HomeARC ML 0000C
"COLONISATION"--MO February, 1970 No.C
OUR PLAN OF COLONISATION BY AMOEBIC DIVISION NOT SCATTERATION
1. Dear Children, Greetings in Jesus' name. This is a continuation of a little lesson we're giving you on the situation regarding the kingdom and the king, and God's kingdom and the King of Kings and His Plan.
2. AND WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU IS THAT WE DO NOT INTEND TO REPEAT THE SAME MISTAKES MADE BY THE FORMER KING which resulted in total disaster, loss of the kingdom, defeat of his army, scattering of his forces, and winding up with nothing but empty land and buildings, and no people.
3. THE PLAN THAT GOD HAS GIVEN US IS NOT THAT SORT OF THING AT ALL. We are not about to begin to send the army into complete rout, and flight and scatteration and defeat, but God helping us we are planning to send a cohesive force that will be able to get the job done, wherever they go.
4. OUR PLAN, THAT GOD HAS GIVEN US, IS NOT A SCATTERATION as was taught by His former preachers, which resulted in the colossal failure of today. OUR PLAN IS A WELL-TRAINED, WELL-DISCIPLINED, WELL-PLANNED EFFORT THAT IS BOUND TO SUCCEED BY THE HELP OF GOD. Because God has ordained it and God has planned it and God is directing it. The Lord is the one whose idea it is--for God's sake certainly not ours, but His. Despite what the king thinks about leadership and everything else, God is the one who is leading this outfit and God is the one who is giving us these ideas. We should be following His directions and His programme, and therefore it is impossible for us to fail. We cannot fail, as long as we obey, because He is with us.
5. JUST AS HE WAS WITH DAVID. And the plan that he has given us--If you haven't got the point by now, I don't know how you're ever going to get the point, if you haven't been studying the things we sent you. But for this day and age in which we are now living and this particular few years of end-time and the growing, worsening national, international situation, the Church is going to have to survive in the wilderness in unity and in closer, compact organisations--even underground if necessary.
6. AND WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO STICK TOGETHER (JN.17:21-23). Not fly thither and yon like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, not knowing where we are going, or what we are doing, or how we are going to survive or anything. God has given us, and we are practicing, not just preaching--that's why I sent you the tape, NOT A SERMON BUT A SAMPLE. We are practicing what God has shown us to do. We are not theorising, we are not dreaming, we are not talking about some possibility in the future, but we are doing it right now and it is working. And God is blessing and God is using. For awhile CBS and Time Magazine and the LA Times were beating a path to your door, the press services and the television are beating a path to our door too. Which shows that God is moving and God is working without our lifting a finger to solicit such publicity. We are not by any means, way, shape or form, soliciting it or looking for it or asking for it. But we expect it, because God is going to see to it that these things are not done in a corner (AC.26:26). He is going to make us a living example of what the Church should have been and how it ought to be run and how they ought to be doing just as they were doing in the beginning.
7. AND WE ARE NOT ABOUT TO BEGIN SOMEBODY ELSE'S HARE-BRAINED, LITTLE PEA-BRAINED, SICKENING MILK AND WATER, STRING-FOR-A-BACKBONE, HUMAN FLESHLY IDEAS (1CO.2:13; 2CO.1:12) of some money-minded, smart-aleck businessman who thinks he knows how to run God's work. We are not following any man at all. We are following God. And God is giving the orders and directing the army and we are following it according to His plan and His programme, and therefore it cannot fail. It has not failed--let's face it--it has succeeded. If we had followed Saul's orders, and the way he wants to do things, we'd have fallen flat on our faces a long time ago, just the way he has fallen, and one of these days, if he keeps going at the rate he's going, he's going to fall on his sword (1SAM.31:4). He's going to commit suicide over that colossal failure that he's turned out to be--compared to what he could have been under God's direction. And I want to tell you right now that we don't want to repeat it. We don't want to see the same thing happen to us. We don't want to fail God. Saul was one colossal disappointment to God. One of the biggest failures in the whole Bible. And his modern successor is another one. "He did run well, but who hath bewitched him? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye made perfect in the flesh?" (GAL.3:1-3; 5:7)
8. WELL, I'LL TELL YOU RIGHT NOW THAT WE AREN'T ABOUT TO BEGIN TO LEAN UPON THE ARM OF FLESH, or the fleshly mind, or fleshly ideas, and smart business tricks, and publicity gimmicks, and blah, blah, blah, to run God's army. We're going to do what God tells us to do and the way God tells us to do it, and that is how it's going to get done. Because that's the only way on God's earth that it's going to succeed. The plan that God has given us is not by any means this turning out of little sheep onto the open range and kicking them out of the fold amidst nothing wolves, without any help, without any guidance, without a sufficient amount of training or support from the home base.
9. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED WITH OTHER GROUPS AND I DON'T WANT IT TO HAPPEN AGAIN: God helping us. It will happen sometimes, but it is not going to be through any fault of others. There will be times like with the church of Jerusalem when persecution hit it, and it was scattered, and they went everywhere preaching. But it wasn't anytime before they bunched up again and got together and cooperated up at Antioch (AC.11:26) and started the greatest missionary venture of their generation. They did the same thing wherever they went. Each time, each church was a new colony--a totally new colony of God (AC.14:23). Everybody there living together just as they had in the beginning, and cooperating together and everything represented, all the gifts, and every member of the body there. So that they worked together, the whole body fitly joined together, helping one another, sticking together and working together for the whole and for the benefit of every member (EP.4:11-16; PHIL.4:16).
10. OUR PLAN THAT GOD HAS GIVEN US IS NOT A SCATTERATION OF INDIVIDUALS out there to die on the vine, without help, and without direction, and without communication with home base. No general in his right mind would run an army like that. No commander-in-chief would run a war like that. To put the officers and the men in basic training and put them through two or three weeks of a few little odds and ends and before they are even ready to be soldiers--much less officers--and then say, "Well here, there's a war out there. The enemy is out there somewhere. We're going to kick you out now, and you grab your little gun and just go your way. You've got the uniform and you can go now. And just, well, you don't know just where, or how. But somewhere, and you'll find them out there somehow and you don't have to work together. Just scatter out, and well, God will take care of you and somehow you'll win the war." I don't think any battle has been won like that. So this is what I've been talking to the folks out here about for the last few days.
11. AND GOD HAS GIVEN US A PLAN WHEREBY WE'RE GOING TO SET UP, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, BASES, STRONGHOLDS, FORTRESSES OF GOD, COLONIES. Whole communities. We're going to divide, not like some kind of atomic explosion, going out into nowhere, blowing up to nothing. But we are going to divide like the amoeba and then each half divide again; and then when it's grown strong enough, divide again. So that we can ship a whole colony of maybe a hundred people to start a new colony (AC.13:2,5,13), where everything will be there that is needed. Every kind of gift and every kind of trade, and every kind of vehicle, and every kind of knowledge about how to do it and how to start a new base and a new base of operations out of which we can send out forays, and teams and skirmishing forces to attack in various areas and accomplish their purpose. God's purpose. This is the plan that God has given us and the only way that we can survive--we can no longer look to the churches, we can no longer look to former friends and mailing lists, and so on. But this is an entirely new day, a new culture, a new nation, a whole new method of operation. And the old one cannot succeed under these present conditions.
LESSONS FROM HISTORY ON COLONISATION FOR SURVIVAL AND MISSIONS
12. WE ARE ABSOLUTELY GOING TO HAVE TO GO OUT THIS WAY--ALMOST LIKE COLONISING NEW TERRITORY. Like colonising a new world. And just like they founded America here: they didn't just dump a bunch of colonists on the shore, and say, "All right now, go out and try to win the Indians' territory. Everybody go out and do his own thing. And we hope you take over the country." Because if they had, the Indians would still be in control; they would have picked them off, one by one. And they wouldn't have known what they were doing. But they built fortresses; they built colonies. They stuck together. They worked together. They fought together. And they survived together. If they'd tried to go out and build their cabins in the wilds, all alone, the guy who tried that got massacred and murdered. And let me tell you, in the hostile territory that we're going into--in this day and age--throughout the world, that if we don't stick together, we're apt to get the same. I believe it. I believe it's God's Plan.
13. IT'S NOT THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, EITHER. Let me tell you, not by a long shot. God has done it before; He's done it with many other groups, even false cults and isms have spread out this way. But God has done it before, and God is going to do it again. And it was done in like days under similar circumstances. Under very hostile conditions and hostile territory. Such as the Jesuit missions of the early Southwestern United States and California. A mission was a little fortress, but it was a co-op, it was a commune, where they all lived together and farmed the surrounding land for their support and where they could flee for refuge and stick together for refuge, and have power of numbers and manage to survive. The Jesuits did it in their missions. The early American colonists did it. Ancient forms of Christianity throughout the Dark Ages, when they would have been slaughtered and decimated, if they had not had those gigantic monasteries and convents which were veritable fortresses, in which to hide and hole up and protect themselves from the attacks from all sides: from the savages, and the System, and everything else. They managed to survive in farming the land around them and earning in a sense their own living, and managing to accomplish at least survival--if not anything else.
14. I BELIEVE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THAT AND US IS THAT WE PLAN TO SPREAD AND SPREAD THE MESSAGE THAT WAY. It is not a matter of cloistering and simply holing up some place and letting the rest of the world go by. But what we are talking about is something in the nature of colonising missionary bases from which we will send out the individuals and the teams to invade the hostile territory, and to win young bottles for the Lord. This is the way David did it and when he was holing up in the Cave of Adullam in the land of Israel. He didn't say, "All right boys, all you little Davidites, here's your weapon. Now get out and scatter out. Scatter all over Israel and all through the hostile enemies and infiltrate somehow winning the battles of the Lord." Not by a long sight. David and his men stuck together. They holed up in that fortress-like Cave and they survived together (22:1,2), scrounged together and raided together. And if they sent out a little raiding party, here or there, they knew where to go home to. They would make a commando raid and hit hard and fast--before they knew what hit'em--and flee back to home base. And under the dangerous conditions under which we are now going to be operating from now on, this is going to be our only salvation, in the Lord.--By the plan that He has given us and by His protection, and by His strength and by His grace. We're going back to the Middle Ages. The nation and the world are going into the Dark Ages of anti-Christ, anti-God savagery. And if we do not hole up in the catacombs beneath Rome and organise a totally new society, we're not going to survive. We have to go underground. We have to have our own fortresses and bases and colonies. Because we can no longer depend upon the System. We can no longer depend on anything but God--and ourselves. And our fellowship together (Ac.9:33; 17:10,14). So this is the plan that God has given us. It is working for you there. It is bearing fruit. It is working for us here.
SCATTERATION--REASONS WHY IT FAILS AND AMOEBIC DIVISION SUCCEEDS
15. AND THE WORLD IS HEARING ABOUT IT (JN.17:23; AC.17:6; 28:22). Now that is just God's honest truth, and the way God is working. You cannot deny it. We tried the other method, and what did we accomplish? We scattered teams hither and yon; this little handful here, and that little handful there; and we crossed a whole nation and we wound up in Laurentide. And what had we accomplished? Where a team would go through a town and pass out literature and preach on the street corner and blast away and give them hell and give them heaven. And just get into these commando raids and more often than not get chased out of town. And what was left behind? What permanent fruit? Or if any fruit was left behind, what happened to it? Where was it conserved? Where was it put to grow and to be nurtured and to be cherished, and to be cultured and cared for and protected until maturity. And helped and taught and trained and encouraged. Where is the fruit of those first months? God let us try to see what kind of results that method would bring. Where are the fruits of it? Well, a few people hear and a few young folks may have heard about us, but they don't know where we are now; and if they did become Christians, where do they have to go now? They have no place to go but those graves, those mausoleums, to fellowship with the rest of the dead people (1TIM.5:6) of the dead church, that ought to be buried. So, what was the result, what was the fruit of these various teams across the whole nation? And when we wound up in Laurentide, what did we have to show for it? How many real, lasting disciples did we have to show for it? Honestly now. Think about it. How many? We had precious little, if anything, to show for it. One or two, because God knows they didn't have room for what they had with them, much less any more.
16. AND THEY HAD NO PLACE TO TAKE THEM, NO PLACE TO PUT THEM, NO WAY TO SURVIVE, NO WAY TO FEED THEM. How in the world could they take them along. All they could say and do was, "Well, God bless you. Sorry we haven't got room for you. We hope you manage to survive somehow (JA.2:15-16). Go read the Bible, pray, and preach the Gospel, and God will take care of you." Exactly what the kings has been preaching here and trying to get us to do. Well, where are they? I hope I meet them in Heaven, I hope they had some fruit (1TH.2:19; PHIL.4:17). I hope some of them succeed. But I want to tell you that from the time we got down to business with God at Laurentide and began to get God's plan and God's direction directly from the Lord; when Moses sat on Mt. Sinai and began to get the Law, that 80 days was the most precious days in Israel's 1,000 years of history. Because the whole world has operated, God's children have operated on those principles ever since. And they work, And as a result, the Church has survived--at least some of them. I want to tell you, that that is what God has shown us. From the time that God chose us, from there, from Laurentide to Virginia, to Washington, D.C., what He wanted us to do and how He wanted us to work, from the moment we started obeying God and doing what God told us to do and wearing what God told us to wear and carrying what God told us to carry. And doing it God's way and traveling and working together as a unit, as an organisation, as a society, as a culture, as a new nation, as a group, as a body, as a church--since that time we have been mightily blessed, and you know it.
17. AND GOD PROVIDED FOR US AND CARED FOR US AND GOD PROTECTED US AND GOD GAVE US FRUIT--THAT REMAINS TO THIS DAY. And God let the world know about us. And they received the testimony of us around the world, in the publicity of something new that was happening. Churches had been sending out these poor little, bedraggled, under-paid preacher here, home missionary there, and missionaries over yonder. And they have hardly survived, and the world hasn't heard about 'em. And they have accomplished precious little--a handful here and a handful there. But I want to tell you something right now, even on the mission field--the most successful missions operated gigantic compounds, which were veritable fortresses, where their converts could hide and find protection from the enemy and could store food and could survive and could farm around there and become a total new people, new culture, new society, a new city, a new nation. And that is what God is going to have to do with this present-day church now (REV.12:6-17). There is no doubt about it and there is no stopping it because that is the only thing that is going to help us survive. Nothing else will do it and nothing else in this world will help it succeed; unless we do it God's way, we won't do it.
18. WHAT I HAVE IN MIND, AND WHAT GOD HAS IN MIND, AND WHAT HE SHOWED US, is that as soon as we can get another piece of property, somewhere on the East Coast, we are going to divide this outfit--divide as an amoeba, not as an atom bomb explosion--I've used that expression before, but God forgive me, because that's not the way that God is going to do it. That's the way they used to do it. And look what happened to it. There's nothing left but a cloud of smoke.--And nothing else. It just blew up and blew to pieces. And where is it today? Where's the king's atomic, blaster-bomb explosion, which was started a long time ago? Well, it blew up in his face and there's nothing left. And I want to tell you something that God has showed us; that the only way we are going to be able to divide and conquer and to divide and survive, is to divide in force. Any general in his right mind, if he's got to divide his army to meet an attack, or to make an attack on several different fronts; he doesn't just tell every little Tom, Dick, and Harry individual soldier to just scatter and go his way and do his thing. But he will divide his forces in major divisions and major forces. And on this front, and on that front, and not too many fronts at once. Until he is positive--dividing his forces only in such a way that he is positive--that he is going to win the battle, and win the war. (LK.14:31).
19. AND THAT'S WHAT GOD IS DOING. And what God is showing us. When we are going to divide, we are going to divide in such a force, that we couldn't possibly fail. We're going to have enough members, and enough of what it takes, and enough talents and gifts of the Spirit, and enough of the members of the body to perform every function necessary to establish an entire new colony. That's the word. I was trying to search for the word the other night after I got through talking...after the Lord got through revealing to me what He is doing; I thought, now there's some kind of a word for it. This is something new God is doing, and yet there is a word for it. The Spirit was trying to get it across to me and I prayed real hard: "Lord what is it?" And just as clear as anything it came to me: Colony! Colonising. We are not just going out, infiltrating and getting lost in the shuffle. We are colonising our new world. We are colonising the world to take it over. We are literally going to colonise this world with successful units that are going to survive and they're going to get the job done. They may not all survive. Some of them may get completely obliterated, some get under attack and be totally scattered. But if so, thank God, they're going to have some place else to go and they're going to know where it is. We're going to have communication, radio communication, and everything else we need to do the job.
20. SO MAY GOD HELP US, TO OBEY GOD AND DO IT HIS WAY AND NOT OUR OWN DAMN WAY. Our own stupid hell-of-an-idea, or that of some crazy man who thinks he still is somebody and can do something.--Or can accomplish something, when he has been a total failure, almost a total failure, except he's managed to survive long enough to give his great grandchildren a chance to take over the kingdom. So for God's sake, read what we send you; and listen to what the Spirit has to say. And know what God's new plan and programme is. It is no longer a total scatteration (AC.13:2,13)--the only time that happened to the Church was when God brought down the hammer of persecution and scattered them because they did not divide and conquer. (AC.1:8 and 8:1). They had not divided and sent a major force to Antioch, and then divided Antioch and sent another major force to establish at Ephesus, and so on. They didn't do it, but they did it after they got to Antioch. They learned their lesson at Jerusalem. They had holed up too long and they had not gotten the job done. But praise God, we don't plan to make the same mistakes and the same fears--if we can help it. So keep your eyes on Jesus, son, keep your eyes on the Lord (PS.16:8). And let's do it God's way, and not our own damn way. Because it will be damned if we do, it'll be damned and just a total failure because we looked to our own fleshly mind (Isa.55:8), and our stupid flesh and our own fleshly ideas--such as the king is doing, in his own human smart ideas. Well, they're not going to work. They are of the Devil and are designed to bring defeat. Absolutely designed to bring defeat, and to divide and conquer us. And bring total defeat to God's army. To do it, if we have to walk out of here on the sandals that Peter has made for us and march, march across this nation, the way God wants us to go. If we have to walk, we're going to have to stick to God's plan and not to a king who has proven a total failure--as far as God's concerned and the job that God gave him to do. So may God forgive us and help us not to make the same mistakes. Now do you understand what I'm talking about? I hope you do (EP.5:17), because this is the plan that God has given us and I believe it. It is already working, We didn't design it. God did and told us to do it. We have obeyed and it is working and God is working and God is doing. And the Lord is doing it. So stick with it, boy! And get with it, boy, and let's get our things together; and not go blowing 'em apart. Let's get together, and let's do it God's way.
CHURCH AND WORLD HISTORY EXAMPLES OF COOPERATIVE, TRIBAL PATRIARCHAL AND SOCIALISTIC SOCIETIES IN THE BIBLE
21. THIS IS THE SECOND TAPE ON THIS SUBJECT, COLONISATION, NOT INFILTRATION OR SCATTERATION. This is a method God has designed in certain times, in certain ages, under certain conditions which are repeating themselves again today. And this is the only way that God's children were able to survive in ancient times, with ancient tribal, patriarchal, socialistic, you might say communistic society--in which they all lived together and worked together. In the days of Abraham and his followers--you could go back further, to Noah, or at least, his family. Abraham and his followers. How about Adam and his family, in the early days.
22. WHEN THE FAMILY HAD BECOME SO LARGE ABOUT THE TIME OF BABEL AND HAD BECOME SO STRONG AND SO UNITED, which was apparently what God was doing for their preservation, the mistake they made was not their united front; it wasn't their total organisation and their being together. Their sin was not that they all spoke the same language, and that they all traveled together, and built cities together and they all worked together, and became a mighty nation, a mighty people together. That wasn't their sin. Their sin was what? That they forgot to give God the credit for it. And the minute they said, "Now we're going to make a name," not for God; but they said, "Now we're going to make a name for ourselves. Look how big we are, how mighty we are and how powerful." "Look how wonderful we are, look how great we are. Behold us, we are the people. Look what we are."
23. AND THEY FORGOT TO GIVE GOD THE CREDIT. THEY FAILED TO GIVE HIM THE GLORY AND GOD CAME DOWN AND SMOTE THEM, AND SCATTERED THEM AND MADE THEM A TOTAL WRECK. There was nothing wrong with their unity. There was nothing wrong with the power of strength, and power and unity, and cooperation and the way they were managing to survive and conquer the world as a result. Yet the danger only came when they thought they themselves were doing it, and that it was their strength that was saving them, their arm was saving them. There is nothing new about this cooperative type of society for survival. Society for survival.--A cooperative society for the sake of survival as well as promulgation, or procreation or propagation. Abraham and his family used it. They had a big family that traveled together. They had hundreds of servants that worked with them (GEN.14:14). And they were a whole new nation, let's face it. They were a totally new nation. When Moses moved out of Egypt with six million people, it was a bigger family, and they were a bigger nation. But they were still sticking together,--And the world heard about them. And it was so marvelous, and so miraculous, and so wonderful, that so many people could live together in love and harmony and cooperation; and be directed by God and God alone; and supplied by God, that it became world-famous.
24. THEY WERE AN EXAMPLE TO THE WORLD. The world heard about them. And they survived as a result, too. Otherwise the world would have clobbered them and wiped them out. It was this very cohesiveness, their total unity and their growth in strength and power as a result, that scared the King of Egypt to death. It made him so afraid of them that he wanted to get rid of them. He begged them to go, begged them to leave. It was this very growing power and cohesiveness and the strength of unity that they had. That they may be one as we are one. This was Jesus' last prayer: "That they may be one, even as we are one" (JN.17:21-23). Now I've heard the church preach for years, "Well, this means just one in spirit. You don't have to live together anymore. God doesn't expect common society of us anymore. That's not for today." Blah, blah, blah. Seems kind of funny to me that this isn't for today, when it has survived in much worse days than this, throughout millenniums before. It was for Adam's family; it was for several of the great big patriarchal families of ancient times--they survived that way--it was for the days of Abraham; it was for Moses' day; it was for the days of Israel; and God marvelously used them when they stuck together and they worked together. And they became world-famous as a result, without even leaving home (LK.11:31).
25. GOD BLESSED THE ISRAELITES WHEN THEY STUCK TOGETHER, WORKED TOGETHER, COOPERATED TOGETHER, and He blessed, strengthened them, made them mighty, made them rich, made them powerful and made them a testimony to the world that in spite of being nobody they had become somebody through the power of God in obeying Him and loving each other, working together, cooperating and protecting each other in a sense, and having that tremendous unity of the Spirit. But the minute, like in times past, that the Israelites got the idea that "mine own arm hath saved me (JUD.7:2); here I am, I have arrived, and we are great and we can save ourselves", the minute they got to that point--Whamee! God gave it to them, and scattered them again to the four winds. Every time! Every time they got the idea they were great and unified and powerful because they themselves had made themselves so (1SAM.15:17,28).
26. EVERY TIME GOD HAS TO SCATTER THEM AS A CHASTISEMENT. And to scatter them out there, singly and individually all amongst the heathen and everywhere in the world (JER.29:18-19) to make them get back to God and ask God to forgive them for their damn pride and their selfishness, and their bunching up together just for their own glory and not for God's glory (JER.9:23-24). You understand the difference? The early church did the same thing.
27. THE EARLY CHURCH GOD HAD FIRST MIGHTILY BLESSED; GREAT UNITY, ADDING TO THE CHURCH DAILY, they were all living together, no one called anything his own, they had all things in common (AC.2 and 4). And they were a sensation. The news of them was being spread abroad throughout the whole world (AC.6:9), because of what was happening in Jerusalem. But I don't doubt that they were getting strong and they were getting powerful, and probably telling off the priests and high priests and the city authorities and everybody else, "Now look at us. Now we have arrived. We're just strong by a strength of numbers."
28. ALL WE KNOW IS, WHEN THEY GOT THEIR BIGGEST AND MOST POWERFUL AND MOST NUMEROUS, one thing we know, and that was that they were bunching up, and not getting out and doing what God had told them to do. And for God's sake let's not make that mistake either. They were supposed to divide and conquer. They were supposed to go out and in a sense, colonise the rest of the world and let them know (AC.1:8). But because they didn't do it the way God had ordained for it to be done, in the same type of little communal societies that they were practicing there in Jerusalem--the same type to be done in other places--God had to strike them with a sword of persecution and they were just totally decimated and scattered all over the place. (AC.8:1,4). But the next thing you know, you find a group of them winding up in Antioch (AC.11:19-26). Right? And you find them sending out teams hither, thither and yon. (AC.13:2,13). And organising new colonies (AC.14:23; 15:41). Call them churches, whatever you want to call it. The strength of a church has always been its unity in the Lord. It's unity in fellowship, the secret that you study in the first chapter of Acts (v14).
FORSAKING THE RESPONSIBILITY OF SHEPHERDING BY FIGHTING GUERRILLA WARFARE IS DISOBEDIENCE TO GOD'S PLAN
29. THERE WERE TWO THINGS THAT BROUGHT DOWN THE BLESSING AND POWER OF GOD: Number one there was obedience and number two there was unity (AC.1:4,12 and AC.1:14). Now if we are going to obey in unity, we are not everybody going to go off and do his own thing (JUD.21:25; JER.16:12; 18:12). But we are going to stick together and do God's thing and the way that God intended for it to be done. Is that clear? God's way, and not some stupid man's way to get out of the responsibility of taking care of each other and dump everybody. I could have told you guys when we left Huntington Beach, I could have said, "Well, looks like we've got to move out now. We've got to leave. God bless you all. I've done the best I can for you. I've got no place for you now. And I've taught you all I know and the best I can do. And now you got Jesus; you got the Holy Spirit. You know you ought to witness. And you know you got to drop out, forsake all, and follow Him, so you do the same and everybody scatter and go do your own thing and go-your own way and I wash my hands of you, and forget about you."
30. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD TO DO, IF I HADN'T BEEN AFRAID OF GOD. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to do--just kiss you good-bye and wash my hands of you and say, "Well, I've got my own family to take care of, I've got my own problems, my own expenses; I've got my own things, and I'll go back to the evangelistic field and do my own little tiny skirmishes there. And just go out and be a little guerrilla warrior--fighting from behind the trees all by myself. And you guys all go do the same."
31. WELL, GUERRILLA WARFARE HAS ITS PLACE AND SOMETIMES IT IS SUCCESSFUL in surviving under certain conditions, but the poor Vietcong have been fighting it for 30 years in Vietnam. And its a sort of defense warfare and it really can't be won. It's just the kind of warfare to fight when you are totally outnumbered and you're really not unified and you're scattered. But it doesn't do much in the way of conquering. I don't know that anybody has ever conquered any place yet strictly by means of guerrilla warfare. In the long run, to conquer a city or a country or a state, a major onslaught of unified forces of a mighty army is needed to totally attack and take it over. Right? Not just scattered out in the jungle, fighting from behind the trees. That's what you do when you get scattered, when you're lost from your unit and you live off the land because a more unified army has hit you and scattered you. That's one way to survive. Guerrilla warfare is one way to survive. But it's not the way to win a great battle or a great war, or to conquer much territory. (GEN.14:14-16; JOS.7:3-4).
32. WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT GOING OUT AND GUERRILLA WARFARING FOR THE REST OF TIME UNTIL JESUS COMES, throughout the world, and just be scattered out behind all the trees, hit and miss, do the best we can, do your own thing. "Everybody do your own thing now. Good-bye. Everybody, we're leaving Huntington Beach. Everybody hide under the nearest tree and scatter. And do the best you can on your own. "If we had said that, it would have been the end and nobody would have heard of anything else, from then on. Right? But instead of that, we spent 14 hours in one prayer session, and God knows how many in others in which God specifically showed us through direct revelation, envisioning exactly what we were supposed to do. And that is the very first thing that God showed us. It wasn't the first thing, but I mean for leaving there, at that time. And that was that we were to continue to be united, to travel in one gigantic mighty caravan and stick together. And frankly, I wasn't even willing to obey it then, because I was scared stiff and afraid to, and didn't know what, for God's sake, would happen. If I hadn't been so damn scared right then of what was going to happen, I believe that if we had left en masse, think of what kind of publicity that would have gotten for our final headlines in Huntington Beach papers. Think of that. Well God knows what the situation was, maybe it was a good thing we didn't. Maybe we wouldn't have made it otherwise. But we fled out in contingents by night (AC.9:25; 17:10) and eventually didn't join up, really, totally. We made a first rendezvous at Tucson and got together and had a reunion until they rejected us again. Then we fled once again. Again in columns and divisions to try to survive, because we still weren't willing to pay the price of the scary, terrible, horrifying, terrifying, frightening, en masse, gigantic army of one gigantic column that God had shown me years before. Clear down before we left Miami, Florida, He showed that to me.
PROPHECY AND CALL OF GOD TO FIGHT UNITED TOGETHER
33. AND IT WAS JUST AFTER WE GOT INTO THE CRUISER, JUST AS WE WERE ON THE POINT OF LEAVING MIAMI, GOD SHOWED ME THAT, and I didn't want to admit it, that someday we were going to do that. And yet, let me tell you something else that maybe some of you have forgotten. And that is that when we sat in that Holiday Inn, in Dallas, and we began hearing from God after we rejoined Grandmother after that year of ten thousand miles of miracles around the continent and the West Indies with Grandmother, when we rejoined her in Dallas at the Holiday Inn, and we sat there with her, between planes, hearing from God. And do you know what God told us? You know, I had forgotten about this? He said, "Thus far I have caused you to divide and to scatter." But He said, "Now, I am going to unite you and you are going to go in a body to the new battlefront to which I am sending you. And you are going to be one body and one people. And every member is going to be needed for this new type of warfare." Do you remember that? "But now," He said, "I have united you and this time you must stick together and you must work together, all together."
34. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT? "And because everyone is going to be needed in the body in which I am going to be sending you, where you are going." This was in Dallas, just before we were packing up to leave for California. And that's the way, let's face it, it has been ever since. We have stuck together from that time on. And when we were there together God was mightily working and using. Let's take an example of an infraction of that rule. God started doing a new thing in Huntington Beach, something I had never seen before. I had never seen the likes before. I mean Scriptural (1SAM.22:2) and the historical examples of similar situations I had heard of, but this type of a unit, communal society, something in our own ministry, we had never quite seen before. Except, of course, we did practice it to a certain extent in Miami. But not totally with youth, not totally with the emphasis we had. But what happened? You were there. God was moving. The Revolution had begun. Mary got herself in hot water; and I said, "Mary, come quick and see what's happening. This is it! Join with us!" But oh, no. "I'm going to go out and be a flaming evangelist on my own. I'm going to be somebody. I'm going to have my ministry. I am going to do what God has called me to do." And what's she doing now? Sitting up in Liberty, New York, keeping house for a plumber.
ONE LEADER'S POOR EXAMPLE OF MISSING GOD'S WILL TO OPERATE INDEPENDENTLY OF GOD'S SHEPHERD'S DIRECTIONS
35. JOSH LANDED IN THE MILITARY. WHICH LANDED HIM IN NEW YORK CITY, WHERE HE WAS DISCHARGED. Josh knew what it was like to have to work under Dad, and as any young man, he kind of had the feeling he would like to have his own ministry, his own work. So when I said, "Josh, come see what God is doing. Come, if just for a visit, and see what's happening. You'll never believe what God is doing." Josh said, "No, I've got an idea I've got to write to Miami. I want to go to Miami. I want to see Caleb and Lydia and I think maybe we might start our own little thing down in Miami." I said, "Well, OK, Josh, if that's your burden, go ahead."
36. THEN I FELT CONVICTED THAT I HAD EVEN TOLD HIM TO GO. I was going to order him, tell him, "Josh, don't do it." I got so convicted that night. You remember, Eve? That I tried to get in touch with him that night and he had already left. He'd already taken off, went to Miami. Well, what did he do? He got a little bit of a start there. With that guy, and a few disciples. Good ones. I mean, God will use you wherever you are. He'll use you wherever you are. And he got a little start, and a few little disciples, but what happened? They were so few in number, they got kicked out and hassled by the cops and virtually almost got run out of town. And they got about one little item in the newspaper.--There was just one little, in this case not a little breeze but a little wind. A few united there, but he didn't get out there to see what was happening, you understand? And when Faithy and Miguel got to Tucson, and it began happening there, again we pleaded with Josh, "Josh, come see what God is doing. It's totally different. It's new. God is doing something new."
37. WELL, HE SAID HE WAS DESPERATELY TRYING TO MAKE A SUCCESS OUT OF HIS FIRST LONELY LITTLE EFFORT ON HIS OWN. And he worked under Dad. He wanted to have his wife out there and do his own thing. Feel independent. As he once said to Faith, "Honey, you know what'll happen, your Dad will be screaming at me and ..." Well, praise God, here I am still screaming at you, Son. Praise God. It works because it was what God showed us to do. So there you had your little wind down in Miami, and you thought you were something--a little ripple on the pond. But not the tremendous splash that we have made now that we are all working together. Right? So, it took you a long time to wake up to what God is doing. And I'm glad you did. And you're working with us now. And when it is God's time to work on your own and have your own thing, you're having it God's way and we are still working together, even though we are apart. Amen? So that's the way it works.
HOW THE EARLY CHRISTIANS SURVIVED UNDERGROUND AFTER ROME FELL
38. THIS IS NOTHING ENTIRELY NEW, as I said a while ago. In the most trying times of church history, down as far as the early church, later on under the Roman persecution, the only way they were able to survive was in a society where they lived together, survived together. I presume they had their own scrounging and procuring teams that operated out of the catacombs right underneath the capital city of their enemies. Can you imagine? Where they conducted a whole society, a whole city of Christians lived, in hiding; caves under the city, think of that. They lived and survived there. Because they stuck together and they cooperated, and they survived. And they did it time and again. I can give you all kinds of history. They did it through their unity, by cooperating together, living together, managing to survive together--that helped them to survive. And it was always in the most trying times. The most dangerous times. The times of greatest chaos, the most confusion, revolution, war, chaotic conditions of the feudal ages when every little lord was a king of his own and his own little bailiwick, and the next guy, he was warring with the guy next door and there was hardly any local government. And everything was just a great big mix up after the collapse of the Roman Empire (DA.2:41,43). And the only way the church was able to survive, was by those huge monasteries and cloisters, and those huge, literally forts of buildings, that they had in those days. They lived together. And they farmed together and managed to make it.
PREDICTION OF THE CHURCH GOING UNDERGROUND TO SURVIVE
39. THIS IS THE WAY THE CHURCH HAS SURVIVED UNDER TRYING DAYS AND CIRCUMSTANCES, WHEN SHE WASN'T RECOGNISED AND IN PRESTIGE AND FAVOURED BY THE GOVERNMENT, and by Rome, and by the System (PR 22:3; JN.8:59; LK.6:11-12)--underground. This is the way the church has always managed to survive: underground, or in colonies there; or above ground, and in such powerful colonies there, that the enemies hesitated to attack them. So this is not the first time that God's ever done it. The days of the security of the Churchianity System are just about over. They are numbered. And it won't be long before those buildings are going to be closed and the pastors liquidated (JER.14:15) and the people decimated, and services banned, and Bibles burned. And then where is their religion, or their denomination? The only church that is going to survive is that which is going to survive as a unit, as a commune, as an entity, as a united front, as a colony. As a body, together. The body ministry has been emphasised spiritually, but they have no idea what it means physically, financially, and materially. The body is not just a spiritual body; it is also a physical, material body (COL.2:19; EP.4:11-16; 1CO.12). We have to stick together not "just spiritually" as the damn churches have done, and yet have not stuck together spiritually as a result. They thought that if they could just stick together spiritually on Sunday morning then they could survive. Well, they have not survived spiritually. They have survived with a few buildings and their meetings once or twice a week, but they are not surviving. And they are not going to survive materially, because as a result, they remained a part of the System. They did not drop out, they did not forsake all. Therefore the Systemites absorbed them. And have taken them and the church over. Because they didn't leave the System, the System has sucked them back in. And they themselves have become a part of the hell of a System. Understand? (See Rev.17--"Drop Out Chart.")
THE TRUE CHURCH IS CALLED-OUT OF THE SYSTEM TO BE INDIGENOUS
40. AND SO, THE ONLY WAY THAT GOD IS GOING TO PRESERVE HIS CHURCH IS THE WAY HE'S ALWAYS PRESERVED HIS CHURCH. Come ye out from among them and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing (2CO.6:17). Come ye out from her, ye My people (REV.18:4). God's plan for His Church has always been ecclesia--the Church, the called-out ones. Not just separated and scattered all over the landscape, but separated as a body, yet one body, one unity (JN.17:21-23; EP.4:4). Separated in bodies, throughout the world. And that's the way they survived. That's what the church is, a body. Each individual church is a body, but the damn stupid Churchianity System broke it down so, because the Devil wanted to scatter it out so, and get it so thinned out that it would be totally absorbed by the System--which is as it has been. Because they cannot now survive without the System. The present Churchianity System cannot survive without the System. They're totally dependent upon the System (JN.11:48; AC.12:20). It is impossible for them to drop out, forsake all, and preach the Gospel to the whole world. They just can't do it (JN.12:42). So God, once again, is doing over again what He has done over and over again, time and time again. There's nothing new about it. Let's face it. It's new to this day and age, yes, but it's happened before. It has succeeded before. And it has survived before, the same way. God has done it before and He's doing it again. Once again, he's calling His Church the ecclesia--separated ones, (JN.17:9,16) drop outs from the System so that they are no longer able to depend on the System. So they have to survive and in a sense be self-supporting. I can remember when we first taught that term. The indigenous church must be "self-supporting (PHIL.4:19,16), self-governing (1CO.6:1-8), and self-propagating" (AC.2:47; 5:13-14; 13:48). But for God's sake, I didn't really know what that meant. That God was trying to show us something then. That the indigenous church was going to have to be truly, honestly, and indeed, self-supporting. Not dependent upon another church and a denomination, or a missionary headquarters for their jobs, or other Christians, or anything else. The indigenous church was going to have to be genuinely, honestly self-supporting if they even had to work with their hands--as Paul sometimes did and as he exhorted some of the early apostles to do (EP.4:28; 1TH.4:11). That was the only way they could survive. They had to be self-supporting. A cooperative society where they managed to get along by themselves.
THE INDIGENOUS CHURCH SHOULD BE SELF-GOVERNING, SUPPORTING, TRANSPORTING AND PROPAGATING
41. NOW, GOD HAS DONE IT BEFORE, HE'S DOING IT AGAIN. THE CHURCH IS GOING TO BE SELF-SUPPORTING AND SELF-GOVERNING AS WELL. Not somebody else, not some denomination or some damn church System telling you what to do. Not even the damnable worldly System telling you what to do. The worldly System can tell the worldly church what to do because it's dependent upon it and they have to do it. But this is a new kind of society, a new kind of church, a new kind of culture, a new nation, God called us. We're not only going to be self-supporting, but in a sense self-governing.
42. NOT RUN BY SOME DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT, NOT RUN BY SOME DAMN DENOMINATION, NOT RUN BY THE CHURCHIANITY SYSTEM. Every modern revival movement has eventually failed. You know why? Because though they thought they were breaking away from the System of the denomination or the thing they came out of, they never actually broke with the System. Never really broke with the Churchianity System for one thing or the worldly System for another. They were just a new group, following the same plan, the same procedure, the same system, still dependent upon the worldly System. And developing their own new church System. They never really dropped out.
43. BUT WE HAVE TO BE SELF-SUPPORTING, WE HAVE TO BE SELF-GOVERNING. No damnable churchy or worldly System telling us what to do. COLONISING. Out in the middle of nowhere, where nobody cares and so they don't even bother you. How many times has the sheriff come and told us what to do? He just knocks at our door and is glad to get away. All he does is run messenger service for us and that's about all. The less he has to do with us he's probably thankful. As long as we don't create any trouble, we don't bother them and they don't bother us. Totally self-governing out here. Let's face it. We could actually be guilty of all the things they accuse us of and they would never know the difference, even if we're not; because they'd just as soon not cross the fence. As long as we're not disturbing the other citizens of this country, we have our little kingdom in which we are totally self-governing. We got our own mayor, our own city manager, our own police chief, and everything else here. Security forces, and now we got mounted police. You ought to see them. Wow, we've got bicycles, motorcycles all over the place. So we got to be self-supporting. Somehow through our own efforts and the help of God, what we can't rustle up ourselves, and scrounge and procure, or make or grow, (1TH.4:11); then we have to try to expect God to just drop it out of heaven (EX.16:4; 1KG.17:6). But self-supporting, in a sense, by the Lord (MK.16:20). I've got my own shoes on here that my own society manufactured (1CO.10:2; ISA.23:18; JOB 27:16,17; ECC.2:26). God bless dear brother Peter. I have yet to thank him. I got to thinking, when we first got started on this thing, "Now we could wrap a sheet around us, we could dress in almost anything; but how about shoes, Lord?" (NEH.9:21). That's a technical thing. My grandfather from Sweden was a cobbler, and that was a highly sophisticated, technical trade. He was a real professional. He made custom-built shoes for people, and they cost a lot of money. I'll tell you, I am wearing a swanky, custom-built pair of sandals--(MK.6:9) built by our own shoemaker here, and worth a lot. And the thorns don't go through them anymore. We've got to learn how to be self-supporting, and we are learning how to be self-governing. We've got our own organisations here and everything, a security force, and everything. We've got this whole society divided into functions and groups and we're totally self-governing, except for the fact that we still have to get licenses, and from the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't need those anymore. We'll be totally self-supporting, with our own stock of horses and buggies (AC.21:15) and what not. You may think I'm crazy, but I mean it, I expect it to happen. The day's coming before long and we'd better start getting ready for it. The day's coming when there isn't even going to be any gasoline. There aren't going to be any new parts. You won't be able to do any repairs, and we're going to have to have some kind of transportation. So, self-governing, self-supporting, and almost self-transporting, as well, and finally self-propagating. These are the things that the indigenous church is supposed to have. That means the church itself sees to it that it propagates itself. It doesn't grow stagnant and stale and grow up a bunch of bachelors and old maids, as some would have us do because they don't want to take care of babies (LK.18:15). But self-propagating in more ways than one, not only spiritually, but dividing into colonies. When the colony gets big enough to divide into two churches, then divide. Establish another church somewhere else (AC.13:2,5,13; also AC.20:4,18,29,31; 21:8).
THE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES EXAMPLE OF DIVISION FOR GROWTH
44. THERE'S ANOTHER GROUP THAT'S DOING THIS, AND IT'S PROVING HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL. It's the fastest growing religious group in America--the Jehovah's Witnesses. They are not doing it in a communist society, but they are doing it in the church System. They start a group or a church in the home or a neighbourhood until they have managed to get a group together. When they finally get enough, they build their little "Kingdom Hall." They don't say, "Let's go build a bigger Kingdom Hall so we can hold you all"; they say, "Well, now, you folks, you live on that side of town, and we live on this side of town, so from now on you guys get out there and rent your own Kingdom Hall and we'll divide this big group into two smaller groups. And that way, you'll evangelise that part of town while we evangelise this side of town." And that's the way the Jehovah's Witnesses, through that type of division, having once got the church together as a body, stick together; and when they get big, they don't just scatter, no, they send their Witnesses door to door and on the street corners; this is all effort by little teams. But when it comes to the church dividing, it doesn't totally disband. They tend to divide into two large groups and they have a ministry in two different places. And as a result, they are the fastest growing religious group in America.
45. WELL, WE MAY SHOW THEM A THING OR TWO BEFORE LONG. Praise God? It's not how many you have, but how fast you are growing and how much God is blessing you. Amen? So I believe, with all my heart and soul, that this is the plan that God has made for us. And as I say, it is not altogether new, although it is new in comparison to the present day Churchianity System. So God is doing a new thing, new for this generation.
THE COMMUNIST'S EXAMPLE OF COLONISATION
46. NOW, I MIGHT SAY THAT EVEN IN THE POLITICAL WORLD, THE COMMUNISTS ARE DOING A VERY SIMILAR THING, in a sense. What are they doing? Well, they establish a strong home base; you can't get out and evangelise the world unless you have a strong home base to operate from, that will be able to support a world revolution and engineer it. To train and send out missionaries you've got to have a strong home base (AC.8:1; 11:26-30; 13:1; 15:2,26,35). What's the result? They're conquering the world, politically. Because, how are they doing it? They are colonising, with little colonies of Communists in other countries. Colonising (AC.14:23; 15:41) and sending out from the home base (strong bastion or fortress) needed help to support them and rushing in to help if they are defeated or something. So they are really colonising these countries. And by putting a colony of Communists in this country, they are able to saturate the whole country, and take it over, with a whole colony of Communists. Well, we want to put colonies wherever God shows until pretty soon we are running that part of the world for the Lord. Amen? I believe it's going to work. It is working. We're doing it! Let's face it. Ever since God told us to do it. We took the show on the road first and even proved it could be done mobile, like Moses, leaving Egypt. And we still survive.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family}
