Herbert W. Armstrong was the world’s leading televangelist of his day—watched, read and followed by millions worldwide. Shortly before his death in 1986, Mr. Armstrong’s World Tomorrow program could be seen weekly on 382 television stations—more than any other religious program in America.

That remarkable broadcasting career began in the smallest of ways back in September 1933, when Mr. Armstrong heard about an opportunity on a tiny, 100-watt radio station in Eugene, Oregon. It was a weekly, 15-minute slot offered freely to any preacher willing to speak early in the morning every Sunday.

The station couldn’t give away the airtime. No one wanted it—until Mr. Armstrong heard about it. To him, it was the most significant door God had ever opened for proclaiming the truth of the Bible.

Mr. Armstrong jumped at the opportunity and the rest, as they say, is history—fascinating history.

At the time, Mr. Armstrong envisioned blanketing the Pacific Northwest with weekly radio coverage. And since the opportunities back then required him to be at the radio station for the live broadcast, it made for a grueling schedule throughout the 1930s. At one point, Mr. Armstrong’s weekend routine was to conduct a church service Saturday morning in Eugene, an afternoon service in Jefferson, Oregon, and then drive to Seattle that night, usually arriving around midnight. He was on the air in Seattle first thing the next morning and then on the road again in order to make it to Portland for a Sunday afternoon broadcast. He then hurriedly hit the road for three more hours so he could host evangelistic campaigns in Eugene on Sunday nights.

God richly blessed Mr. Armstrong’s diligent labor of proclaiming the truth of the Bible. As the size and scope of God’s work grew, many bigger doors opened for the gospel message to go out to this world through the voice of Herbert W. Armstrong. In 1942, he started traveling to Hollywood, California, for months at a time to record programs for daily radio broadcasting.

Daily radio had a tremendous impact on God’s work. After 1942, the overall growth and development of God’s work accelerated dramatically. Mr. Armstrong attributed much of this phenomenal growth to the impact of daily broadcasting.

In 1955, Mr. Armstrong began cutting back his radio coverage in order to concentrate on the newest medium of the day—television broadcasting. With the emergence of television, he initially thought radio audiences would disappear. He soon discovered, however, that the world of radio was not dead. He concluded that daily broadcasting on many radio stations would be more effective than weekly programs on only a few television stations.

It wasn’t until the late 1960s that Mr. Armstrong realized the need for a regular presence on television. So the program went on television once again in 1967. By 1969, the church started phasing out its radio coverage.

Television was much more costly than radio, Mr. Armstrong said. But the potential audience size was so much bigger.

In 1972, Mr. Armstrong revealed plans for a daily program to be broadcast on 25 television stations. In announcing the move, he left little doubt about the significance of this new phase. He said it was the most powerful door God ever opened for the work.

“Due to the morning times we are having to take, we cannot expect a sudden influx of millions of letters immediately,” he wrote, “but it will build, and grow, just as this work has always had to do. It started the very smallest, and has grown to the biggest—and it will do the same on daily tv!” (co-worker letter, July 28, 1972).

Sadly, while Mr. Armstrong traveled the world to meet with world leaders during the 1970s, those left in Pasadena to look after the day-to-day operations of the work, led by his son Garner Ted, dismantled the work Mr. Armstrong started and liberalized his Bible-based teachings.

In the case of the television program, rather than continue proclaiming the gospel that Jesus Christ originally preached, World Tomorrow producers churned out programs that were predominantly secular.

As a result, daily television experienced an untimely death. Even the weekly television show dwindled to only a handful of stations.

It wasn’t until 1981, when Mr. Armstrong took over broadcasting duties at the age of 88, that the weekly television program exploded with growth. In five short years, World Tomorrow coverage and the size of its audience multiplied by many times over. In 1985 alone, for example, the church answered 1.1 million phone calls, most of them in response to the weekly program.

It’s hard to believe, but Herbert W. Armstrong’s weekly television show was bigger than all the heavyweights of his day—Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell and Robert Schuller.

It’s even harder to believe how fast Mr. Armstrong’s successors methodically destroyed everything he established and built over the course of his lifelong service to God!

Beginning in 1989, however, the same God who raised up Mr. Armstrong’s ministry went to work raising the ruins of his incredible legacy (Amos 9:11).

Many of you have become faithful supporters of this work as a result—either as subscribers to the Trumpet magazine or as viewers of our weekly television program, the Key of David.

Right now, we have well over 300,000 monthly subscribers to the print version of the Trumpet. And the audience that follows this website has steadily grown since we started posting daily content four years ago. Over the last four months, traffic at this website has increased by over 25 percent, compared to last year.

The Key of David program, meanwhile, is one of the more popular, well-established religious programs on television today. The weekly broadcast, presented by my father, plays on 194 television stations worldwide. Since it began in 1993, Mr. Flurry has recorded 600 different episodes.

Now added to that, finally, is a new program to be televised every weekday, beginning next week!

In The Trumpet Daily, we believe we now have an ideal complement to both the Trumpet magazine and the Key of David. With daily television content now available, we have an even greater opportunity to arouse interest in our audience and to grab hold of their attention every day.

When Mr. Armstrong first considered the prospect of daily television during the 1950s, he said the work needed more than one program per week simply because of the many forms of entertainment that were turning people away from God.

He learned that it wasn’t easy winning people to Christ when there were so many distractions working against them. And that was in 1956! What would he say about the noisy, plugged-in, entertainment-crazed society of our digital age today?

God prophesied it would be this way just before the return of Jesus Christ to this Earth in power and glory. Read 2 Timothy 3.

And yet, even as we see our society unravel in these latter days, God is expanding and growing His work in preparation for His soon-coming world government to be established in Jerusalem!

“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35). My father quoted this verse in a recent letter he sent to our faithful co-workers. There still is a huge work to be done before Christ returns, he explained, which is why we will be testing the effectiveness of daily television this summer.

To begin with, we will be airing the program on two national cable networks, Monday through Friday: The CW-Plus Network (5:30 a.m. est/pst) and GSN (6:30 a.m. est/pst). In order to get this up and running, we have started with more affordable times early in the morning, just as Mr. Armstrong did. So it will undoubtedly take time to build up a regular viewing audience, particularly on GSN, which doesn’t begin its network programming until 8 a.m.

But one advantage we obviously have over Mr. Armstrong’s era is the rapidly improving quality of television broadcasting over the Internet. For those who cannot access The Trumpet Daily on television, this website will enable you to watch the program every day—at any time. You can also view the programs and additional videos we produce on our YouTube channel.

As my father admonished co-workers in his recent letter, be praying for the results of this test—that it might become a real breakthrough for God’s work! “We have the attention of a pretty good audience out there, but in this age with so many distractions, it‘s hard to bring them along,” he wrote. “We must help them to see that they must get into their Bible, and act on what they‘re hearing!”