- Definition of PATRIARCH from Oxford English Dictionary (Volume VII ).
- 4: One who is regarded as the father or founder of an order, institution or
(by extension) of a science, school of thought, Order the like.
- Definition of PATRIARCH from Webster Dictionary:
1 b: a man who is father or founder
- c: (1): the oldest or representative of a group
- (2): a venerable old man
- d: a man who is head of a patriarchy
The Passing of a Patriarch
Memories flood my mind as I think of the events that led up to
and surrounded the final time that I spent with Dr. Wierwille. In
December of 1984 we at long last bought a location for The
Way Corps to begin in Europe. This had been the original
intent when we came to Europe in 1983. It seems strange now
to think back that we had to fight through so much to get to the
day that was supposed to have been our beginning, but we did.
Had Dr. Wierwille not been so deeply involved in every step
along the road it would be easy to think that what we had faced
would have been a figment of imagination. The process to finally
acquire a Way Corps location in Europe had been a longer,
harder road than any of us would have anticipated. It was a road
paved with treachery and disappointment, but finally a road that
ended with the great delivering presence of God clearly
manifested.
The final Way Corps location was not at all what we had
anticipated. It is located in an area that is far removed from
easily accessible transportation. It is also in a very difficult part
of the British Isles to facilitate business needs, and perhaps
worst of all, it is isolated from any large groups of believers. Our
primary choice in England would have had good transportation,
easy access to businesses that we had long dealt with and been
close to a majority of the believers in Britain as well as being far
more accessible to the majority of European believers.
There had been speculation during the WOW Festival
1984/85 that Dr. Wierwille and perhaps Mrs. Wierwille would
come to visit us at the new Corps location in Gartmore,
Scotland, shortly after the New Year's period of 1985. However,
after the WOW Festival, I got a letter from Dr. Wierwille telling
me that he would not be coming until after the opening of The
Word Over The World Auditorium, which was due to take place
in March.
In one sense I was relieved and in another I was not. Though
I would have loved to have seen Dr. Wierwille and to have had
his counsel at the beginning of such a project, our new location
was in Scotland which was not at all what we had wanted or
planned for. The setting of it was breathtakingly beautiful, but
its remoteness made doing business extremely difficult. This we
suspected to be true before we made the final decision to accept
Scotland, and in particular Gartmore. Knowing and coping are
often very different things, and this was one of the times that
proved this out.
We had lost the original location in England that we had
selected because our own Way Corps graduates were not
capable of handling things involved in getting a location. They
just collapsed under the pressure. The increased difficulty in
doing business in a remoter area of Scotland made me glad to
have the extra time to prepare for Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille's visit.
There were massive things that needed attention immediately
upon our moving in. There had been very little maintenance to
the roofs and gutters and as a result there was considerable
leakage in any event of rain.
There was almost no hot water and the heating was very
poor. We either froze or boiled, and if we boiled we did it at a
great cost. There was so little hot water in fact that for quite a
while we used the showers adjacent to the large gymnasium in
the Knox Centre to shower, which meant walking across the
centre of the campus in robes and towels in the wintertime.
When we accepted the decision to locate the Corps in
Scotland, we had to evaluate whether Chris and Nancy Kent
could handle the United Kingdom from Scotland or whether
they would have to stay in Altrincham to be central to the
country. Finally we decided that with the percentage of our work
that was in the southern part of the country it was too much to
tack on the additional drive to get to Manchester, let alone from
there to the south coast. It became evident that for the work of
the Ministry it would be more expedient to leave them in
Altrincham. That left us without the man whom we had felt
could handle our Way Builders and without Nancy whom we
had thought would have been able to handle our bookkeeping.
One of the other things that we faced was Barbara's pregnancy.
Having started in her pregnancy in England, we had originally
contacted doctors in England thinking that we would be in the
Cheshire area. The change from England to Scotland
had put intense personal pressure on not only myself, but
Barbara. Because we were operating basically with no support,
her expertise in so many areas was required in order for mere
survival, so she never really had time to investigate the various
medical options that existed. In the end, she settled for the care
of a local doctor who (with the grace of God) helped her
through her pregnancy. We found out later of his intense dislike
for Americans and extreme unwillingness to be helpful;
however, (again the grace of God) she was referred to the
correct people at the correct time for her prenatal care.
The times leading up to the visit of Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille
were quite a challenge in themselves. Besides running the first
year of a Way Corps programme outside of the United States
and with multicultural and multilingual considerations, we were
in a new location that had massive physical problems to
overcome. We also had to acquire basically everything to outfit
the location and do it in a culture and a business community
that we were not experts in.
When we moved into the facility, there was one telephone
which worked only sporadically. We had selected a telephone
system to replace the single wall phone that existed upon arrival,
but due to the costs involved and other factors we had decided
to run all the internal cables ourselves. This allowed us also to
run the audio and video lines at the same lime, and we ended up
running approximately one mile of cables all told. The telephone
installation was to have been completed by 26 March, but the
engineer did not even arrive to start the installation until 24
March. When he did arrive it was only because we had started
making concerted complaints. It turned out when he did arrive
that he did not even know how to fit the new switch equipment.
It was all new to him and because I was familiar with the system
it required considerable assistance on my part. The project
which was to have been completed by 26 March was in fact not
completed until well after Dr. Wierwille's death in May.
Dr. Wierwille's previous visit to Europe in 1984 had
overlapped at its tail-end with the commencement of our
Advanced Class which we were holding in Bowdon, England,
just adjacent to Altrincham where we then lived. During that
Advanced Class, we made available, with Yann Beauvois, who
had helped with the translation of the Advanced Class into
French, running the French Advanced Class simultaneously
with the running of the English Advanced Class in the same
facility. We had shared the same meals and auxiliary tapes (with
translation) and the Advanced Class had been handled for the
French-speaking students in French, and for the balance of the
class in English.
As I had been concerned with not only Dr. Wierwille's visit
but with the massive problems that we still faced at that time, I
attended portions of the French class but really I allowed Yann
the freedom to handle it. It was during the course of running
that Advanced Class in Bowdon that we began thinking and
planning toward running an even bigger multilingual Advanced
Class the following year.
We had decided on Bonn, Germany, as the location, and had
decided to run English, French and Spanish and to have
Wolfgang Schneider do the first live presentation of the German
Advanced Class. It seemed the only feasible way we had of
getting the Advanced Class to people who needed it in other
languages. We did not have anybody else at the time who would
have been qualified to have run an Advanced Class except
myself, and I simply did not have the time to run four separate
Advanced Classes in a year in four separate locations if we were
going to start The Way Corps and if I was going to carry on
with the remainder of the work.
Bonn was where Wolfgang lived, and I felt this would give
him the greatest ease at handling the class. It proved a good
choice too, because of coordination considerations. It was a
central point for all to travel to easily and offered the facilities
that we needed to do the class. I thought that since I spoke all the
languages except German I would be able to instruct all four classes
and have a class assistant for each class. Ray Brandt was to be my
assistant in the English language class, Claus Kratzenberg in the German
language class, Nicole Könz in the French language class and
David Grimsditch in the Spanish language class.
One of the other problems we faced in putting together the
multilingual Advanced Class was the production of the syllabi
and other materials for the classes, but I am getting ahead of
myself at this point, I really need to go back to the period
following our acquisition of Gartmore House.
One of the challenges that we were faced with during the
European WOW Festival and immediately following it was
cooking. To start with we needed to get a kitchen equipped and
stocked. Both Barbara and I are experienced at cooking for
large groups and at menu preparation, etc. It was largely
Barbara who prepared the food for the WOW Festival, and then
directly following the Festival I personally began handling the
responsibilities of cooking three meals a day.
We were genuinely concerned from the earliest days of the
consideration of a Way Corps in Europe with the quality of the
food. This is something that Dr. Wierwille and I talked over long
before we ever came to Europe. He indicated that one of the
things of prime importance in a European Way Corps would be
a good diet with things that were readily available to hand so
that our Corps in Europe could learn to eat properly.
Dr. Wierwille had noticed that there was a tremendous
weakness among the European Corps as regards their eating
habits. He pointed this out to me before we ever left the U.S.A.
and I knew that it would be quite a challenge and one of our
major considerations.
We advertised locally for a cook, and the closest we came
was in acquiring the help of a young man from Aberfoyle, the
adjacent village, whose help was more along the lines of
cleaning and washing-up. We were very blessed that he ended
up taking the Power for Abundant Living class though.
I continued to do the cooking, working with some of the
In-residence Corps as we went and finally took on trial one of
our Advanced Class graduates from the Continent. He had the
sense-knowledge qualifications to be able to handle the
responsibility, but within a period of three weeks or less it
became quite evident that he would not work out. So once again
I assumed the responsibilities of cooking three meals a day in
the kitchen in addition to handling The Way Corps programme
and handling the work of the European Region. This also
included all the menu preparation as well as all of the shopping
to buy in the goods for the meals. I suppose I could have
compromised and just let it go, but I did not feel spiritually right
about it, so I did not.
The first European Corps opened directly after the WOW
Festival. All of these things were taking a toll on me physically.
By the time we actually acquired a location, I was quite tired
from the concerted efforts I had exerted physically, mentally and
spiritually. When we lost our initial location, time was short, so
it required extreme effort to locate and evaluate other available
properties. Even though we needed to move quickly, careful
evaluation was required so that we would not find ourselves in a
bind legally or caught in a bad business deal. This meant
learning the legal considerations which differed from England to
Scotland after having recently learned the English. Once
acquisition was made, there was a voluminous amount of work
to do in stocking the location so that we could begin to operate.
Almost from the earliest days of The Way Corps we began
to experience serious problems with a number of the senior
Corps. Their attitudes and thinking were very far from what
Way Corps' should be. It turned into a confrontation battle from
early on in the year, and in fact never ended until we dismissed
a number of them almost at the end of the year. This made life
difficult, as we had to watch everything that was done, and really
the year turned into an exercise in confrontation for large
portions of the time.
One of the occurrences of these problems that overlapped
with the Advanced Class preparation from this was when a
member of the senior Corps had indicated that he was capable
of fixing and maintaining printing presses and of doing offset
printing. I gave him the responsibility of helping to put back
together the offset press which I had taken apart into its major
subsections to bring it from Altrincham when we moved. When
he was finished there was a pile of spare parts and a press that
did not operate properly. I had to get involved in getting it taken
back apart and putting it together properly so that we could
print.
Once we had done that, we had another problem, that of the
platemaker. The platemaker that we had been using in
Altrincham had broken just prior to our coming to Scotland. It
was, in fact, an old, very slow platemaker that we had gotten
secondhand, so we took in a photocopier that was meant to
make direct-image offset masters. This deal on the photocopier
which we entered into very shortly after the New Year's period
turned out to be the one that taught us how difficult it is to
trade in Scotland, and especially how difficult it is being an
American. The issue of the photocopier/platemaker never really
did get resolved and in the end we had to buy an Addressograph
Multigraph platemaker which worked very well.
Even with the proper platemaker, our senior Corps man
ended up wasting about six times more paper than he ever
produced finished copy. Furthermore, he never had the honesty
to come and tell us. It was when we found the evidence in the
trash one day that we knew we were in trouble. So on my
shoulders fell the responsibility for printing all the Advanced
Class materials for our multilingual Advanced Classes.
One of the additional disadvantages to having to have a
Corps location in Scotland as opposed to England was the need
to re-establish business contacts. Every time you have to start
over in business it takes time and work to develop good business
relations. We had had quite a good reputation among the firms
that we traded with regularly in England. When we started over
in Scotland, it seemed to be a very challenging adventure
because we seemed to be besieged by business "cowboys' out to
take advantage of us, and we still had to rely quite heavily on
our English contacts to fulfill our needs.
During all of this time Barbara was getting larger and larger
and going slower and slower. Even though she was large and
going slowly she still had to maintain some very major
responsibilities. Shortly after the Festival it had become obvious
that if the Ministry was going to survive financially we would
have to do all the bookkeeping for the entire UK Ministry at
Gartmore, rather than let it stay in Altrincham. Things were just
moving so quickly and every decision seemed to be so major that
it was the best that we kept track of everything. This
responsibility fell largely to Barbara, and she quite admirably
handled it on a day-by-day basis.
At the same time that all of these other things were running,
the Corps graduate that we had as our secretary was proving not
to be capable of coping with the responsibilities of the job. It
finally became evident that if she was going to stay happy and
we were going to have the work of the Ministry done we would
have to change secretarial help. She left us to go on the field in
the spring, and even before she left, Barbara and I reassumed
her full responsibilities until we got a new secretary in the
summer.
When we finally got to the time of the Advanced Class, The
Way Corps were on the field as Lightbearers. Directly following
their departure those of us who were left (both Staff and those
Corps who were to be Staff for the Advanced Class) began
printing all of the materials for the Advanced Class. This took
approximately twenty hours a day for a number of days so that
we could pack everything and be ready to go. We loaded
ourselves and all the equipment for the class into one of our
vans and drove to Germany. That meant that, as I was the only
driver on the trip, I drove to Germany from Scotland basically
with one rest stop, and that on the beat crossing.
When we actually began to get involved in the Advanced
Class, I was in for a rather unpleasant surprise initially. Claus
Kratzenberg who was to be the assistant for the German class
really proved inadequate. He would not take direction from
Wolfgang, who was the teacher in this instance, nor from me.
He had pretty well made up his mind that he was going
things his way and everybody else could do their own thing.
I tried to work with him, but by the end of the second teaching
session of the class it became evident that the German class
would be in drastic problems if we allowed him to continue in
his responsibilities. This meant that I would have to handle the
German class primarily and not split myself evenly between the
classes as I had anticipated.
This presented another problem. The Advanced Class was
supposed to have been an opportunity to physically try and
overcome some of the exhaustion that was catching up with me.
The daily sessions had been scheduled so that the English.
French and Spanish language classes had Twigs in the
afternoon. We had placed Twig session for the German
language class in the mornings so Wolfgang would only have
two hours to teach at once. To get the equivalent third hour in,
there was a teaching session in the afternoon while the other
language classes were in Twigs. My intention had been to have
an opportunity to rest and exercise in the afternoons to try and
overcome my growing exhaustion. When I inherited the German
language class, the time that I had anticipated having was no
longer available to me.
The entire Advanced Class seemed to be plagued with
problems. Spiritually it was a very high time with a great
enthusiasm among the believers, great deliverance and
wonderful fellowship. However, during the course of the class it
became more and more evident that the quality of the translated
works was dubious. The French was clearly deficient and in
places quite misleading. The Spanish was not laid out at all in
the way that I had seen Dr. Wierwille lay classes out with the
attention to detail that he paid. We discovered linguistic
problems in both classes as well as inconsistencies in the class
layouts, and it took an enormous amount of work to try to keep
the classes as a whole on an even keel. By God's mercy and
grace the class did prove to be a success, and at the end of the
class I returned home to Gartmore to get ready for the next two
big events, the birth of our baby and the visit of the Wierwilles.
Barbara had very kindly held on to our baby, and I was able
to be there for the birth. In fact we were home for a few days
before she actually gave birth to our baby. Just five days before
Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille's visit, Abigail Nicole was born in
Stirling hospital. The joy of having a new face in the family also
added the presence of my parents. My mother had come for the
birth and had been very helpful in taking care of Rebecca so
that I did not have to be concerned with that aspect. At the very
end of her visit my father came for one day to see Abigail as
well as to see our new entrenchment in Scotland.
The other thing that really required attention and
supervision was the preparation for Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille's
visit. We had been redoing one of the sections in Gartmore
House for a suite of rooms which we called the "ELO Suite". It
was not in particularly good shape when we started and required
an extensive amount of work to get it ready. This meant buying
furniture, painting, hanging wallpaper, refitting the bathroom,
laying carpets, fitting a kitchen and repairing floors as well as
installing a workable heating system. All of this we managed to
do and have completed by the time of the Wierwille's visit.
As the time of Dr. Wierwille's visit drew closer, I became
very concerned with his comfort, starting with the journey from
the airport to the campus. He was flying into Prestwick Airport,
from which we generally estimate transit time at between two
and two and one-half hours. It can be less than that, but
because it requires driving through sections of Glasgow during
business times of the day with traffic to consider, we had to
allow that much transit time. I became quite concerned with
whether he would be too tired after the transatlantic flight to
adequately be comfortable in the car for that length of time. I
began contacting helicopter firms to try and contract a
helicopter to take us from Prestwick to Gartmore and land in
the front of the house by the sundial. We did in fact contact and
successfully contract with a helicopter firm that would have
permitted us to have him from the airport to Gartmore in
approximately twenty minutes. I thought that this was a
workable solution and we made the necessary arrangements.
In order to accomplish this, Chris Kent was going to
accompany me, and we were to leave from Gartmore at 7:30 in
the morning to drive to Edinburgh, where we would fly with the
helicopter to Prestwick and then back to Gartmore. At
approximately 7:28 a.m. the pilot rang us to say that Edinburgh
was closed in with fog, and so was Prestwick, thus we could not
do the trip in the helicopter. This was not only a change in plans
but required some very quick radical shifting, as we had less
than an hour and one-half to get to Prestwick Airport. As soon
as we reorganized ourselves to be able to accommodate Dr. and
Mrs. Wierwille in the car, we left for Prestwick and, despite
heavy fog on our journey and the rush-hour traffic in Glasgow
that we experienced, we made the transit in one hour and
eighteen minutes. It was quite a challenge on the way home to
try not to go as fast as we had on the way down.
We arrived at Prestwick Airport and parked in the car park
and began to look for where incoming passengers would be. The
board said that the flight that Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille had flown
on had already landed and that the passengers were in customs.
In fact passengers with luggage-check tags from their flight
were coming out of the doors from customs, and we began to
look around to see if Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille had already come
out. As we did not see them, we waited at the doors. They were
the second group of people to come out after our arrival at the
doors.
Dr. Wierwille did look very tired indeed, and I was so sorry
that we were not able to provide for him the helicopter that I
still think was the right solution, but he was in good humour
despite his apparent fatigue. When we arrived at the campus he
graciously greeted all the Corps and Staff, also welcoming
Abigail to the Household. Shortly after that, I escorted Dr. and
Mrs. Wierwille upstairs to their Suite where we began
unpacking them.
I helped Dr. Wierwille to undress, so that he could rest, as I
had done so many times before. We put his clothes away neatly
and as I was helping him out of his socks and shoes he started
talking about how blessed he was to have me help him again.
What followed, however, was less expected. It was not his
general custom to start talking about deep things right off the
bat. Usually when he had something to talk about with me it
would have come up later on in a conversation or visit but not
this time. He told me how Peter Esmond had blessed him in
helping take care of him. He spoke of how he was very blessed
with both Peter and Christie and their hearts for him. He said
that Peter did not have the abilities that I had in practical fields
but that having him to help was better than having Bill Warga
He said that Bill was very talented and capable but spiritually
dishonest. He never had been able to really trust Bill; Bill's
heart had not been to genuinely, lovingly help Doctor. It was not
usual for the things of his heart to be so close to the surface, but
I attributed it to his physical condition of being tired from the
journey and did not really consider any deeper implications at
that point.
That afternoon I spent time in the office in the Suite with
Doctor unpacking his briefcases and setting things out for him.
Barbara came up with both girls and we all had a visit. Doctor
had brought a bag of Tootsie Roll Pops with him and gave
Rebecca one and put the rest of the bag in his desk drawer so
that she could come get one from "Grandpa Wierwille"
whenever she wanted to. We talked through the events for the
evening and cued videotapes for the night. After a while I left so
that I could finish getting dinner ready.
The first function that he attended after his rest was dinner
that evening for which occasion I had made lamb, knowing how
he loved lamb. After the meal, he wanted to share with the
Corps, but he said that because he was tired and feeling weak he
would like to do it sitting down. This, I think, was the first time
that I had ever seen that happen. He shared about his stop in
Massachusetts, about the tree that Ralph Dubofsky had
organized to donate to the Gartmore campus and about a
number of things in the Ministry that were on his heart.
After he shared, we adjourned to the Victory Room. Doctor
had brought along videotapes of a number of the early events in
the Ministry, and he played these for the Corps and shared
about the related incidents. Later on, he played some High
Country Caravan productions and talked about them. One of
the moments of the evening that really stuck out in my mind
was a comment he made to Liz Slater, who had been a member
of Agapé, the music group. He told her that if Agapé had
stayed together and had been faithful that they could have been
as good or better than Branded.
The next morning Doctor was still pretty tired.
Jet lag often took him two or three days to
overcome, and so he took the day pretty easy. We
visited on and off during the day and planned to
show the Corps a video that evening. He had asked
before he came over if there was anything that he
could bring along to bless us, and there had been
only one thing that I could think of. He had
carried a copy of the movie The Black
Stallion. on the coach and showed it to the
Corps in the U.S.A., when I had been traveling
with him. Rebecca very much enjoyed The Return
of The Black Stallion so I had asked him if he
could bring along a copy of the original movie
that we had not been able to find for Rebecca. He
told her that he had the film for her and asked
who she would like to show it to. she told him
that she wanted to invite her "Way Corps pals" to
see it with her, so that is what happenend.
On Wednesday morning Cr. Wierwille wanted to
read, and I had cooking to do, so we did not spend
a lot of time together. I did work it out so that
I could prepare the meals for the rest of the day
in the morning and have time free to be with
Doctor in the afternoon because he wanted to "case
the joint".
That afternoon he and I went out for a drive
around the grounds in the Land Rover. He had been
too tired to walk around the house or grounds
much. He had seen some of the inside of the
house, but in order to see the outside we had
decided to ride around. we drove along the
grounds and looked at all of the different
buildings and outbuildings. We drove down the
south road and when we reached the gate at the end
of our property we pulled in before turning
around. doctor asked about who owned which fields
and other points, so we sat there for a few
moments with the motor offf and discussed things.
As dr. Wierwille and I sat in the Land Rover
parked at the gate of the pasture looking east
toward Sterling, he began to talk. "Son, what
would you say if I told you I was going to die?"
After a moment I responded: "Sir, every day
that I have been with you I have always been
mentally and physically prepared to accept and
deal with your death. I have know that at any
minute your deathe might come. You know how many
hours I have trrained to protect you and all the
drills we have been through. You know that I have
literally covered your body with mine when there
were situations that demanded it. I have also
pushed my mind to accept and carry any last-minute
instructions that you might give me. I have known
that they might be the last directions for the
Ministry."
He hesitated and looked across the horizion.
There was a long silence between us, but not a
strained one, a relaxed one. Finally he spoke
again. "Well, I am dying. The doctors call it
[OE]melanoma'." I did not know what that was at the
time. "Dr. Winegarner says I have up to a few
years to live, but Father has told mne that the
time is very short. My days are shortly numbered.
That is why I came to see you' this will be the
last time we are together."
Needless to say my throat was tight and there
were tears coming to my eyes. He continued, "Do
you believe me?"
I told him that I did. I remember that he
looked across me with clear eye as thought
examining me, then his eyes too filled with tears.
All he said at first was, "Bless you, son." Then
he began: "My being here is really a breach of
protocol in the Ministry, but no one else has
believed me yet. They all keep saying or
thinking, "That's just V.P.'"
He paused, then slowly he began to speak,
teling me how he was to be buried. He atalked
about the route that the casket was to take. He
talked about how Howard had promised him that he,
Howard, would personally make the casket out of
white oak with his own hands. He talked about how
he wanted a simple grave-side sevice and the main
recognition service conducted at a later time and
at a large Ministry function.
He was very explicit and clear on every point.
When he was through he asked me if there was
anything that I could think of, then we discussed
it a little further. He told me what he wanted me
to do was to draft the gist of a statement to be
released to the Ministry around the world.
I asked him, thinking this was all already set up somewhere,
who knew all this. He told me that although some of this had
been communicated I was the only one he had covered this with
lately and then he paused. He told me that he wanted me to
write this out for him and give it to him and to compose the
statement he had talked about and submit it to him. I was, at
that point so thankful for the ability that Dr. Wierwille had
drilled into me to develop, that of recalling conversations point
for point well after the fact. When I gave him the copy of the
notes he did not find anything missing or incorrect that we had
talked over.
Then he began to speak very softly as he looked across the
landscape. "Son, you are the only one that I have to come to, to
talk about this. No one else believes me. In the end I am almost
alone. I am reminded of Paul. My last days have been so lonely.
"You see, son, I have two earthly sons. Today I cannot really
talk to either one of them. J.P. is a nice guy, but spiritually he
just doesn't have it; he's weak.
"The hardest to face, though, is Donnie. Despite everything
that I have tried, he is not a spiritual man. I knew years ago that
he had tremendous administrative abilities. That I have never
questioned. I had really thought that if he was with us he would
grow and make a commitment spiritually, but he hasn't. He is
governed by facts, sense knowledge, and has basically neglected
the spirit of God in his life. Perhaps he has done more to harm
this Ministry than any other single man in its entire history."
He sighed and paused before he continued. "There are
basically only two men that I could talk to, you and Howard.
You never have been the friend to me that Howard has." I knew
that he was right; I had been painfully aware of this truth for a
long time. Dr. Wierwille and I were not of a similar generation,
cultural background or experience. We had both had to work
very hard to get along over the years and had developed a close
personal admiration for each other's abilities and a deep
love-bond for each other, but we never really had the friendship
that he and Howard had between them. He continued, "I told
him that I was going to die soon, and he responded just like Don
did, with all the sense knowledge about doctors and facts.
"He has been so busy with the Ministry I feel guilty to bother
him, and when I do, I see how he has been influenced and lost
his spiritual perception. Today he is not the man he once was
spiritually and certainly not the man he could have been if he
had stayed faithful. The infection that has so deeply cut into the
life of the Ministry has taken my only real friend from me, too.
In fact, I haven't had him as a friend for a number of years now,
and that is almost too much for me to bear. I would have
thought he would be the last to go, but not the first.
