Dear Dr. Meredith,

There’s a point I meant to relay to you in our discussion over lunch about what you perceive to be a coup in the making. With the meetings coming up next week, I think it important that I state this now. Please consider it prayerfully.

For a long time, we have been hearing about how wonderful it is that even though "voting" of a sort is employed in Board and Council decision-making, it has never been a close call. You have explained that the consensus has always been unanimous or nearly so (with perhaps one person abstaining). This, according to you, has been strong evidence of God’s leadership—that is, His Holy Spirit leading all of you to "speak the same thing."

And yet now that the Council has met and unanimously agreed on the government issue THREE TIMES, it is shocking to me that you believe the doubly reaffirmed conclusion—agreed upon by you and set forth in a coworker letter that you signed—is wrong. In fact, you consider it the insidious seed of a plan to overthrow God’s government—which would mean it is of the devil! If that is so, then why should we believe that God had any part in any of the other unanimous consensus decisions the Board and Council have made?

Of course, I—like you—believe that God DID lead these other decisions. How, then, can I conclude that in the government issue, Satan came into your meetings (meetings opened with prayer in which you asked God to restrain Satan), took over the minds of every single one of you on three separate occasions and led you to agree on something that is against God’s will? It seems much more likely that the Living Jesus Christ took the reins of His Church and set the government the way He wants it to be—that He led everyone to make the same decision despite the personal reservations held by a few. Indeed, it seems He led them to make it three times—the number, as you have often pointed out, of judgment and finality.

So do we dare claim that these decisions were authored by Satan? Would not this be tantamount to what the Pharisees did when they said the devil was behind Christ’s miracles? I am not accusing anyone of committing "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit." I am simply saying that if it is possible that God is the one behind these meetings and the coworker letter that went out under your name, then we need to give that a tremendous amount of prayer and thought.

Incidentally, no one has swayed me to look at the circumstances in this way. But if anyone has at all, it would be you—in your past confidence in Christ’s leadership of the Board and Council meetings.

And now, before closing, I do want to say one more thing. When the international conspiracy ideas were rife in certain areas of the Church, you were very level- headed in pointing out the dangers in getting caught up in them. One of the biggest dangers you mentioned was that of creating a "self-fulfilling prophecy"—that irrational fear of the government and acting on that fear may eventually bring the government to really act against you.

Well, in the "present distress," I believe that the same danger should be pointed out. For if you are dead-set on the idea that a number of other Board/Council members are out to get you—and proceed according to that supposition (acting in opposition to them and turning others against them)—you will no doubt create a self-fulfilling prophecy yourself, in which others are forced to act against you.

I sincerely hope and pray that you will take these matters before God in prayer. Perhaps you still believe the other 89ers and I are naive—and perhaps we are in certain ways—but we just don’t believe that things are as you see them. If we had any such inkling of a coup attempt, we would certainly have stepped up to your defense. But if you act contrary to decisions that you yourself have made along with the rest of the Council or if you actually separate from Global for the reasons you’ve stated and these reasons are still not apparent to us, we would not be able to support you—because we would see your actions as causing division in the Church.

Yet I and all of us want to support you. So as your friend and brother, I ask and plead with you not to go off and start another work unless Global apostatizes or simply refuses to do the Work. Otherwise you will shatter the spirits of God’s people. Indeed, you have continually pointed to the fact that though we have gone through tumultuous times, Global has not suffered a major split—a fact that gives us a great deal of credibility. Just this Feast, you said so again. And I hope that long after today, you and all of us will still be able to say the same thing.

I do pray that you will continue as the presiding evangelist of a unified and growing Global Church of God—preparing the way for the return of our King, Jesus Christ.

In Christian love,

Tom Robinson