giving up very lucrative jobs.
But I had to concede to reality by September l when I dropped
out to finish up several projects I had been working on part-time for
months—we all can stretch just so far. One
of those projects
was to finish up a small book on the Feast Days—great concern for
many people. The second was to finish up a book for the Pacific Press
on sixteen stories of how Ellen White’s visions directly affected
men and women and how their lives were greatly changed—a great read,
I promise! And
the last challenge is a
forthcoming book on the Rich Warren phenomenon—the author of The
Purpose Driven Life. Thirty million copies sold in the last four
years—nothing like it in publishing!
I hope to have it ready by the first of the year. Warren is
probably the best-known Protestant preacher in the world and he is
nowhere near where he wants to be in five years!
All this without his own television show or radio program!
What is his secret and what kind of discernment is needed in
evaluating his remarkable success?
I guess you will have to wait until the book is off the press! My
dear Queen of the Home
is now thinking that we must make appointments to take vacations at
home although she jumps at the sound of either the car motor or the
airplane! Great traveler!
Among our safaris last year was a magnificent long weekend at
the Smokey Lake Camp Meeting in northern Alberta (now that is some
country, rode in a monster spray machine with 25 foot outriggers on
each side, about 12 ft. above the ground); spoke at the 130th
Anniversary of the Sheridan Church, IL, where I pastored in early
1950s; in June/July in St. Louis for a week, serving in the Amazing
Facts booth at our quinquennial, world-gathering General Conference;
then a great week of meetings at Southern Adventist University where
we had time to spend with Reatha and her family; then a week later at
ASI convention in Sacramento, CA; finally about ten days with Dan and
Marilyn Cotton at their summer home on Marrowstone Island in the San
Juans along Puget Sound (preaching at one of the island church where
old student friends, the Kongorskis, are pastoring); a few weeks later
motoring up to Montana to spend a week with Donna (love that trip!);
the first of November, 10 days on the Mexican cruise out of San
Francisco (with Helen, Norma’s sister and Allison our niece from
WI—real fun to introduce cruising to someone who knows how to enjoy
it); then the five days at Palm Springs celebrating Thanksgiving in
Vivienne/Emily’s Real Life Makeover of their home (Wow!) with Jan
and her daughter Vivyan’s family from Bakersfield. Then, of course,
our trip to Florida on December 21 (using frequent flyer miles, we had
to take what seats were available: leaving Wednesday afternoon,
December 21, Sac-LA-Denver-Orlando, arriving in Orlando at 5:40 AM,
Thursday!). I leave you with some thoughts about “it’s much later than we think.” Are natural (!) disasters worse today or not? Depends on how we look at the evidence. Some experts say that most natural disasters work in cycles; but when one lives in one, the disasters always seem “the worst ever.” But is there something different about disasters of the twenty-first century—some call them “mega-catastrophes?” I say, “Yes,” and I describe it in terms of the “exponential curve.” Draw a line that slopes increasingly upward in contrast to a predicted increase that follows a predicted slant line up. When the curve begins to turn straight up, something dramatic is about to happen. For example, think of interest on your bank account. If you get 8% interest on $100,000, you can draw a straight line up, beginning with $8000 the first year. In 30 years, you would own $215,892. But if you were earning compound interest at 8%, you would not have a predicted straight line of $8000 per year but a line that would slope up continually. In 30 years, you would own $1,006,266. Compare! How does this “curve” relate to the various types of disasters in recent years? All the awful catastrophes of the past will be repeated but in exponential rapidity. Very much like the mother’s labor in childbirth! First, ten minutes apart, then two minutes—and you better be in the hospital! The steepening slope of last-day events began, slowly at first, in the early 1980s, it seems to me. Can anyone deny that hurricanes, floods, famines, pestilences, national debt, personal debt, bankruptcies, moral degradation, fantastic surveillance technology, depletion of water aquifers, global pollution, energy consumption, etc., are increasing with astonishing speed? Most people live with the sense that everything is out of control compared to life we lived even 25 years ago. There seems to be no way to turn back the clock. The escalator, either down or up, seems to go faster every day with every news broadcast. And everyone has the lurking feeling that they can’t get off that escalator. Everyone
on Planet Earth is involved in these rapidly
developing end-time events that the Bible has predicted.
The gospel going to all the world seems to be suddenly
accelerating with the incredible Internet.
And it will speed up rapidly, especially under the “loud”
cry of the fourth angel and his earthly counterparts. The winds now
held by those angels in Revelation 7 seem to be loosening (we
haven’t seen anything yet!)—waiting for God’s loyalists to catch
on as to why Jesus has delayed His return.
That prescient lady wrote: “These wonderful manifestations
will be more and more frequent and terrible just before the second
coming of Christ and the end of the world, as signs of its speedy
destruction.” Patriarchs
and Prophets, 108. Forgive
the absence of our usual personal notes this year, but space
vanishes before our druthers. Our
main wish for you all is that we trust in the faithfulness of God and
not in our faithfulness—He is faithful with His promises. No matter
what, our Lord never turns away anyone who responds to His “come.” Herb
& Norma Douglass – 1538 Perdita Lane, Lincoln Hills CA -
916-408-5881 herbdouglass@sbcglobal.net
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