EXCERPTS
“If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicist about the method they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle; don’t listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds.”
“On the Methods of Theoretical. Physics,” Herbert Spenser Lecture, Oxford, June 10, 1933.
​
This book is a detailed account of Doug’s life before its beginnings through the time he moved his family to Washington DC and began to carry on the work of Abraham Vereide and Richard Halverson. The rest of the story is told largely through the eyes of his many friends around the world that he did life with over the ensuing decades following his move to Washington.
​
Our strategy in presenting this story is to focus on a group of people who made a significant impact on Doug’s life and thinking in the context of a worldwide brotherhood, and to track Coe’s development as he matured from a youth leader to an informal ambassador with worldwide influence. We also feature a collection of quotes, correspondence, thoughts and statements by and about Doug that demonstrate many of the core thoughts and concepts that flowed from a lifetime of study and application. We hope the readers will hold these concepts close to their hearts and remember what Doug and his friends tried to practice throughout the years. We also hope that these accounts will encourage those who read them to strip away the vestiges of religion and help each reader to see the purity of the call of Jesus’ life and story and His desire to impact each of our futures.
The following is a part of the book’s introduction:
​
He never held a political office nor received any partisan appointments. He was neither a minister nor a religious leader. He possessed no political portfolio, nor would he ever write a book. He sometimes accepted the wages of a greenskeeper.
​
For credibility and connectiveness world leaders meeting in the runway would greet one another in his name. He visited the leaders of virtually all of the 195 countries in the world. He likely had more contacts across the earth than any president will ever have.
​
Kings, princes and business moguls stood in line to meet with him for ten minutes, but many of his closest friends were elevator operators and restaurant workers toiling in a hotel kitchen. He spent time with Mother Teresa and the Dali Lama and scores of the spiritually hungry in between.
​
He was not formally trained in the art of diplomacy but Generals sought his formula for peace, while ambassadors pursued his simple diplomacy based on tender reconciliation. He wrote thousands of personal letters to friends. The letters are kept by many as prized possessions. When he died, hardened generals wept and his memory was cherished in memorial services in venues all across the world.
​
Pursuing his lofty purpose sometimes damaged the feelings of those he cherished the most; those relationships where someone was hurt by his actions or inaction were the things that grieved him the most according to those close to him. There are accounts in his last years of his attempts at reconciliation of these damaged relations, with some more successful than others.
​
He traveled the world some of the time with his wife Jan, whose gentle grace made one feel as if they were addressing a gentle queen. Together they raised six champion children.
​
This is an account of Doug’s life before its beginnings through the time he moved his family to Washington and began to carry on the work initiated before him by Abraham Vereide and Richard Halverson. Our strategy in presenting this story is to focus on a group of people who made a significant impact on Doug’s life and thinking in the context of a worldwide brotherhood, and to track Coe’s development as he matured from a youth leader to an informal ambassador with worldwide influence. We also feature a collection of quotes, correspondence, thoughts and statements by and about Doug that demonstrate many of the core thoughts and concepts that flowed from a lifetime of study and application.
​
We hope the readers will hold these concepts close to their hearts and remember what Doug and his friends tried to practice throughout the years.
​
We are honored that Jan Coe and family members have supported our effort, with the only request that we present him as a man not unlike any other man, who worked to reconcile himself to his God and to the people around him.
​
XXXXX
Now Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God. In fact, every single thing was created through and for him. He is both the first principle and the upholding principle of
the whole scheme of creation.
Colossians 1:15, 17
BOOK EXCERPTS
Doug let the man out at the bus station and proceeded home. On the way, as he considered the words and the tone the man had used, and as those words sunk in, he began to weep. Blinding tears seemed to flow from a unique intersection of his heart and mind. He had always understood the objective transaction between man and God that resulted in the forgiveness of his transgressions and the reconciliation that took place with both God and man. He had heard the words countless times In his spiritual journey. He had processed it almost like an algebraic formula that covered all the theological bases. But this was different. This was not religious church-talk. This was personal. Almost like the man who accompanied him to the bus station reconciled Doug’s mind and his heart in a dynamic and profound way. From this point forward things changed…
XXXXX
Weeks later when Coe received a call from Dean Hatfield’s secretary and was directed to report to the Dean’s office. The next day he immediately felt a knot in his stomach and a lump in his throat, fearful he would be disciplined for using the student union meeting rooms on campus for his Navigator meetings without obtaining the necessary permission, or for being critical of the university for how it had been conducting its chapel services.
​
Coe was surprised when - instead of receiving a stern reprimand, he was asked to serve as a driver to nearby Corvallis where Hatfield was scheduled to deliver a speech.
​
Coe stayed quiet in the vehicle as the forty miles clipped along, and Hatfield finally broke the silence. "I just wanted to tell you. Two nights ago at midnight I got down on my stomach in my bedroom as flat as I could get and told God I was tired of living my life for myself and I wanted to begin living for Him. The thought came into my mind that I needed to tell you this.”
​
The usual talkative Coe was embarrassed and somewhat flabbergasted and confused. “I didn't know what to say. I just sat there and listened and don't recall anything that we talked about for the rest of the evening. The next day I realized what I had done was a good thing, and that I needed to talk to him about what he had done. So I made an appointment to go see him the next morning. I told him: ‘What you did was a good thing.’ We agreed to meet together for two hours once a week and talk about what had happened.”
​
Then Coe said “Well, maybe we should say a prayer together. I will say one then you can say one.”
​
Hatfield reflected: “This was a quite new experience for me because prayers like that you didn’t do unless you were at a religious meeting and some minister had said a prayer. I had heard my mother say prayers, but I never thought a grown man would say one, particularly in that setting.”