friend, who was present at the session, Richards behaved churlishly towards Houteff by propping his feet up on a windowsill and paying scant attention to Houteff's presentation, which he had at length prepared at the Committee's request. After the very first study, an adjournment was called by the Committee. Some believe that this adjournment and subsequent termination of the agreement for studies, was a direct violation of the agreement as per the "Agreement" as stated above. Despite the protest from Houteff, four weeks later, the Committee released its official reply, A Reply to The Shepherd's Rod, which was authored by Professor O.J. Graf. In his rebuttal of the Committee's reply, Houteff complained that a number of his written statements had been taken out of context, or summarily dismissed without proper consideration. He further argued that in Graf's response nothing was mentioned about the interpreted main points of the very first study (the Harvest) as per the Agreement outline. Nevertheless, the Committee's verdict was final. Later Houteff wrote a small booklet explaining his views on the meeting. Though he had been forced out of the SDA Church, Houteff had no intention of leaving it. Since the Church leadership had rejected his message, he took it to the people with great success. In 1934, his evangelistic endeavors began to bear fruit. Several thousand Adventists accepted Houteff's doctrine of the Shepherd's Rod. His Message began to have a considerable impact on the Adventist Church, which, at that time, counted less than 250,000 members worldwide. In 1934, Houteff formed the Universal Publishing Association. While he had no intention of forming his own church, he did wish to use every medium within his power to spread his message within the SDA Church. He viewed the Adventist Church as backsliding from the beliefs upon which it had been founded a hundred years before, and saw his message as a method of solving the many doctrinal disagreements which had arisen as the Church expanded in the 1900s after Ellen G. White's death. The first chapter of Houteff's book, The Shepherd's Rod, dealt with the Biblical 144,000 of Revelation, Chapter 7. Houteff's teachings are inclusive of a message intended directly to the Seventh-day Adventist members, in which God will have a judgment upon his people (Ezekiel 9) and have a purification in his church, resulting in the 144,000 surviving. This belief of a small number of SDA eventually