Death to the Cities!
"DEATH TO THE CITIES!"--MO November 30, 1975 GP No.373
--New York's Destruction and The Fall of Man!"
Copyright © January 1976 by The Children of God
(Recorded from an Informal Discussion:)
1. I WISH PEOPLE WOULD REPORT ON WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR ENEMIES, because that's quite a testimony! I remember a lot of things when I was a kid that happened to my folks enemies. So that's a quite a testimony what God does to your enemies.
2. I WAS THINKING ABOUT NEW YORK BEING ON THE BRINK AND GOING BANKRUPT: Look how they tried to persecute us! Now they're getting what they deserve. You know the Federal Government's trying to go to their rescue, but that doesn't solve their problems, they're still living on borrowed money.
3. PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO BE LOANING THAT DAMNED CITY MONEY FOR EVER! One of these days they're going to start collecting. And if the Federal Government loans them too much money and doesn't get it back, they could bankrupt the Government! This is why they were so scared to let the city go bankrupt because too many banks would fail that hold bonds and stuff.
4. TOO MANY BUSINESSES WOULD FAIL, people would fail, just like a row of dominoes, they'd collapse right on down the line including banks in other cities and they'd even have repercussions in Europe if New York went bankrupt.
5. THE PROBLEM IN NEW YORK CITY HAS BEEN THAT NEW YORK HAS LET BOTH THE RICH AND THE POOR GO FREE: They haven't taxed the rich enough and they've spoiled the poor with too much welfare. Most of the big rich people and the big money boys and big banks and big corporations actually live over in Connecticut or somewhere else and are incorporated somewhere else and did it deliberately so they wouldn't have to pay those big high New York City taxes. So the people with all the money who have their big buildings and banks and everything in New York City have corporations that escape N.Y. City taxes. Leave it to the rich to figure it out so they don't have to get taxed! Well you can't run a city like that without taxes.
6. THEN THEY'VE BEEN FEEDING THE POOR IN NEW YORK TOO MUCH: Ridiculous things like if you're a poor peon in Puerto Rico--every Puerto Rican lives for the day when he's got eighty dollars and he can catch the Airbus to New York, because the moment he gets there they immediately house, clothe and feed him and put him up in a $200 a month apartment, pay $80 worth of utilities a month and give him a bunch of money to eat on besides, and he's just living in luxury, he doesn't even have to work! Anybody, any U.S. citizen, and it finally got to be where even any foreigner or anybody could land in New York City and apply for welfare and they immediately treat them like kings with a luxurious welfare system, the total welfare system, the total welfare state! I mean that's going to the opposite extreme on welfare. So between the two, treating the poor like that and letting the rich get by without paying taxes, N.Y. is going broke!
7. YOU CAN'T PAY THE POOR UNLESS YOU ROB THE RICH, right? So they were sure paying the poor all right, but they weren't robbing the rich to do it, so they soon ran out of money. You just can't have socialism where the rich stay rich!
8. BUT IN NEW YORK THEY HAD IT ALL FIGURED OUT WHERE THE RICH COULD STAY RICH AND STILL FEED THE POOR ON BORROWED MONEY! New York kept borrowing money and selling bonds borrowing more money and all that kind of stuff. Well, people will trust you so long, and then they quit trusting your ability to ever pay it back. So if you keep living on borrowed money, there comes a day when you have to pay it back when those bonds begin to come due. I wrote you and told you what bonds were in "Rich man, Poor man," didn't I?
9. THESE DEBTS BEGAN TO COME DUE WITH ALL THEIR BIG HIGH INTEREST RATES AND NEW YORK DIDN'T HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY THEM BACK. She'd been living on borrowed money all the time and wasn't even raising enough money for her current expenses, much less to pay back her debts. Now anybody with a lick of sense knows if you're living far above your salary, your income, and you're living mostly on borrowed money you keep borrowing from your friends to live, and you're not even earning or working and making enough money to pay your current expenses, where you're living beyond your income and you are not even making enough money to pay your living expenses, much less repay all this money you borrowed, you're bound to go broke! Well that's what happened to New York: It's been going on for years until now New York's billions and billions of dollars in debt!
10. AND THE THING THAT THEY'RE ALL SCARED ABOUT IS THAT SOME OF THE BIGGEST BANKS IN THE WORLD, Chase Manhattan and first National and first City National and all these huge big corporations and banks and even the U.S. Government, hold blocks of billions of dollars worth of these worthless New York City bonds!
11. NOW BANKS ARE CUSTODIANS OF THE PEOPLE'S MONEY. Small investors and big investors both put all this money in the banks. The bank then is supposed to invest it so they can earn interest and pay them back some interest. Well, city bonds and government and state bonds are supposed to be the best, surest, safest investments there are.
12. SO FOR YEARS AND YEARS THE BANKS HAVE BEEN BUYING ALL THESE BIG BONDS FROM THE CITY, New York City bonds, which means just loaning in the City Money which the City is promising to repay at a high rate of interest. Well here's all this money, that these banks have been loaning the City to live on, and the City's not even earning enough money to pay its daily expenses much less pay back these loans! It's living on borrowed money.
13. SO IF THE CITY GOES BANKRUPT AND DEFAULTS ON ALL THESE DEBTS, ALL THESE BONDS ARE WORTH NOTHING and all these people who put their money in the bank can't get it back because the bank goes bust because the money's gone, and its all just on paper! So then it goes on down the line: All the various businesses who have money borrowed from the bank, the bank has to start foreclosing on to get some money to stay alive, and so the businesses go bankrupt, banks go bust, etc.
14. WHAT HAS HAPPENED IS THAT THE CITY IS NOT GOING BANKRUPT, IT IS BANKRUPT ALREADY! It's just staving off the day of doom a little longer, that's all, by borrowing more money, This is what the Federal Government has just done now. What the Federal Government has done is not actually loan them money, but it has promised them another 2 1/2 billion a month credit guarantee for the next three years, has promised to guarantee the repayment of all these loans and bonds etc.
15. ALL THAT THESE BIG BANKS WERE WAITING FOR WAS FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO GUARANTEE THEIR LOANS. In other words, the banks tell the Government, "We'll loan the City more money if you will promise to pay us back in case the city can't pay us back." So Ford finally signed at the last minute. When the State passed some laws to raise the taxes enough to try to start meeting their expenses, Ford finally signed. In other words, he said, "Either you guys start living within your income or we're not going to give you the money. Cut down your city expenses and raise the taxes."
16. ONE OF THE REASONS OF COURSE IS THAT THE WHOLE CITY'S RUN BY THE MAFIA, a bunch of racketeers who are robbing the banks and the government and everybody blind, so that billions in money goes into New York City into its banks and its businesses, but where does it go? It doesn't wind up in the city coffers!--And the rich have got all kinds of ways of worming their way out of paying taxes, etc.
17. BUT YOU CAN'T RUN A CITY THAT SIZE WITHOUT MONEY. You've got to run the city's basic utilities, water system, power system, transportation system, sewage system, etc.--And when you get 14 million people in a city it's absolutely ridiculous! I mean its totally, utterly ridiculous! Nobody could possibly ever have that many people live in one city and survive!
18. THE LORD WILL HAVE MILLIONS IN HIS CITY, but of course His City's going have a lot of room--1500 miles wide and 1500 miles high, and that's a whole lot bigger than New York!--That's half as big as the United States!--And a whole lot higher--And I'm sure it won't have to have a sewage system and all that stuff that New York has to have.--And we're going to have the whole world paying our taxes!
19. SO NOW THE U.S. GOVERNMENT or at least Ford, has promised to push bills through Congress to promise to guarantee the money, if the banks will loan it, that the U.S. will guarantee it in case it can't get paid.--And it won't! They're just stalling off the day of judgment three more years, that's all.--Just three more years of living on borrowed time and borrowed money.
20. BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IN A CITY THE SIZE OF NEW YORK with millions of people in it if suddenly they couldn't pay the garbage men or the train drivers or the truck or the bus drivers, subway drivers electrical workers, water men, all the various utilities, school teachers--if suddenly the whole city went totally bankrupt and nobody could get paid and nobody got any more free housing, free rent, free food and everything, with all those loafing poor? It's unbelievable!
21. THE LAST I HEARD TWO OUT OF EVERY FIVE NEW YORKERS IS LIVING ON WELFARE! You can't have half the city sitting around doing nothing and survive!--No wonder they have so much crime, drugs, vice and all! They're always saying, "Oh isn't it pitiful, the poor New Yorkers, those poor people in New York!". Let me tell you, all those poor are living in style! I mean, they're getting all their bills paid, their rent paid, food paid, utilities paid and everything by the City and doing nothing!
22. VIRTUALLY THE ENTIRE NEGRO CITY OF HARLEM IS ON WELFARE, THE WHOLE NORTH SIDE OF NEW YORK! Well, you can imagine what would happen if suddenly nobody in a city that size got paid and they couldn't buy their food, or the water stopped running, the sewage stopped flowing and the lights went out? Now what do you think would happen?--Riots, brother?--No!--There'd be war! I mean there would be absolute chaos, total bedlam! People will be slaughtering each other for food!
23. THAT'S THE KIND OF A SITUATION THAT COMMUNISM AND COMMUNISTIC LEADERSHIP THRIVES ON: They just wait for a situation like that and then furnish the leadership for the rebel army! And what I and Jeane Dixon both have seen was the Blacks, as a result--They're the poor of the United States, though they're rich compared to the poor in most other countries--taking over the country--literally like black savages taking over the country.
24. IN ALL THE MAJOR CITIES OF THE UNITED STATES TODAY OVER HALF THE POPULATION IS BLACK! The United States has probably the biggest black population of any one nation on the face of the Earth!--And they multiply like guinea pigs, like rabbits! In New York and most of those big cities they pay welfare to the poor women who have children and no husband. So a big fat and sassy woman can live in style and have all the men she wants as long as she has plenty of children and no husband, because for every child that comes along they pay her more welfare money. So she makes her living on having children, the more the merrier, the more money! So they just multiply like rabbits!
25. IN ALL THOSE CITIES THEY PAY THE POOR WOMEN WELFARE ACCORDING TO HOW MANY CHILDREN THEY HAVE. They don't dare have a husband because then the welfare says, "Well, if you have a husband, no welfare!--He's got to go to work!" Even if they do already have a husband and he can't get a job, they've got to pay him welfare any way.
26. IT GOT TO BE SUCH A RACKET IN LOS ANGELES THEY CALLED IT "THE BABY BUSINESS"! The woman down there, the more children they could have, it didn't matter whose they were, they got more money. If they didn't have a husband, the more money they'd get from the state. So they have multiplied like guinea pigs, like rabbits!--That way they now comprise the majority of the population of every major city in the United States.
27. AND WHEN THE TROUBLE COMES AND THE CRASH COMES, the economic crash and the bankruptcy comes and nobody gets paid, they're going to go out with their guns and their knives and get it by force! And there's not going to be enough food in New York City, there's not going to be enough to eat there to get it in New York.
28. SO I SAW IN A VISION, I SAW THEM STREAMING OUT OF THE BIG CITIES LIKE BLACK ANTS UP THE HIGHWAYS from New York and out of all the major big cities in the United States, streaming out along the highways into the country and out in the Midwest and the West and all. Where are they going to head for? When there's no food in the cities, where are they going to go? When there's no food and no water in the cities, where are they going to go?
29. THEY'RE GOING TO HEAD FOR THE COUNTRY, OUT WHERE THE FOOD IS!--And they're going to rob the farmers by force and take it! Probably they'll run the farmers out of their houses and take over, slaughter their cattle and live off the land. That's probably very likely the way it's going to happen.
30. WHAT YOU SOW YOU REAP: What early America sowed in the way of slavery and all the rest of it, she's going to reap. Her slaves are going to take her over.--And because they didn't give them the Lord and salvation, they're going to revert to savagery. It's going to be even more savage than the jungle because they're going to have guns and knives and bullets and bombs to do it with, bombs that they didn't have in the jungles!--I mean real savagery! That's what I call horrible!
31. YOU TALK ABOUT SAVAGES, THAT'S THE KIND OF STUFF THAT'S GOING ON IN NORTHERN IRELAND and places like that where they just bomb indiscriminately men, women and children, innocent people, just for the sake of making themselves a nuisance! When there's no food and no water in the cities, there going to head for the country and they are going to kill to get there! There won't be any trains running to take them. There's not going to be any gasoline, so there won't be any cars running, or buses running--everything will be absolute chaos!
32. THAT'S WHAT THEY WERE SCARED TO DEATH WAS GOING TO HAPPEN TO NEW YORK CITY: All of a sudden the day would come when they couldn't pay the salaries and everybody would quit--if they're not going to get paid they'll quit.--And if then they find out they can't buy food and the water stops running, they're going to start killing to get it. And when it is all gone in the city they're going to head for the country and they're going to be fighting their way there--something like you saw in "Soylent Green."--Did you see that movie?--You should see it if you get a chance.
33. "SOYLENT GREEN" IS A PICTURE OF NEW YORK WHEN THAT TIME COMES when everybody's ruling themselves and carrying their own guns and fighting their way from street to street, and going out and robbing each other to get food and so on. That's why they're scared to death of New York City going bankrupt, Some say, "Yeah, let it go bankrupt, let it sink!"
34. GOLDWATER SAYS, "THEY OUGHT TO SAW IT OFF AND SET IT ADRIFT IN THE ATLANTIC AND THE WHOLE COUNTRY WOULD BE BETTER OFF!" They wish they could! They wish they could, but they can't--that's the trouble! There are all those Puerto Ricans and Blacks and poor people who are going to kill to eat, they're going to kill to eat.
35. IN "SOYLENT GREEN" THEY GOT TO THAT STATE WHERE IT WAS TOTAL DISORDER and the only way they managed to bring order or any kind of peace in the City was they began feeding the people what they called Soylent Green, this special synthetic food made of this kind of wafer-like crackers, and they were feeding everybody free, just like tossing the crumbs to the dogs to keep them from eating you. But then some of the guys got curious, "What are they making this food from, what are they making it with?"--And they found out they were taking all the dead peoples bodies and shipping them to this factory and making those free wafers out of them!
36. CANNIBALISM! EATING EACH OTHER! It happened in Bible times several times.--And they did and they will, believe it or not! According to that dream I had "The Bloodsuckers" (coming soon!), they'll start living on each others blood, sucking each other's blood to live!--Only it was all done very scientifically like donating your blood, blah, blah!--Only they didn't realise how much they were going to donate, and they just drained them dry! The unscrupulous cannibalistic modern savages are going to be living off the blood of other living people--real vampires!
37. SO THAT'S THE SERIOUS SITUATION OF WHY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S WILLING TO GUARANTEE BILLIONS IN LOANS TO TRY TO SAVE NEW YORK!--They're scared to death! If New York goes bankrupt they will have war, civil war! They've got a lot of weapons too. You bet they have! Good night, yes! I mean weapons are so easy to get in the United States, nearly everybody has one.
38. THEY SAID THAT DURING THE WAR GUYS WERE SHIPPING HOME STOLEN RIFLES TO THEIR BROTHERS FOR REVOLUTION. Yes, that's where a lot of those terrorist outfits were getting their stuff. The authorities began complaining that some of the U.S. arsenals in Germany were being stripped by the soldiers!
39. A VERY LARGE PROPORTION OF THE GUYS IN THE ARMY AND THE NAVY ARE NOW BLACK, because the poor Blacks can't get jobs. Times are so bad and unemployment's so bad that they can't get jobs. The Whites gets the jobs first and the poor Blacks get left out if anybody gets left out, so the only thing left for them is to join the Army or the Navy. So now the Army and the Navy are absolutely loaded with them. So in a time of international crisis what's going happen there?
40. THAT POOR BLACK ARMY AND NAVY IS NOT GOING TO PROTECT THE WHITE RICH IF IT COMES TO CIVIL WAR! In other words, capitalism is coming to the end of itself. It has overextended itself, it has lived beyond its income. It's living on borrowed money and borrowed time, and some day soon it's going to have to pay! The economists have been warning the U.S. Government of that for years and years and years, ever since I was a kid, but it doesn't do any good. They figure, "Well, so what? We don't know any solution, so we just have to keep on living this way!"
41. THEY DON'T KNOW ANY WAY OF RAISING MORE MONEY because the people don't like the higher taxes, and the politicians are elected officials elected by the people who don't like higher taxes, so they just keeping living on borrowed money. And because the banks and the capitalists have such faith in their systems and their almighty god Dollar, they have to keep having faith in that Dollar, and therefore they have to keep loaning the money and hoping that they're going to get paid some day--but they won't!
42. THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S BEEN LIVING ON BORROWED TIME AND BORROWED MONEY FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS, going deeper and deeper in debt every single year. The Federal Government is already bankrupt, and if it weren't for people's faith in the Government, it would crash right this minute!
43. NEW YORK IS JUST A SAMPLE OF WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY. When people's faith begins to be shaken whether New York can repay or not and when it's in black and white on paper that New York can't afford to repay, can't pay back the money, then the people will lose faith and the banks stop their loans and stop loaning the money. In fact they will ask for it back again, and when the borrowers can't pay--crash there it goes! And that's what's going to happen to the U.S. Federal Government. Even if war doesn't destroy it, it's destroying itself.
44. THIS IS WHAT BOTH MARX AND LENIN TAUGHT, THAT IF YOU LEAVE CAPITALISM ALONE LONG ENOUGH, IT WILL DESTROY ITSELF! It'll collapse of its own weight because of its built-in self-destructiveness because it's selfish. So thank God we're here and not there in the dying U.S.! Thank God we live under a little more primitive system that's not so utterly and totally dependent on industrialisation and all that stuff.
45. IT'S THE INDUSTRIALISATION WHICH HAS MADE THESE RICH WESTERN COUNTRIES SO TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON OIL. They've abandoned the natural agricultural economy where the people lived off the land and at least have enough to eat. They live off industrialisation now. And what does that do, what does that make for them?--Nothing but weapons of war and all of their idols, automobiles, TV, and all the rest of their luxuries, non-necessities.
46. THE LUXURY OF WAR AND THE LUXURY OF IDOLATRY THAT'S WHAT INDUSTRIALISATION BRINGS! The whole industrialised civilisation is living on those things. It's all in "War-Boom-Bust," isn't it?
47. SO IT'S A WHOLE FALSE ECONOMY BUILT ON THINGS THAT ARE NOT PRODUCTIVE AND WHICH ARE TERRIBLY WASTEFUL. You can't bury automobiles and grow more automobiles. When an automobile comes to the junk pile it's done, finished, it's just pure waste! You can't burn oil and grow more oil, you know? You can't go out planting TV sets and have more TV sets spring up. When they get obsolete they're junked, total waste!
48. AND OF COURSE WAR IS THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE OF ALL: You bury the bombs but you don't get more bombs, you just get more death and destruction, more waste! So the whole economy is a false economy built on luxuries, non-necessities and waste, pure waste, the worst of which is war!
49. SO IT'S GOT TO COME TO AN END. YOU JUST CAN'T KEEP ON WASTING MORE THAN YOU'RE REALLY PRODUCING. All of this kind of production of industrial war and luxury products in the long run is actually waste, because it is not reproductive. Only life is reproductive. All this stuff that industry produces is dead, it is not self-reproducing.
50. THE CREATION THAT GOD MADE IS ALIVE AND SELF-REPRODUCTIVE "Whose seed is in itself bearing fruit," whose seed is in itself which can bring forth more of the same fruit and more life and multiply. God's production system is life and life-giving and multiplying and increasing and extremely efficient, the most efficient there is in the world!
51. THE HUMAN BODY IS THE MOST RESILIENT, TOUGHEST, STRONGEST AND THE MOST DEATH-RESISTANT MACHINE IN THE WORLD, CONSTANTLY RENEWING ITSELF! What other machine or motor will last a hundred years and constantly repair and rebuild itself as well as reproduce itself, reproducing other little machines that are just as tough and just as amazingly full of life!
52. ALL FORMS OF GOD'S CREATION ARE REPRODUCTIVE, REGENERATIVE. It's continually being reborn and repaired, repairing itself and its own wounds and its injuries.--Think of it!--Man has yet to create any kind of machine that repairs itself! God created a machine that repairs itself!--Even the plants and the animals and all forms of life! God's created life is creative, productive, reproductive, regenerative and multiplies.
53. BUT WHAT MAN MAKES IS TOTAL WASTE AND TOTAL DEATH! When I saw that "Earthquake" and the ruins of Los Angeles, I thought, "Well, it serves them right!--God hates cities!" Cities are the glory of man--man's greatest achievement are his cities. That's what he brags about more than anything else, his big buildings and his big cities. "Oh, it was a great city!"
54. WHAT ARE THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENTS OF MAN?--BUILDINGS!--Buildings built higher than God ever intended man to go in the first place, so why not shake them down?--They're dangerous!--Right? And what are they made of? Something that will reproduce itself? Is this hotel over here going to reproduce some little hotels one of these days in that nest on top of the hill? No! It's gonna sit there and decay and rot so that it'll fall apart one of these days if you don't keep repairing it and patching it up.
55. THIS IS WHAT THE MAN SAID ABOUT A HOTEL where we stayed once, the tallest hotel in town. He said, "It's not the operation of this place that costs us money (some phenomenal sum), it's the constant maintenance and repair of the wear and the tear and the breakdown of the materials, equipment and machinery and the painting of the building, the repair of the walls etc.--This is what costs us the money!" In other words, trying to keep this thing alive by patching it up, keep this dead body alive by patching more dead material onto it!
56. THE THINGS MAN'S BUILT ARE PURE DEATH! There's nothing alive about them. They are death and dead to begin with and can only continue to die unless man keeps patching them up and patching them up. Eventually they get past the point of repair to where he can't even patch it up anymore. It totally rots and wears away and collapses, as you can see by all the big buildings of the past glorious history of past civilisations. Where are they today?
57. WHERE'S THE PARTHENON AND THE ATHENIUM AND THE COLOSSEUM AND ALL THOSE GREAT AND GLORIOUS BUILDINGS? THEY'RE ALL GONE BACK TO RUINS because they got to where they couldn't patch them up any longer, they couldn't keep them alive any longer, for they never were really alive to begin with.
58. MAN'S TOTAL ACHIEVEMENT THAT HE GLORIES IN THE MOST IS DEAD AND DEATH AND IS TOTALLY NON-REPRODUCTIVE! You can't sow a hotel and reap a harvest of more hotels. I mean it's a dead building to begin with! You're starting with something dead and you've got nothing but death on your hands from the beginning to the end!--Whether it's an automobile or a TV set or a fancy house or whatever, they're all dead and non-reproductive!
59. MOST U.S.-BUILT HOUSES ARE DEAD WITHIN 30 YEARS!--Especially the kind of houses they build nowadays! They have a life expectancy of about 30 years, one generation. That's what made me decide to give up my government loan house in Miami: It was going to take me 40 years to pay it off!--Ten years beyond the usual life expectancy of a house! The house would be all broken down and a wreck by that time!
60. THE BEAUTIFUL RESIDENTIAL SUBURBS OF THE RICH OF YESTERDAY ARE TODAY'S SLUMS FULL OF RATS AND THE POOR WHO ARE MULTIPLYING LIKE RATS! Broken-down mansions, fallen-down buildings. When man doesn't follow God's plan and God's way of doing things, man's creations are nothing but death! They're dead to begin with and they're always dying.--They never were alive in fact. They're only death and waste and they never ever can repair themselves. They can't stay alive, they can't reproduce, so it's all dead and dying. It's all non-reproductive, therefore it's non-productive. Do you understand what I mean?
61. WHEN MAN STARTS BUILDING THESE THINGS WHICH WERE NOT OF GOD IN THE FIRST PLACE, he's headed on a crash course to destruction! All of the various means of rapid transportation that are faster than a horse are not of God! Anything that's faster than a horse is too rapid.--God hates cars! God made horses as the most rapid form of natural transportation that there is, and anything faster than that is too fast and is man's creation. In fact, manmade rapid transportation today kills more people than anything else! Rapid transportation kills more people than anything else besides old age! If old age doesn't get you, rapid transportation will!
62. SO MAN'S INVENTIONS ARE ACTUALLY NOTHING BUT DEATH-DEALING. They're not only death and dead to begin with, but they're also death dealing! That's all the devil's system, as his whole idea is destruction. So he has man continually busy building machines and engines and weapons of destruction.--Not only war, but rapid transportation! Rapid transportation kills more people than have ever been killed in all the wars put together!
63. RAPID TRANSPORTATION KILLS MORE PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES EVERY YEAR THAN WERE KILLED IN BOTH WORLD WARS PUT TOGETHER, think of that! So man's inventions and man's productions, so-called, his mechanised industrial productions, are all death, dead and death dealing, all of them! So when man starts willfully following his own way and going the Devil's way and building all these things that God never planned and never ordained and never will and never designed to destroy man, man is set on a self-destructive course of total destruction!
64. WHEN MAN STARTS FOLLOWING THE DEVIL'S WAY OF BUILDING BUILDINGS THEY ARE GOING TO KILL HIM, means of rapid transportation that are slaughtering him by the millions already, buildings that all it'll take is a little shake and down they come and are going to kill him by the millions when it happens! I'll never forget that vision I had at the end of "Ivan Ivanovitch" when I saw all those buildings falling! They were just toppling like dominoes, horrible, all the towers falling!
65. IN THE BIBLE GOD CALLS THEM TOWERS: A tower over there, a big tower here--and all He has to do is shake the earth just a little bit and down they come! It seems to me rather significant, isn't it, that the most destructive disaster that there is, is an earthquake. But what does it destroy? Why does man consider it the most destructive form of disaster or catastrophe? Because it destroys his buildings, his proud cities! It destroys man's pride, his vain creations!
66. BUT THE FARMERS OUT ON THE RANCHES, THEY DON'T WORRY ABOUT EARTHQUAKES. I never had any worries out in Texas at TSC about an earthquake. Good night, what few little tiny huts they had there, little tiny shanties and shacks, especially the ones made out of wood, they would survive anyway! They'd just swing and sway around. It's your ones made out of stone, that are supposed to be the best and the most beautiful and the most permanent, but they're actually the least permanent and the most dangerous in an earthquake! A wooden building's the safest kind of building to be in, in an earthquake.
67. MAN'S BUILDINGS ARE WHAT KILL HIM! It's not the earthquake that kills him. I talked to a guy after that big earthquake down somewhere near the Salton Sea in California. He was down there in a trailer park on the Salton Sea when that big earthquake happened, and he said he could see the ground waves coming right across the desert four feet high, the ground was just waving like that! He was making tea or something and it hit his little trailer and it knocked the trailer over on its side it was so violent, the waves like that! They rocked the trailer back and forth until finally it fell over. Even though that's the safest kind of building to be in, a vehicle, it threw it right over!
68. HE SAID THE ONLY SAFE PLACE WAS STANDING OUT ON THE GROUND and it made you sea sick, it was like standing on the waves of the sea just rolling like this. You saw them in this movie "Earthquake," you could see the waves of the earthquake coming down the street, the ground just goes in waves! Ordinarily if you're just out there on foot and you don't have much of a house or anything, it's not going to hurt very much. But it's totally and utterly destructive to man's greatest scientific achievements, his buildings! It just totally destroys his cities!--Which shows God must not like cities, huh?
69. AS TOYNBEE THE HISTORIAN SAID "CITIES ARE MAN'S FESTERING SORES ON THE BODY POLITIC! THE CURSE OF CIVILISATION IS ITS CITIES!" Take New York City for example now: They don't known what to do with it! But one of these days it's going to be totally abandoned, just a wreck! Because the people can't get food there, they won't have water there, and then what's going to happen?--The people are going to desert it! Even if God didn't shake it down they'd desert it!
70. WITHOUT FOOD AND WATER, NEW YORK WOULDN'T LAST A WEEK!--Right? How many people are going to stay in a city where they can't get food or water or get rid of their sewage or flush the toilets--can you imagine? Their cities are so vulnerable, so totally dependent on the artificial means of survival, electricity, gas, sewage, piped water and shipped-in food and all that, they are going to be the first to go!
71. IN ANY KIND OF TROUBLE, THE CITIES ARE ALWAYS THE FIRST TO GO! In history it's always the cities where the women are eating their babies and they're eating each other and everything else including their own dung and piss in time of siege and whatnot! They're always the first to go in time of war, first to go in time of disaster, storm, earthquake or flood. Because God hates cities, that kind of cities, man's cities.
72. GOD'S HEAVENLY CITY WILL BE THE PEAK AND ULTIMATE OF HEAVEN ON EARTH and the right kind of society and the right kind of city, the ultimate achievement of the Children of God and God Himself, the Heavenly City, Space City!
73. BUT THE MODERN CITIES OF TODAY ARE THE ULTIMATE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE DEVIL AND MAN, inspired by Satan! They're doomed to destruction because God doesn't like them because they're always so wicked!
74. SO, WHAT DOES MAN PRODUCE THAT IS REGENERATIVE, REPRODUCTIVE, LIVING AND LIFE-GIVING? What does he really produce that is going to really live and last, that has life and really is going to last? Of course, the first thing that comes to mind, or should, is his children. They of course are the creations of God and man is His instrument, and they are forever, eternal, praise God!
75. NOTHING'S EVER WASTED IN GOD'S CREATION. Life is constantly regenerating, reproducing, things are constantly growing, and if it weren't for sin there wouldn't be dying at all, think of it! There would be absolutely no waste, no destruction, but all life, all reproduction and multiplication.
76. SCIENCE WILL OF COURSE TELL YOU, "WELL, IF THAT HAPPENED WE'D ALL SOON BE TEN MILES DEEP IN HUMAN BODIES AND MANKIND WOULD HAVE COOKED HIMSELF TO DEATH BY OVERPOPULATION!" WELL, THAT JUST ISN'T SO! Before sin got so bad even after the Garden of Eden before the Flood men were still living a thousand years and only having a few children. So when you multiply man's lifetime by ten times or more, then the world could carry on ten times as long without overproducing, right?
77. BECAUSE MEN WOULD LIVE LONGER AND HAVE FEWER CHILDREN. They hardly even thought about having kids until after they were two or three hundred years of age in the pre-Flood days! They were too young for such responsibility!--Ha! And it's going to be like that again in the days of the Millennium. Anybody that dies at 100 years of age would be considered a child. (Isa.65:20.)
78. SOME ARE EVEN WORRYING ABOUT AFTER THE WAR AND THE COMING OF CHRIST. I've even had people argue that "Well, wouldn't we still have the problem of over-production and over-population if death is going to be cut way down and the curse removed? Why, the world would over-populate itself in a thousand years, in the Millennium!"
79. I'VE HAD GUYS EVEN ARGUE AGAINST THE MILLENNIUM, saying it wouldn't be possible because if there's no death, no curse, the world would soon be over-populated. No!--Because they're going to live a long long time and have very few children like they used to before the Flood.
80. SO GOD'S WAY IS A PRODUCTIVE, REPRODUCTIVE, LIVING, LIFE-GIVING, CREATIVE, MULTIPLYING, no waste, no death, can't lose system! They say, "Well, if we wouldn't be over-populated with human beings, then we would by insects or by fish.--They have all kinds of crazy theories! Well, don't you think God controls the insect population and the fish population and the animal population? He balances that out according to whatever the needs of man may be, or the needs of His judgments may be.
81. BUT MAN'S SYSTEM IS HELL-BENT FOR DESTRUCTION, CARVING HIS OWN TOMB WITH THE THINGS HE PRODUCES. His buildings are going to kill him, his fast transportation kills him everyday, nearly everything he's got is death-dealing and life-destructive. Now a minimum of housing, something enough to give you a little shelter, is all man really needs and is not all that dangerous. Especially if you live in tents and trailers or caravans and things like that like the Rechabites, Bedouins or Gypsies.
82. EVEN A HOUSE CAN BE DANGEROUS IN AN EARTHQUAKE if you don't get out from under it, if you can't get away from the building or out of the building or far enough away from it so it doesn't fall on you. The safest places to be are under a bed or a table or a car or something like that, a strong structure. Most buildings collapse into their basements and really bury you. Although they say that sometimes basements are safer because they're usually a little more strongly constructed than the upper floors, the girders and all are stronger.
83. BUT IN A DOORWAY, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, OR IN A WINDOW CASEMENT IS ONE OF THE SAFER PLACES TO BE because of the strength that is structured around it. Things are not as apt to fall on you there, too. Also under a bed or a desk or a table things are not as apt to fall on you in a way that kills you or that you get pinned down some way by falling debris.
84. OF COURSE THE SAFEST PLACE TO BE IN AN EARTHQUAKE IS OUT IN THE OPEN FIELD. Even in that big Managua earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua, guess who was there? Howard Hughes spent three days and nights in his limousine sitting out in the open field! He got a taste of what it's like. He thought he was all nice and safe and sound ensconced in the top of a big hotel in Managua until the earthquake came! But then he headed for the hills like all the rest! Disaster knows no rich or poor, they're all on the same level when the earthquake comes, all brought down to the same level.
85. THE POOR MAN WHO'S ALREADY LIVING IN THE HILLS IS A LOT SAFER THAN THE GUYS AT THE TOP OF THOSE SKYSCRAPERS! But even if you're outside a city in the streets, you can't get away from the buildings. It's impossible. If you go out into the street that's one of the most dangerous places there is, stuff falling clear off the tops of the buildings right onto you! You saw in "Earthquake" how it does.
86. ONE OF THE SAFER PLACES IS UNDER A TRUCK OR CAR but even that's not totally safe. If a whole wall collapses on the car it'll smash it right down flat to the ground anyway. But with most falling debris, if it's not too big, you're pretty safe under an automobile, as an automobile chassis is built strong, if there is enough clearance. Of course, many of these new fancy low-slung cars are so low you can't even crawl under one! A lot of them only have four or six inches clearance and you can't even get under those cars.
87. THE FANCIEST NEWEST CARS TODAY YOU COULDN'T GET UNDER ONE EVEN IF YOU TRIED! So you're better under an old one! But the others, if anything very heavy fell on it anyway it would squash it down and burst the tires and it'd be sitting on the rims, so there still wouldn't be enough clearance for you underneath. But it's safer, yes, than standing out in the open street.
88. BUT IN A DOORWAY IF THERE'S ROOM, IT'S STRONG. THEY'RE PRETTY WELL REINFORCED, doorways and windows are pretty well reinforced. But of course the safest place to be is out in the country or at home, out in the garden. But glass pops and flies everywhere, so keep away from glass, as flying and falling glass is really murderous! But somewhere out in the open is the safest place, not the open street like a city, but in the open fields in the country.
89. IT'S PROBABLY GOING TO COME HERE ONE OF THESE DAYS, because of what I saw in a vision or dream or whatever. It was of that mountain blowing its top and shaking away and rumbling, and with that always comes earthquake, with volcanic eruption, and three streams of fire pouring down the hills there over that direction, so it'll come.
90. BUT THE LORD WILL TAKE CARE OF US wherever we are. Even if we'd still be here then, we've got enough water there to drink for quite a while, thank the Lord. Even the pond water behind us there, if you purify it and boil it you can drink it.
91. YOU CAN'T DO MUCH FOR VERY VERY CONTAMINATED WATER with these little portable purifiers, but it says to strain it a few times and then boil it or use your purification tablets on it, if it's badly contaminated, which of course that water back there is, it's almost like a cesspool.
92. TALKING ABOUT CESSPOOLS, THE BIBLE SAYS THAT IN THOSE TIMES OF TROUBLE MEN ATE THEIR OWN DUNG AND DRANK THEIR OWN PISS in time of famine. People must have been pretty hungry and pretty thirsty, huh? Remember that movie we saw in London about those miners who got trapped for so many days down below, they wound up drinking their own urine?
93. IT'S THE ONLY WAY THEY MANAGED TO SURVIVE! It's better than nothing! It contains sugars and things as well as uric acid. It made some of them sick, but it contains sugars and moisture which the body needs badly. It made them sick, but maybe it's better to be sick than dead!
94. AT LEAST THERE WERE TWO OR THREE OF THEM THAT FINALLY SURVIVED. They killed some rats and ate them, and some of them had a few sandwiches left from their lunches. How many days?--30 or 40 days they spent trapped down there in total darkness!--But they lived to tell the tale!
95. WELL, WHEN THE TIME COMES THE LORD WILL TAKE CARE OF US as He sees fit: He'll either take care of us or take us, one of the other! So we've got it made, we've got nothing to worry about. Who was I telling the other day that was so shocked? He was saying, "Some day we're going to be starving!" I said,
96. "YOU KNOW, STARVATION IS REALLY NOT A BAD WAY TO DIE AT ALL! It's just like fasting: After the first few days the hunger pains cease and you have a very peaceful feeling, sort of a light feeling and you just finally go to sleep! It's one of the easiest ways in the world to die, to starve to death! Who was it?--The doctor? I think he was talking about the rain. He said, "If we don't start getting rain pretty soon we're all going to starve!" So I retorted,
97. "WHY DO PEOPLE ALWAYS WORRY ABOUT STARVING TO DEATH? It's not such a bad way to die! It's one of the easiest ways in the world to die! You just finally go to sleep!"--And he was just finally horrified, because what they really fear is death itself! It's not the means of death, but they just fear dying--period! Because they're not prepared to die. Thank the Lord, we are!
98. BUT GODLESS MAN AND HIS WHOLE SYSTEM, THE DEVIL'S OWN DIABOLICAL SYSTEM, IS HELL-BENT FOR DESTRUCTION!--His industrial system, his military system, his economic system--all of them are self-destructive, his rapid transportation system is self-destructive, his buildings are self-destructive.
99. EVERYTHING MAN CONSIDERS HIS GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS ARE DEAD, DYING AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE AND DEATH-DEALING--THEY KILL PEOPLE! War, rapid transportation, tall buildings, everything man makes is self-destructive. When that hill there begins to bounce up and down, can you imagine what's going to happen to that hotel? I think maybe God let them put it up there for a prime example, so that it's up there where everybody can watch it fall! It's up there because its human builder is proud and he thinks it's a great achievement. But when it starts bouncing up and down and falling apart and killing people, he's going to see how puny his destructive inventions are.--And it won't take much to shake that mountain down level!
100. WHEN THAT BIG OL' MOUNTAIN THERE BEGINS TO SHAKE HERSELF THERE'LL BE A LOT OF PEOPLE SHAKING TOO! I'm not too thrilled about the location of this place for that matter, because I figure if things started shaking very bad this thing will be down in the gully in nothing flat!--Except for the Lord's protection, of course, we could all wind up in the basement down below!
101. BUT ANYHOW, THE LORD WILL TAKE CARE OF US. Even all the whole city of Jericho fell except the part of the wall on which Rahab's house was standing. God destroyed the whole city and everybody in it except her and her little house--that was the only part of the wall that didn't fall! So why worry about it? If all the rest of the house falls and we're in bed, probably our beds will be the only things left standing!
102. IN THE GREAT MIAMI HURRICANE OF 1926 the houses were blowing down flat all over the place and 2000 people were killed! We lived in a big cement blockhouse, I mean it was a mansion in those days, made of heavy concrete blocks and reinforced steel and concrete. Of course that didn't keep the awnings from ripping off and the rods coming down and bashing the windows in and the rain pouring in!
103. SO WE LITTLE KIDS WERE HAVING A GREAT TIME wading around in six inches of water on the floor, and we thought it was fun, great fun! You know little kids, they don't take things very seriously. So we had a great time, we thought it was fun! Of course we didn't know 2000 people were dying outside, houses blown away and everything!
104. BUT OUT BEHIND OUR STRONG HOUSE WAS THE LITTLE PAPER SHANTY SHACK built out of cellotex fiber board. It's not even hard fiber board, but soft stuff that you can stick your fingers through, the stuff they use for inside acoustic tiling, about this thick, real light soft spongy stuff. They used to make it out of light cane fiber, ground up sugarcane after the sugar's been squeezed out.
105. WELL, THIS LITTLE PAPER HOUSE OUT THERE WAS A LITTLE TEMPORARY HOUSE that they'd built for us to live in until our big house was finished.--And you know what studs are, the vertical two-by-fours that they build a frame house of. Usually nowadays in places like California they require them to be only twelve inches apart, and some places they allow them to be 18 inches apart--uprights like this.
106. WELL, THE STUDS ON THIS HOUSE WERE FOUR FEET APART, far enough apart that you could nail a four foot sheet of cellotex to 'em!--And the windows were nothing but holes framed with two-by-fours four feet wide covered with framed flaps made of tar paper. When we wanted air we just raised them like an awning, for they were made big so we got lots of air in a tropical country.
107. IMAGINE NOW, WINDOWS MADE OF TAR PAPER, STUDS FOUR FEET APART AND NOTHING BUT CELLOTEX, A HOUSE OF CARDS, A PAPER HOUSE, A CARDBOARD SHACK!--And that big hurricane had winds of at least 150 miles per hour!--And the hurricane hit in the middle of the night and blew and blew for about three hours while we little kids were having a great time wading around in the water in the big house! I'll never forget after that the floors of the house developed big warps that I used to love to run my little cars over the hills and through the valleys, wooden hardwood floors all warped from having all that water standing on them so long!
108. WELL, NOW OLD LELAND VALENTINE LIVED OUT BACK IN THAT OLD PAPER SHACK--the man that prayed for me when my eyes were burned by that exploding water heater at our first house in Miami where the Jordan Marsh Dept. Store sits now. When that heater blew up in my face and I was "permanently" blinded he prayed for me and my eyes were instantly healed!--Just like it says about Paul in the Bible where the scabs came like scales off his eyes. Apparently his eyeballs had actually been burned by that bright light he saw on the way to Damascus! His eyeballs had been burned just like mine were, because scales peeled off just like scabs off the cornea--and I'm not talking about the lids, I'm talking about the eyeballs--just like scabs right off the lens of each eye, and I could see again!--Whereas the doctors had said I would never see again!
109. WELL, THAT DEAR OLD MAN, HE WAS A REAL OLD SAINT OF GOD, like an old prophet, a white-haired old saint in his 70's, and he had such faith! During the lull, the eye of the storm, everybody was worried to death about him over there because he was sleeping in that little flimsy cottage behind, and that that thing was going to blow away any minute of course! I mean, they just expected it to blow away because it was nothing but paper!
110. A TALL HUGE OLD PINE TREE TWO FEET THICK, one of those big ol' Florida pines with one of the biggest trunks I ever saw, stood right beside that house. I used to climb it all the time as a kid, with the trunk only two feet from the roof of the house. The storm blew that tree down and it fell down, instead of falling on the house so it would have smashed the house flat, it fell down parallel just like that!--Just missed it by inches!
111. SO HE CAME RUNNING OVER IN THE LULL and said, "What's happened? What's going on?" And we said, "It's a hurricane! It's a hurricane!--You've gotta stay over here now!--Your little paper shack's gonna blow away!--We don't know why it hasn't gone already!" He comes running over in his long red flannel underwear and looked so funny! We kids once asked him why in the world he wore it in hot Florida, and he said, "Well, when it's cold it keeps me warm, and when it's hot it keeps me cool!"--Ha! He was the funniest little guy!
112. SO WE SAID, "YOU'VE GOTTA STAY HERE! YOU CAN'T GO BACK THERE TO THAT SHACK!" But he snorted, "Oh rubbish! God's able to keep me anywhere--as well out there as in here! I'm going back to bed!" And he did! He went back over to that little cardboard shack and went back to bed, and that thing was not damaged at all, not even the tar paper windows! I mean that was an absolute miracle, it was an impossibility! I mean it should have at least blown out the paper windows! It was just ridiculous!
113. THERE WERE BIG CONCRETE BLOCK APARTMENT HOUSES BLOWN OVER BY THE HURRICANE! The Meyer Kaiser Building, 17 stories high--they had to tear off the top 12 stories because it was tilted over at an angle like that! And there sat that little cardboard shack out behind our house totally undamaged!--It never ripped off one shutter, never did it a bit of damage! I think it did rip a little tarpaper off the roof, that was all--just to show us that it was blowing!--And old Leland Valentine went back to sleep and said he slept fine and never woke up until the next morning when it was all over!
114. SO THE LORD'S ABLE TO KEEP YOU, CHILDREN, NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE! Even if you sleep right through the eye of the storm, He's able to keep you right in the middle of it all! So you don't ever have to worry about it.--And if He decides He'd rather take you than take care of you, why you've got it made one way or the other, amen?
115. SO WHAT HAVE WE GOT TO WORRY ABOUT? "Take no thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall wear, or what ye shall drink." He doesn't mean that you're not to even make preparations, if possible, and try to prepare for tomorrow, but it means you're not to be worrying about it or anxious for tomorrow.
116. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE A FEW THINGS READY, a little survival food and survival water and so on. If you don't have any water running in your pipes one of your biggest problems is sewage. When things like that happen, you're like you're camping out again. You know what a problem sewage always was in the Ark! We had to figure out someplace to dump it. (Maria: What would we do here?) Well, I think we'd probably be running out in the fields here and digging ourselves little holes and fertilise the crops!
117. THE DEATH OF THE CITIES!--They're going to die one way or the other. They're either going to kill themselves or God's going to kill them, destroy them. If He didn't, they'd destroy themselves anyway, they cannot last.--And when they're destroyed, whether they go bankrupt or collapse, the people are going to head for the country and the hills, and that's when the horrible things are going to happen, as they slaughter the people in the country to get their food!
118. I REMEMBER I READ A SCIENCE FICTION STORY ONE TIME about these demonic vines that started growing from something somebody planted, and they grew to where they totally choked up the highways and the cities and everything, and people began running for the country, otherwise well-behaved citizens suddenly became gangs of murderers with guns slaughtering the farmers to get food!
119. SO WHEN IT HAPPENS, THE ONLY SAFE PLACE TO BE IS IN THE LORD, amen? Because all of man's inventions and creations are going to be destroyed. The best place to be will be where God's creations are, the fields and the plants, the trees and the flowers, praise the Lord? Thank You Jesus! Lord bless and keep us and give us wisdom. Well, I guess that was a class--maybe it'll be a new Letter if we can trim it down.
120. EVERYBODY'S THINKING ABOUT THE DEATH OF NEW YORK. We could title it "The Death of the Cities," as it's not only going to be the death of New York, it'll be the death of all the cities!--The days when the towers will fall! "The Earth shall reel to and fro like a drunken man," it says in Isaiah 24:20. That's when the whole earth is going to shake, the whole earth is going to tremble before the Lord, the days of His judgment.
121. SO THANK YOU, LORD, FOR THESE DAYS OF HEAVEN ON EARTH NOW! Help us to be thankful for them and enjoy them and "redeem the time for the days are evil." (Eph.5:16) Help us to get out these Letters to help the kids, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen, Lord. Help us to either be able to survive those days or to escape them. Death is the easy way out if we only had ourselves to think about, if we didn't have to think about helping others who aren't yet ready to die.
122. DEATH IS THE EASY OUT. But we have to live that others may get ready to die, praise the Lord? Death is no great loss, it's all gain! Thank You Lord! So what do we have to worry about? Whether we live, or whether we die, we do it all unto the Lord, amen? Isn't that wonderful? I was marvelling to Maria the other night about what a security system God's Kingdom has!
123. I MEAN, DEAD OR ALIVE YOU'RE SAFE! What can they do? They can't do any more than kill you, and when they do they only release you!--So praise God! But how horrible the Lord says some of those days will be for the wicked during the days of His judgment when He begins to pour out His judgment on the wicked! "They will seek death but be unable to find it"--they'll wish they could die! (Rev.9:6) But praise God "we have life and we can live, and so the Lord be thank-ed," amen? Even if we have death we still live, praise the Lord?
124. AND WHAT MORE COULD WE HAVE TO LIVE FOR THAN TO HELP OTHER PEOPLE TO LIVE? I'm so thrilled with the testimonies that come in of the kids who are saved and love the Lord because of our witness and our Letters and all--whole lives changed! It's just wonderful what the Lord does just through the Word, a lot of them just from reading the Letters and getting our literature on the street. Some of them have even gotten saved through just picking up pieces that were thrown away! Thank You Lord! Amen,
125. LORD, HELP US TO REACH THEM ALL! Well, I guess this wasn't time wasted--it was time well spent and we got a little lesson out of it didn't we? But if we're ever going to get them into print I've got to go back to work!--And you too! God bless and keep you when the cities die!--And He will--if you love and obey Jesus! Amen.
