HomeARC ML 0069A
"GOD'S EXPLOSIONS II"--MO May 2, 1971 NO.69A--DO
AN EXPOSING TESTIMONY AND ANALYSIS OF A VISIT TO AN ENGLISH CHURCH!
33. WHEN I EXPLODED LAST NIGHT WITH THIS MESSAGE in the middle of a meeting city-wide, supposedly of people praying for revival, these church robots rejected it like the rest. The church is no different here! It's still gotta be an explosive Revolution for Jesus!
34. We had gone there to see this Pat Boone film they had advertised, thinking it was the new Dave Wilkerson film, "The Cross and the Switchblade" in which Pat Boone plays the lead, which is what I think they wanted everybody to think so they'd have a big crowd, which is what most preachers love: huge crowds--the more the merrier, but it's really the more the burier, from the word bury, it reminds me so much of a mass burial--just that many more dead corpses in this huge mausoleum called Central Hall, which we thought was a public auditorium, right downtown across from the House of Parliament, it was so gigantic and massive with winding marble staircases, monstrous candelabras, mammoth stained-glass windows, and an auditorium the size of an opera house, which turned out to be the Methodist Church Building, an ancient relic of former religious glory of that originally unpretentious sect after it had begun to reach its full strength and power in England under Sangster, who filled its main floor and gallery to the gills with great throngs of Londoners to hear his popular oratory. Today it's virtually empty, and its tomb-like interior echoes only with the past--the day when religion was popular.
35. THIS PSEUDO-INDEPENDENT PENTECOSTAL GROUP WHO WERE SHOWING THE FILM were only half able to fill the main floor, and could have been squeezed into a much smaller and cosier hall for the purpose.--It wouldn't have been so freezing cold that we had to wear our overcoats to keep warm!--But the spiritual atmosphere was even chillier, so that we were amazed as we sat there listening and reading their literature, that this was supposed to be a charismatic group similar to the Body Movement of America--and believe me, it was a very poor imitation: I'd take "Body" any day, who at least allow the freedom and manifestation and leading of the Spirit! This outfit was as cold and clammy as they come, and as stiff and formal as the Church of England, and without even the colourful ceremonialism of the same.
36. THE PREACHER SPOKE IN THE TYPICAL TOMB-LIKE TONES OF THE FORMAL ORATOR with swelling words of man's wisdom. The Boone film was the only bright spot on the entire program, and the platform was so dark you could hardly even see the speaker's faces, although there was one nice musical number by a little modern musical trio of a pianist-singer and two guitarists called The Miracle, led by Andrew Culverwell. Well, their music was anything but miraculous, like yours, but it was sweet, and he sang a very sad song: "Here am I, Here are you, Searching the universe to find the Truth. Some say here, and some say there, But I know God above--He's everywhere. He gave His very best--the only Son He had; And there's no religion in the land which shows such love, such love to any man. "How true! It was certainly true of that religious group there that night. We saw as little love manifested there as you'd find in any cold church--but he went on singing his very sweet song; the lovingest thing on the program: "What can I give to Him? It cost His life the world to win--and the world has turned away. What a chance and what a price to pay! As for you and as for me, can it be true to say: Lord, I believe? He gave His very best--the only Son He ever had! And there's no religion in the land that shows such love, such love to any man!" Certainly the religions of today are not showing the love of God to man--and this beautiful song was a striking condemnation of the very group and its leaders to whom it was being sung--although I doubt if they even got the point! I've found from 12 years of leading singing in churches that most church people don't know what they're singing about, or what is being sung--and you could sing them almost anything, including "Hi diddle diddle, the cat in the fiddle; the cow jumped over the moon," and they wouldn't know the difference. More church people take the name of God in vain in their singing than all the cursing wicked in the world!
37. ANYHOW IT WAS A NICE SONG--and I wish we could have gotten a copy of it for you, but the bookstand was closed by the time we got through there that night; And the Pat Boone film so-called turned out to be a very interesting colour segment of an Oral Roberts' TV show in which Oral interviews him about his recent Baptism in the Holy Spirit last year, before making the "Switchblade" film for Dave Wilkerson, a guy who has turned from the Cross to the Switchblade wherever we, the Children of God are concerned, having "knifed us in the back" on a number of occasions in his rallies and radio shows, with no opportunity to reply to his lies about us in which he says we're still using drugs, etc. The rest of what Dave says about us is true, of course, and we're not ashamed of it; that we hate the churches, encourage the children to disobey their parents, especially when their parents are disobeying God and refusing to let them serve the Lord; and Dave also claims we defy the law, but we certainly defy it no more than he did in that courtroom scene that gave him his first publicity, or than Peter and John did in their courtroom scene in the Book of Acts, when they said it was better to obey God than man. Anyway, we'll still have to love Dave, forgive him and pray for him, for he knows not what he does, and the damage he's trying to do to God's work in jealousy and self-vindication, like the hypocritical Pharisees of old. At least he does preach Christ, although how much good that does, I don't know, since he preaches a "work's religion", instead of Eternal Salvation purely by Grace--And a work's Salvation is no Salvation at all, no matter how many times you use the Name of Christ, or however good you are! And if you don't get kids to quit the damn System and live for Jesus full-time, what good does it do?
38. ANYHOW, PAT BOONE GAVE A VERY SWEET TESTIMONY TO ORAL about how the Baptism of the Holy Spirit had changed his whole life and saved his family, and helped him do a better job of playing the part of Dave Wilkerson in Dave's "Switchblade" film, which is all very well and good--but I wonder what he's gonna do now: Maybe write books--because as soon as the film was over, they began pushing the sale of Pat's latest book at about $7.00 a copy, which is more than Dave gets for his!
39. OF COURSE, I BET YOU COULDN'T PEDDLE MY LETTERS FOR A NICKEL A PIECE, so I better not knock 'em--just use 'em! Although I bet those Scribes and Pharisees would pay thirty pieces of silver for 'em to some Judas, just to get the goods on me--but don't let that give any of you damn Judases ideas--although it probably will. Oh well, we know it's comin' some day. Every outfit got its Judases--even Jesus' Twelve Disciples. I've often wondered why the Lord allowed that, totin' the Devil around on his coattail all those years--but I guess it helped keep Him on His toes, along with the rest of His longhaired hippies. And Judas finally helped to get Him crucified so He could be the Saviour of the world--so every dog has his day--even a damn dog like Judas!
EXPOSE ON G.T. ARMSTRONG
40. Of course, our beloved enemy, G.T. "H" Armstrong doesn't like Jesus' Twelve Disciples being called long-haired hippies, according to his latest article entitled "The Jesus Trip" in his so-called "Vain" Truth Magazine of March 1971, which we found to be mostly plain lies about the Jesus People Movement, including us, and in which he accuses us of not even knowing who Jesus is.
41. OF COURSE, AFTER READING HIS ARTICLES ABOUT YOU, in which he indicates you're no different from the rest of the hippies, saved or unsaved, and don't even know what you're talking about, including Jesus, I was pretty sure he didn't know what he was talking about, and doesn't even know Jesus himself, but just another jealous, self-righteous, hypocritical Pharisee trying to put down God's movement among the youth of today, just because he had nothing to do with it, and doesn't want his dear little systemite college kids to bet into it--another A.C. college, if you know what I mean. He certainly doesn't preach Salvation by Faith or Grace, and says in his article that "Christ was utterly unconcerned about saving the world! He only came to deliver a vital message--not to convert men's souls." He also says that if you preach the real Christ of the Bible you'll "turn off people", instead of turning them on, contrary to what Jesus Himself said when He advised us, "And if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me." In other words, Jesus said, If you show people what I'm really like, it'll turn 'em unto Me; but "H" Armstrong says it'll turn 'em off. He also tells so many other lies, twists so many other Scriptures, and misuses so many others, and preaches so much false doctrine, and so much "works" to be saved, that the whole article is so much Anti-Christ thrash that I'm absolutely through with "H" Armstrong!
42. I USED TO THINK HE WASN'T TOO BAD, because he was warning the nation of impending doom and Evolution, in spite of the fact that his religion is a mixture of Seventh-day Adventism, Jehovah's Witnessism, British Israelism, and a bunch of other crap, but this latest article against you and your Christ and God's latest move amongst the youth of the world proves that "H" Armstrong, the son of W. "H" Armstrong, with all his daily world-wide radio and TV shows for all these years, has been absolutely wrong and how you ever let this rascal in amongst our fresh green grass of our Los Angeles Colony to take pictures of us and do a story on us, I don't understand.
43. WHICH JUST GOES TO PROVE THAT JUST BECAUSE A GUY'S RIGHT ABOUT A COUPLE OF THINGS, like Evolution and the doom of the nation, and coats the poisonous pill of his diabolical lies and doctrines of devils with a thin sugar-coating of a little truth, doesn't mean he's a prophet of God! He can be an absolute damnable preacher of Satan if he's anti-Christ! Get rid of his literature and burn it: It's the very voice of the Devil! And if you still believe in him after this, you might as well get your own hell out of here too! May God have mercy on you!
ANALYSIS OF NEWS ARTICLES AND THE COUNTERFEIT J.P. MOVEMENT
44. THANK GOD AT LEAST FOR THE HONESTY OF THE WORLD-FAMOUS "CHRISTIANITY TODAY" magazine for at least giving credit where credit is due in their article on "Street Christians", pages 34 and 35 of the January 29th issue, 1971, in which they give an amazingly accurate account of the growth of the "Revival in the Underground" and particularly its present expansion into the Pacific Northwest under a guy by the name of Carl Parks, whoever he is. And in their accompanying article by Edward E. Plowman entitled "Straights Meets Streets", they also give an astonishingly truthful description of the Children of God of Thurber, Texas, including some of the little-known details of their early history, such as their early church vigils and their founding by the three children of some travelling evangelist by the name of Dave Berg, whoever he is, in the year 1968--and that our Texas and Los Angeles headquarters are owned by a guy by the name of Fred Jordan, whoever he is. This is a remarkable amount of previously unknown detail, which has not appeared in any other publication, but is now heralded world-wide to Christians of all faiths through this popular international publication. How about that? Leave it to the Christians! Some who's who! I wonder where he got all that information! CIA? (Christian Intelligence Assn.)
45. AT LEAST THAT'S NOT AS BAD NEWS AS DETROIT'S LATEST FREE PRESS ARTICLE of April 24, headlined on page 4A, "Jesus People Street Christians on Rise Here", giving all credit for their major advance in the Detroit area to some radio preacher by the name of Bogle, whoever he is, but who apparently wowed the paper with his monstrous warehouse--coffeehouse with its magnificent staff of 20 and mighty crowds of three to four hundred kids on a Saturday night in a typical Youth for Christish sort of thing; while in the same article the Children of God are barely mentioned as some woman preacher's insignificant little outfit of a mere three couples and five girls in some old mission, drawing a handful of 20 to 50! Hallelujah! I'll match my staff of 11 against their 20 any day, or even one of ours against all of theirs when it comes to a knowledge of the Scriptures and how to really witness, forsake all, and work full-time for Jesus, and I'll bet we could run circles around them any day in the week, including Saturday.
46. UNDEDICATED, CURIOUS CROWDS OF LUKEWARM CHURCHY KIDS MERELY SEEKING SOME NEW FROM OF GOSPEL ENTERTAINMENT don't mean a damn thing. If you haven't got something better to offer them, than a "Now-raise-your-hand; Now-come-down-front; Now-come-back-to-church-next-Sunday" formula, it's not gonna do a damn bit of good! I did this for years, like thousands of other evangelists, and a helluva lot of good it did, because it never gave the kids anything to live for, change for, die for, or start anything even approaching any kind of religious so-called revival amongst youth, much less a downright, outright, upright, red-hot real radical Revolution for Jesus! God damn it for even associating us with that kind of people! I don't even wanna be classed with any of these sickening, nauseating, disgusting, putrifying, dead-fleshly manifestations of man and his damnable organised churchy religious System, accursed by God! They don't even deserve the name Jesus People! They don't even faintly resemble Jesus, anymore than the rest of the so-called church! They're just a damn devilish counterfeit with some old-line diabolical religious racketeers endeavouring to capitalise on the name and publicity of the real Jesus People Movement and the Children of God, and using it and them for their own greedy power-hungry, covetous, commercial ends. That article made me so furious I nearly blew my top; but I thank God you sent it to me, because it shows what some of these old-line religious Pharisees are going to try to do to capitalise and try to control this move of God to their own ends, just like the churchy hypocrites of Jesus' day--The Circumcision--The Concision--The Legalists--the damnable religious hypocrites who tried to corner the Jesus Movement of His day, put their brand on 'em, and try to profiteer, plagiarise, and proselyte and exploit the true Jesus Movement of Christ's own day. As Jesus said, they'll compass the earth to make one proselyte, and then make him a worse child of hell than they are themselves (Mt.23:15)--And if you don't like that kind of strong language, you better read your Bible!
47. IT PUKES MY GUTS TO HEAR OF GUYS LIKE THIS SYSTEMITE PENTECOSTAL PREACHER TRYING TO "BUILD A JESUS PEOPLE EMPIRE" and being called the "Kingpin in the new undefined operation of the Jesus People", which People, however, the paper is wise to point out, ordinarily "abhor organisation and institutionalism", drawing an obvious line of difference between the real revolutionaries and the Systemite copy-cats! Hallelujah! Thank God for the subtle candidness of some reporters!
48. I CAN JUST IMAGINE IT NOW: THIS DAMN SYSTEMITE PREACHER SEES THIS BIG FRONT PAGE SPREAD ABOUT THE CHILDREN OF GOD invasion of Detroit in a recent issue of the same paper, with a huge front-page photo of you guys witnessing, all-out, on the front steps of Wayne University, with obvious sincerity. So he phones up the newspaper--I know those damn preachers so well! I ought to!--I was one of their accursed number so long!--And he makes a big beef about the paper's giving so much publicity to a little one-horse unknown new outfit like us, located in some dirty little mission downtown, when he's a well-known, long-time resident and big-shot preacher with a big radio programme and a beautiful big coffeehouse of his own that has much bigger crowds than ours; and damn it!--The papers haven't given him a line of publicity!--Why don't you come out and see my sumptuous pad, and my huge crowds of kids, and let the world hear about me! So, since the papers are pretty sensitive to the influential power of the preacherhood, especially with a radio audience that big, they're naturally forced to do a story on him and his big empty barn of a building--because after all, it's buildings that really impress the System, and long-time radio preachers with big radio programmes and big crowds of not-worth-spitting-on Christians! And so they do.
49. AND JUST TO MAKE SURE THAT NO OTHER LOCAL PREACHERS GET THEIR FEELINGS HURT, THEY HAVE TO THROW A FEW MORE IN, in the bargain, and let the world know they were there ahead of us, including the so-called "pioneer" Morrison with his thirteen, Peggy Justis and her eleven, Majewski and his Pentecostal-Catholic rally, etc. And of course, since for special survey features like this, reporters are always having to meet a deadline, they hurriedly phone around and try to get all the facts on the phone as fast as they can to please the people, instead of a real news item with a personal visit, like the first one they did on us--so naturally, they're bound to make some mistakes and get some misinformation, especially from somebody who knows as little about us as Peggy, who's more interested in tooting her own horn rather than ours when your phone was out! Wow!
50. BUT PRAISE THE LORD! ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD TO THEM THAT LOVE THE LORD! (RM. 8:28)--So I think all three of these articles have really taught us something! And I wanna congratulate you for keeping your eyes open and discovering them, including my faithful little secretary who was really led by the Spirit in finding some of these.--And you folks in Detroit have sent me the other one! You were right!--It wasn't good, and probably the worst piece of publicity we ever got so far, to be ranked along with the rest of those outfits, and pretty far down on the list, at that!
51. THE PICTURE THAT WENT WITH THE DETROIT ARTICLE WAS AT LEAST HONEST, and a real laugh!--It shows this big empty barn of a warehouse, with almost no people in it, with everybody sitting or standing around doing nothing, as though lying in wait for some poor unsuspecting victim to be lured into their claptrap, in typical churchy fashion!
MEDIA PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOULD ALWAYS CATCH US IN ACTION!
52. FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T EVER LET US GET LIKE THAT! Don't ever let 'em catch us just sitting or standing around in some empty building like the rest of the church! Buildings are not our boast! They're the church's brag bag! Let the papers shoot us on the firing line! Let the TV photogs catch you at work witnessing--not standing around waiting to lure somebody into your building trap! Let 'em take every one of you talking to someone individually about Jesus--and not some damn preacher of poisonous pious pulpit platitudes standing in his pulpit lullabying a bunch of spiritual babies!
53. WHAT A HORRIBLE IMPRESSION THE WORLD IS GONNA GET OF THE JESUS PEOPLE FROM A GUY LIKE BOGEY and his claptrap! He imports nine members of "Action Life", a supposed Jesus People centre in L.A., uses 'em on his broadcast, and then claims to be the leader of the Jesus People! What a helluva travesty on the truth! I'd rather see some dear guys like Arthur Blessitt, Lonnie Frisbee, Chuck Smith, Breck Stevens, Pederson, even the Alamos, Calvery Chapel, House of Miracles, Bethel Tabernacle, and Hollywood Presbyterian, some of the recent promoters of the Movement, get the credit for it, even if they weren't in on the ground floor with us when we started it and are only mimicking what we did first! At least they're not trying to claim they're something they're not, like this guy in Detroit, or trying to make themselves the self-appointed Messiahs of the Movement, like Bogey, just because they've imported a few Jesus People from the Far West in order to exploit them on their radio programme! What a helluva hypocrite! May he get what the Seven Sons of Sceva got!
WITNESSING--TAKE GOD'S CUE AND GIVE THEM THE MESSAGE AND FOLLOW THROUGH!
54. As you can tell by the enclosed yellow sheet and from what we learned that night in the meeting of their sponsoring organisation,--it's what I would like to call "The Crusade Against World Revival"!--THEIR CHURCHY, ASSEMBLY OF GOD, CAPITALISTIC, RELIGIOUS EXPLOITING LEADER, the speaker of the evening, is drooling at the mouth and just smacking his lips, waiting to capitalise on and exploit the Jesus People Movement over here! They're just waiting for you, kids, to lure you into another damn church clap-trap--but he really blew it with me that night and his chances of ever using us for his victims! I don't mind being used if I'm being used by the right God and the right people, but I don't like me or my kids being used as a tool of the Devil and his ministers for their own private profit!
55. AFTER THE FILM AND THE SWEET, SOFT MUSIC, AND A LOT OF FINANCIAL PROMOTING, for which I put a bill in the wastebasket (After all, you have to pay to see almost any show!), this Pentecostal preacher began to orate like an Episcopalian--and I got so inspired by the whole dastardly scene, that when he said, "If you have even one talent and God calls on you to do something with it, don't be afraid of what people will think of whether you'll succeed: Just obey! Don't just sit there and do nothing: stand up and be counted, and let God be the judge! "So, since I'd been sitting there a long time smoldering, barely able to contain, and like the prophet Jeremiah, actually sick from withholding, I took his invitation literally as my cue, since he'd just gotten through advising me to do it, and leaped to my feet and exploded with a message in tongues and interpretation which God had been trying to give for about a half an hour--And I really blew it!
56. AT FIRST THE LORD WAS TRYING TO ENCOURAGE THE LITTLE FLOCK of about 500, in case there were any true believers there, that if they'd not only pray, but obey, God would give them the revival they claimed to be seeking. But since the preacher wouldn't stop preaching--in fact, continued to spout off his manmade wisdom without even pausing for the Lord to get His Word in edgewise,--the Lord really started to blast 'em for their unbelief, insincerity, having ears that hear not, eyes that see not, hearts that perceive not, etc., and was about to tell 'em that though they claimed to be the Children of Abraham, that behold, a greater than Abraham is here in your midst (the Holy Spirit, I'm sure)--but ye will not hear him! And there was a lot more that would have come if his polite bouncer hadn't come over, put his hand on my shoulder and told me, "That's enough, Brother; you can sit down now!"--and gently pushed me down into my seat. At least I can say for the English that they were much more courteous and didn't call the cops, or beat me up on the spot, as some American so-called Christians have done to us in their synagogues of Satan! They were real nice about quenching the Holy Spirit and forbidding to speak with tongues--and did it very politely, but firmly.
57. I FELT LIKE SHAKING OFF THE DUST OF THE FEET AND STOMPING OUT, but felt that might just confirm their apparent feeling I was just some religious crackpot, so I stayed to talk to the preacher afterward and ask him why he didn't wanna hear what God had to say and he gave the usual alibis. So I said THAT'S WHY GOD HAS TO WORK OUTSIDE CHURCHES!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family}
