Personal Testimony of Charles Welty
(As of February 16, 2008)
My name is Charles Welty. I reside in the
city of Paramount, a small friendly city just north of Long Beach in Los
Angeles County, California. My office is also in Paramount at this time, but
I plan to move soon to an area which will depend on what happens in the next
year with various business interests that I have. It could be Malibu,
Chicago, the New York area, Annapolis, or perhaps even Europe.
I was raised in the Presbyterian Church,
Westminster Confession. All I learned from my experiences in the
Presbyterian Church is that as far as I was able to tell, to be saved, you
had to join a committee. Those of you who are of a Presbyterian background
will surely appreciate the humor of that observation.
The doctrines of sin and salvation didn’t
have much meaning to me. Mine was not a “cross and the switchblade” type of
testimony. For you younger people, The Cross and the Switchblade
was the name of a popular book about Nicky Cruz, who left a life among the
gangs and barrios to become a minister. My testimony might be better labeled
The Cross and the Butterknife. But sin is sin, and I was
brought to a realization of this when I was in high school. Gary Richmond,
who has served as an Associate Pastor at the Evangelical Free Church of
Fullerton for a number of years now, was at that time a leader of a Campus
Life club at Hoover High School in Glendale, California. He led a study in
my parents’ home. After a few weeks of listening to what he said, the Spirit
of God convicted me of my sin and need for redemption.
For those of you who question any of this,
and especially in regards to my reputation or that of my twin brother,
William, I say that I was much worse then, in spite of my Cross and
the Butterknife testimony, than I am now, as God is working his
patient work in me, the least member of His Kingdom.
I am a single father. My eldest daughter
(now 23) was married a week before Christmas in 2004 to Nathan Larson, a
wonderful Christian man. Christopher, my son (now 20), is in the Navy,
currently stationed through 2011 at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis,
Maryland. Rebecca, my youngest daughter, now 16, doesn’t know what she
wants to be; a writer, perhaps. Heaven help us. Just kidding, as I am a
screenwriter. The law profession could use someone like her. So could the
motion picture business, for that matter.
I have been married twice. The first time
was in 1976. The marriage lasted 4 years. She wanted to be a lawyer and saw
no future with me. She divorced me and abandoned all of our friends. She has
since been disbarred, throwing away all she gained after our divorce. See
what happens when you try to do things your way, and reject God’s Law for
your own short-sighted choices? You throw everything away, and for what?
But I remarried in 1984. The effects of
childbirth on my second wife resulted in severe post-partum depression, and
a mental breakdown for her. I tried to keep my family together, but in the
first trimester of her last pregnancy, she was literally placed in a padded
room with no medication, for fear of harming our baby, who turned out to be
my precious daughter, Rebecca.
But during the last trimester of her
pregnancy, she was hospitalized at a mental care facility. During her
hospitalization, my wife divorced me, blaming me for her problems. Nearly 15
years later she came to regret that decision, as I warned her she would, but
what is done, is done… and I cannot change that.
My three children are now estranged from
her. Rebecca refuses to talk to her. My former wife now resides in constant
supervision at a board and care facility. But my children don’t blame me for
what happened to her. My children and I have had many long talks about this.
I am told that my former wife continues to move in and out of mental
facilities and board-and-care centers. To this day, I do not know where she
lives.
So I spend my time writing and optioning or
selling screenplays (I have three movies in active development now),
overseeing the development of them into novels and such, and now and then
putting some input into Davidson Press, the company that my brother and I
formed to publish the International Standard Version Bible. That’s the
translation that we had the privilege of funding upon the sale of
Continental Satellite Corporation, the DBS licensee that was ultimately sold
to Dish Network.
I also have a new motion picture development
company called
Fidelis Entertainment. My various
screenplays are quite eclectic in nature. They run from light-hearted
comedies, political thrillers, bio pics, time travel adventures, and the
like. One of my scripts has a $70 million budget, and a very reputable
producer friend in the Beverly Hills area is looking at producing it. Maybe
we will produce it ourselves from the funds set aside for new programming
for our satellite company. More on that later.
Through God’s grace,
Davidson Press and the
ISV
Foundation were able to distribute over $2,000,000 to various
charitable Christian groups, including the ISV Foundation, some local
churches, a seminary, and a law school, all from the sale of that DBS
license. And we have distributed over 1,000,000 free copies of the ISV New
Testament on line (and 35,000 copies in print), making the ISV one of the
most successful new Bible translations on the Internet.
Many of the recipients of our gifts later
came to despise the gifts, and the giver, though. To this day, I am not sure
why; perhaps because the people with whom we made the complex legal
arrangements required for the transfer of the assets that were donated left
the organization and new people didn’t understand or respect what we
accomplished. We learned some lessons from this. If you don’t work for what
you get, many times you will despise the gift and the giver. That may
not make sense to you, but it’s true. Some of these people think the gift,
and its continuing benefits, were something they earned or deserved. I’ve
seen this first hand, and I still don’t quite understand the thinking behind
it. Oh, well…
Now we are engaged in the development of a
new high-frequency worldwide satellite-delivered broadband Internet service
called the
Super Wide Area Network. It was
designed specifically to aid the underground church in the Far East, and
elsewhere, using encryption methodologies that I am not free to talk about
much, as well as serve just about anybody else who needs the services.
We are working with a number of foreign
governments. It’s hard to believe when the ambassadors from a whole bunch of
countries keep calling our tiny little postage-stamp office in Paramount.
And William, my twin brother, went off to Africa in February to address the
African Union as the keynote speaker at a special conference called to help
solve the telecom problems of Africa. They believe, and rightly so I must
say, that our SWANsat project can help them. We hope so. Who could’ve
figured all of this from the beginning? Only God, of course. So His hand
continues to work in spite of our own failures and shortcomings.
I read in the Bible that God is able to do
and perform much more than we think or imagine. Maybe the 18 billion dollar
loan we’re talking to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and
other big groups about will actually work out. I don’t know, but you have to
start somewhere.
The nature of my work takes me away, now and
then, sometimes for extended periods of time. My new movie –
Ludington’s Ride – is in development for shooting at
Frank Capra, Jr.’s studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, and in New York.
We posted the preliminary storyboards for the motion picture to our website
a while back. And
Chicago Radio Theater – our live radio
drama theater project – is perking along. We’re hoping to bring back “The
Shadow”, “The Green Hornet”, “Captain Midnight” and other old favorites,
performed live with new and original scripts, in a live radio broadcast from
a theater in Chicago. A big ad agency in Chicago and a new radio network in
Texas are expected to be working with us.
I don’t know how long these projects will
take, but they could keep me away, or at least occupied in and out of the
local area, for quite some time. I attend a small Bible-teaching church in
Irvine with my daughter. But if I’m not actively involved in some of the
local church committees, it’s not because I am lazy. I just request that
people understand that my ministry is my work, as it should be, and
that my ministry is expanding way beyond the local area here. And a home in
Chicago, in Annapolis, in New York or North Carolina where our
Ludington’s Ride motion picture project will be produced, or even in
Malibu may be a reality. I don’t know what will happen with those projects.
I have avoided formal membership in
churches, only because they never seem to understand the nature of my work
and why it may take me away for long periods of time. Missionaries and
people who serve in the military understand that, though. I trust whatever
church I land in will understand this, too. Local involvement on committees
can be spotty, as my schedule can be unpredictable.
A note on tithing: One other reason I
avoided church membership is all the others, especially the Baptist churches
I looked at, had a tendency to demand 10% tithing. They seem to think
“tithe” means 10%. It actually means a tenth, like “percentage” doesn’t
necessarily mean one percent. It could mean multiples of that, and I think
“tithe” actually means more than 10%, and sometimes less.
I have had to arrange my affairs so that my
personal income is actually quite little each year. My businesses and trusts
pick up all my other expenses. This was done many years ago, more than a
decade now. And ten percent of that is not much, so I don’t bother. That
sounds harsh. Let me explain something, and I hope you can get used to this,
as it is a part of my testimony.
My income has been irrevocably dedicated to
a number of non-profit trusts under my trusteeship, and the trusteeship of
my family (like Rebecca, when she’s old enough, and if she passes the bar,
and perhaps my son, should he be interested in that sort of thing) and of
certain qualified individuals who really know what is at stake. So I don’t
personally earn anything. The trusts get the royalties from my novels, movie
scripts, and corporate holdings, including our satellite companies, our
publishing company, and all the rest of them.
I don’t believe in 10% tithing, by the way,
as I think this is unbiblical. It’s not that I disagree with tithing.
Actually, I think 10% tithing doesn’t go far enough! The biblical tithes
were much greater than 10%. They were actually closer to 22%, if you add
them all up, including what I call the “party tithe” where God told the
Israelites to plan for and set aside money for a festival; a party, if you
will.
So I live on about two to ten percent of my
income, sometimes a lot less and sometimes more, and the rest is slated for
other causes through a trust structure I cannot change. There is always
foundation grants for special projects, I suppose, so don’t rule me out
completely about helping with a church mortgage now and then. Let’s see what
happens with the trust incomes.
And the trusts are designed to distribute
billions, not merely millions, of dollars annually – and perhaps in the
hundreds of billions of dollars – should SWANsat and these other projects
become successful.
If you pray for
rain, you’d better bring an umbrella. Anything else is less than faith.
Likewise, if you work hard and
pray for your business to be a success, you’d better plan for that success,
or you aren’t really believing that God is going to do anything. I suppose
God doesn’t want to hear our words on what we would do if He
blesses us. I think he likes to see actions rather than
hear words. Don’t you agree?
And all of this includes your life, not just
your business. Your family, here and now. Life, business and family have
been roller coasters for me, but all along, He has been faithful, even when
I fail. “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.”
So… that’s my testimony… my “Ebenezer stone”
as the Scripture puts it: Thus far have I come, by God’s grace. And by God’s
grace, he will see me home.
Charles Welty
Paramount, CA
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