The History of Herald of Hope

The Herald of Hope magazine was first published in 1948 by a group of pastors who desired to continue the ministry of Pastor William Lamb of the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle in Darlinghurst, Sydney.

William Lamb had a long and fruitful ministry majoring on the truth of the return of Jesus Christ. Many souls were won to Christ through his preaching. In his later years, he travelled the world addressing large crowds in the USA. After he preached at the Moody Memorial Church in Chicago he was invited to pastor the church but declined. For more than 20 years Pastor Lamb published a prophetic paper entitled, The Advent Herald, with 4,000 subscribers, and in the early 1940s when he was unable to continue publishing through ill health, Evangelist John Ridley MC, Pastor’s Russell Ecob, Bob Leghorn, Albyn Betteridge and others, formed a committee to establish the Herald of Hope, a Bible prophecy magazine, to continue the ministry of William Lamb. John Ridley had been converted through the preaching of William Lamb and Russell Ecob had served as a Deacon at Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle.

After WWI, John Ridley travelled the country areas of NSW as a colporteur promoting books written by William Lamb before becoming Australia’s most outstanding Evangelist.

Editorship of the new magazine was held by Albyn Betteridge for many years, then in the 1990s it passed to Pastor John Wilson who had been won to Christ at an evangelistic meeting when John Ridley had preached in the Armidale Baptist Church.

In 1997 John Ecob DD, son of Rev. Russell Ecob, was invited to take over editorship. He has continued to serve in this role, producing many Gospel tracts, articles, and books on Bible Prophecy which the Herald of Hope distributes free of charge. Some of these have been translated into Afrikaans, Chinese, Spanish, Malayalam, Hindi and Telugu languages. A major contribution has been John’s life’s work of charts and maps that are particularly useful for power-point presentations.