“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.”

                                                                        Proverbs 29:2

Brother Homer’s rainmaking ability was phenomenal. In November 1955 he undertook to walk a thousand miles from Iran to Bethlehem, following the traditional route of the Magi. Then, you guessed it: “Mighty driving rains struck me the second day I was out there.” The clouds began to pour out rain, “a very deluge.” Boys slogged around in the mud. Buses, headed for Baghdad, along with oil-company trucks and other vehicles, bogged down and had to be extricated by yellow “cats.” When he arrived in Jerusalem, rain was falling there, too. They asked him, “Bishop, don’t you think we’ve had enough rain?”

The downpour followed him all the way to Damascus and on to Beirut, where he took a ship for Alexandria, Egypt. Somebody there wanted to know, “Don’t you have any rain for Egypt?” Brother Homer promised water, and “in those self-same hours” Americans drilling for oil struck fresh water, which reportedly gushed up, shooting high in the air.

In 1959 Tomlinson visited Accra, Ghana. The country had been gripped by a terrible drought for more than a year. He asked a thousand people to gather while he prayed for rain, and before they left, “while I was yet standing there, clouds began to gather, the shadows began to gather.” Next morning Brother Homer boarded a small plane, and just as this aircraft began to ascend into the sky, tiny raindrops spattered on its windows. Minutes later showers poured down upon the thirsty country. “I had prayed for rain plenty of times, but I really never did go up into the sky to meet it before,” commented Brother Homer.

Tomlinson took a special interest in the Holy Land, and actually transferred his church headquarters from Queens Village, New York, to Jerusalem. In 1959, when the war was about to break out again between Jordan and Israel, Homer sent a message to both countries through their press and radio, urging them not to have a war. He promised to come soon, lift up his banner, and heal the 4,000-year-old enmity between Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau.

He himself recognized the incongruity of proclaiming peace to the world when he could not completely pacify his own faction-ridden Church of God. But these bothersome details never seemed to deter him for long in his global mission.

In the elections of 1956, 1960, and 1964 Brother Homer continued to run for president of the United States, with a platform that proposed to unite church and state; guarantee freedom of worship; abolish taxes and substitute 10 percent tithing; promote free enterprise; end wars, crime, and delinquency; abolish the jury system and try the accused before “godly judges”; stop all divorce, gambling, and use of liquor, narcotics, and tobacco; promote racial equality; achieve painless childbirth; and establish Bible reading and prayer in all schools.

When it came to head counts, Tomlinson’s computer seemed to give him trouble. For example, in the 1960 election, he claimed to have received 3 million votes, whereas the World Almanac gives all scattered and write-in candidates together only 785.

(to be continued . . .)

“Father, Thank you for stories of faith and history, and the people who make them. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”