The estate would be inherited by a woman worker...

From Tom Schroeder:

Hello again:

I should tell you all that a lurker on the "list" called me this forenoon and asked me when I was going to write another story. 

He asked me if I had read on the list about all the money that the friends give to workers. No, I told him, as I had done a few days of charity work this week and had a lot of reading to do to get caught up.

"Well, I can't talk too long," he said, as his wife would soon be home from meeting.

So I am writing this letter to him.

Dear Lurker -- My sister put "The Secret Sect" book in my hands to read back in 1987..........I looked at those pictures and saw men I knew and had visited with. Yes, Nichol Jardine who had been sent out by William Irvine, was our head worker in Wisconsin from about 1907 until he died in 1954.

Well, let me tell you, when I finished reading the book, I said to myself, "I cannot support this system and I never gave to the workers again. AND I never heard of any workers starving, or lacking anything.

I knew a professing couple and their son for a number of years and they had meeting in their home and workers often stayed at their place. But as the son grew older and left home, he lost out and became like the prodigal son. Soon after this, the boy's mother became ill and passed away. Soon the boy's father married a professing woman and now, the boy had a stepmother. A few years later, his father became ill and he passed away. His stepmother did not get married again but continued to live in the house that he had grown up in.

It wasn't very long until his stepmother became ill and she passed away, but before she passed away, she had papers made out that the estate would be inherited by a woman worker that was preaching in another state for about 20 years.

The head worker in her state gave her several months off from saving sinners and getting them into the only true way that goes to heaven so she could hire people to put in new carpeting and redecorate the inherited house and put it on the market.

It was almost ready to be put on the market when the prodigal son came home,...... he rang the door bell........the worker opened the door and he stepped inside. He asked her if his father had any papers drawn up that may have left him some inheritance of the home he had grown up in. She told the son that it was all hers and that there was nothing left for him and there is the road, go and don't come back.

The estate would easily have been valued at $300,000 and legally it was all hers and he did not contest it, but morally, I wonder if she did the right thing. Here, she had a chance to preach to the prodigal son in the home that he grew up in.

The very thing she gave her life for, as she sold all and gave it to the poor,........ " I mean the head worker".........when she went out into the work to find all the prodigal sons. I think she blew her chance of showing what a worker's heart really should be.

God says, "No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

Yes, that woman worker was in her field for about 20 years, plowing and plowing and planting seeds in the black soil for the kingdom of God, but one day, she heard some news from the town where she grew up, and she turned and looked back. Yes, she gave up all for the gospel sake, but she turned and looked back and she saw green and it wasn't grass either.

In all my professing year's, I always heard workers preaching that we need to follow the example of Jesus, but I never read anywhere, where Jesus gave any of his apostles several months off to go back home and inherit a good chunk of cash. Yes, the son's stepmother was a widow and somewhere it says, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you devour widow's houses."

But maybe I don't know yet what Jesus meant by that........

Well, my lurker friend, there is one more cash story about the workers I will tell you and it may be astonishing to you, but you may have heard stories like this during your professing years, that workers keep thousands of dollars in cash standing around in suitcases, and it's a worry to them.

What I mean is, they may be worrying more over a suitcase filled with cash, than getting one sinner to repent.

My ex-worker friend that had been in the work for 24 years, told me that his older companion, Murray Keene, around 1980, was going on the special meeting rounds and Murray wanted him to know that just in case anything happened to him as he was traveling around the country, that he was leaving a suitcase in the closet and he should keep an eye on it as it had $10,000 cash in it. Then, two years later, he had Earl Newmiller for his older companion, and Earl told him he was going to leave for a while and he should keep watch on that black bag in the closet as it had $10,000 cash in it.

(ADMIN NOTE: Earl Newmiller is in back row on the right.............Murray Keene is second in the back row)

Jesus went into a cornfield with some apostles to eat some corn one time and I don't think he ever worried about carrying around a suitcase full of cash.

Well, my lurker friend, you asked me to write here to tell you my worker money stories. I know some people may not believe them, but they are true, and I have a few more but I will not tell them now. My friend, when the workers come to visit you and your wife, try to be good to them, as they will be tired and hungry.  

Tom Schroeder

Written 12-6-04