HomeARC ML 1049
NIVEA OF THE SEA!--Another of God's Mysteries! DFO 1049 15/9/81
--God Loves a Mystery!--Don't You?
--By Father David
1. AMEN! PTL! TYJ! HALLELUJAH! I GOT IT! Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL! I was just thinking about this weird dream I had this morning sitting here wondering what possible meaning could it possibly have? It was just a total mystery to me. I think God likes mysteries, He sure has a lot of'm! I think He enjoys us trying to figure'm out like a puzzle or like a detective story, & He kind of gets pleasure out of sort of leading us on & giving us clues & cues just like playing a game, the same way we do with our own children sometimes.
2. MARIA LOVES TO PLAY A LITTLE GAME WITH TECHI: HIDING THE PAPER CLIPS! She scatters paper clips around different places in the room, & them we play "Hot & Cold." Did you ever play "Hot & Cold"? If she's getting near where one is hidden, we say, "You're getting warm!" And if she gets real near we say, "You're getting hot!" And if she's practically right on top of it or maybe even lays her hand right down on where it is & doesn't see it, we say, "Oh, you're burning up! You're getting burnt!"
3. IF SHE WANDERS IN THE WRONG DIRECTION AWAY FORM WHERE THE PAPER CLIPS ARE, then we say, "No, you're cooling' off. You're getting cold." And if she gets further & further we say, "Oh, you're just freezing! You're absolutely freezing!"--She's getting so far away from where the paper clips are hidden. She really enjoys that little game, she gets a big kick out of it! Her eyes open wide & she smiles & she creeps along & almost tiptoes this way or that & loves to have us mystify her this way, & I think God does the same thing in a way!
4. AND THEN OF COURSE THERE IS A SPECIAL INCENTIVE TO FINDING THE PAPER CLIPS, because for every paper clip she finds she gets a peanut, & sometimes she gets as many as 15-20 or more peanuts for finding so many paper clips! The minute she finds one she comes running & puts it in Mama's hand, or puts it on Daddy's little table, & she's so proud as her little stack grows & she's got more & more paper clips piled up until she's just about got'm all! The whole mystery is solved & she's proud of herself that she found so many paper clips!
5. --SORT OF LIKE WE DO WITH GOD'S LITTLE MYSTERIES! He lays down a mystifying puzzle before us, then He keeps giving us cues and clues to what the solution is & how to solve it & where to find it etc., little by little sometimes, & we get so proud of ourselves & He gets proud of us too when the little pile of findings & solutions begins to grow & the jigsaw puzzle picture begins to fill out & we begin to solve it & understand it.
6. SO OFTEN IT'S THAT WAY, HE DOES IT LITTLE BY LITTLE. I think in almost most of my dreams that I've told you about, I didn't get the interpretation of some of these really queer, weird, crazy dreams until I had the faith to begin to tell you. Right? And then as I would relate it, the Lord would give it to me what it meant.
7. MY DREAMS HAVE COME THIS WAY & I would wake up in the morning & not have the faintest idea what this strange dream meant! But then as I exercised my faith & believed it & acted on my faith enough to have the courage to tell you & relate it to you, then the Lord would reward my faith & believed it & acted on my faith enough to have the courage to tell you & relate it to you, then the Lord would reward my faith by giving me the answers!
8. JUST LIKE TECHI DOES IN FINDING HER PAPER CLIPS, the more she finds & the more she goes the right directions & she's approaching her findings & her solutions, & the more answers she both have a lot of fun playing that game of "Hot or Cold," of hiding things & searching for them. It's fun for both the parents & the children. You know those Easter Egg hunts & those scavenger hunts & all those hunting games that we used to play? Even "hide-&-go-seek," that's the basic principle of the mystery of where they are.
9. YOU THEN THERE USED TO BE A GAME CALLED "I SPY," I've forgotten how that went. But I think you'd pick out something in the room that you were thinking about, & then you'd ask the kids to guess what it was & give them different clues. And whoever thought they'd guessed it would look at something or say, "I spy" and they'd name it, & then you'd tell them whether it was the right thing or not until they finally hit it. Then they got to be "it" & decide on something & have everybody else guess it.
10. YOU KNOW, THE LORD REALLY LOVES TO PLAY GAMES WITH US, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, just like we parents like to play games with out children, & the children love it too. I get a real bang out of it! I get a real challenge out of some of these dreams. I wake up & I know I got it from the Lord & I know it's very important & very impressive & still vivid in my mind, but it can be just as weird as this dream this morning with the most peculiar, strange, almost impossible happenings & seem to have absolutely no sense or meaning whatsoever until the Lord begins to give me little clues & little cues & little hints. PTL!
11. SO THE LORD LOVES A MYSTERY!--AND I LOVE A MYSTERY! I BET YOU LOVE A MYSTERY TOO! Mystery stories are some of the most popular stories in the World, even the Bible is full of mysteries & conundrums & in a sense guessing games. They called it riddles when I was a kid. I wonder what ever happened to the old riddles?--There used to be lots of little riddles that you told & got people to guess what it meant. I don't know, maybe kids just aren't that smart any more today, or maybe the parents aren't that smart & they don't want any of those old-fashioned guessing games & riddles, conundrums as they're sometimes called.
12. BUT EVEN IN THESE LAST DAYS, MAN'S LOVE OF MYSTERIES HAS NOT ABATED, although they've gotten up into Outer Space now & space stories & science fiction stories & all kinds of weird mysteries completely out of reality, some of them almost as crazy as some of my dreams! But anyway, I love a mystery, & God loves a mystery!
13. I THINK HE REALLY LIKES TO ALMOST TEASE US WITH THESE MYSTERIES SOMETIMES, because it really makes us pray, for one thing, to find the solution, to find the answer, to find the amazing interpretation sometimes of these very weird, strange, almost crazy dreams & puzzles that He sets out before us.
14. HE DOES THAT EVEN SOMETIMES IN TRYING TO FIND HIS WILL. He lets us think it's a lot of things & try a lot of things & have a lot of opinions. My mother used to take a piece of paper & draw a line down the middle when she was trying to decide on maybe a couple of different things, which one she was supposed to do, or something that she was thinking about doing. Column one would be "for" & column two would be "against," & she'd put down all the things in favour of doing that thing & all the things against it; all the things that were good about that choice & all the things that were bad, the alternatives.
15. GOD SETS CHOICES BEFORE US LIKE THAT ALL THE TIME! That's almost the name of the game, this whole game of life is Choices, constant choices. We have to make decisions, really thousands of them every day, tiny little decisions of every kind of what we're going to do & what we're going to write or what we're going to see.
16. WE HAVE TO MAKE DECISIONS TO DO ALMOST EVERY LITTLE TINY THING OF THE DAY, except that we get into making the same kind of decisions so much about our daily habits that they just become a habit. We get in a sort of a rut & therefore we don't any longer have to make so many decisions. As my father-in-law used to say when he was exasperated by how we never knew what we were going to do next & we seemed to have a rather disorderly schedule as far he was concerned.
17. HE SAID, "YOU GUYS ARE CRAZY! You have to make so many decisions every day about what you're going to do. All these years I've done the same thing every day, got dressed, ate breakfast the same time, ate the same kind of breakfast, went off to work at the same job for nearly 50 years. I couldn't live my whole day through without hardly having to make one single decision because I do exactly the same thing every day!"--What a monotonous humdrum life! When he told me that, that really didn't turn me on a bit, because I really like the excitement of variety, even the mystery & uncertainty & excitement!
18. PEOPLE EVEN LOVE SUSPENSE and go to see suspense movies & thrillers. They've got movies classified as suspense, thrillers, mysteries, romance etc., & it seems to me that variety is really the spice of life!--And that means having a variety of choices, a variety of answers, a variety of alternatives as to what you want to do or what God wants you to do, or what God even suggests that you do.
19. HE DOESN'T ALWAYS DEMAND THAT YOU DO A CERTAIN SPECIFIC THING, He usually gives you, believe it or not, a range of choices between certain frequencies, like you have a range of choice of wave lengths on your radio that you can choose what station you want to listen to, between certain limitations of the frequencies of your particular radio or your waveband.
20. YOU'VE GOT A LOT OF CHOICES IN-BETWEEN. You can't go any lower than a certain spot on your radio & you can't go any higher. He sets limitations on your choices at both ends, both directions, high or low, or left or right, or up or down or whatever. But within this range He gives you a variety of choices that He will allow you to make yourself.
21. I THINK I ILLUSTRATED IT TO YOU ONE TIME LIKE A TUNNEL. You were allowed to find your way through the tunnel any way you wish, but you should be making progress & not going backward. The tunnel restricts you, limits your side-to-side wanderings, & it always leads the right direction, it always has a goal, there's light at the other end of the tunnel.
22. IT'S SIMILAR TO HOW THE EUROPE MONETARY SYSTEM IS GOVERNED. Since they have allowed their currencies to float in Europe in relation to each other & in their exchange values, the EEC, the European Economic Community--or the Common Market as it's commonly called--allows their currencies to float within a certain range in relation to each other.
23. SOME CALL IT THE TUNNEL, OTHERS CALL IT THE SNAKE GOING THROUGH THE TUNNEL. The snake can wiggle back and forth from side to side of the tunnel, but it still can't go any further than that either right or left, & to make may progress it has to go ahead. So they have likened their currency arrangement in Europe to a snake. Well, it certainly is governed by the Serpent, that's for sure!
24. BUT ANYHOW, THE LORD REALLY DOES LIKE A MYSTERY, & people like mysteries, & I like a mystery, you like a mystery, don't you? Now let's be honest! We're excited by guessing games & mysteries & puzzles, riddles, conundrums. Nearly all games have a certain element of that in it, or unexpected chance.
25. GAMBLING GAMES ARE REALLY MYSTERIES, THEY'RE REALLY GUESSING GAMES. You don't know how it's going to come out, you don't know how the dice are going to fall, you don't know where the little ball's going to land on the roulette wheel, you don't know where that Wheel of Fortune is going to stop when you're playing around with your kids at the local fair or the carnival & you pay your 25 cents to let the wheel roll & you wonder where it's going to stop, & if it stops on the right number you get a prize!
26. AND WE LIKE SURPRISES, ESPECIALLY PLEASANT SURPRISES! Children get all excited about surprises, don't they? They love to have a surprise. I'll never forget we were giving a surprise to the children one time & Techi was the last to come in. She said, "Where's my surprise? Where's my surprise?"-- She wanted a surprise too!
27. SURPRISE IS LIKE A PRIZE RIGHT? Part of the surprise is the prize, but it's gotta be a sur-prise in order to really appreciate the prize! You have gotta sometimes find it, hunt for it, search for it, have a hunting game, hide-&-go-seek, you've got to really really seek for it. "Ah," you say, "the Lord doesn't do things like that!" I can even give you a Scripture for it: "Seek & ye shall find, knock & it shall be opened unto you, ask & ye shall receive!" (Mt.7:7.)
28. THE LORD LIKES HUNTING GAMES, HE LIKES SEEKING GAMES, GUESSING GAMES, MYSTERIES! He likes you to have to hunt for it, to which one's going to open; & when one opens, He likes for you to have to ask for it. Because this is all exercising your faith in Him & His Word & His divine guidance & magnanimity, His parental love. It shows you trust in Him when you obey Him, even if you don't know what's at end of the road.
29. IT SHOWS YOU HAVE FAITH IN HIM WORD IF HE TELLS YOU TO DO A CERTAIN THING: "Now go that direction, now you're getting warm, now you're getting warmer, you're getting hot, you're getting so close, oh, you're almost burning, you're so close!" He gives you cues & clues that way, & if you start going the wrong direction, let me tell you, He very very soon warns you that you're cooling off or you're growing colder.
30. HE SAYS, "THE LOVE OF MANY SHALL WAX COLD" (Mt.24:12.), so pretty soon you're freezing like "The Frozen Book Dream" (No.383) & you've gotten so slow & sluggish & cool & cold until you're absolutely frozen stiff & good for nothing! You've gone the wrong direction, far away from Him, far away from your goal, far away from the prize, the surprise, & you've lost it entirely until you have just been gone away so long, backslidden so long, so cold & frozen that you're stiff you can't even move any more!
31. YOU CAN'T EVEN LOOK ANY MORE, you can't even search any more, you don't even move any more! You're stuck in a rut, the roots are grown down, you're frozen like a block of ice into the System & you're as dead as the ice itself! You're cold, frozen, no feeling. You know, when you're frozen--one of your limbs or fingers or something is frozen--it has absolutely no feeling whatsoever, & the Lord even has a verse about that.
32. HE SAYS THAT AS WE BACKSLIDE & GET AWAY FROM THE LORD THAT WE BECOME "ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD." What are the three things? Alienated from the life of God, darkened in our understanding, until we're past feeling. (Eph.4:18,19.) Think of that! You drift away from the Lord, alienated from the life of God, darkened in your understanding. Because you've resisted the truth, resisted His will, resisted obedience, you've drifted further & further away from the Lord, alienated from the life of God.
33. UNTIL HAVING RESISTED THE TRUTH SO LONG YOU BECOME DARKENED IN YOUR UNDERSTANDING--You can't see the light, you can't understand any more what's going on!--Because you resisted the truth there's nothing left for you but a lie, darkness! Until finally the worst & the last stage of all, you're so cold & so frozen that you can't even feel any more--past feeling! That's what's happened to some of you folks, & that really is, in a way, what this dream is all about.
34. THE LORD, IN TRYING TO SHOW YOU HIS WILL, ALMOST ALWAYS GIVES YOU THE STARTING CLUE. It's like some of those little games you play, those pathway games like Monopoly & some of the games we put into the Kidz Mag, the maze games, etc. You throw the dice or you spin the needle, it lands on a certain number, you go so many hops & when you get there it tells you what to do. Or maybe you draw a card & it tells you what to do next.
35. NEARLY ALL GAMES HAVE AN ELEMENT OF MYSTERY, OR THEY WOULDN'T BE ANY FUN, RIGHT? What if when you played "hide-&-go-seek" you already knew where everybody was hiding?--That wouldn't be any fun, would it? What if you knew ahead of time exactly how things were going to come out on the game board?--There wouldn't be any mystery to it, would there? There wouldn't be any fun if there wasn't any mystery to it & it you didn't have to search for it & look for it & work for it & play for it & try to find it & try to win.
36. IF MOM PUT THE PAPER CLIPS OUT RIGHT IN SUCH OBVIOUS PLACES that Techi didn't even have to look for'm, she wouldn't get near as big a kick out of playing the game, they'd be too easy to find. A game's got to be a little bit difficult & it's got to have some guessing & some element of the unknown, the mysterious, the puzzle, the riddle, the conundrum. It's got to have those unknown factors of the mathematical problem. To me, a mathematical problem is a real challenge, you're seeking for the answer! This is true of all mathematics, all mathematics is composed of problems & answers & ways of finding the answers.
37. ALL OF LIFE IS THAT WAY, THAT'S WHY GOD PUT US HERE!--To make decisions & choices & search for the right thing & try to find the right direction, try to follow Him & His leading in the right paths to His goal, & this causes us to seek Him more in prayer, to ask Him for the answers. It makes us more dependent on Him as our Parent to try to find the right way & to get the right answers & go the right direction, make the right choice, to land in His only right will.
38. MY MOTHER USED TO SAY, "DON'T TALK ABOUT GOD'S BEST & HIS SECOND BEST & SO ON. As far as the will of God is concerned, there's only one best, that's His best, His first best, His first choice! And if you take second choice, so-called His second best, it's nor really His second best, it's your best, not His!--Because it's not His highest & best will & the thing He wants you to do the most!"--And even this dream illustrates that very thing too.
39. A LOT OF YOU ARE GETTING AWAY WITH WHAT YOU CALL GOD'S SECOND BEST. You know it's not the highest & best that He called you to on the mission field, to preach the Gospel in all the World to every creature, because you weren't willing to pay the price.
40. YOU WEREN'T WILLING TO REALLY WORK FOR IT & SEARCH FOR IT & seek it & find it & get the answers & really depend on God by faith & follow Him closely & live by faith & seek God with all your heart & mind & soul constantly in order to get the answers & get support & get fruit & win souls & really witness!
41. YOU JUST KIND OF DRIFTED AWAY FROM THE LORD. You thought it was a little too hard work to pray, it was too difficult to keep asking God for answers & for things, so you just sort of drifted away. You quit asking, you lost interest in the answers, didn't even want the answers.
42. YOU'D JUST RATHER GIVE YOUR OWN ANSWERS & GO HOME & TAKE AN EASY RUT JOB, dead-end job like my father-in-law, where you could just live the same way every day over & over, day after day--the same schedule, the same old job, the same old things. Your could go through it by habit almost in your sleep without even thinking, not having to seek God for answers, not having to depend by faith on His Word, not having to really search & seek & knock & ask & play God's guessing game & solve His mysteries & find the answers to His riddles.
43. YOU LOST INTEREST IN THE GAME. You're tired of playing games. You're tired of playing God's game. You're tired of working for it and having to pray for it and trust God and to have faith for it and search for it & seek & find & knock & ask & really go after it! You've lost sight of the goal, you've lost even a desire for the goal. You're not even interested in the answer any more, you don't even want to solve the mystery.
44. YOU'RE TIRED OF MYSTERIES, YOU'RE TIRED OF PUZZLES, YOU'RE TIRED OF PLAYING GAMES WITH GOD & you're tired of seeking the Lord in prayer, desperate prayer, & trusting His Word in desperate faith & walking on by faith, just putting your foot out because God says so, taking a step forward, and even if you don't see anything to step on or stand on, just trusting God to stick the ground right under your foot by the time it lands!
45. YOU'VE GOTTEN TIRED OF THIS GAME GOD PLAYS WITH US that He enjoys & that we enjoy who love the exciting, the suspense, the thriller, the mystery, the surprises, the variety & the thrill of living by faith, the excitement of the challenge of stepping out on nothing by faith & letting God just put something there for you to stand on by the time your foot hits the ground! Praise God! I love it!--Don't you? It's thrilling!--It's exciting!--It gives zest to life!--Sparkle!
46. I KNOW IT'S HARD SOMETIMES, & SOMETIMES I ALMOST GET FED UP & I wish the Lord wouldn't be so mysterious & I wish He'd make things a little plainer & give me an answer, But almost every major decision we have ever made, God originally made it a mystery, & we really had to search for it. We really had to search for it. We really had to knock on some doors until the right one opened and ask some folks until we got the right answers, until we found the fight place & the right place to go, the right place to land.
47. WE'VE JUST SENT A COUPLE OF OUR BOYS OUT SEARCHING FOR A NEW PLACE FOR US TO LAND, A NEW AREA. It was a mystery! It was exciting! They went out like Abraham, not knowing whither they went hardly; in fact, the place they finally landed wasn't even the place we sent them to, wasn't even the place we thought we were going to go to! But when they found the place, they just had the witness of the Spirit that that was it, & when they told us about it we were all excited because they had found it! "I found it! I found it!"
48. JUST LIKE DEAR OLD ARCHIMEDES WHO DISCOVERED THE PRINCIPLE OF FLOTATION. He was in the bathtub one day, I think it was, when he discovered the principle of flotation. If you know anything about physics, the weight of the amount of water displaced by a certain object floating in the water like a boat, etc., was equal to the weight of that object itself. The weight of the amount of water displaced by the object floating, is equal to the weight of the object, & if the weight of the object is more than the weight of the water displaced, it will sink.
49. ANYTHING THAT FLOATS SINKS IN A LITTLE BIT, RIGHT? Even you! But if you're too heavy for the amount of water you're displacing, you'll sink to the bottom. Fat, you know, oil, is lighter than water, did you know that? And if you're pretty fat you'll float! Like that little fat woman, Mrs. Five-by-five, that I baptised in my little swimming pool in Arizona behind my little church I built that time! The water was only five feet deep where I was going to baptise her, but that was about as tall as she was, & she was almost that broad too!
50. AS I LED HER OUT TOWARD THE LITTLE DEEPER HOLE where I usually stood people to baptise'm, all of a sudden she began to chuckle & said rather excitedly, "I'm floating! I'm floating! My feet aren't touching the bottom!" She got a little scared. She was so fat that as I walked her out to the hole she began to float!--And I had a hard time pushing her under when I baptised her, she was so buoyant! Maybe she thought it was some kind of miracle on the day of her baptism!
51. WELL, ARCHIMEDES JUMPED OUT OF THE BATHTUB, AS I RECALL THE STORY, STARK NAKED, & went running down the hall screaming, "Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!" which means, "I've found it! I've found it! I've found it!" in Greek. He was all excited because he'd found the solution to this great problem about boats floating. And believe it or not, guess who have been almost the most successful ship line owners & shipping magnates for hundreds of years ever since?--It's been the Greeks! Even now when other shipping companies are going broke & losing business, they're still sailing!
52. THE U.S. IS PRACTICALLY GOING OUT OF THE PASSENGER CRUISE BUSINESS & big ocean liners like they used to have, & so are most of the European nations. All the big rich countries that used to have big rich boats, like the QE2, etc., they say they're losing money. The Isle de France lost money so they finally sold it to the Norwegians who are such good shipping people that they renamed it the Norway, didn't they?--And it's running cruises down into the Caribbean, etc., all the way from Scandinavia!--
53. THAT'S SOMETHING FOR YOU GUYS TO THINK ABOUT UP THERE, BY THE WAY! You want to get to the Caribbean? Well, there are Scandinavian cruise ships that still sail from Scandinavia & stop by Britain, too, & pick up passengers, & France & pick up passengers at Cherbourg, & go on down & cruise the Caribbean. (The Navarino of Greece). Some of them cruise the Mediterranean too.
54. SO DEAR ARCHIMEDES SHOUTED "EUREKA!", HE HAD FOUND THE PRINCIPLE OF FLOTATION & water displacement which is very important to ship-building, to know that the weight of your ship is not going to be more than the weight of the water displaced or it'll sink. The weight of the ship has got to be less than the amount of water displaced. So the Greeks have been great ship-builders & ship-owners & ship line operators ever since.
55. AND JUST RECENTLY MWM HAD AN "HMS MWM" DAY ON BOARD A GREEK PASSENGER OCEAN LINER cruise ship in the Mediterranean, operated by the Greek line Epirotika, & on the very same ship that Maria & I went all the way from Italy to Israel upon, on a six-day Mediterranean cruise, the Hermes, believe it or not!
56. AND JUST RECENTLY WE FOUND OUT THAT THERE'S A GREEK COMPANY STILL OPERATING TWO OLD SCANDINAVIAN SWEDISH VESSELS that used to make the trip across the ocean between Stockholm & New York, the Kungsholm & the Gripsholm. I don't know what's happened to the Kungsholm, but the Gripsholm is still making cruises. By the way, whether you want to go to South Africa or South America or the Caribbean or wherever, that old Gripsholm that used to take my rich aunt, my father's sister, all the way from New York to Stockholm every Summer for her Summer vacation, is still sailing! Only it's under a new name now, I've forgotten what it is. It operates all the way from Southhampton, goes clear down to South Africa, & then it goes across to South America & up the coast to the Caribbean, I believe it is, & then it goes back again.
57. THEY'RE VERY EXPENSIVE CRUISES, OF COURSE, because you spend weeks & weeks on them, full room & board, luxury travel, three or four square meals a day & all kinds of free entertainment. They have swimming pools, night clubs, dancing, music, all kinds of pastimes, card games, tennis, squash or whatever, all kinds of things that they give you to entertain you & amuse you; staterooms like hotel rooms. like hotel rooms, & every possible sort of luxury & comfort you can possibly imagine to make your long voyage very happy & restful on your long vacation.
58. WELL, IMAGINE THAT, THE GREEKS ARE STILL OPERATING SUCCESSFULLY MANY CRUISE SHIPS & ocean liners, whereas nearly everybody else has given up on them. The airplane's practically taken over the tourist traffic, but the Greeks still manage to make it successful, God bless those Greeks! And maybe it all started with a monumental momentous discovery by Archimedes when he shouted, "Eureka! I found it!" Hallelujah! TYJ!
59. ISN'T THAT THE FUN OF THE GAME, WHEN YOU FINALLY WIN? Isn't that the fun when you finally find the answer, you got the solution to the mystery? Isn't it exciting when you're watching a mystery movie & you're wondering who the criminal is, who's the guilty one? They've got all these people sitting in the parlour & one of them has got to be the criminal or all these are on board a ship or on a train or in a hotel or on a plane.
60. I LOVE THESE GROUP MYSTERIES where they're all riding on a boat or a plane or a train or in a hotel, the same hotel lobby or something, or all in the same house. You know somebody there has got to be guilty, & you're just so excited trying to figure out who it is! Every now & then just for relaxation & recreation, Maria & I just lie in bed & watch a mystery movie.
61. SHE LOVES MYSTERIES & I DO TOO! They're exciting! Challenging! They stimulate your intellect, they stimulate your curiosity, they stimulate you! They pep you up & get your blood circulating, your heart beating rapidly & excited, & they get you going! A lot of people really need something to get'm going, let me tell you!--Some kind of stimulus, some kind of excitement, some kind of a challenge, some kind of a mystery, some kind of a puzzle, riddle or problem.
62. SO GOD HAS JUST FILLED LIFE FULL OF PUZZLES & PROBLEMS & MYSTERIES & excitement & suspense & challenge & puzzles & all these mysteries to challenge our intellect, challenge our spirituality, challenge our faith, challenge our trust in the Lord, to challenge our spiritual fiber & our spiritual muscle & to get us going to want to find out the answer!
63. IF YOU'RE PAST THAT STAGE & YOU'RE SO DEAD & DULL & COLD & FROZEN that you don't even care to find the answer any more, you don't even like challenges, you don't like mysteries, you don't like puzzles, you don't like playing games any more, you don't like God's little mysteries, you don't like having to pray so hard to find the answer, you don't like having to just step out by faith on almost nothing trusting God to give you the answer, you just don't like seeking & knocking & asking any more & you've given up, well, you're as good as dead!
64. YOU'RE ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD, you are darkened in your understanding, & you're past feeling--or you're coming dangerously close to being past feeling where you don't even feel like it any more. You don't even feel the presence of God any more, you don't even hear the voice of His Spirit any more. You've lost the light in your life & your life has become dead & dark & cold, & you've become so frozen cold that you've lost even feeling, you don't even feel it any more--past feeling!
65. HOW HORRIBLE, HOW TERRIBLE TO GET SO COLD & SO FROZEN THAT YOU'RE PAST FEELING! I frozen my two heels when I was in the army standing out in the snow for four hours, I froze both Achilles tendons & I was almost crippled up for awhile. I knew my feet were getting cold, but when those heels began to get where they were even past feeling, I knew I was in a dangerous condition!
66. AND LET ME TELL YOU, FOLKS, IF YOU'VE GOTTEN SO FROZEN YOU'RE EVEN PAST FEELING, YOU'RE IN A VERY DANGEROUS CONDITION!--When you don't even feel like it any more, you're not even challenged by the mysteries of God any more, you're not even trying to find His will anymore, you don't even have the feeling to want to find His will any more.--You're past feeling, you're dead, you're just like the churches that have gone to sleep & left their engines running--only sometimes I wonder if the engines are even running!
67. LIKE THE LITTLE GIRL SAID ABOUT THE KITTY WHEN IT WENT TO SLEEP & she heard it purring, "Oh Mommy, the kitty's gone to sleep & left its engine running!" You know how a cat will do when you pet it & it closes its eyes & kind of goes to sleep & it's purring away? Well, that's like a lot of you Christians, a lot of you folks our there that have gone back home & taken jobs in the System, sent your kids to the godless schools.
68. YOU'VE JUST FROZEN RIGHT BACK INTO THE SYSTEM, ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD, darkened in your understanding, past feeling, & you've gone to sleep & your engine is just even barely running. You're in a rut, you're frozen. You went back to where you don't even have to think any more, you don't have to pray any more, you don't have to make decisions any more, you don't have to have any more mysteries. You know exactly what you're going to do every day, you think, & you have the same old job, the same old schedule.
69. YOU LIVE IN THE SAME OLD RUT EVERY DAY--get the kids up for school in the morning, send them off to school, get yourself off to your job, work all day, come home tired, switch on the TV, have your beer, have your smoke, sit there stupefied, numb, dead, frozen, hypnotised, past feeling, & finally fall into bed exhausted! And what have you accomplished?--Nothing but earning a living, nothing but existing, nothing but just surviving--& if you stay where some of you are in the cold North, when the war comes you're not going to survive!
70. BUT RIGHT NOW YOU THINK, "WELL, I'M AT LEAST ACCOMPLISHING SOMETHING, I'm surviving, I'm supporting my wife & children, I've got a nice home & a car & a TV & a video & a good job, good income & we're making it. Even though we did leave the plow behind in the foreign field, the mission field, God is good to us, God is merciful & He's allowing us to do His second best. We witness a little bit on weekends, we go out sometimes in the evening with the kids & sing on the corner, pass out lit. We do a little here & there.
71. "WE COULDN'T QUITE MAKE IT ON THE MISSION FIELD, WE COULDN'T DO GOD'S BEST, but we've come home & we're getting by & we're managing to get along, & we're doing a little bit for the Lord. We're not completely gone, we're not completely backslidden, we still belong to the Family, we still tithe, we still witness a little, we still tithe a little bit, we still sing together a little bit, the children sing now & then, here & there for friends & family & relatives etc., but it was just too tough on the mission fields.
72. "IT WAS TOO MANY MYSTERIES, TOO MANY RIDDLES, TOO MANY PUZZLES, TOO MANY PROBLEMS, TOO MUCH PRAYER, too much faith & trust, we just didn't have it!--Too much uncertainty, we just decided we just had to come home, we just couldn't make it. It was too absolutely mystifying, too many problems, too many riddles, too many questions, too many mysteries, too hard to find the answers, too hard to get support; we just gave up & quit & left, came home where we can just live by habit in a rut & do the same thing every day & not have to worry about accomplishing very much for the Lord, & just manage to exist & survive."
73. LET ME TELL YOU, IF YOU'VE GOTTEN THAT FAR OFF, YOU ARE REALLY IN BAD SHAPE!--Like a lot of you still left there in the cold frozen North or in the States or in Europe. For awhile you said you were going to go back & you were going to get a job & you were going to make some money so you'd have enough money to go the field, to go South, but you just got stuck in a rut & you drifted further & further from the Lord, alienated from the life of God, darkened in your understanding--you couldn't even think clearly any more, couldn't even see the will of God clearly any more--& finally past feeling, you didn't even feel like it any more!
74. YOU'RE SATISFIED WITH YOUR RUT, YOU'RE SATISFIED WITH YOUR STICK-IN-THE-MUD JOB. You're content just to sit down stupefied in front of your TV & relax a little bit after a long hard day's work in which you didn't have to think but just do the same old thing over & over again all day long. You didn't have to pray, you didn't have to think, you didn't have to find any answers, you didn't have to solve any problems, you just went through the thing like a zombie.
75. YOU COULD ALMOST DO THE JOB IN YOUR SLEEP because you've done it so many times over & over & over again, the same old thing, day in & day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, & pretty soon it became year in & year out & you finally didn't even realise that you were really stuck & you didn't even seem to have any desire to go any more.
76. YOU NO LONGER HAD ANY IDEA THAT YOU WERE SAVING UP MONEY TO GO TO THE MISSION FIELD--about all you'd been able to save up was debts & more & more debts & credit card debts & payment debts on houses & cars & lands & utilities & video & colour TV & all the rest, & you're so deep in debt now that you can't even see any way out, & you're stuck with it!
77. YOU'RE CHAINED TO IT, YOU'RE TIED TO IT, YOU'RE IN BONDAGE, YOU'RE A SLAVE OF IT. Like the old song Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing, wasn't?
"Sixteen tons & what do you get?
Another day older & deeper in debt!
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go,
I owe my soul to the company store!"
So that's the way you've gotten. You've gotten back there & wanted so many things & comforts & luxuries that you're so deep in debt with payments & credit cards that it doesn't look like you'll ever get out of the hole!
78. YOU'LL NEVER GET OUT OF DEBT, YOU'LL NEVER GET EVERYTHING PAID OFF, much less save any money to go to the mission field! You are really stuck! The Devil's really got you bound, chained in a pit, the slime pit of the System! You've gone back to your vomit & your wallowing in the mire, & you're almost a hopeless case! May God have mercy on you & show you what's wrong with you!
79. MY OH MY, HERE I WAS JUST GOING TO TELL YOU A LITTLE MYSTERY God gave me this morning & I got into all that! But I'm just trying to prove to you that God loves a mystery, just like you love to play games with your children & they love to play games with you. A child who's really got some umph & get up & go & some drive will love to play the games with you, & he loves the challenge & the problem & the search & the find & all the rest, the excitement, the suspense, the mystery of it all!
80. IT'S FUN! AND APPARENTLY GOD THINKS IT'S FUN! And when we play games with our children like that, we think it's fun. We have fun with them, they have fun with us! God has fun with us, we have fun with Him in playing this great Game of Life with all of its mysteries & challenges & clues & cues & different cards & different rolls of the dice or whatever it may be. There's one thing you're not doing--you're not gambling or taking any chance if you trust the Lord. If you're following Him.
81. HE'LL GIVE YOU CLUES & CUES TO LEAD YOU ON STEP BY STEP, but just like on that pathway game, you don't know what's going to happen to you next till you land on the next stop, so how can you plan ahead? How can you know everything that's going to happen unless you take that throw & you make that move to the next space on the board, & then it tells you what to do. And that's exactly the way god plays His game too.
82. HE'S NOT GOING TO TELL YOU ALL THE HOPS YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE & all the jumps you're going to make & all the spots & spaces you're going to land on ahead of time. He makes you just find His will, cast the lot, cast the dice, & find our how many moves He wants you to make next, how far He wants you to move next to that next space. If up comes number 7, well, you count seven spaces & you land on number 7, & there on number 7 it tells you what to do next, or tells you to draw a card that tells you what to do next. And God works the same way, believe it or not.
83. HE LIKES YOU TO PLAY THIS GAME BECAUSE HE LIKES YOU TO EXERCISE YOUR FAITH. He likes you to go ahead in what some people call "blind" faith--actually it's seeing faith, in a sense, because you're seeing God! You may not see the answer, you may not know the solution, you may not even know the place He's leading to or what you're going to find, but what did Moses do? He like Abraham went out not knowing whither he went but trusting God to fulfil His promises.
84. MOSES WENT OUT REALLY IN A WAY NOT KNOWING WHERE HE WENT. It says that he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of seeing--pleasures of the season--yes, the seeing, that's for sure!--You only see for a season sometimes, & seeing is not enough. It says because he had respect unto the recompense of the reward, as seeing Him which is invisible. (He.11:25-27.)
85. WE HAVE TO TRUST GOD EVEN THOUGH WE CAN'T SEE HIM. We have to go ahead & follow Him even though we can't see Him or exactly where He's leading. We just have to go along following His little mysteries & His little hints & His little cues & clues that He drops along the trail & that He leaves behind, like Pocahontas left little pieces of her dress along the trail so that John Smith could find her & recapture her & marry her to John Rolfe.
86. THE LITTLE INDIAN PRINCESS, JUST A YOUNG TEENAGE GIRL, MARRIED THIS FAMOUS MAN JOHN ROLFE, one of the pioneers of Jamestown, I think it was, & she became his wife & a princess of Jamestown instead of just princess of the Indian tribe. She became the wife of a famous man & went down in history.
87. WELL, WHEN SHE WAS BEING KIDNAPPED BY HER TRIBE & taken away because for some reason they didn't want her to marry that stranger, in order for the British under John Smith to find her, she tore off little tiny bits of her dress as she went along, leaving little scraps behind on the pathway so they could trace her. And sure enough, they traced those little scraps of cloth, & as they found each one they knew it would lead to another one & they knew they were going the right direction & they finally found Pocahontas!
88. THEY RECAPTURED HER & MADE A GOOD DEAL WITH THE CHIEF, her father, & convinced him that John's intentions were good, that he meant to marry her & not just use her, & that he meant to really take care of her & that he really loved her & wanted to make her his wife, & as I recall the story, they then relented & let them have Pocahontas & let the little Indian princess get married. But it was a mystery for awhile, he had a hard time finding her.
89. WELL, GOD SORT OF LIKES THOSE MYSTERIES, He really likes you to sort of really trust Him by faith. You know, the World's motto is: "Seeing is believing!" If I see it, then I'll believe it." Well, that's not God's motto, the motto of God's Word is "Believing is seeing!" If you'll just believe & trust God's Word & trust Him & obey Him & do what He tells you to do, go South, not even knowing maybe where you're going to land, God will give you the answers. You will eventually see what you're supposed to do & where you're supposed to go & how to do it. I found that so many times.
90. OUR BOYS JUST TOLD US SO THRILLED LAST NIGHT, that they found just what they feel is the right place & it sounded good to us & we said, "Go ahead. Praise God!" However, when we sent them off we didn't know really where they were going, & we didn't even except then to land in the city they finally landed in or find a place where they finally found one. We were aimed at a totally different city.
91. SO GOD LOVES A MYSTERY! AND I LOVE A MYSTERY! DON'T LOVE A MYSTERY? What's the matter with you that you're such a freak & such a deadpan & such a dummy & a zombie & a deadbeat that you're not even excited about mysteries or conundrums or problems or puzzles or playing games with the excitement, the suspense & the thrills of finding solutions & answers!
92. IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR SCIENTISTS LIKE DEAR ARCHIMEDES, we might never have known how to float ships & the Greeks how to run shipping lines. But he found a solution: "Eureka! I found it!" He was all excited because he'd been looking for the solution to this problem for a long time & he suddenly discovered it sitting in the bathtub! I don't know whether he was playing with his toys or what, like our kids do!
93. BUT ANYWAY, "WHAT ABOUT THAT DREAM, DAD? What's that crazy dream you had? You got off to preaching us a sermon!" Sometimes I think the Lord deliberately gives me some strange peculiar dream that I do not understand & it's absolutely weird & I cannot savvy it at all, just to get me started talking to tell you the dream so He can give me the interpretation. And sometimes it seems like the interpretation hardly has anything to do with the dream or the lesson that God makes me give you in this course of telling you the dream & interpretation. But in this cases it is very applicable & very real & has a definite genuine connection meaning.
94. I'VE ALREADY HAD A LETTER ON "GOD'S LITTLE MYSTERIES", maybe this is "God Loves a Mystery" or "I love a Mystery," or, maybe we'll just name it after what the sign was in the dream--"Nivea of the Sea!" It's about a Sea Goddess named Nivea, Nivea of the Sea, & it's one of the most peculiar strange odd dreams I ever did have!
95. SOMETIMES I HAVE TO SEARCH ALONG CLUE BY CLUE, cue by cue, hint by hint, warm, warmer, hot, or cooler, cold, colder, & so on, until I finally find it. Or sometimes, like He did today when I was asking the Lord, "What in the World does this mean? I can't tell head nor tail of this dream what it means, Lord?" Suddenly just like I'm in a dark place He just like turns on a big flood light & illuminates the whole scene!
96. WELL, PTL! HERE WE ARE ON SIDE 2 OF THIS TAPE ON "I LOVE A MYSTERY" & "God Loves a Mystery," & we're playing His mysterious game of faith & trust & obedience, play by play, card by card, roll by roll, jump by jump, we're playing God's game of little mysteries. Well, I'd better tell you the dream before tell you the dream before I get to preaching again.--Ha!
97. I DON'T KNOW THAT I CAN REMEMBER EVERY DETAIL because it seemed like it was a little longer, but certain parts have sort of faded out & now it's been so long, I've been preaching at you so long, & it was this morning & now it's nearly noon. But there are parts of it that were so vivid & so dramatic & emphatic that I couldn't possibly forget'm, & I guess those are the parts the Lord wants me to remember to tell you & to inspire this little message that God's already given you. PTL!
98. WELL, FIRST OF ALL, IT WAS AT NIGHT, IT WAS DARK; in a sense, I was in the dark. We were at a sort of a junk yard full of old building material & old stuff from old wrecked buildings & wrecked places, & the funny part about it was there was an old TSC sign standing there, & then there was an old Huntington Beach sign standing there. I thought, "Boy oh boy, how did these signs all get in this one place?"
99. THEN I WENT OVER & LOOKED AT THEM & DECIDED TO PICK OUT THE ONE THAT SAID "HUNTINGTON BEACH", because we needed some kind of a sign or a name for the place we were living, out on a kind of a farm out in the country. I thought, "Well, TSC, we've had that. Huntington Beach, that's got good memories & that's good old happy days of yore, let's take the nice Huntington Beach sign!"--In fact, it seemed to be in better shape. "We'll take that out to our farm & stick that up as the name of our place--Huntington Beach!"
100. NOW IN THE REVELATION I JUST RECEIVED A FEW MINUTES AGO, the Lord showed me that this is exactly what some of you people are doing in going back to the States & back to Europe & back to home again, you're going back to he old things, you're going back to the old ways, you're trying to revive old memories & old ways of doing things & old contacts, old friends, you're really going backward!
101. INSTEAD OF LEAVING THOSE BEGGARLY ELEMENTS OF BEGINNINGS FAR BEHIND & forgetting the past, pressing forward to the things that are before & the high calling of the Lord in Christ Jesus & His highest & best on the mission field, you have gone back to some of those old basics like our old bases, TSC & Huntington Beach, & you've gone back to the old rut, the old way.
102. YOU PICKED UP A FEW THINGS OUT OF THE OLD JUNK YARD OF THE PAST & you've tried to set'm up again & revive old memories & old ways & old things & old friends & old places, & you're really living in the past. I mean, you've really gone backwards in time!
103. IT WAS LIKE WE WERE TRYING TO REVIVE THIS BY-GONE DAY & REVIVE OLD TSC--it was sort of like TSC where we put up this sign "Huntington Beach", certainly a strange combination! Well, the Lord likes peculiar strange weird combinations, particularly when they're symbolic to represent things, & all of that definitely represents trying to revive the past, going back to the past.
104. MANY OF OUR OLD FAMILY BACKSLIDERS DIDN'T LIKE THE NEW WINE, they didn't like the new news, they didn't like the new ways, they didn't like the new organisation, they didn't like the new leadership, they were still part of the old Chain-Saul's old chain, & they liked it that way. And each time we had another revolution we left them further behind until finally they're out of it altogether!--Because they thought we should have kept things the way they were & the old leaders etc.
105. THE RNR REALLY SHOOK A LOT OF THEM OUT OF OUT HAIR, & if that didn't do it, some revolutions we've had since then have! But they're way back there in time, they're way back there like Deb & Jeth & them still trying to revive the old things, the old ways & really making a mess of things. Poor Mom, she's still trying to revive the churchy ways, & Deb & Jeth, some of the old Chain-Saul school ways, etc.
106. OH, BY THE WAY, WE PUT UP THE "HUNTINGTON BEACH" SIGN ON THE TSC RANCH. We used to always have to have a sign to direct people from the main highway, U.S. 80, out there at Thurber, or not far from Mingus & Strawn, 25 miles to the North of Stephenville in Central Texas, & about 70 miles West of Ft. Worth. That's where TSC was--out in the middle of nowhere!--Like you now!
107. WE USED TO HAVE A SIGN OUT ON THE HIGHWAY, & sometimes dear old Ho would take his bus out there with his orchestra on top & they would play away to attention with a big sign on the side of his bus: "THIS WAY TO TSC! FREE ROOM & BOARD FOR HIPPIES" & whatnot, to attract attention there to get them to come out & hear the Gospel & join us, become new disciples. And boy, we got lots of them! The place boomed from the 125 that first landed there to over 300 before they left!
108. SO WE PUT UP THIS SIGN ON THIS NEW TSC. It seemed to be awfully dark, everything was dark & at night, isn't that strange, because it was like it was in the dark, in the darkness of the past, trying to revive the past. Forget the things of the past!--Press forward toward the future God's Word says. Seek the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Praise God? Forget the things of the past! It's gone forever!--You'll never revive it!
109. I GOT DO CONVICTED ABOUT THAT ONCE! I had all my photobooks of all the memories of the past, the things that I used to do, & I so treasured those photobooks of the past & all those old photos, that God, on two different occasions, two different floods, had to completely ruin them to where I could hardly salvage a thing! He wanted me to forget the past! Live today! And don't worry about the future either, but press forward toward whatever direction God's leading.
110. WELL, IN THIS DREAM, INSTEAD OF ATTRACTING NEW DISCIPLES, do you know what it attracted?--Robbers! There were some kind of though bums or something, young hooligans walking down the highway & they saw our sign & they came threateningly to our door as though they wanted to rob us, so that we had to pick up our guns to warn'm away & shoo'm off!
111. THAT'S ABOUT THE SHAPE SOME OF YOU PEOPLE ARE IN THERE IN YOUR RUT JOBS, dead-end jobs what you've gotten into in the States & Europe & whatnot, & North America, Canada even. You're trying to revive the past, & instead of attracting new disciples, all you're attracting is robbers & thieves & criminals & attackers & enemies! All you're doing is letting them know where you are at so they can attack you!
112. A LOT OF YOU FOLKS HAVE GONE BACK HOME & DISCOVERED THAT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE DEVIL WANTED that's exactly what your enemies wanted! Your folks or parents or relatives immediately called the deprogrammers & kidnapped you & put you through torment & torture & the third degree & the inquisition, or took away your children.
113. OR YOUR WIFE OR YOUR HUSBAND LEFT YOU & STOLE THE KIDS & YOU LOST EVERYTHING, including getting a judgment against you for alimony & child support, so that you were not even able to get a passport to leave the country! You couldn't even get away, you're not allowed to leave the State. You were commanded by Court Order to stay there & not leave the state without permission, you're on probation of some kind.
114. INSTEAD OF ATTRACTING NEW DISCIPLES & BEARING GOOD FRUIT your going back & your trying to revive the past has borne very bad fruit, & your advertisement of your return & your presence back home again has only notified your enemies to attack you & only caused you trouble, nothing but trouble!
115. WELL NOW, THE NEXT SCENE, I WAS IN THIS SORT OF A PRETTY SPANISH COURTYARD, PATIO THEY CALL IT. Some of the hotels even, the great haciendas & villas in the Spanish & Spanish-American, Latin American areas, they're built around beautiful huge gardens called patios or courtyards, full of flowers & beautiful plants, etc.--Very pleasant, very pretty, very cool in the hot nights with openings, breezeways, so the breeze would blow through.
116. THE HOUSE SURROUNDS IT SO THEY CAN SIT OUT IN SAFETY AND COMFORT IN THE PATIO & still in privacy from your neighbours & even in safety & security from your enemies, & yet be able to sit outdoors but surrounded by the house.--Very convenient type of construction that's very popular amongst the Spanish & Spanish Americans in particular.
117. IT WAS ALMOST SORT OF LIKE IN A WAY SOME OF YOU HAVE GOTTEN SORT OF SETTLED DOWN, & maybe some of you have sort of gotten settled down even on the field, because it was quite obviously a sort of a Spanish-American, Latin-American house. Maybe you got to the field, but maybe you settled down on the field in some kind of a job at some kind of a good income & you're not a missionary, you're just a mover, that's all. You didn't go to the field & become a missionary, you just moved to a foreign country, that's all.
118. WELL, AS WE WERE SITTING THERE, THERE WERE SEVERAL OF US--there were quite a few of you, too, by the way, you backsliders & you sticks-in-the-mud that have gotten settled down, whether it's at home or on the foreign field--& suddenly two or three very beautiful native girls ran playfully through the patio topless, very exciting & stimulating, almost like they were deliberately trying to sort of flirt with us & tease us to follow, & I had my eyes especially on one of them.
119. SO, LEAVE IT TO ME, I JUMPED UP & RAN AFTER THE NATIVE GIRLS, especially this one with cute little bare bosoms hanging out who'd smiled at me so sweetly & was very coyly, shyly trying to entice me to follow her, obviously. I ran through one of the doors that led off the patio into this bedroom, but she wasn't there. Obviously I hoped to catch her in the bedroom, but she hadn't bedded. So I quickly ran on through the bedroom out the door that ran into the hallway in the house looking for her, searching for her, & finally ran out of the house looking all around trying to find her.
120. SOME OF YOU HAVE BEEN ENTICED TO THE MISSION FIELD by some beautiful sexy appealing enticing goddess of that field who wants you to come & follow her & to help her people, & you have actually made that step & you have tried to follow to the field & you have gotten there, but you've gotten settled down, & she's still trying to entice you out into the field away from the patio & the house, to get out in the field & preach the Gospel to all her country, all her people, every creature!
121.--TO GET OUT OF YOUR RUT, GET OUT OF YOUR SETTLED DOWN BASE & GET OUT IN THE FIELD the hungry parts of the country that have really not been already soaked & saturated & over-worked with the Gospel & with out lit & with our people, etc. There's a real danger of that happening in some places in South America, Central America & Mexico particularly which is easy to get to where a lot of you are piling up to where you bump into each other on every street corner litnessing! So she was trying to entice me out of the house & somewhere outdoors into the field.
122. SO GUESS WHERE I NEXT FOUND MYSELF, OF ALL THE FUNNY THINGS?--I found myself in this trailer, in the water! Now, a lot of you folks have finally broken loose enough to go mobile, & you got yourselves a mobile outfit, camper, trailer, truck, whatever, & you've broken away at least that much & you've at least gone mobile.
123. BUT YOU FIND YOURSELF IN THAT TRAILER OR THAT CAMPER STILL SORT OF DROWNING IN THE SEA, or at sea as to what you're supposed to do or where you're still supposed to go where you should minister, and in a sense your trying to revive the old, the old past. You're trying to live like Mom & Dad did with their little flock when they were here 15, 20 years ago--many years ago!
124. THIS IS THE WAY THEY LIVED HERE IN THE STATES, this is the way they lived on the road, this is the way they did it--& it's still a symbol of trying to revive the past & what we used to do in the old days when the U.S. still hadn't heard out message & we were just beginning to shout it from the housetops & beginning to litness.
125. WELL, LET ME TELL YOU, THAT DAY IS GONE! It's past! So many of you have gone back there & tried to revive the old Mom & Dad Mobile Ministry & the old church Invasion Ministry--which has had its day! I'll admit, God will still use it, God will still use you--if that's the best He can get you to do--& He'll still perhaps help you get started that way to break you & shake you loose from that house & that job & to invade the churches to help get your support.
126. BUT DON'T DROWN IN IT! DON'T GET STUCK IN IT!--Because we were drowning in this trailer, literally you might say drowning! The trailer was absolutely full of water right to the ceiling, or almost to the ceiling, maybe we went up & had an inch or two at the top to gasp a little breath of the reviving Spirit of God & then had to hold our breath underwater while we were swimming around in this water & trying to get out, looking out the window. But it seemed like we were locked in, we just couldn't get out!
127. HAVE YOU GOTTEN INTO A MOBILE MINISTRY THAT INSTEAD OF LEADING YOU TO THE FIELD HAS JUST GOTTEN YOU LOCKED IN to where you can't get & you're stuck with your trailer, you're stuck with your trailer, you're stuck with your mobile outfit? Instead of becoming a freedom & freeing you to go to the field, your camper has become a prison & you're drowning in the Mobile Ministry & you're locked in & you just can't seem to get out to the field.
128. WELL, WE WERE DESPERATE & IT SEEMED LIKE THE WATER WAS RISING HIGHER ALL THE TIME. Suddenly we saw a little group of native kids passing by this kind of rectangular back end of the trailer, you know how they have sometimes a big window. And here we were swimming around trying to survive & keep from drowning inside this trailer & we saw these native kids laughing & playing as they walked down the road a few yards away from our caravan window.
129. I SAID, "QUICK! WE'VE GOT TO GET THEIR ATTENTION SOMEHOW!" And I looked around & I saw this sign that said in big bold letters at the top: "NIVEA". And then in little slightly smaller letters like a subtitle it said, "Of the sea." "NIVEA of the Sea!" And I grabbed the sign & stuck it in the window facing the little kids & banged real hard on the window, knocked real hard on the window trying to attract their attention.
130. SUDDENLY THEY SAW US & THEY RAN OVER TO THE WINDOW HAPPY & EXCITED & they were saying, "Grandpa! Grandpa! Grandpa! There's Grandpa!" We were knocking & trying to yell at them through the window & the water, but you can't talk underwater, really, & it's almost impossible for anybody to hear you. If you ever did any underwater swimming, you try to yell in somebody's ear & it's very difficult to hear each other underwater. Well, we were banging on the window, excited, trying to tell'm, "Open the door! Unlock the door so we can get out!" And they got the idea & said, "Yes, yes! Quick! Go get somebody to help Grandpa to get out, to help'm get out!"
131. OF COURSE, I WAS HAVING TO HAVE THE DREAM FOR YOUR SAKE, undoubtedly, because I don't think I'm stuck in any trailer or any situation, we move nearly every three to six months & we stay on the field! But I'm sure I had the dream for your sake because it's the shape you've gotten into. Because that's the meaning I got, the revelation the Lord gave me. So the little kids were all excited & happy they'd found us there, & they real quick ran to get help!--And I woke up, just like that!
132. AND WHAT A MISSION FIELD THE LITTLE NATIVE KIDS ARE, EVEN CHILDREN IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY, in the home countries & the great rich Northern continents, even the little children are a mission field! You need to get out of your rut & out of being so stuck in the old ways of doing things that you need to really try to search out a mission field. Even if you're still stuck in the home country, children are a mission field.
133. I CONSIDER CHILD EVANGELISM A VERY WORTHWHILE MISSION FIELD--even if it's in your native country--because the children are a completely brand new fresh mission field full of native children, many of whom have never really heard the Gospel, never been really shown who Jesus is & how to get saved. Even though their parents may be church people & all the rest, just like some of your parents were, they never really led you to churches that could lead you to Christ, & they never old you to Christ, & they never preached you the Gospel, & you never knew what it was to be saved or to know Jesus or His love or to take Jesus into your heart until we along.
134. SO I CONSIDER THAT THE LITTLE CHILDREN, THE CHILDREN OF EVEN YOUR NATIVE LANDS, your homelands, are a mission field in themselves. So if you're stuck there & you can't get out any other way, get out & preach to the children, "Open the Door for the Children!" God bless Aaron, Peter, Kerry & their little puppet team there in Australia who made all that beautiful scenery & those cute little puppets. The video they made of their puppet shows just fascinated our children, they loved it!
135. THESE PUPPET SHOWS ARE A MARVELOUS WAY OF REACHING LITTLE CHILDREN! It's a marvelous door-opener to get into places & put on your program in hospitals, institutions, orphanages, schools & places where little children are. It's a good door-opener, a foot in the door, kind of a wedge to get your way in order to entertain the children. The authorities will usually let you in & they will even encourage you, even sometimes pay you some places to come in & put on puppet shows! So you really do have a marvelous opportunity there with these puppet shows.
136. I'LL SAY THIS FOR YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT, I consider that even in a home field the children are a fresh raw mission field.--Of course, not nearly as good as the native children of the foreign fields who really are in ignorance & darkness & need your light, along with their parents, but at least it's better than the old Gospel-hardened, Gospel-saturated older generation who have heard it so much & are so hardened to it doesn't even make a dent in their insulated devilish armor of indifference & unconcern & rejection!
137. THE LITTLE CHILDREN STILL NEED JESUS, PRAISE GOD, & little children are still a fresh new beautiful native mission field! Little children are still a marvelous place for child evangelism, felt-o-grams, puppeteers, puppet shows, skits, video shows, all kinds of ways of attracting little children--showing them movies or stunts or clowns or anything to attract little children, to get their attention.
138. AND THEIR ATTENTION ISN'T ALWAYS EASY TO HOLD because they like excitement, they like action, they like movement, they like something different--& how much we ought to be like little children, huh? Some of you have really grown to be old stick-in-the-mud old fogies, old hardened older generation that likes to just settle down.
139. KIDS LOVE TO MOVE! THEY LOVE ACTION! THEY LOVE CHANGE! THEY LOVE TRAVEL! Don't ever say it's too hard on kids, that's a lie! What you're trying to do is use the kids for your excuse because it's too hard on you! I remember all my young days I loved to travel! I loved it every time we made a new move & made a new change to new places and new faces, new experiences, new exciting adventures, & we kids loved it!
140. WE LOVED IT EVEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT HURRICANE, wading around in the water on the floor! Anything new, different, exciting, challenging, a new mystery, a new friends, new experiences, new playground, new swimming spot, new friends, new languages even--kids pick'm up quicker than their parents!
141. I TOLD YOU ABOUT HOW MY WIFE EVE'S SISTER & BROTHER-IN-LAW WENT TO BRAZIL & lived in Sao Paulo for two years learning the language, & they hadn't been there two months & their little kids playing out with the neighbour kids had already learned it so that when they went to the store downtown shopping they had to take the children along to be their interpreters! And they hadn't even cracked a book, all they had done was mingle with the people!
142. DON'T WORRY SO MUCH ABOUT WHETHER YOU'RE GOING TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE OR NOT. Let me tell you, when you get there & you've got to talk it as we have in many a country, you'll learn it! Ho even picked up Arabic ..., & picked up several different languages of the different countries that we've had to move to.
143. SO DON'T WORRY ABOUT WHETHER YOU'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE OR NOT, "Oh, I can't learn a language, I've gotten too old, blah, blah, blah!" Well, let me tell you, I'm older than you are & I've learned several languages, at least enough to get by in town & on the streets or the restaurants, & you can do it too! (Read the new Letter, "Found Girl & Languages!")
144. I USED TO SIT FOR HOURS & WITNESS EVEN IN SPANISH, my little childish present-tense Spanish, to learned doctors of the law & important businessmen & government officials down there in Tenerife & Madrid & places like that, talk away & witness to them about the Lord in my little childish infantile present-tense first-grade Spanish!--And you can do it! You'll learn it, don't worry. If you have to go there, you'll learn it.
145. JUST THINK, IT ONLY TOOK YOUR LITTLE CHILD TWO YEARS TO LEARN YOUR LANGUAGE, how about that?--And he never cracked a book, he never cracked a thing but a smile! And he had to learn it from scratch without even having anything to go by except you & your words & your motions & the meaning of your actions & the things you pointed to & you repeated the word, you said the thing, & your little one-year-old child learned it!
146. AND THAT'S THE WAY YOU LEARNED YOUR LANGUAGE, FROM SCRATCH! You learned a whole language in only two years! As they say, it only takes you two years to learn to talk & the rest of your life to keep your mouth shut! Well, praise God! You'll learn the language, don't worry about it.
147. BUT IF YOU KEEP STICKING IN THAT OLD MINISTRY THAT YOU'VE GOTTEN STUCK IN, even if you're mobile, you're going to drown, suffocate in the stuffy old ways of the old things & old methods & in old fields unless you get inspired at least by the children to get out in some child evangelism & neighbourhood felt-o-graph stories or videographs or puppet shows or clown stunts or whatever it may be.
148. MAY GOD HELP YOU TO WAKE UP & TO GET OUT, & in this case it was, "Children open the door for me & let me out of this place!"--I was drowning in this trailer! Now whoever heard such a crazy dream as that, drowning in a trailer full of water & having to stick up a sign in the window, "Nivea of the Sea!" Well, that was the last thing, I couldn't imagine what in the World that was the last thing, I couldn't imagine what in the World that meant!
149. BUT IT CAME TO ME AS CLEAR AS ANYTHING, THIS IS SOME KIND OF A HINDERING SPIRIT that is trying to drown us & suffocate us & choke us & quench our spirit, quench our fire, quench our ministry, lock us in & bind us in some old kind of plan & program, even mobility, even still on the road in our home country, trying to preach the Gospel, this is some hindering spirit, Nivea of the Sea!
150. AND THEN IT CAME TO ME THAT ANOTHER THING THAT'S HINDERED A LOT OF YOU PEOPLE FROM GOING IS THAT OCEAN! That sea between you & the foreign field has really been a hindering spirit, a real seemingly insurmountable obstacle! You just couldn't figure out how to get across it. You're at sea as far as finding a solution for your fare to get across the ocean, across the sea--& you've got to go overseas to most mission fields from the home countries whether they be North America or Europe, you have to cross the sea--the Caribbean or the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Mediterranean or whatever.
151. SO NIVEA OF THE SEA HAS REALLY HINDERED YOU! That evil goddess of the sea has really scared you out & bound you & nearly drowned you, & has been not just your Nivea but your Nemesis * which you just couldn't seem to conquer. The sea has held you back, the sea has gotten you down, the sea had almost drowned you, suffocated you & hindered your ministry, hindered you from getting to the field. (* Goddess avenger of violations of sacred law!)
152. SO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IS PRAY DESPERATELY! Put up a sign, "Nivea of the Sea is keeping me from going! Help!" Bang on the window! Knock on the windows of Heaven! Bang & pray & yell & ask God & His precious little angels & spirits of Heaven to help you get out of that mess & not be blocked or hindered by the sea or the evil hindering spirits or Niveas of the Sea, but to ask for help!
153. IF YOU JUST CAN'T SEEM TO MAKE IT YOURSELF & YOU CAN'T GET OUT, you're locked in, you're drowning, pray desperately! Put up a sign! Knock, bang away, yell, pray, ask for help--& advertise, as Maria says. Do something! Try to get out. Ask for help! Pray! Put an ad in the Want Ads of the Magazine for a place toe go, somebody to help you. Some people have even been putting want ads in the newspaper, the local papers, & have gotten floods of response, people wanting to help an independent poor missionary trying to get to the field! Hallelujah! GB'm!
154. SO BANG AWAY! YELL LOUD! KNOCK ON THE WINDOWS OF HEAVEN! Knock on the windows of the World! Knock on the windows of opportunity! Knock on the windows of rescue & help for the cute happy little native children outside that want to help you & love you, & those still young in spirit & those still childlike in their fresh attitude toward new things & toward you, who can go running for help & get help to try to get you out.
155. SO THERE YOU ARE! THERE IS THAT DREAM, "NIVEA OF THE SEA!" Don't let that evil hindering goddess of the sea prevent you from getting to your field. Call for help! Knock & it will be opened unto you! Seek & ye shall find! Ask & ye shall receive! You're just not trying hard enough! You've just sort of given up & you've just settled down & you've just sunk beneath the surface.
156. YOU'RE DROWNING, SUFFOCATING UNDER YOUR HINDERING WATERS & HINDERING SPIRITS & you're letting them have the victory over you. You're letting the Devil win, you're surrendering, you're giving up, you're quitting! My God, don't do that or you sure will sink into a sea of despair never to come up again!
157. TRY TO GET OUT! ASK! KNOCK! SEEK! FIND!--Beg the Lord for help & I know He'll help you! I just know God will help you! You just haven't gotten desperate enough. "In the day that you call unto Me with a whole heart I will answer thee!" "Call upon me & I will answer thee and shew thee great and mighty things!" (Jer.29:13; 33:3) You haven't gotten desperate enough, you haven't cried with a whole heart, you haven't really begged God to get you out of it. You haven't wanted to get out of it bad enough.
158. BUT NOW MAYBE IF YOU SEE THAT YOU'RE REALLY DROWNING, really drifting so far away, alienated from the life of God & getting dark in your understanding where you can't even understand the Letters any more because you resisted the truth so long & the Devil's filling your mind & heart with lies & the lies of enemies, until you're almost past feeling!
159. WAKE UP! QUICK! HURRY!--BEFORE YOU GO TO SLEEP or you become totally hypnotised, totally unconscious & you just can't even feel any more, can't see any more, don't know any more, & you're as good as dead, dying & almost dead in the land of the millions who, though now living, are already dead! God help you!
160. GOD HELP & FREE YOU, LIBERATE YOU, FROM THESE HINDERING SPIRITS OF THE OLD WAYS OF DOING THINGS, the old ministries, the old past, trying to revive old dead horses & vehicles & ministries & places & friends when you need to break out! And if you can't get out by yourself, for God's sake, bang away & yell loud & ask for help!
161. I'M SURE THE LORD WILL SEND YOU SOME KIND OF HELP TO FREE YOU & LIBERATE YOU to where you can get out in the fresh wide open freedom of the open spaces with lots of fresh air and sunshine and good exercise on a nice fresh field, good spiritual exercise with deep breaths of fresh air of His Spirit and the heartwarming work and witnessing and litnessing and following that beautiful, lovely, sexy, topless goddess of some new native country that is trying to entice you to come love her and woo and win her and enjoy her to the end, till Jesus comes! PTL? Amen! GBY!
162. WELL, THAT IS THE DREAM & THAT IS THE MEANING THEREOF, as Daniel said, "Behold, the Lord hath given the King a dream that has been revealing your present situation, & the past as well as the future!" So may the Lord bless & keep you & help you to get out of it & get going & on your way & liberate you & free you from these old traps of these old ways & the old places & the old faces & the old friends & the old jobs & the old System & all the traps of the Devil!
163. THAT TRAILER FULL OF WATER WAS A REAL TRAP, IT WAS A DEATH TRAP!--And we were almost gone! You'd better get out quick before it's too late. And if you can't get out on your own, then cry for help! Ask somebody else to help you get out & I know God will answer, in Jesus' name. Amen! PTL! GBY all, we love you, and we hope to see you someday, somewhere down south and hear you've already arrived where God wants you to be.
164. "FORGET THE THINGS THAT ARE BEHIND, press forward to the things that are before, & seek the high calling of God that is in Christ Jesus!" (Ph.3:13,14.) Don't settle for anything less than the best! Don't sink down in despair! Don't drown in your sorrows! Try to get out! Make an effort! Ask for help & I know God will answer--& others will answer too. Amen?
165. PTL, FAMILY? YOU'LL HELP'M, WON'T YOU? GBY! I know you will try to help these who want to really get out & get to their field, or back to the field again, or to a new field, in Jesus' name! GBY! Even if it's only the child evangelism field of your home country, that's a real field!--If you can't get out!--Or,
166. MAY GOD HELP YOU TO REALLY DO YOUR BEST WITH THEM BEFORE YOU GO, deliver your soul, wash your hands of their blood, so you'll know you gave them God's warning message & you gave the children Jesus. Even if they all perish in the flood with their parents who won't let them go, at least you did your part, you delivered your soul before you left. You did like dear Aaron, Peter & Kerry with their little puppet team down there in Australia.
167. GOD HAS GIVEN AARON SUCH A WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY THERE, a place to work & make the puppets & a school room & the use of their video equipment & all the materials & helpers & Peter Puppet & all the rest, such a good team & such a good artist, Kerry, who does the artwork. We were just amazed at the excellency of your puppet show!
168. I ADVISED AARON, WELL, IF YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF AUSTRALIA RIGHT NOW, USE IT! Don't give up & think you've got to leave it all behind. I don't think God would have given you all that equipment if He didn't intend for you to use it there while you can. "Open the Door for the Children," that's your theme message, it's the title over your door!
169. IF YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF YOUR FIELD AT THE MOMENT, THEN USE THAT TOOL & make us more of those puppet videos for the Family, so the Family will know how to do it & it will entertain & instruct & inspire our own children as well as many other children around the World where they can use those puppet videos. They're a real tool, a real witnessing tool!
170. FOR ANYBODY WHO'S GOT A VIDEO, YOU CAN MAKE PUPPET VIDEOS LIKE YOU DID FOR US, which they could use to witness to children at home or neighbour's children or in the park or in the trailer park or wherever it may be. That's a real tool for witnessing, not just only you own puppet show wherever you are, but to make puppet videos for the rest of the Family & the whole World!
171. SO DON'T GIVE UP! DON'T DROWN IN YOUR SORROWS! MAKE AN ADVANTAGE OUT OF YOUR HANDICAP! Build a bridge out of your broken dreams & set those ships asail again, even if they are all tattered & worn, and try to see if you can put them to use. Don't knock it, use it! And maybe the Lord will even let that be the channel, that in some way trying to reach those native children of even your own homeland, they will come to your rescue, even they, & help you get out of your mess & get to your field! Amen? GBY all!
172. MARIA'S MADE A GOOD SUGGESTION: IF YOU'RE ALREADY OUT & YOU MADE IT THROUGH THE TUNNEL & you're out on higher ground enjoying your new field, don't forget to tell us how you did it! Don't forget to write your testimony of what a wonderful victory & miracle it was how you managed to break loose & break out of that drowning situation in which you were drowning & suffocation & sinking, & how you called for help & how God answered & how He made a way, how you got your fare.
173. WRITE A STORY ABOUT IT, HOW YOU FOUND OUT WHERE THE LORD WANTED YOU TO GO & how you managed to muster up home support & all the rest--to encourage others, your brethren who are stuck back in that old field of old methods & old ways & drowning in their present ministries. Encourage them, pray for them, inspire them, tell them how you did it! Tell them how God did it for you, & I know the Lord will help them if you will pray for them.
174. BE LIKE THE LITTLE NATIVE CHILDREN THAT RAN TO OUR ASSISTANCE & WENT TO GET HELP to unlock the door to help us get out. Maybe if you will really pray & ask God to help'm, the Lord will give you an idea how to help them, or get help to unlock that door to set them free to chase that beautiful native maiden, goddess of their chosen land, the one that God has chosen for them. She sure looked chosen for me, & I chose her, & I chased after her!
175. MAY GOD HELP YOU TO CATCH HER & FIND HER & LOVE HER & FUCK HER & BEAR FRUIT as children in the Kingdom of God for Jesus, in Jesus' name! Amen! GBY all & help you to make it! PTL!--Amen?
176. PS (WHAT A MIRACLE! I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT NEMESES MEANT! But we just looked it up as we re-read this Letter, & guess what!: The encyclopedia says she was the Greek Goddess of vengeance for violations of sacred law! You've disobeyed God, so He's let her torment you for your sin! She's your Nivea!--You'd better obey & escape before she drowns you!)
Copyright (c) 1997 by The Family
