So I said, “Well, I quickly thought the 200 seats we need, the songbooks, the drapes and a few things, $400.” She said, “Here’s your $400!” Well, that was about the first time the people in Maple Chapel went into orbit. Right there, $400 from a little lady called Mother Alberty, and it was a take-off point.

Then we went to the chapel and I wasn’t a bit happy with that 8’ ceiling. I’ll never forget Brother Docken. He was about 6’ and he had extra long arms. One day we all got together and decided we were going to pull that 8’ ceiling down and literally raise that roof. We had a time of it. We pulled that ceiling down and up went the roof to about 10-12 feet and we began to form a chapel. Along came Mother Alberty again and she said, “If you’ll build a decent platform outside on the back of the property and really do a good job, I’ll buy all the material and pay for my son to build it.” And that became the new platform in the new baptistery and the basement room that we used inside, outside and upside down for all those years of Maple Chapel. It wasn’t long before we put a new roof on the outside, stucco and built new windows inside it and it literally became a chapel.

LEARNING TO CRAWL:

Well, for years I had always felt that I didn’t want to be like other preachers that had

only a new building as their goal. This became a part of the warp and the woof of our psychology of Christ working through us to do bigger things on the outside than he was doing on the inside.

One day two of these young people, hand in hand, came up to me with a little giggle. I’ll never forget when Les Baker and Sharon Hatten said, “We want to be the first to be married in the chapel. But Brother Ray, we’d like to have an organ.” The war was going on, just finishing, and there were no organs available to speak of. When I asked the board, the board said an emphatic no! Why? We didn’t have any money, and second, we barely were just paying our bills. I want you to listen. This little baby called Maple Chapel learned one of its greatest lessons.

I walked out on the platform that morning and I heard the spirit of the Lord say, of course these people don’t have the money. But I’ve got a lot of money on the outside. And you know the board couldn’t govern that money. So, I said to the people, I want you to listen. Let’s believe the Lord to buy this organ with complete outside money, not touching a dime in the church. And they prayed and the power fell. Going out the front door a man stopped me and said, “I’m just going through from Chicago, and I’ve got $120 tithes in my pocket. I’ll never be here again. Would you consider outside money? I said, “Just hand it over. I’ll consider that money.” Listen. Between Sunday morning and Sunday Evening the members of the church went to their neighbors, they went to their relatives, and a man that I had led to the Lord just a few weeks before that never once had attended Maple Chapel, came that very afternoon and said; “Brother Schoch, you have so delivered and so blessed me, I’d like to give you something. He, that very afternoon, handed me $30. We came to church Sunday night and there was $625 in the organ fund already from outside sources. You know what? The little baby that had just been born a few months before was beginning to crawl. It had learned a brand new law of God. God is not limited to what you see right around about you.

How many know He’s got lots of dirt to form lots of anointings for lots of eyes. And you know we married that couple. Right over here in North Hollywood, you know that couple is preaching the gospel today. Brother and Sister Baker are the pastors of the Foursquare church out there in the North Hollywood area. Every time they come around, they just have to hug me. They say they remember when God caused the baby to crawl and gave us that money on the outside.  You see, I want you to know, there is a stature in you. Even though you’ve never recognized it before, there is a stature in you that will make you to be of age today to do something for God that we’ve never done before.

LEARNING TO TALK:

We hadn’t been in existence for more than a year than we decided, for we had been in camping sessions all up and down the area with other churches and other church programs, and we agreed together that we’d take the whole to church camp in the mountains. We found a very primitive little camp; and we took the first 45 people to camp, and we had a tremendous time. This began a whole new phase of our church relationship. Just yesterday I went up to camp knowing a Mr. Hohman. We worked all day, and I brought down Brother Paul. This is the difference camp does for you. It made a family out of us. A family in agreement can do much more than a church in disagreement. This is the key. So we went to camp. It wasn’t long after coming down from camp, that the Lord put it on our heart to go on the radio and again, no money.

But a radio station was just opening in Pasadena. They said we will give you prime time for half rate if you’ll go on the air with us when we start. So, I got a little plastic tube. It held exactly $13.50. That’s what it was going to cost us for the first broadcast. Every Sunday morning and Sunday night after we took the first offering we took a second offering. That’s where it began, and everybody put their 50 cent pieces in there. When the tube was full, we had the broadcast paid for. We praised God and we went on the air and stayed on the air and paid our bill every month. God just met it supernaturally just by this simple means. But do you know what happened? The baby that had been crawling was now beginning to talk…our first radio.

We would sing “Wings Over Alaska.” Everyone began putting in their money. You know, within six week’s time, we had an airplane…and paid for. Brother Malcolm took flying lessons and wore out about three or four airplanes. This little kid [Maple Chapel] was beginning to fly. He was a good crawler, and he was beginning to talk, but now he was going to fly.

LEARNING TO WALK:

Then one day we caught a tremendous burden when we were in prayer for all the children that were in these trailer camps during the war. I saw, while I was in prayer, a house trailer made out of white wood siding with the doors on each end rather than on the side, and pews down each side. Also a little piano, we still have the piano, and a little pulpit that opened up into a flannel board and also into a projection screen. It had a steeple on the top with a bell that was the air conditioner. We caught this vision, asked the people about it, and before we could hardly get it out of our breath, we raised a couple hundred dollars when somebody said, don’t raise another dollar. If you raise another dollar I’ll be insulted and I’m going out and borrow the rest. I want to be responsible for this being on the road.

We bought what was called Mobile Chapel. Every afternoon after school, we paid somebody to pull this around the trailer courts. It literally averaged 4,000 youngsters a year, and perhaps four to five hundred youngsters getting saved in that trailer as it went from camp to camp. The idea soon caught fire and we got notices from all around the world when people caught vision of this because it went on international news services one day when a newsman came down and took pictures of all the actions for a newspaper release. And then it went clear around into Europe and Asia. People began to copy Mobile Chapel. It did a fantastic job because the baby now could not only crawl but the baby was beginning to walk.

STARTING SCHOOL:

We went to summer camp about the third or fourth year; I’d say the third year. By this time we were growing and we didn’t have chapel room enough. So, we rented a tent and we put up a little tent there in this camp. My how God came down, and still comes down, to meet us! But there were two messages in prophecy that I’ve never forgotten. The body of the first message was this. I’ll take a worm and thresh a mountain. That means that God will take a most unlikely thing to do the greatest job. Threshing a mountain; that’s the biggest thing you could move in the world, and He says I’ll do it with a worm.

Another message came in that same camp that was just as shattering. He said I’ll take you from the tail aid I’ll make you the head. We had absolutely no concept of what He was talking about, except He said, I’ll take you from the tail and make you the head. I know what it means to feel exactly like David felt when the Spirit of God came on him and he looked at that Goliath. There is something that is uncanny, there is something that is reassuring, there is something that is undergirding, there is something that is out of this world when the Spirit of God comes upon you and you have no idea what God has in the future. But you know the Spirit of God is there and He has said, I will take you from the tail and I will make you the head. From that moment on, this little rascal [Maple Chapel] started to school. He had now been walking and talking, but now he was starting off to school.

One day we were at summer camp. I was getting ducked by everybody and everybody was ducking me, and everybody was yelling Brother Ray this and Brother Ray that. One of these seasons I turned around and I saw a little boy floating face down in the water. I grabbed him and ran to the shore, for there was a life guard there, and we worked over him and prayed like a house-a-fire. God restored that little drowned boy right there before his Momma and Daddy.

But while everybody was yelling Brother Ray this and Brother Ray that, and throwing water and cavorting and having a great time, we came out on the beach and were drying when a couple came up to us and they said, “Who is this Brother Ray? We hear them out there yelling Brother Ray, Brother Ray. Who is Brother Ray?” So, just in a few words, we began to explain that we were a camp over here in the mountains, aid we’re having a great time. They said we’re Christians and we’re Pentecostal. Can we come to your camp? They came that night. That was the way that God introduced us to the Immanuel Christian Assembly that has a whole lot to do, in a few moments, with the baby as it starts to school.

LEARNING TO STAND:

We came down from that camp. The board had already taken and created a Committee of Engineers, and the Committee of Engineers said it would cost too much money to ever start a Christian Day School. So, the board voted not to start a Christian Day School. We could just never afford it. But standing in a circle on the Saturday night prayer meeting a little lady who has meant an awful lot to the beginning of this church, Mother Carley, she’s on the other shore today looking at all the things that God has done. I had my hands folded. I argued with God. God, I’ll never raise a dime the way we’ve seen other preachers abuse their people. I’m arguing. I won’t say a word out loud. He told me; ask me for a thousand dollars in just one week to start a Christian Day School. That was just like asking for the moon. We had never done anything like this.

While I’m arguing, somebody slips a note into my hands while my eyes are closed, and I didn’t open my eyes, and they slipped away. Pretty soon I opened my eyes and unfolded the paper. It said on it, “You start a Christian Day School, and I’ll give the first $500.” How could the board argue with God? I made them argue with God then. By the next Saturday night, we only had $960. The Devil said, “You’ve missed it, you’ve missed it. See? You were wrong!” I was so nonplus that I didn’t say anything about it all Sunday.

But Tuesday, next Tuesday night, a little lady came to the back of the church and she cried. She said, “Brother Schoch, I’m in trouble.” I said what’s the problem? She said, “Last Thursday night, right in the middle of that week, God told me to empty this coffee can of nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollars, all silver. Empty it out and give it to the church for the new school. I heard the Devil, and I poured out half of it, I only gave half. But here is $40 left in the can.” The $40 that was to have been given the Thursday before was to prove that God had said a thousand dollars. Who are we to argue with God? You see, we are going to school now. We’re beginning to stand on our own two feet.

We went up looking all over, as the school was growing so fast, we began looking all over Glendale and had realtors looking in every direction for a place to build a school. We found a place on North Glendale Avenue. It was $35,000, so we were able to put about $8,000 down. R-4 is the zoning regulation for property to have schools. It was R-4 across the street, R-4 a couple of doors south and R-4 a couple of doors north, and this happened to be all R-1. When we had three or four tremendous battles with the city, we finally lost end the city said we couldn’t use it for a school.

Then everybody said that Brother Schoch didn’t know the mind of God and didn’t pray through. Perhaps I didn’t pray through. But wait! A Christian man that I had never met before, about three or four months later came to one of the services and he said, “I only have about $2,000 to my name. But I would like to build the first own-your-own apartment for Glendale. If you can trust me, I’ll pay you the rest of the $8,000, and I’ll give you a check for $10,000 besides.” We asked the Lord, and the Lord said go. You know what happened? He gave us a check for the balance of the $6,000 and be gave us a check for $10,000 besides, and he gave us the buildings on the property that we had bought the property for.

So, we were able to move the buildings down across town to a four acre site. Not just a one acre site, a four acre site, and this four acre site was zoned right and they wanted $37,000 for it. We had only $2,000 at this time. The rest hadn’t come yet. We argued with these Seventh Day Adventist people about giving us this property for only $2,000 down. As God works miracles, we bought that property for only $2,000 down and the real estate commission was $1,975. They got $25 down for their property. You talk about miracles? But a few days later we found out why. A little lady down the street came to me and she said, “Brother Schoch, our family has been praying for years that God would let that property become a Christian Day School, and you’re the answer to that prayer.” That gave me courage to smash the Devil time and time and time again. Now it just so happens that on the back of that property there was a mountain, a peak, a hill. God had raised up that hill for a reason we found out a little later.

IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL BUILDING CHARACTER AND STATURE:

We were paying the bills as we could by the church offerings, when all of a sudden the city said you’re going to finish that school within so many days or we are going to revoke your permit. They didn’t like the idea that we were taking so long. One Sunday morning, our treasurer, Howard Skeans, was in there counting the offering between Sunday school and church, then the man that had been running our half-hour radio broadcast every Sunday night came in. He had a way of slinking in if you remember Gene Carpenter, he kind of waddled in and he said, “Ray, there’s a whole FM station for sale, the transmitter, coaxial cable, control board, dry air pumps, and monitors; about $20,000 worth of General Electric equipment. It was only about four years old at that time. You can buy the whole thing for $2,500!”

If you know Howard, you know Howard. His hackles got up and he said, “Ray there are $4,000 worth of bills that we owe on that school right here, and we’ve got to raise that money.” I said don’t worry about me. I know about that $4,000. I’m concerned about that $4000. But how many remember the organ. Do you remember the organ? God was building a stature. God was creating a person. We had a tremendous “son” service. The Spirit of the Lord said, “I dare you to tell the people about that radio station. I dare you to.” And I said, but how Lord? But, Howard. He said, “Remember the organ?” I’m not looking at your resources right in the room. I’ve got money on the outside. Why don’t you use that?

See…what God has done in the past, God is preparing for the future. There’s enough of God right here in this room to turn the world upside down. So, I said to the people, there’s a radio in Galveston, Texas, that can be bought for $2,500. We can’t raise a dime inside the church. But then I reminded them the story of the organ. We’re going to stand together, and we’re going to believe that God can raise up this money on the outside. And so, we all stood, and as we stood the power of God just swept over the place. I’ll never forget it. You know what happened? A note was sent to the platform while one of the board members was singing a solo. It said, “You buy it, we’ll pay for it.”

After the church service, two lady evangelists, Assembly of God, who knew each other for years, hadn’t seen each other for years. They didn’t know they were coming to Maple Chapel that morning, met on the front steps, walked into the auditorium and sat down. While we were praying Lord raise up the money on the outside, one poked the other one and said, I’ll give $1,250 if you’ll give $1,250. The other one said I was just going to tell you the same thing. Here’s what happened. The first one had just lost her husband and had collected enough insurance to pay $1,250 on that radio station. The other one had a $1,250 endowment policy. She was sitting on orange boxes in her house for furniture; they were going to buy furniture for the house. But that policy matured that week, and she had her $1,250. That was bringing together the first elements of KHOF FM. Listen. If God hadn’t given us the organ, He never would have given us the radio station. He was building an image, a character, a stature.

COLLEGE:

While we are in college, we find a few fantastic things happened. The school of the Living Word came into existence, the radio station down in Rio, and last year we were able to give $1080 a day to missions. Then on Sunday just a few months ago, in one service, God raised up $74,000. Then He said, right in the middle of building KHOF-TV, you’re of age!

NOW OF AGE (21 years):

Now 21 years old gives you something that you’ve never had before. Being 21 years old makes you able to vote and responsible for your own debts. It gives you the right to speak right back to the opposing forces and say, we know not some things but this we do know, once we were blind but now we see. Needless to say just this, today above all the days that have ever existed, God has put together a body called Faith Center. He was weaving, molding, shaping and creating until He could come to the day. All right Faith Center, before 21 years of age you could be interdependent, a lot of it could be self-centered. You could have a wonderful church, but when you become 21 years of age, you begin to be more conscious of the world and its needs and your responsibility to the world and the world becomes more responsible to you, than any other time of your life. We today, take on a new stature in God, just by reason of age, so says Paul.

THE BIRTH:

My wife and I found ourselves in a very peculiar place when a little handful of people without a pastor said, “We would like you to pastor us.” We met for our first service in the home of brother and sister Clayton right here in Glendale and had our first service. A baby was born! The next Sunday, we had Sunday school in the Fremont Park in northwest Glendale. For about six weeks, we met in the living room of Brother and Sister Clayton.

We had discovered that there was a building for sale on the corner of Maple and Adams that was formerly a house. It could be bought for $12,500. With great excitement, we took our first offering and got $35. But a man, who knew nobody in the church but one couple, an attorney in the city of Glendale, trusted an unorganized, handful of people. There wasn’t one tangible thing he could hold onto, and he loaned us $10,000. The other $2,500 was given by people on private notes.

Within a few days we were in a building, that when I stood on a one-foot platform, the ceiling was 8’ high. My eyes looked and right there ahead of me the plumbing was hanging through the walls. On this side the bathroom plumbing and the medicine cabinet place was still there with two little windows that normally were a bathroom. The kitchen plumbing was hanging out of the wall in the back. It was a very primitive little place. We were in there a couple of Sundays.

While we stood back in the living room of this house, going through Escrow, we had now raised our $12,500 and we needed to buy some seats, some song books and a few things to get started. I asked the people to pray about the seats and a few things to get started when a little peculiar lady stood up and said, “Brother Schoch, how much would all that cost?” Nobody or I had ever given it a thought. I thought…my word. I never dreamed that somebody would ask what the total price would be.

LEARNING TO FLY:

Then we went to looking around for a missionary program and discovered that our old Sunday school teachers and youth workers were having a great time serving the Lord up in Alaska. We decided to make them our first missionaries. Brother and Sister Malcolm became our first missionaries, and we began sending them a monthly offering.

One of those grand days they came back on furlough. I’ll never forget it. Through eternity, I’ll never forget it. We just had a tremendous Sunday morning service and we were standing in the left-hand aisle when Claude and Vivian said, “Brother Schoch, seventy-five per cent of Alaska is inaccessible except by air. If we are ever going to do anything at all, we’ve got to do it by airplane. He didn’t fly, we didn’t have an airplane, and here was a problem. But my mother had taught me years ago that when you put a penny on the Bible, It’s already started, the edifice is in motion. So, I took my Bible and I got a dollar out and I said let’s lay it on here and we’re going to have an airplane. Before I could get my hand on the dollar, another dollar was laid on top of it, and it began to go. We laid our hands on there and then we ran a contest; and every service, we had a wire stretched from the back to the forefront of the church, and we had a little carbon dioxide gas capsule that you could puncture and it would send an airplane right across the church.

COLLEGE PREP (A LARGER EDIFICE & KHOF-TV):

It was right about this time that we graduated from high school as a youngster, that God showed me the fantastic law that communication is equal to Calvary. For the person who hasn’t yet heard, from God’s standpoint, Calvary doesn’t yet exist. Then about this time, I’m driving along the road and I see a bunch of steel girders along the side of the road. I stop, and I said what are you going to do with these steel girders? The man that was there said we’re going to build a building with them. Why…what do you want to know? Oh, I said, I could use them up at camp. I was thinking of the chapel. He said, well I’m sorry we’re going to use them. About 6 or 8 weeks later, I drove by this same location in Pasadena, and I see part of the girders laying there and the full building up. So, I stopped and I said what are you going to do with these girders? He said there’s the man right there getting in his car, go and ask him. So I ran and stopped this man and said, “Say, what are you going to do with these girders?” He said, what do you want to know for? I said I’d like to build a little chapel, up there in the mountains. Oh, he said, I’ve got these left over. He then said, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll sell you all that pile of girders and I’ll draw the plans and get you the building specifications and take it through the building department for $500. I said, “It’s a deal!”

So, that wasn’t the end of it. He had just wrecked some buildings down along where the freeway was going to go. He said, I’ll tell you what I’ll do I’ll build the whole thing for $2,000. Before he was through, he had about four or five thousand dollars in it but only cost us $2,000. Why? Because God allowed us to see the girders along the side of the road. This man was the instrument of God to build the chapel up there.

Just about this time we were in revival with Brother Tommy Barnett. We tried to rent halls around town and could find nothing but the Epicurean Towers. What a dirty, filthy, rotten place it was. They used it for dances and liquor parties most of Saturday night and we would try to hold services on Sunday. It was really something. But we got too big to go back to Maple Chapel. Our Sunday crowds had now grown to about 200 more, and we couldn’t go back. We began to look everyplace. One day I drove by this property here [1615 S. Glendale Ave.] and finally talked to Coldwell, Banker the biggest realtors in the world.

When they said $400,000 I sort of choked and I guess they must have heard me choke. It was way out of the question. We left it there and kept driving by every once in a while but always thinking, God you can do exceedingly abundant above. In the meantime Mexico City Radio is another whole story that exploded in our hands right about this time. One day I couldn’t believe it as we began to buy property around old Maple Chapel, because we thought we would build there, a man came to my house. I casually knew him and he said are you ever interested in selling that school property up there? And I said, yes, I might be, why? He said I’ll make you an offer. This was at the very peak of all the building program about five years ago.

He decided that the four acres would make the most beautiful spot for an own-your-own apartment. Therefore, he drew a great big plan. He went to Gibraltar Savings and Loan, and he persuaded them to give us money on the purchase of that property far in excess of its value. We paid $38,000 for it. We were able to sell 3 of the 4 acres for $225,000. Then the building calamity came and he has never built on that property. Right at the dead center of the moment of God, God made Gibraltar Savings and Loan pay a premium on this property on the fact that they were going to build this big building. They have never built there. It was offered back to me for a far less amount of money, but we don’t need it. In that very thing, God was preparing this here.

At about this time, the TV license was being activated upon. God worked miracle after miracle to bring it to pass. As we moved down into God’s purpose, it took a whole year to get all the finalization of selling old Maple Chapel and selling this property. During that period, another church organization came onto this land with a cashiers check for $400,000. The Vice-President of Forest Lawn, his mother, belonged to this other church, and they had a cashier’s check for $400,000. But the man I was dealing with said I will not let that property be sold to anybody else until Reverend Schoch has expended all of his resources. An absolute miracle! He’s a man down on the totem pole, and he should have played politics with his bosses. But he didn’t because God’s getting ready to do something through you. What happened? We were able to purchase this property, borrow $255,000 and save $175,000 to put up this building right here. So, we built this gym and now we’re ready to go to college.

THE TWENTY-FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF FAITH CENTER

Transcribed and edited from a message delivered by Pastor Ray Schoch in 1968

Used by permission of the Ray Schoch family - All Rights Reserved

Click here to return to main FBN page

OFF TO HIGH SCHOOL (KHOF-FM):

We wanted to rent four acres on top of the mountain up here; but we were forced by the man that owned it to buy 43 acres. By this time, this youngster [Maple Chapel] had graduated from grammar school and was getting ready to go to high school. We filled out the papers to apply for the license, ourselves, the two of us, and had a great time doing it, and found out that there was such supernatural wisdom from God that we didn’t make one mistake. We tad never done anything on this line or had any training on this line before. But there was one thing that bothered the Government that they wanted to understand. They sent word that they wanted us to list the nationality of every one of our members so that they could be sure that no one was of an alien origin that would control that station. This was the only addition that we had to make. So, we made this addition, and in February sent it back to the FCC. When we mailed this particular addition to our other papers, I said to Brother Carpenter, jokingly, I’d like to have this license for a birthday present. Heaven and earth didn’t hang on it. It was a joke.

February went by, then March, April, May, June, and July rolled around. July 7th we went to the mail box like we did every day. We looked at the mail and there wasn’t anything extraordinary there. I said to Brother Carpenter, why don’t you call the FCC and see if there is anything we should be doing and that we should do. He called our man, the one that was involved with our papers. He said your papers have been shipped up to the upper echelon to the Commissioners. They may be there a day, a week, a month or a year. We don’t have anything to do with it now. We said thank you and hung up.

I was cooking the men’s dinner for the evening, it was a Thursday evening, and we were preparing the dinner about five o’clock in the afternoon when the telephone rang. Some magazine that had to do with radio and television called us on the phone and said, is this Maple Chapel? Yes. Who is Maple Chapel, they asked? We’re a church in Glendale I responded. Well, what kind of church? And they asked us a whole lot of questions that I answered. I said, what are you asking for? Well, we have a correspondent in Washington, DC and at 11 o’clock this morning Maple Chapel was granted a license on July 7, right on my birthday, to build KHOF. You don’t think that God knows how you’re breathing? I would have shouted right from every housetop if it had come the day before. But God said, I love him and he can have it for a birthday present.

Oh glory! I wish I could tell you the whole story about the radio station. It’s fabulous, except to say that this man who owned the acreage up there on top of the hill was going to lease us the acreage. That little bump on the back of the school property was the cause of all of this because you have to put a FM tower on a bump. So, he looked at the bump and said the bump on top is better. So we went up on top. There was a Jewish man that owned the whole thing. He said he’d lease us four acres. But by the time we went to finalize our agreement, he wouldn’t lease us anything. He wanted us to buy 43 acres. We had to buy the 43 acres, and by a series of miracles, God gave us the $5,000 for the down payment. We held it for it about a year. We retained 8 acres after acquiring a couple of pieces of property, we retained 8 acres which we have yet, and sold the balance of the 40 acres for $120,000 more than the mortgage. Because God made that man make us buy the whole hilltop. God’s awfully good. When you look at something hard, remember if God’s in it, it’s going to be for his glory and your glory in no time at all.

It wasn’t long until we were just about to graduate from high school as a young man. I’m talking now about the structure of this organization, when we decided we ought to go to higher power on this radio station because we knew that if you didn’t go to high power then, there would soon be a time when you couldn’t go to high power with all the other stations going on the air. When we went on the air, there was about five stations in Southern California and now there are about 75 station in the same area. So, by a series of miracles we were able to buy a bigger transmitter or amplifier and we went to 100,000 Watts of power.

It’s Tuesday night and we’re just going on. I was reminded in prayer meeting that other organizations could rent billboard space, put adds in the newspaper, could do all kinds of things to tell people that this radio station should be listened to because it had gone to high power. But we didn’t have any money to go on billboards, or in newspapers or on television. But, we had something that the world didn’t have. So, we joined hands and said Lord, we ask you to release the knowledge of this station all over Southern California. The next morning at 6 o’clock, as God is my witness my radio man called me frantically and said, Ray, get dressed quick and get up on top of the mountain. There’s a man on the side of the tower. He’s going to jump off and commit suicide. As God planned it, there weren’t any murders, there were no wars, and there were no riots. There was nothing going on that day. So, there were at least 35 or 40 newsmen up there with all their cameras, their tape recorders. The helicopter went over the top, flying over the top, and they told us we got $50,000 worth of free advertising the very next day.

They finally got him down after a couple of days, and they got him for a misdemeanor. Do you know what happened? He went up there a few weeks later with a full set of equipment, even a little cocoon. He was going to stay there until he died if he didn’t get what he wanted. Here’s all the news media out again to do the same thing. Pictures were on the front page, we got on all the television stations. We got every place because this is the way God is for us to build the stature.