By James A. Cheek,
Founding Publisher/Editor
From his book, 'Footprints of a Human Life' 1949
God was blessing the mission work [In Los Angeles, California], but we longed to see greater things accomplished. We had been going on with this work some weeks when one day as I was stepping across the threshold of the mission doorway, it seemed as though a silent voice said to me, “This mission work is only a step to a greater work.” I surely thought this was of the Lord, but did not understand it. I laid it away in my heart and later knew that the Lord meant the Herald of Hope ministry.
For several years I had been writing for the Pisgah paper, but when Pisgah [Home Movement] left the city I was deprived of that privilege. I still had a longing in my heart for greater accomplishment along that line, so in 1937 my wife and I began to think about starting a paper. We wanted to send out the Gospel light free of charge and began to pray and seek God's will in the matter.
Brother J. S. Overstreet, a Virginian, came to see me one morning and in a very business like way said that he had come to offer himself to pray until we had prayed our undertaking through. We were impressed to go into the mission every morning early to pray, and it was wonderful how God made good His promise. In Matthew 18:19 we read, “Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.” I believe the wonderful things which have been accomplished through the Herald of Hope ministry had their rise [in] the prayers which went up at that time.
I do not suppose I had $20 in cash. How was this paper to be financed? My wife saw my disappointment at not being able to continue writing for the Pisgah paper and was in deep sympathy with me. She has been faithful in backing me in this paper ministry all these years. Of course, the burden and the call were principally on me, and the financial responsibility of it rested upon me mainly and caused me to realize my helplessness. My wife had a little money saved, but I did not intimate that I wanted any of it. Yet when the time came she volunteered to finance the first issue of ten thousand copies.
When we were praying about the paper, we were walking very softly before the Lord, and we prayed until we had the assurance that we were in the Lord's order. We then moved forward, trusting His guiding hand.
There were some huge and steep mountains right in our road. One mountain looked like an impossibility to scale —we had no circulation for a paper. How we were to get a mailing list, we did not know. The first effort we made toward that was to see individuals. When we met people on the street, or anywhere, if we felt led to speak to them, we would ask if they wanted to take a good Christian paper. If they said they did, we would put their names down. In the natural, this looked like trying to deceive, as the paper was not yet in existence, but when God tells us to go ahead at anything, His Word is a rock upon which we can build without hesitancy. We can reckon on it as though the proposition had been brought out into plain view.
Getting single names on the streets was slow, but we kept at it, which reminds me of the poem:
Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make a mighty ocean
And a pleasant land.
When the Lord saw we were doing our best to get a circulation for the paper, He speeded up matters by letting us get in touch with people who had lists of names. I met one lady who said, “Yes, I will take your paper and also I have about two hundred and fifty names I will type and give to you.” Another lady, who had traveled in this country and in foreign countries, gave us her list containing seven or eight hundred names.
When I was at Pisgah as Manager, one day I had been away somewhere and as I returned to the grounds noticed a car from a distant state in the driveway. My heart leaped within me; I did not know why, but when I met the people I learned that they were missionaries from China and other countries. I welcomed them and did things for them which they considered a great favor, but were no more than my duty. After staying possibly three months in the Home, they went over to a distant part of the city. Afterward the wife of the head of the group came to our place.
“Brother Cheek, you can copy our whole file of 4,500 names, with the donors underscored with red,” she said, upon seeing that we were trying to launch a Christian paper. She also said that their list embraced thirty states in this country and several foreign countries. This great favor from the Lord through these people gave us the backbone of our circulation, although we already had names from many states in this country.
In the beginning, the Herald of Hope was a sixteen page paper, but only carrying about the same number of words it does today. We thought ten thousand copies would be enough for our first issue, but we found later that we could have used many more. We had to have cuts made and secure permits, also many things had to be done to get our paper started through the United States mails. But we kept hammering away until we got Herald of Hope Number One out.
Previously I mentioned [In my book, 'Footprints of a Human Life'] being a cotton mill boy and taking a trip to Greensboro [North Carolina] to try to buy a printing press to print a village paper. In the 37th Psalm we read, “He that delighteth himself in the Lord shall have the desires of his heart.” God saw the desire of my heart and kept me in mind through all the years of my varied experiences and had a paper waiting for me to take hold of and send out across the world in my later life.
We do not know the depth and length of the thought of God for us. He often strews the trails of our lives with trials, but He delights to give us joy in them. He sometimes gives us things that we naturally like, and if we look to Him, He will keep us from getting puffed up by having them. I have thought many times of my Greensboro experience, how my great desire to print a paper caused me to do such an unseemly thing, but when anyone is sure he has God's approval, the opinions and thoughts of men do not influence him very much.
When the time came for the Herald of Hope to be launched, it was done, for God was the doer of it. When God called me to publish the paper, I felt like a young man just starting out in life. We need to seek God until we are really commissioned of Him, then we will not walk with a faltering step.
When we saw the paper going out, we wondered about the response in a financial way. I well remember the first coin which we received in a letter. Dollars now do not seem any bigger to us than those few cents did that day. We felt that it was a token from the Lord that He was going to give financial support to the paper, which He has done, and we praise Him for it. We lifted that little coin up before the Lord and praised Him for it, with tears in our eyes. We knew that the paper would have to find favor in the hearts and minds of the people or else they would not support it.
A lady in a California town who received a copy of the first issue did not unwrap it for some time, thinking it was just more false doctrine. After a time she was impressed to take the wrapper off and read the paper. She was so favorably impressed with it that she wrote us an encouraging letter and enclosed an offering. It was the Lord who had to put the paper over the top with that lady. Letters at this time which carried words of encouragement meant a lot to us, and, of course, do now, but we were then wondering about the future of the Herald of Hope. Any favor shown by a reader we felt was a token of God's approval upon the paper and that financial support would be sent in for its publication.
The kindness of the Lord through the people in little ways and in big ways goes beyond our telling. We did not get any great amount of financial help from the first issue. We had very little money, but were determined to trust God for the finances. It looked like we never would get out another issue, until one day we went to the post office and got six or seven letters. There were two very ordinary looking envelopes among them, but when we opened them, we found in one a check for one hundred dollars and in another a twenty dollar bill. The bill came from a very poor woman in Wisconsin and the hundred dollars was left to us by a friend of long standing who had died. Then we knew we could at least print another issue of the paper. When the last consignment of papers came from the printer, we had the money to pay for them, but had none with which to send them out. We wrapped and prepared them, but waited for weeks before we had the money to mail them.
I frequently went to the mission early in the morning to pray. One morning while there a man came in. I looked at him and felt impressed to give him some money to buy gas, as he was driving a car. I had only four dollars to send out papers and the postage would cost at least eighty dollars. They were lying there in the mission until we could accumulate postage money. Under these circumstances it seemed that fifty cents should be enough for me to give. I felt condemned at that thought, so gave the brother a dollar, which was twenty-five per cent of all I had. He accepted it and went on his way. The next morning about the same time, someone drove up and said, “Come home with me.” I did not know what he wanted, but was impressed to go with him and when we reached his room he took down a satchel, from which he drew a little purse and began to take out five dollar bills. He gave me four of them, I believe, which was all he had. He was saving the money to buy a suit of clothes.
“Now you can send out some papers,” he said.
We got busy and, if I remember correctly, we soon had the whole issue out. This was a great lesson to me in giving. My natural judgment was that I needed the money as much as the man needed gas, but when the Lord speaks to us to give, we had better give, for He says, “Give and it shall be given to you.”
Before we had published the first issue of the Herald of Hope, we meant for it to be God's paper and we wanted Him to give His own paper a name. So we prayed and looked to the Lord for it. We had thought of different names, but they did not seem to be right. One day, after we had discussed the subject quite a lot, I seemed inspired to call the paper “Herald of Hope.” Immediately my wife said, “That is the name for it.” So we felt sure and are still sure that the name is a God-inspired one. Many readers have written us saying, “Your paper is just what the name implies,” or words to that effect, “For it sounds out hope to the hearts of its readers.”
Also we believe the Lord surely helped the artist who drew the headline [Banner] of the paper. You will notice in the center there is a picture of the Bible with rays of light showing forth from it, which go out through the name of the paper, interspersed with stars, to represent Bible truth shining through its pages.
A denominational preacher in one of the states, who read the paper, went to seeking for the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which he received, together with many of his members. Later, practically the entire membership of his church became full Gospel people. There is a convicting power when the truth is turned on the hearts of men. Oh, for men and women who will so yield to God that they will become heralds of the Truth, by which the works of satan will be burned out of the hearts of men. The works of satan are inflammable when the fire of God touches them. Much prayer is needed to get us into a place of yieldedness before the Lord.
A short time after the second issue of the Herald of Hope was sent out, we went to work on the third issue, regardless of the fact that we were not receiving many offerings. We did not know how long we would be delayed. The burden of the paper was on my heart, so I went to searching to see if there was anything wrong with me. The Lord did not show me anything especially wrong, so I committed the matter to Him, and before a great while funds began to come in. However, we had financial troubles for some time. Perhaps the Lord was trying us out. As time went on, we were gradually being blessed more in a financial way. Some one from the Hawaiian Islands began to send offerings occasionally; then they sent larger offerings, and soon we were able to send the paper out when it was printed.
We then began to tithe the gross income of the paper and the Lord prospered us more than ever. Soon we were led to give twenty per cent instead of the regular ten per cent, and it seemed the more we gave the more the Lord sent in. It was wonderful how we were blessed during the last war. We were enabled to send out Bibles and Testaments by the thousands. We sent quite a number to the German prisoners here in the United States prison camps. One German prison worker with whom we cooperated said, “After those boys went back to Germany, they were calling each other 'brother'.”
In 1944, the circulation of the Herald of Hope had so increased that we were sending it to one hundred five thousand people in the United States and sixty foreign countries. We printed from ten to fifteen thousand extra to send out in bundles for the various ones who might want to distribute them to friends and acquaintances. After this was done, various people wrote us to send them the paper, tracts and handkerchiefs and many were saved, healed and baptized with the Holy Ghost through reading them.
Brother Hyzer, an evangelist in Maryland, said he gave a paper to a family in his travels and one of the members became so engrossed with it that she read it with intense interest. We do not remember the details of the story, but all the members of the family were converted right there in their home. In another case, the members of a whole family turned to God as their healer.
We have an acquaintance whom we call “Brother Mack.” He was in San Quentin prison here in California a few years ago. One day while there he went into the library and saw the Herald of Hope, picked it up and carried it to his cell. After reading it, he began to shed tears and cry to God about his condition. At that time he did not seem to know why he was so broken up, but he knows now that it was the power of God in the paper which had been prayed over. The Spirit of God followed him and he was converted and filled with the Holy Ghost. Brother Mack is now one of the most consecrated men I know. Only yesterday in our Sunday afternoon meeting he preached a wonderfully inspiring sermon.
One of the great features of the Herald of Hope work is its large prayer band. There was a sister living in Mississippi who wrote us that she wanted to pray for our work an hour each day. Of course we gladly informed her that we would greatly appreciate her prayers. Her cooperation in prayer with us put a thought into our minds and we wrote a circular letter, leaving a blank line for the signature of anyone who wished to pray with us and for us, also for their own community. The result is that we have a prayer band file in our office of one thousand six hundred names. This has been several years in formation. Some have died, but we get letters occasionally saying, “We are still praying for you.”
Away up in the northern part of the United States is a little spring from which flows a brook, trickling along the surface of the ground. A man can easily step across it, but it is a different proposition when the Mississippi river flows into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans. The water has been greatly multiplied, and so it is with prayer. Because one little woman in Mississippi said, “I will pray an hour a day,” sixteen hundred people said they would also pray. As we look across the world with our mind's eye and see the thousands and tens of thousands of believers who form the body of Christ, how we should cling together in the love of Christ, praying and travailing in the Holy Ghost for every member of His body.
Paul had a big vision of prayer. We read what he says in I Timothy 2 :1-2, “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.”
The success of the Herald of Hope ministry is due to united prayer. “In unity there is strength,” and when papers or handkerchiefs are placed in the pillows of unbelievers or sick ones, or in whatever way they may be used, prayer changes things and God begins to work to save and to heal. Members of the prayer band, or any saint who may read this book, let me say to you, pray, that God may work powerfully in the hearts and minds of men, and He will give you souls for your hire.
We are now sending out about eight thousand papers each week, which will continue until this issue is sent out. When we get them in the bags ready to mail, we call the workers and all others who will, to come and pray with us over the papers, asking God to save, heal and fill with the Holy Spirit, and to drive out of hearts and homes gossiping demons, quarreling demons, drinking demons and every evil work. At this service we sing and different ones pray as they feel led. We like to listen to the different ones pray. Some ask for one thing and some another. As they make these various requests, I am glad for each one, whatever it may be. Above all else, we want all the blessing we can get prayed into the papers as they go out. We pray for the postal clerks and the train men who handle the mail. People have experienced the sensation of the power of God in handling the handkerchiefs and papers, as though it were something like electricity. We sing around the mail bags, believing that God can send the spirit of song with the papers.
Helping in the Herald of Hope work is a precious brother, Dad Ludlum, who is ninety-three years old. He has for years wrapped most of the papers which have gone Out from this office. He is still energetic and Brother Anderson, who is looking after him, has to hold him back to keep him from working too hard and he always feels that he should do more. We always ask Dad to pray over the papers.
“Oh, Lord, I have not done anything much, give Brother Anderson credit for wrapping these papers,” he said in his prayer not long ago, because he had not done as much as common. We thank the Lord for the wonderful spirit of this man of God.
For several years, before we were given the Herald of Hope to look after, I had gone to various places in and around Los Angeles to find a place to pray and some nights when the Lord laid a burden on my heart, have prayed all night and did not get sleepy. We used to have an old pine field of forty acres down on our place in North Carolina. Many, many times I have longed for that place, that I might go down into the middle of those pines and pray to my heart's content. If one has a secluded place to go for secret prayer, it should be used by all means. There is such a tremendous need of prayer.
Among the supernatural events mentioned in letters received at our office was one told by a native African. He sent in a simply expressed testimony saying that he laid a blessed handkerchief on the body of a dead person and he came back to life. We were convinced of the truth of this man's statement because of the simple way in which he wrote.
One sister, who was greatly interested in the soldiers during the war, sent for thirty handkerchiefs for her own sons and for other boys. After the war was over and the boys were coming home, she wrote and told us that most of them were home and safe and those who had not yet arrived were still living. One particular boy who had received a handkerchief was in an engagement and the boat he was on was sunk. He was swimming around in the water waiting to be rescued and his clothes were black with oil. He said he had a blessed handkerchief in his shoe. God surely answered prayer and he was rescued. He was greatly surprised to find that the handkerchief was still white when he took off his shoe.
A man in Canada requested prayer for rain in a dry time. We sent him a handkerchief, after praying, and told him to put it out in the fields. He did and there was good rain and very good crops.
Also in Canada, in a certain district, the grain was being destroyed by insects. They asked for prayer and we sent them handkerchiefs which they put into the fields. The crop was saved from the ravaging of the insects. And here in California someone wrote and said the grass was dying in their pasture for lack of rain. We sent a handkerchief and they put it out in the pasture and rain came and the pasture was revived. Wonderful things are accomplished through prayer.
I would like to relate an incident of healing which took place while I was at Pisgah Grande. There was a cattleman who had a large herd of Hereford cows on a neighboring ranch. One of them fell over a bank ten or twelve feet high breaking her back. In order for her to be in a standing position, she was suspended under some trees. Later I came riding by on “Dynamite,” a little mule we had at Grande. I wanted in some way to witness to those cattlemen that I was a servant of the Lord, so I got down off the mule and without much ceremony hid my hand on the cow and prayed for her. This embarrassed the cattleman and his helper, so without saying much I got on my mule and rode away.
The next morning I met the cowboy coming up the road from their camp and while he was some distance from me he began to tell a wonderful story about how when they went down to attend to the cow next morning, they discovered that she had broken loose and gone up on the hill with some of the rigging still on her, and she was perfectly healed. Later on I met the cattleman himself and in his quiet way be told about it, expressing his amazement and joy over the healing of his valuable cow. He was still at the ranch at Christmas and sent me a box of candy to show his appreciation. His treatment of me after that showed the profound impression made upon him when he saw how God answered prayer in such a wonderful way.
We have just been talking about some remarkable answers to prayer along different lines, spiritual, temporal and physical. Before the paper was started, one of the things the Lord seemed to show us was to trust Him for the support of the work and make no solicitation. After the third or fourth year, we determined to tithe the gross income of the work.
We believe that the ideal plan for Christians is to give liberally. The Bible plainly states, “Give and it shall be given to you.” This keeps our faith with a keen edge to be exercised for spiritual blessing, [and] then divine healing for the body follows. Wherever real physical healing is in operation, it always stimulates our confidence to expect greater spiritual blessing. Miraculous answers to prayer draw people to God, and also draw the means needed to carry on the work of the Lord. God's work is, in a sense, automatic. If one thing is working, another will. If we will give, we will receive in return, after the manner of God's giving, which is heaped up, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
The money which has come in has been kept revolving in the work of the Lord, supplying workers' needs and, as we have previously stated, helping Christian and missionary work. We have tried to be true to the plan God revealed to us concerning the principles by which the paper should be governed. One of the main things that He revealed to us was to send the paper out without charge and without any intimation that we expected anything in return.
We are all familiar with the circulatory system by which the blood is distributed throughout the human body, first there are the main arteries, then the smaller ones, and last the tiny capillaries carrying life to the whole body. The circulation of the Herald of Hope is somewhat similar. We send it to every state in the union, several hundred to some of our cities and it goes over the rural routes back into the valleys, and up into the mountains, bringing a life-giving message to out of the way places.
We have taken delight in sending the Herald of Hope to foreign countries where there was no hope of receiving anything from the poor and sick ones. God in His grace and mercy has given us special joy in doing this. We thank God that we are reaching forty or fifty countries with the paper bearing the Gospel message, and we are getting in return hundreds and thousands of testimonies of the good various ones have received. But when we think of the promises of God, we see that this is just a beginning of what might have been accomplished, had the full tide blessing of God flowed through the work in the broad spread channels of all its borders. The ministry of this paper is like the ministry of many sanctified lives: There is much that is written in the heavenly record that is not seen by human eyes.
Many of our readers throughout this country and in Canada when in Los Angeles come to the Herald of Hope office and to our meetings, to have fellowship with us. There are thousands corresponding with us, who are manifesting in their letters and gifts love and Christian fellowship, and it is deeply appreciated. It is wonderful that God should have given us such a great work to do, especially in our later life. Yes, surely we have trials and burdens. Sometimes it seems they are formed into billows and look as though we might be rolled under, but when we think of the thousands who have been helped and are now being helped, we take courage, not minding the opposition.
We have wanted to write a brief history of this work which was engineered by the Lord Himself. If we did not know that God is perfect in all His plans, we would wonder why He ever chose such a one as this poor man to be the founder and overseer of the Herald of Hope ministry.
The hidden streams found in the state of Tennessee illustrate to some degree the way the Herald of Hope works. As the various writers of the paper sit in their homes or offices and pray for a message, God gives the messages in that seclusion. They are then published and sent forth; people read them and are inspired to action along some line of Christian endeavor. Therefore, this work becomes an open stream for the spiritual benefit of all who are touched by its ministry.
Our heart's desire is that from the Herald of Hope, as well as from other spiritual channels, may flow rivers of living water, whereby multitudes of poor, famished souls may quench their thirst, be refreshed and made complete in Christ our Saviour and soon coming king.
James A. Cheek, Publisher/Editor & Amanda Cheek, Assistant Editor
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