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The Herbert W Armstrong Papers Collection (HWAP)

Additional Items

Below is a collection of papers, letters, photographs etc from various sources which may well form part of the HWAP. In addition to the bulk of items kept at GCI, there are possibly other items residing with ICG, CGI, PCG.

*The Dream:

“Within 30 or 60 days after our marriage God spoke to my wife in what might have been an intense unusual dream, or a vision — but it was years later before we came to realize that this really was a message from God. I'm pretty skeptical about God speaking to anyone today, by direct vision or dream. God speaks to us today thru HIS WRITTEN WORD — the BIBLE. My wife "saw" an angel, revealing that God was calling me and her to the mission of WARNING this world of the fast-approaching END OF THE AGE, and the Second Coming of Christ. When she told me of this impressive dream, I was embarrassed, and somewhat awed, but didn't recognize it as any message from God — and tried immediately to dismiss it from my mind. I certainly didn't heed it.” (H.W. Armstrong, Brethren and Co-worker letter, 28 November, 1956) 

“One night my wife had a dream so vivid and impressive it overwhelmed and shook her tremendously. It was so realistic it seemed more like a vision. For two or three days afterward everything else seemed unreal — as if in a daze — and only this extraordinary dream seemed real. 

In her dream she and I were crossing the wide intersection, only a block or two from our apartment, where Broadway diagonally crosses Sheridan Road. Suddenly there appeared an awesome sight in the sky above. It was a dazzling spectacle — the sky filled with a gigantic solid mass of brilliant stars, shaped like a huge banner. The stars began to quiver and separate, finally vanishing. She called my attention to the vanishing stars, when another huge grouping of flashing stars appeared, then quivering, separating, and vanishing like the first. 

As she and I, in her dream, looked upward at the vanishing stars, three large white birds suddenly appeared in the sky between us and the vanishing stars. These great white birds flew directly toward us. As they descended nearer, she perceived that they were angels. 

“Then,” my wife wrote a day or two after the dream, in a letter to my mother which I have just run across among old family pictures, “it dawned on me that Christ was coming, and I was so happy I was just crying for joy. Then suddenly I thought of Herbert and was rather worried.” 

She knew I had evidenced very little religious interest, although we had attended a corner church two or three times. 

Then it seemed that, from among these angels in her dream, that, “Christ descended from among them and stood directly in front of us. 

At first I was a little doubtful and afraid of how He would receive us, because I remembered we had neglected our Bible study and had our minds too much on things apart from His interests. But as we went up to Him, He put His arms around both of us, and we were so happy! I thought people all over the world had seen Him come. As far as we could see, people were just swarming into the streets at this broad intersection. Some were glad and some were afraid. 

“Then it seemed He had changed into an angel. I was terribly disappointed at first, until he told me Christ was really coming in a very short time.” 

At that time, we had been going quite regularly to motion – picture theatres. She asked the angel if this were wrong. He replied Christ had important work for us to do, preparing for His coming — there would be no time for “movies .” (Those were the days of the “silent” pictures.) Then the angel and the whole spectacle seemed to vanish, and she awakened, shaken and wondering! 

In the morning, she told me of her dream. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to think about it, yet I was afraid to totally dismiss it. I thought of a logical way to evade it myself, and still solve it. …

Do not hastily ascribe a dream to God. True, the Bible shows that God has spoken to His own chosen servants by this means of communication — primarily in the Old Testament, and before the writing of the Bible was completed. But most dreams mean nothing. And false prophets have misled people by telling false dreams, representing their dreams to be the Word of God (Jeremiah 23, where God says, “I am against prophets who recount lying dreams, leading my people astray with their lies and their empty pretensions, though I never sent them, never commissioned them” — verse 32, Moffatt translation).  

Certainly I did not ascribe this dream to God. It made me feel a little uncomfortable at the time, and I was anxious to forget it — which I did for some years. I was twenty – five at the time. God left me to my own ways for five more years. But when I was age thirty, He began to deal with me in no uncertain terms… (H.W. Armstrong, The Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong, 1973 edition, pp. 187, 193-94).

**Ordination Certificate:

“I have in my old files my Ministerial License Certificate, which is reproduced in this autobiography, dated March 2, 1932, and signed by O. J. Runcorn as President, and Mrs. I. E. Curtis as Secretary. This was almost a year after I was ordained -- probably my second certificate.” (The Autobiography, Vol. 1, Ch. 23)