HomeARC ML 1285
THE CINEMA CAFE DREAM!--Are You Feeding Bodies or Souls? 25/5/82 DFO1285
1. WELL, PTL! TYJ! THIS IS A FUNNY LITTLE DREAM I HAD YESTERDAY MORNING THAT I DON'T QUITE UNDERSTAND, but it was quite impressive at the time for some reason, particularly the final conclusion, the final question which was asked at the end of the dream. PTL!
2. I WAS CARRYING THIS VIDEO EQUIPMENT AROUND TRYING TO FIND A PLACE TO SET IT UP, & I found this Frenchman's house in this small village which had a nice little sort of a grape arbour carport out behind the house--just big enough for one car or a little with grape vines growing all over it to make the shade for the car.
3. THE CARPORT WAS SORT OF SEPARATE FROM THE BACK OF THE HOUSE & there was a little lane or driveway running through the carport, apparently so the cars could drive in & then drive out in either direction & they wouldn't have to back out. If you went in from one direction you could drive out the other, a very convenient handy little arrangement for parking a car in the shade of these lovely vines which almost completely covered it except for both open ends.
4. I THOUGHT THAT WOULD BE A NICE LITTLE SHELTER OUT OF THE DIRECT SUN & yet with plenty of light for the subjects I was going to video, so I asked the dear middle-aged Frenchman if I could use his little vine-covered carport. He was very cheerful & very agreeable & consented very hospitably in a very friendly way, so I took my camera, tripod & machine, etc., around behind his house & set it up at one end of the carport & began to video some of our lovely girls singing & dancing, etc.
5. WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN A BUNCH OF CARS BEGAN TO DRIVE THROUGH THE CARPORT FROM THE OPPOSITE END WHERE I WAS VIDEOING! They apparently were taking a shortcut behind this man's house from one street to the other & just drove right through the carport, so I grabbed my camera & tripod & equipment & rescued them out of the way of this first fool that shot through, & the girls dove for cover!
6. THEN CAME ANOTHER CAR & AFTER THAT ANOTHER ONE & it seemed they'd developed a habit or a custom of taking this shortcut through from one street to the other behind his house, & I was really mad & angry & disgusted at this interruption, interference, lack of consideration, invasion of privacy & trespassing!
7. SO I WAS FUSSING ABOUT IT & JUST THEN IT BEGAN TO RAIN, & of course you cannot take a chance with video equipment out in the rain, it can ruin it forever, so I quickly covered my camera, & grabbed it & my tripod, closed my video case & ran for cover inside the Frenchman's house!
8. FOR SOME REASON OR OTHER MY BROTHER HAD SHOWED UP WHILE I WAS VIDEOING & was observing the process, & he sort of laughed when I got all this interruption & interference. And finally when it began to rain & I had to give up he said, "Maybe you ought to quit this kind of business & quit videoing & go into something a little more practical & useful.
9. "INSTEAD OF THE CINEMATIC ARTS, MAYBE YOU OUGHT TO LEARN THE CULINARY ARTS & LEARN TO BE A CHEF in a high-class restaurant or hotel! That's something that's always in demand, always a highly honourable occupation, well-paid & something very useful & practical. There's good money in it & it's safer than what you're doing & a lot surer & undercover for one thing, cars aren't going to be driving through your restaurant or your hotel lobby & you can have plenty of pretty girls around for waitresses!"
10. I WAS A LITTLE BIT CHAGRINED & CRESTFALLEN THAT HE DIDN'T APPRECIATE MY VIDEO TALENTS & my endeavour to do this videoing & the work I was doing, but this really sounded typical of my brother. He was about seven years older than I & he was always criticising what I was doing & critical of me & making fun of my foolishness & my juvenile occupations, as older brothers will so often do, perhaps make fun of their kid brothers & their foolish ways since they're not yet grown & mature.
11. SO I FELT A LITTLE DOWN & DISCOURAGED & I was telling the Frenchman what my older brother had said. I was saying, "Well, maybe he's right. Maybe I ought to quit this business & get into something more practical & not try to make these videos. It's a pretty difficult task & you're not too sure whether you're going to make it or not financially or any other way whereas people always have to eat."
12. SO I WAS TELLING THE DEAR FRENCHMAN WHAT MY BROTHER HAD SAID & HE PIPED UP WITH A WEE WORD OF WISDOM! I was really rather surprised, he was very encouraging-& this is the thing that was so clear just at the end of the dream & I can remember the words yet--he almost rather huffily replied:
13. "WELL, WHY DON'T YOU ASK YOUR BROTHER IF HE'D RATHER HAVE YOU RUNNING A RESTAURANT OR A CINEMA?" Now when you think it over there may not seem to be all that much difference by comparison, restaurants have their advantages but of course so do cinemas, For one thing, the restaurant business is a very very difficult business.
14. I CAN RECALL ONE YEAR WHEN MY BROTHER-IN-LAW WAS IN THE RESTAURANT BUSINESS running two different restaurants in Miami, one the hotel-diningroom of the Hotel Dolphin, & another the diningroom of the Tate Hotel, named after the famous Mrs. Tate, one of the pioneers of Miami.
15. MY BROTHER-IN-LAW'S NAME WAS MELVIN BOOTH, A DESCENDANT OF THE FAMOUS JOHN WILKES BOOTH WHO SHOT LINCOLN! And frankly, being a Southerner, he was proud of it & proud of his infamous ancestor!--Infamous to the Northerners, famous to the Southerners, because he was the assassin who shot Lincoln. So my brother-in-law was his great grandson or something like that & his name was Melvin Booth. His father had come there as a gambler, developer & salesman, their family had settled there & he eventually married my sister at the nice ripe old age of 15!
16. HE RAN TWO RESTAURANTS THERE AT WHICH WE FREQUENTLY USED TO EAT IN THE GOOD OL' DAYS. In the days of the Depression you could get a really good lovely hotel dinner for only 50 cents, & in some restaurants you could eat a full seven-course dinner for only 25 cents! At the famous Bluebell in the depths of the Depression in Miami, you could get a seven-course meal for 15 cents!
17. WELL, THAT WASN'T NECESSARILY CHEAP WHEN MAYBE YOU ONLY MADE $10 A WEEK! It's just due to the devaluation of the dollar & inflation that it sounds cheap now, when you'd be doing well to get a dinner for $5, & someplaces $15 instead of 15 cents--which is just about how much the dollar has deflated! That's a pretty high rate of inflation & devaluation of the dollar!
18. SO TO GET BACK TO THE SUBJECT IN MY DREAM, THE RESTAURANT BUSINESS WAS A PRETTY ROUGH BUSINESS! My dear brother-in-law used to lament that it was really a gambler's business. His father was a gambler & he was a gambler & he said, "It's such a rough business because one night you might have an absolutely delicious dinner cooked & nobody comes!--Then maybe the next night you were short of everything & the whole dinner had gone awry & was a flop & you were mobbed with people who all complained about the dinner & the shortage of food!"
19. IT'S A VERY DIFFICULT BUSINESS & IT REMINDS YOU A LITTLE BIT OF THE CHURCH BUSINESS! I can remember as a young preacher you could prepare a very good wonderful spiritual meal & nobody came, & on the night or morning when you weren't properly prepared & you didn't have very much on your cupboard shelves intellectually or spiritually for that sermon that morning, then you might have a good crowd to whom you preached your poor sermon!
20. SO IT WAS IN THE RESTAURANT BUSINESS: You might have your best meal served to the poorest crowd, & then the poorest meal to have to try to satisfy the best crowed! It's really a feast-&-famine business! So that in the United States alone, what business has the highest rate of bankruptcy & failure? Yes, you guessed it!: The restaurant business runs 50% failures! In other words, one out of every two restaurants that are begun goes bankrupt, fails & goes out of business--half of'm!
21. WHEREAS WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE IS THE MOST LUCRATIVE BUSINESS WITH THE LOWEST RATE OF FAILURE, only a rate of one-percent failure per business begun? Guess what business that is? Only one out of 100 of these businesses fail in the United States--the liquor business! Liquor stores & any kind of liquor business is 99% successful! The Devil really blesses his own businesses, right? But a good business that really feeds people what they need, such as good food like a restaurant or hotel-diningroom, they have 50% failure, one out of two fails. Whereas only one out of 100 liquor stores fail! Well, there's a little bit more useful information for you!
22. I WAS JUST A YOUNG BOY OF ABOUT 10 OR 12 IN THOSE EARLY DAYS OF MY BROTHER-IN-LAW'S MARRIAGE TO MY SISTER, & I can remember eating at his lovely diningrooms of the Hotel Tate & Hotel Dolphin & the lovely meals which we really enjoyed, & some "soup-to-nuts," so to speak. I can remember him crying over the fact that he had such a good dinner prepared & so few people came, so he invited us to come over & enjoy it free--which is about the only way we could enjoy it in the depths of the Depression because we had so little money!
23. WE HAD A HOUSEHOLD OF ABOUT 12-25 PEOPLE from our church & our own family living together in two houses--the front big house & the back celotex cottage I've told you about before--on an income of church offering of about $10 a week! We only got the Sunday morning offering which went to the pastor, & that averaged about $10 a week.
24. THE SUNDAY NIGHT OFFERING WHICH WENT TO PAY CHURCH EXPENSES such as the light bill, rent, payments, etc. Only ran about $5 a week, & sometimes didn't run enough to pay the light bill! I can remember having a candlelight service in church, not for the effect or the romanticism or the beauty, but just because we hadn't been able to pay the light bill & they'd turned off the electricity! I'm always full of old Grandpa Stories!
25. SO THE RESTAURANT BUSINESS IS A VERY TRICKY, DANGEROUS & DIFFICULT BUSINESS, & in my dream my brother's opinion was that it was at least a much more sure business & much more profitable & actually a more useful business to humanity, to feed the hungry stomachs of the World! But the Frenchman piped up & said; "What would he rather have you to be?--A chef of a restaurant just to feed people's stomachs?--Or the manager of a cinema to feed their minds?" And with that, believe it or not, I woke up! So that's quite a thought!
26. WHICH DO YOU THINK IS MORE VALUABLE TO HUMANITY: TO BE A RESTAURANT MANAGER OR A CINEMA MANAGER?--To feed their stomachs?--Or to feed, you might even say, their souls?--At least their minds, intelligences & mental capacities, which influences their spirits or what some people call souls. Is it better to feed the body or feed the soul? My Mother once wrote a beautiful poem about a man who fed his body but starved his soul. He was rich & he filled up his barns & fed his body, but he starved his soul spiritually & died a spiritual pauper. (Lk.12:16-21; Ps.106:15; Is.55:2.)
27. AND OF COURSE YOU'VE HEARD ABOUT THE FAMOUS RESTAURANTEUR & MISSIONARY'S SON OF LOS ANGELES, CLIFFORD CLINTON who started the Clifton Cafeterias of Los Angeles on a shoestring, more or less, with prayer & Christian faith! His father had been a missionary in China, & I don't know how he got back to Los Angeles, of all places, but the son, at least, started these cafeterias. Maybe he was trying to help support Pop in China, which wouldn't be a bad idea!
28. AND ON EACH TABLE IN HIS CAFETERIA HE HAD A LITTLE LEAFLET RACK WHICH SAID: "FOOD FOR THOUGHT!" And underneath it was the motto: "Food for the soul is important too!" So his cafeterias became very popular, particularly because he made his first cafeteria to look like the inside of a beautiful redwood forest! It was called Brookdale Cafeteria, & they all were called Clifton Cafeterias after his two names: Clifford Clinton."
29. HE FINALLY HAD A SOUTH SEAS CAFETERIA ALSO over on Olive Street to which we used to love to go, the interior of which was decorated like a beautiful Hawaiian landscape! And his food was very reasonable, very good! In fact, he ran a kind of a soup kitchen for bums in the basement of the one downtown on Broadway, Brookdale Cafeteria, where during the Depression & even into the days when I was young & first married, bums could still eat down there for 5 cents a meal, believe it or not!
30. HE DEVELOPED A SPECIAL DRIED HEALTH FOOD CEREAL that they could put in a bowl, pour a little water on & instantly it was a delicious bowl of vitaminised nutritious cereal which was supposed to supply you sufficient nutrients, health food & vitamins to last you for one day. They even shipped many many thousands of these food packages of this particular health food cereal to poor nations of the World. He was still very missionary-minded, GBH!
31. BUT HE WAS ALSO VERY SPIRITUALLY-MINDED & SO PUT LITTLE GOSPEL TRACTS ON HIS TABLES: "FOOD FOR THOUGHT--FOOD FOR THE SOUL IS IMPORTANT TOO!" Well now, which do you think is more important, food for the body or food for the soul? Well, you can feed the body & starve the soul & still wind up dead & lost & unsaved even though you might be a fat, food-stuffed, rich millionaire!
32. YOU COULD FEED YOUR BODY & LOSE YOUR SOUL such as the man who stuffed his barns full of grain in the Bible. (Lk.12:16-21.) Jesus Himself told the story of how the man thinking one night about what he should do with all his extra produce because he didn't have enough barns to put it in! He said, "I know what I'll do, I'll build me bigger barns where I can deposit all of my riches!"
33. AND GOD SAID TO HIM, "THOU FOOL, THIS NIGHT SHALT THY SOUL BE REQUIRED OF THEE: Then whose shall all these things be?" In other words, he was to die that night! So, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole World & lose his own soul?" (Mk.8:36.) Therefore, to save your body but lose your soul & your body too in the end is not very profitable!
34. WHAT ABOUT SAVING THE SOUL BUT PERHAPS LOSING THE BODY? Well, you're going to lose your body anyway, & the only part of you that you can really save forever is the soul, or really we should say the spirit. The soul is actually a union of the spirit & the body, & of course eventually in the Resurrection your soul will be saved--which is you & your body--if you're saved & you've received Jesus.
35. "BUT WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN IF HE GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD & LOSE HIS OWN SOUL?"--I think the answer is obvious: It's better to save your soul, so to speak, than to lose your body & your spirit--meaning your whole soul--& have the whole thing land in Hell or some undesirable place other than Heaven or the Heavenly City.
36. WELL, YOU SAY, "WHAT'S THAT GOT TO DO WITH CINEMAS?" Cinemas show all kinds of horrible movies, & now it seems that horror & violence movies are the most popular, horrible violence & horrible demonic horrors & Kung Fu & all kinds of phooey! So you say, "What good is it to be the manager of a cinema & drive people out of their minds & drive them crazy with these horrible, crazy, violent movies of today?"
37. WELL, MOVIES WEREN'T LIKE THAT IN THE DAYS WHEN I WAS YOUNG! In fact, my uncle ran a movie house & he was nevertheless a Christian. My Mother & Father didn't think it was a very Christian thing to do, but he was a very good supporter of them so they didn't complain too much. He was using his income to help the Gospel work like some of you are.
38. IF YOU'RE IN A SECULAR JOB IN THE WORLD & EARNING WORLDLY MONEY we're not going to complain too much about it if you use a good portion of that money to support God's work & His missionaries, amen? You're thereby investing your money in souls & in eternal dividends & I'm sure God's going to bless you for it even though you have to do it at some secular business or System job.
39. GOD BLESS YOU ANYHOW & I'M SORRY YOU CAN'T BE A MISSIONARY, MAYBE YOU COULD BE IF YOU TRIED! But if you can't be a missionary, as I've often said, at least try to support one, & that's what many of you are doing. God bless you for it & we appreciate it & they certainly appreciate it!
40. SO YOU SAY, "WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO DO WITH CINEMAS? Why should the Frenchman make that application & what application is that to you, Dad, & your work?" Well, a way you could say that I do run a pretty big cinema with over 10,000 steady customers, & actually about four million outside customers every month who receive our literature on paper, if not on the screen.
41 YOU RECEIVE THE BOOKS & THE VIDEOS & THE AUDIOS & WE'RE REALLY RUNNING A PRETTY BIG SHOW HERE Which developed out of a few little Letters many years ago into Books & musical shows & radio shows & now video & TV shows! So praise God, that's a pretty big cinema! Only, the nice thing about me & my cinema is that I'm not really the Manager!--He's upstairs & He just hands me the films! He selects them &, thank God, He selects good ones!--Not the horrors of today!
42. ALL I HAVE TO DO IS PUT'M ON MY LITTLE PROJECTOR & SHOW'M ON OUR SCREEN SO THAT YOU CAN GET THE MESSAGE! He certainly gives me all kinds of pictures in my dreams & you get the pictures in the Komix & on the videos & you hear the audios! So I'd say that was a pretty good cinema & it certainly is paying off in beautiful fruit in the far-flung mission fields around the World in 70-100 countries with out 10,000 missionaries, including our children, reaching four million people with out literature every month!
43. WE'VE ALREADY DISTRIBUTED HALF-A-BILLION PIECES OF LITERATURE & REACHED SOME 38 BILLION PEOPLE! You say, "How could you do that when there are only three billion people on the Earth?" Well, that shows we've reached some of them many times over? In fact, we have reached some of the Christian, Western, Northern countries too many times over! I'm sure some of them have heard it 30 or 40 times from us, whereas there are some parts of the World, especially in the South & the Eastern fields that have never even heard our message once!--And I don't think it's fair for anybody to hear it even twice when some people have never even heard it once, do you?
44. SO WHY DON'T YOU GET OUT OF THOSE COLD, FROZEN, NORTHERN, SATURATED, GOSPEL-HARDENED FIELDS into the beautiful, sunny, tropical, warm, receptive, hospitable, encouraging, receptive, responsive fields of the South with the warm hearts of the hospitable natives! Come on South, young man & young woman & dear children, & grow up with the country in this beautiful beautiful Southern Hemisphere & the fields of the Far East!
45. IF YOU ASK ME, OUR CINEMA BUSINESS HAS THE BIGGEST PAYOFF & THE HIGHEST PROFITS OF ANY BUSINESS IN THE WORLD!--Eternal dividends, eternal profits, the most valuable merchandise in the World!--Souls!--Forever! Souls are forever! Saved souls saved by your Gospel & saved by your loving message of the Love of God & the Salvation of His Son, Jesus Christ. Souls that will last forever, saved forever!
46. IF YOU ASK ME, THAT'S THE BIGGEST PAYOFF OF ALL! That's the most profitable business in the World!--Eternal dividends forever & the most priceless possession of all, immortal human souls! PG! Hallelujah! So I'd say our cinema business beats any restaurant business I know of.
47. WELL, WE DO BELIEVE IN FEEDING BODIES TOO IF THEY NEED IT, & we try to serve the whole man on our mission fields. Our missionaries distribute clothing & food & some even help medically & in hospitals & in clinics & we are trying to feed the poor & the poor stomachs, & most of all their souls in every way we can.
48. BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT, OF COURSE, IS FOOD FOR THE SOUL TO SAVE THEIR SOULS & TO SAVE THEM ETERNALLY! Their bodies are not going to last forever anyhow! They're going to lose their bodies one of these days anyway, so what's the use of just saving the body when it's soon going to die or be destroyed in the horrible wars of this Earth, or just by the various diseases & calamities & catastrophes & accidents of this Earth, or just plain old age?
49.--ALTHOUGH IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THIS GENERATION IS GOING TO DIE OF OLD AGE! They won't have time to with this huge atomic war coming!--And then the soon-coming of the Antichrist System & its horrible eventual destruction, & then finally the soon-coming of the Lord Jesus Christ! So I don't think any of us are going to have a chance to grow old now except those of us who are already plain old age--like me!
50. SO WHAT IS THERE BETTER TO SAVE THAN THE BODY? WELL, I'LL TELL YOU WHAT'S BETTER-THE SOUL! I don't know what kind of business you may be in or what kind of a job you've got in the System or a secular job or a profitable business, but nearly all of them have to do with people's bodies, either to feed them or take care of them, whether it's food, clothing, shelter or whatever.
51. A FEW OF THE SYSTEM'S ENDEAVOURS ARE FEEDING PEOPLE'S MINDS, such as education & cinemas & movies & videos & television & radio, etc., but look what they're feeding them!--They're actually feeding their souls poison that will kill'm forever & will cause the loss of their everlasting soul!
52. NOT ONLY ARE THE POLLUTIONS OF THIS EARTH POLLUTING & POISONING & KILLING BODIES, BUT THEY'RE ALSO POLLUTING, POISONING & KILLING MINDS, HEARTS, SPIRITS & SOULS FOREVER! So even if you happen to be in some kind of soul-feeding business such as education or information or the media, is the food you're feeding them food or is it poison? Is it bringing them to life & giving them ever lasting life?--Or is it killing their souls, their spirits, & sending them to long-lasting destruction? God help you!
53. I DON'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS YOU'RE IN OR WHAT KINDS OF JOB YOU'VE GOT! Are you just feeding their bodies & starving their souls?--Or even though you're feeding their souls, are you feeding them poison & poisoning their souls?--Not only destroying their bodies, but destroying their minds, spirits, hearts & souls as well!
54. SO I THINK THE DEAR FRENCHMAN'S QUESTION WAS VERY APPROPRIATE, & I think he was trying to show the advantages of running a cinema compared to running a restaurant, & that feeding the soul was far more important than merely feeding the body!--Providing you're really feeding the soul & not poisoning it!
55. SO THANK GOD FOR THAT FUNNY LITTLE DREAM which inspired this little talk about the difference between restaurants & cinemas & helped to encourage me, & I hope convince you, that it's far better for us to run our kind of a cinema than their kind, & certainly better to run a cinema which feeds the soul than merely a materialistic restaurant business or job of some kind of this World that merely feeds the body.
56. WHICH ARE YOU DOING?--IS YOUR JOB OR BUSINESS FEEDING SOULS OR MERE BODIES? May God help you not to just be running or helping to run a restaurant for the bodies which will be destroyed anyway, but a cinema, a media, a work & endeavour like ours which is feeding souls & saving eternal immortal souls forever! PG! I'll take the cinema over the restaurant business any day, amen?
57. SO GBY! I HOPE YOU'RE HELPING IN OUR CINEMA, whether you're the janitor sweeping the floors & cleaning the seats, or the producers in our Creations units helping to prepare the films or the projectionist printers, photographers & recorders who project'm on the screens or the Books & the audios & videos & all!--Or perhaps you're an usher helping people to find seats, like our missionaries!
58. OR PERHAPS YOU'RE THE LIT-TICKET GIVER ON THE STREETS OR TICKET-TAKER AT THE TICKET BOOT WHERE PEOPLE CLAIM BY FAITH THEIR FREE TICKETS TO HEAVEN!--But they pay the price of giving their hearts to Jesus & their lives to His service to be able to enter into our cinema & sit in our seats & enjoy our movies & feed their souls & be on their way to Heaven in our Heavenly lives with our Heavenly people in these Heavenly Homes full of Heavenly angels! GBYA!
59. I FEEL LIKE I'M LIVING IN HEAVEN ON EARTH ALREADY with the beautiful places God gives us to live in & the beautiful Family I live with & the beautiful creatures it's composed of! This is a little bit of Heaven already, as far as I'm concerned.
60. I LOVE THIS CINEMA! It's the best cinema I ever saw & ever experienced & ever entered & ever enjoyed, with all its beautiful pictures & its wonderful information & its thrilling messages & exciting experiences! I'll take our cinema any day over their Worldly fleshly fleshpots materialistic restaurants of this World that merely feed the body! I love our cinema that feeds souls & saves souls forever!--Don't you? Amen? GBY!
61. ARE YOU WORKING FOR OUR CINEMA? ARE YOU ENJOYING OUR CINEMA? ARE YOU ENJOYING ITS MESSAGES? Are you thrilling to its pictures & enjoying the fellowship of its other members? I hope so! May God bless you to be a part of this cinema of spreading the Worldwide & saving souls rather than just being a member of the System engaged in running restaurants, materialistic businesses that merely feed bodies. Amen? GBY!
62. COME ON OUT TONIGHT & ENJOY THE CINEMA, PTL?--GOD'S CINEMA!--His movie theatre of Heaven with its Heavenly movies & revelations & pictures & dreams & experiences & fellowship & saving Gospel message that is saving souls forever!
63. WHICH ARE YOU DOING? Are you helping to run a fleshly restaurant, merely feeding & caring for bodies?--Or are you helping us to run a spiritual cinema feeding people's souls & saving them forever? I hope you're doing the latter, & thank you if you are, & may God continue to bless you & make you a blessing!
64. AND IF YOU'RE NOT IN OUR CINEMA, YOU'D BETTER GET IN QUICK before the whole System restaurant collapses & destroys all those bodies it's been feeding its poison!--Amen?--In Jesus' name, amen!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
