HomeARC ML 1936
THE NEED FOR & MEANING OF STATS! DO 1936 6/85
1. ARE YOU HAPPY? HEALTHY? (FAM: YES!)--TTL! THE LORD CERTAINLY DOES TAKE CARE OF US, DOESN'T HE? TYL! PTL! Well, let's praise Him, shall we? (Sings: "Praise Him!" "Every Day with Jesus", "I Love Him Better Every Day!" & "Be a Blessing to Someone Today!") PTL! Hallelujah!--And you're all being a blessing, even here in a Selah Unit where you can't go out & witness publicly. You're being a blessing to the whole World in making it possible for others to do so. PTL? Someone lead us in prayer. (Family member prays.) Have Thy way, Lord, Thy will be done, in Jesus' name! TYL! PTL! Amen!
2. WELL, I THOUGHT MAYBE YOU'D BE INTERESTED IN THE LATEST STATS & PERHAPS A LITTLE INTERPRETATION THEREOF! (See GN 191.) Although our population is remaining steady, the number of our Homes is declining. Can you give us any reason for that? (Fam: More Comboing?) I'm quite sure that 's what it is, it would have to be. If we've got the same amount of people in fewer Homes, that means they've got to be Co-oping or Comboing. So, PTL!
3. WE'VE STILL GOT OVER 10,000 FULLTIME TRFers, as well as nearly 3,000 more of other kinds of Members. We are at a total of over 3,000 Homes, a little less that 1,000 TRF Homes. I notice that we give the number of TRFers & TRF Homes in the Top 20 countries, but I'm wondering if we should discontinue these nation stats, considering things are getting so tight persecution wise. Even though we no longer have "Here's Where We Are" anymore, telling the exact number in each place, this still gives the exact number in the Top 20 countries, which is just about as unsafe. So I'm afraid we're going to have to eliminate that & just retain the same chart with the Area totals.
4. WE'RE GETTING MORE & SHARPER PERSECUTION ALL THE TIME, MORE & WORSE PUBLICITY! The lies are getting more heinous & more horrible! You just wonder how people can lie about you that way, just outright lies, & even get the facts all twisted & mixed up! It's horrible! It seems like somebody ought to have the heart & the courage in some of those countries to write a letter to the newspaper denying some of those things, or at least write some kind of an article in our favour. Of course, you might be risking your own neck because usually they won't print Letters to the Editor unless you give your name & address, or at least your name, although some papers will allow anonymous letters. Newspapers will print almost anything if they think it's news or about something that's interesting, even the pros & cons. They may slant it the way they want it & they may even take the article you write & twist it, but just the same, it seems like somebody ought to speak up & I wish someone would have the courage to do so!
5. THEY SAY THAT HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS, & WE SAY IT'S ALSO WHERE THERE ARE LOTS OF CHILDREN! Guess what area of the World has the most children per Home? (Fam: The U.S.) You must read the stats! You'd all know the answers if you read the stats.--Not even this month's stats, but almost any month's stats. Why do you suppose North America has the most children per Home? (Fam: They couldn't make it on the field & went back to the States.) With so many children they found it difficult on the field for one reason. (Fam: Because they were the oldest Members?)--Yes, so they usually have the most children. It seems like the oldtimers not only have the most children, but sometimes are old bottles who just couldn't quite take it & went home. But they're still with us, God bless them, & they're still heavily supporting the missionaries in the field, God bless them for that! They haven't lost heart for the work or interest in the literature, they just couldn't make it on the field but they're doing their best to support the work from home, where they are.
6. PRIVATE HOMES SUCH AS MOST OF THEM ARE IN THE STATES WITH JUST MOTHER, FATHER & CHILDREN ARE APT TO HAVE MORE CHILDREN PER COUPLE THAN COMBO HOMES where a number of them may be singles & maybe only one or two or three of them couples with children. So this blows out of proportion the number of adults compared to the number of children, & the adults outweigh the children, much the same as they do in our Home. Of course, we can't have too many children here because we've got too much work to do, but thank God we have a few. PTL? That keeps us mindful of the children, not to forget the children. In fact, a lot of our work & our childcare work & materials have been inspired by these children who are right here, starting with dear David! PTL!--And then Davida, Techi & Mary Dear.
7. WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE ARE THE NEXT TWO FIELDS WITH THE MOST CHILDREN PER HOME? (Family: Europe.) Europe is one, that's a home field too. These run an average of about 3-1/2 children per Home.
8. BESIDES EUROPE, WHAT COUNTRY, IN FACT BY ONE FRACTION OF A PERCENTAGE POINT, HAS EVEN GOT EUROPE BEAT? (Fam: Latin America?)--No. Any other ideas? (Fam: The Pacific?) Well, by the process of elimination you're going to get down to it sooner or later, Southeast Asia! Now why do you suppose that is? (Fam: The lovely tropical weather?) The wonderful weather, that's for sure! Not as much for housing or clothing or even food, so it doesn't cost as much to live. But there are other reasons perhaps even more influential than that. (Fam: Are the Homes smaller?) No, I wouldn't even say that necessarily. (Fam: Is it because it's real easy for Americans to stay in some of the countries so there are a lot of old-timers?)--Exactly!
9. SOME SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES HAVE ALMOST BECOME LIKE HOME FIELDS where it's easier to live, easier to immigrate, easier to stay a long time, they speak the same language, all kinds of things make it easier, much better conditions than some, etc. I'm sure the fact that some of those countries are English-speaking has made them easier to pioneer & to populate & to work & stay in, therefore our old-timers, our pioneers, have been there longer than many other fields & had time to have more children. So the U.S.A. comes first, it's definitely a home field, they Southeast Asia second with 3.5 children per mated couple, & Europe with 3.4, almost the same. The next two areas are exactly the same as third. The Pacific & Indian areas both average 3.2 children per mated couple.--For some of the same reasons.--What are they? (Fam: They're English-speaking?)--Yes!
ENGLISH!
10. THANK GOD FOR THE ENGLISH, that's one thing they did for India, Southeast Asia & the Pacific, they really spread the English around! In countries like India the only national language is English, otherwise they speak so many different languages they couldn't possibly communicate. So the educated & government officials & people who have to do business throughout the whole country have to know a language that they can speak in any lingual district, & it has become English!--The most international language in the World today.
11. THE LORD HAS SPREAD THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT MOST OF THE KNOWN CIVILISED WORLD, BOTH EAST & WEST, as the most prevalently spoken language throughout all the World, to prepare for the last harvest, the end of this era, the final great missionary endeavour, such as ours & other Christians as well, thank the Lord! Most of it has been just within the past 200 years, in fact, most of it has been in the past 100 years! The great international World Missions movement began with some of its very early missionaries back in the late 1700s, but most of the missionary work during the late 1800s has been done by English speakers, British & American. About the second largest group of missionaries are other European-language missionaries such as the Germans, Dutch, etc., of the Protestant countries of Northern Europe, not the Southern countries of course.
12. --ALTHOUGH THE CATHOLICS HAVE HAD A LOT OF MISSIONARIES TOO, mostly Jesuits who pioneered missionary work from Southern Europe--Italy, France, Spain & Portugal.--But they mostly concentrated their efforts on Latin America, which is why Latin America today, instead of speaking a conglomeration of Indian Languages, all speaks Spanish & Portuguese. It's the common language of the Continent, even of Central America & that part of North America called Mexico. So you can thank God for first the British, & then American missionaries, as well as other European-language missionaries who have spread Christianity throughout the World, particularly in these Last Days.
13. IT REMINDS ME OF A VERY SIMILAR CONDITION IN THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY when God saw to it that what primary Western worldwide language was spread abroad & made it very easy for the early Christian missionaries to go through all the World of their day & preach the Gospel in just one language? (Fam: Greek.)--Greek! And what other language? (Fam: Latin.) First it was Greek because the Greeks had conquered the World & Greek was spoken everywhere by everyone of culture, education & government. Philosophy, medicine, whatever study, was all Greek. Then when the Romans took over, they spread their language throughout all the Western World, & Latin became the most prevalent language, the basis of all Romance languages.
14. IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THEY'RE ROMANTIC IN THE WAY OF LOVE, BUT ROMANCE MEANING ROMAN LANGUAGE COUNTRIES such as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, etc. All these countries' language & even English & some of the other European languages are based on Latin. The Southern European countries have a lot of Latin & Greek. The basis of their language is mostly Greek & Latin because it was the language of the scholars, the language of medicine, the language of scientists, the language of art, philosophy, religion & all the educated people. That way they could speak to others in different countries, even though their native mother tongues were other languages. The internationalists, the international schools of various culture, thought, etc., such as doctors, lawyers, religionists, philosophers, government officials & all the rest could then converse & speak with each other.
15. THEY SPREAD THEIR LANGUAGES ABROAD, WHICH FACILITATED THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL BY THE PIONEERS OF THE EARLY CHURCH. That helped for a long time until the Church went awry & became corrupt & lost its true doctrines & began teaching a lot of things that weren't so.--Lost its mission, lost its vision, lost its purpose & began building buildings instead of evengelising the World, began building Bible colleges & cemeteries. I call them cemeteries: Seminaries is too good a name for them, because a seminary is a place where you keep the seeds for sowing. But they keep the seeds there & they just stop growing! So Christianity became more interested in buildings & schools & colleges & education & local churches rather than evangelising the World. They also became far more interested in arguing & splitting hairs over doctrine & having great doctrinal disputes & conferences & conventions & councils trying to settle doctrinal issues, etc., until finally, except for pitiful little efforts here & there, they just really stopped evengelising the World.
16. DO YOU KNOW WHO THE MOST MISSIONARY-MINDED MODERN CATHOLICS ARE TODAY? (Fam: The Maryknolls?) The Maryknolls are more politically minded. (Fam: The Paulists?)--The Paulist Fathers, right! Those are the ones that got out the confraternity Christian Doctrine New Testament, & Old Testament now too, & are very interested in genuine evangelism of the World with really a genuine Gospel. They're a fairly straight Catholic group & really have done a good job in trying to further the true Gospel.--Of course, it's mixed up with lot of other Catholic doctrine too. Then, of course, there's a very modern, recent Catholic movement that is very Evangelical, Spirit-filled & Charismatic, & what is that?--I just told you!--The Charismatic Catholic movement. Some countries are loaded with them, in other words Pentecostal Catholics, & some of them have even split off from the Catholic church. Most of them have stayed in but have gotten really on-fire for the Lord.
17. SO THE LORD IS STILL WORKING & STILL EVANGELISING! He helped the Early Church to evangelise the World, He helped even the Middle Ages somewhat to keep evangelising the World during the days of the Catholicisation of Latin America, etc., as well as Catholic missionaries going to the East & spreading out throughout the World through the reformation, Renaissance, etc., isn't it wonderful how the Lord knew that English would be needed to be spoken in fields which need to be evangelised by the people most interested in evanglisation & most Christian?--And they happen to be the North Americans & the British--the British in particular--plus some Europeans.
18. BUT YOU CAN GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE, the British & the Americans pioneered what is known as the modern missionary movement of these past few generations, especially the past 100 to 150 years. We used to just say the past 100, but now you've got to say 150, because I'm 50 years older than I was when we used to say 100! Now it's from the mid-1800s to the end-1900s that Christian missionary work has mostly been done, most of the missionaries & most of the missionary movements & most of the money raised by what were the most powerful & richest nations, first the British, then the Americans.
19. THE BRITISH EMPIRE SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD POLITICALLY, MILITARILY, CULTURE-WISE, LANGUAGE-WISE & RELIGIOUS-WISE, FOLLOWED BY THE AMERICANS. The Americans were a little Johnny-come-lately because they were just a little tiny people who rose up only a couple hundred years ago, & that's a drop in the bucket compared to most civilisations & empires. The British Empire was already in existence before there ever was an America, & many other Empires too, so that the British get credit first of all for spreading English & Christianity throughout the World. They a had worldwide Empire that boasted "the sun never sets on the British flag"! Then along came the Americans, late but fast & rich & powerful, & spread English & Christianity to all of their colonies, & there are quite a few throughout the World.
20. YOU DIDN'T KNOW AMERICA HAD ANY COLONIES?--THEY STILL HAVE COLONIES! They don't admit it, but they have colonies today just the same. In fact, most of Europe is an American colony today. All of Western Europe was dominated, revived, supported, refinanced & everything by the United States & the winners of World War 2, so they're virtually dependent on America & virtually American colonies, whether they like to admit it or not.
21. BRITAIN IS NO LONGER A GREAT EMPIRE, BUT ITS GREAT EMPIRE DID THE WORK! IT SPREAD ENGLISH & CHRISTIANITY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, FOLLOWED BY THE AMERICANS. The Americans seemed to have specialised more in Africa in their missionary work, but of course the British were in India first so they took care of India. The Americans, of course, sent many missionaries to South America, but the Catholics were already there, so we could say it was already Christianised, although not all saved. But American missionaries went everywhere, in fields throughout the World, some of the most pioneer fields, spreading English & Christian faith, or at least Christianity. So we can thank the Lord & the British & the Americans for making it possible for our Family to go to these lands throughout the World, most of the World, & still get by with English. TTL! COMBOING!
22. SO OF COURSE THE HOME FIELDS OF THE U.S. & EUROPE NATURALLY HAVE MORE CHILDREN, larger families, because they are people that have been with us the longest & people who perhaps couldn't make it on the mission field & had to go home. But they're still supporting us, God bless them, & making it possible for many of us to be out in the field. Then Southeast Asia along with Europe are second, because of what I said about the spread of American & British culture & language & Christianity throughout the World, & also the Pacific & India.
23. BUT LATIN AMERICA, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST, ALONG WITH THE MIDEAST & AFRICA, AVERAGING THREE CHILDREN PER FAMILY. I think we once figured that in proportion to the population, we had something like ten times as many of our people in Latin America as we did in the East, but that's been whittled down now to only seven times as many in Latin America in proportion to the population as we have in the East.--But that's still too many. However, since those stats we put on that map that said two-thirds of our population was still in the West, I am glad to tell you now that only a little over half of our population is still in the West! It runs about 55% to 45%. So you're moving, you're coming, you're invading the East! They're in some ways harder fields, but in some ways they're easier.
24. THIS IS WHAT THEY CALL INTERPRETING STATS! It's one thing just to have the figures, it's another thing to understand why or what direction the figures are pointing, what's the trend. And as I say, one trend is toward larger homes with more adults comboing, especially on the field, but smaller Homes with more children per adult in the home fields. About the only way some of them can make it on the foreign field is by comboing. That way, even if they can't do one thing, there's always something they can do in a large Home.--Whereas a small Home, if you only have one couple & three or four children, you've got to do everything!--Maintain the home & the cooking & the cleaning & the dishwashing & the clothes washing & mending & all the things that a home has to do, childcare, education & everything! So how much time have you got left for witnessing, soul-winning, litnessing, tapenessing or Postering?
25. WHEREAS IF YOU'RE IN A LARGE COMBO WHERE THERE ARE AT LEAST A DOZEN OR TWO DOZEN PEOPLE--SOME HOMES HAVE GOT THREE DOZEN--YOU CAN SPECIALISE! People can specialise in what they're best at, such as cooking, childcare, secretarial work or maintenance work & do nothing but that nearly all the time, setting on an average perhaps half of the Home free to get out & litness, witness, tapeness, poster & win souls full time! It makes it a lot easier. Whereas a small single-Family Home can only go out a little bit part-time with their children at certain free times, maybe only a few hours a day or maybe not even that, because they are so busy having to do everything that has to be done within the Home.
26. IN A LARGE COMBO OF TWO OR THREE DOZEN ADULTS YOU CAN SPECIALISE & THERE IS SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY TO DO! People that are not good on the street, not good at witnessing, Postering, tapenessing, door-to-door or whatever, not good at singing, not good at music, not good at busking, not good at provisioning, they can do these other things. They can do house work in the home & hardly ever have to leave the house, & let a variety of people with different talents specialise in the various, greatly-needed ministries such as support & provisioning.
27. SUPPORT FROM SO MANY PEOPLE & SO MANY SOURCES OF THEIR FAMILIES & SUPPORTERS CAN BE POOLED TOGETHER IN ONE HOME & SUPPORT THE WHOLE HOME! Some people in that Home may have rich relatives & rich friends & be good promoters & write good letters & get much more support than they even personally need, & can share it with the others.--Whereas there may be other people in the Home that just aren't good talkers, good writers or good provisioners, they don't have many friends, they didn't get good support, they don't have any relatives, their relatives are antagonistic & they have literally little support. At least they can work in the Home & do other jobs that need to be done, while those who have good support can share it with others.
28. THAT WAS EVEN A POLICY IN THE MISSIONARY ORGANISATION I BELONGED TO, THE CHRISTIAN & MISSIONARY ALLIANCE. There were some missionaries who could go out doing what they called "deputating" when they were home, back for their furlough, going church to church, & they were terrific speakers & promoters! They had gorgeous slides & pictures & could raise thousands of dollars, much more than they needed. Others stammered & stuttered & could hardly talk at all, could hardly even hold a service, hadn't been thoughtful to accumulate lots of pictures from the field & couldn't tell exciting stories. Although they might have been good, hard, faithful workers on the field, they just didn't have that showmanship & were not promotional-minded like some of the real promoters were.
29. SO THE ALLIANCE WOULD POOL ALL THE FUNDS THAT CAME IN FROM THESE MISSIONARY TOURS & MISSIONARY CONVENTIONS of all the different fund raisers & all the different people who raised money & got support, & would spread it out amongst the missionaries as they had need--which is very much the same system we use in World Services. We support many missionaries & many Units that have little or no support & could hardly support themselves on the field. So we receive support from those who want to support but don't know where to put it necessarily, or they even designate it, & we help those Homes & missionaries which otherwise have difficulty in raising support.
30. BUT IN A LARGE COMBO OF TWO OR THREE DOZEN FAMILIES YOU'RE BOUND TO HAVE A FEW WHO ARE GOOD PROMOTERS, good provisioners, good FFers & good letter-writers who know how to write prayer letters & really raise support & have a lot of friends & have a lot of churches backing them & sending much more than they personally need themselves for their own family, that they can then share with the whole Home. So the broader base you have on the mission field the better!--So the more Combos!
31. WE USED TO BE AGAINST THIS ON THE HOME FIELD, WE WERE LITERALLY TRYING TO BREAK UP THE BLOBS BECAUSE PEOPLE WOULDN'T GET OUT & GO! They just loved to have two or three hundred people in one Home or one big factory or one big camp or one huge hotel or something, & everybody bunched up together just enjoying themselves, & not getting out to the mission field. They were doing a lot of witnessing, they were doing tremendous discipling locally wherever they happened to be, in that one town or one city of one country, but they weren't reaching anywhere else in the World at all!
32. SO WE FINALLY HAD TO HAMMER AWAY LIKE A SLEDGE HAMMER & POUND ON THOSE BLOCKS TO GET'M BUSTED UP TO GET THE PEOPLE SCATTERED OUT! And that's when our great foreign missionary drive began to really get people out & around the World, when we outlawed big Colonies for awhile under the famous "New Revolution" that we started when we were in Tenerife. We penalised Homes that had too many people in them & suggested that the ideal Home was six to a dozen, a dozen being really ideal because then they had at least two or three couples & few children & they could share. That was almost the minimum Combo, a Home of a dozen people.
33. HOWEVER, NOW SOME OF OUR COUPLES HAVE A DOZEN CHILDREN, so it still doesn't relieve the situation! We've got to have ever-bigger Homes the more children we have in order to have more adults to do more jobs taking care of all those children & educating them, cooking for them, provisioning for them, clothing them, sheltering them, etc.! So now since we have bigger families we've got to have larger Combos in order to accommodate all of those & have a broader, more versatile base of talent & ability to handle all the jobs that need to be done.
COUNT YOUR PAGES!
34. PERHAPS LATIN AMERICA HAS HAD A SURPLUS OF SINGLES COMING DOWN FROM NORTH AMERICA, so they average fewer children per couple when it's spread out than do these other fields. It's encouraging to know, though, that outside of the two major home fields of North America & Europe, the children are more numerous on the foreign fields, particularly of the East, despite that disproportionate balance of Latin America.
35. HOWEVER, THAT ALSO MAY ACCOUNT FOR ANOTHER STAT THAT I WANT TO BRING TO YOUR ATTENTION HERE, & that is a stat that shows a declining line that's almost taking a nose-dive, both in literature distribution & lit pages per adult! Guess whose stats along those lines have declined from a former high a year ago of four million pages a month to only one million pages a month? Guess which of these major continental areas? (Fam: Southeast Asia?) No, sorry. Theirs has declined, but not that bad.--In fact, most of the field have remained fairly steady.
36. OUR TOTAL WORLD DISTRIBUTION HAS DECLINED A GREAT DEAL, & I THINK ONE REASON FOR THE RECENT SHARP DECLINE IS THAT THEY HAVE NOT BEEN TOTALLING PAGES CORRECTLY! We started off with FN-size literature, all of our little four-pagers for the General Public, I call it FN-size now because the FN & the LIN are about the only ones left of that little half-typewriter-size page. That was our basis for figuring our pages distributed to begin with, because that was the size of our literature. But our literature size has increased, & if we're going to have comprehensive stats that still tell the actual story & based on the years when we only had that small size of pages, we're cheating ourselves if we don't count the same area as pages.
37. THE LARGE-SIZE GNs & WNDs ACTUALLY HAVE 16 PAGES, BUT THEY'RE TWICE OUR ORIGINAL FN-SIZE PAGES! So to get our stats straight & to be able to compare fairly with former numbers of pages, we have got to instruct our people to count the large pages as two pages of former literature. Otherwise, no wonder our stats are nose-diving on the amount of pages of literature! It was fine that we finally went to pages instead of pieces, because we started publishing books & things that had lots of pages, & if you just counted pieces, just per book in other words, you wouldn't have gotten much credit for the actual amount of labour & printing. So we finally went to pages so that we could count all the pages in a book or pamphlet or magazine, & the four little pages of the GP literature as well. So that was a much fairer way of accounting for how much literature we were actually distributing, by the number of pages. But today's records are going to look very bad compared to years back when everything was figured according to the FN-size page.
38. I THOUGHT IT WAS NECESSARY TO TELL YOU FOLKS THIS THIS MORNING, BECAUSE I THINK IT'S GOOD TO SOMETIMES STOP & TAKE STOCK & INVENTORY & sort of measure just what we're doing & correct some things that need to get corrected. This little talk will get out to the people, but we need to get an LNF out immediately, about how to figure their pages of literature distributed. Of course, they're not distributing GNs & WNDs, & we don't produce enough LINs to distribute unless they reproduce them themselves, but LINs & FNs are the same size as the old pages & can still figure the same.
39. BUT EVEN THOUGH THE GNs & WNDs ARE NOT NORMALLY DISTRIBUTED, FOR AT LEAST THE PAST TWO OR THREE YEARS WE'VE BEEN CHEATING OURSELVES ON PRINTING STATS ON THE NUMBER OF PAGES. In order to be able to see a comparison between what we've done in the present, we've done in the past & what we've got to figure on the old basis of the smaller FN-size pages, book-size pages, the Magazines, four-page literature, Komix & everything else that we distributed which was all that old-size page. Now to get proper printing credits for WS we should definitely count every large page of an old GN or WND as two of the FN-size pages! Therefore the large GN was not just 16 pages, it's 32 pages, according to the old stats!
40. WE'VE GOT TO KEEP THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE OLD STATS & THE NEW ONES THE SAME OR IT DOESN'T MEAN A THING. We could be printing twice as much lit today & giving ourselves half as much credit, so that it looks like our printing is declining & it looks like our distribution is declining, which it is not! I really prayed about it & it came to me clearly that that's why, you're not counting the actual page areas.
41. NOW THE BIG RUB IS THAT THE POSTER STATS ARE BEGINNING TO POUR IN & they're only counting per poster, or at the most two sides of the Poster when a Poster has got two sides, & each side is the equivalent of four of the old pages! So every Poster should count eight pages according to our old size, which is the foundation & basis of all of our old stats. We can't go back & recount those. But we can certainly recount our present stats according to page areas, that each large page of a GN or a WND is an equivalent of two of the old pages. I'm not trying to cheat, I'm just trying to treat us fair, to get credit for printing twice as much on a page as we used to, & now on one single sheet in a big Poster, eight times as much! I'm sure that's why things look kind of bad, & since Latin America was one of the pioneers of the black-&-white Posters, etc., why their stats have declined from four million pages a year ago, to only one million pages now! I don't think we have that many fewer people & I don't think we have that much less distribution, actually.
42. I'LL GRANT YOU WE'VE ADVISED THEM TO GO SLOWER WITH THE POSTERS & MAKE EVERY ONE COUNT, to use them only more or less for personal witnessing or door-to-door or to really witness with each Poster!--Not just go down the street pell-mell scattering seed where you may, regardless of the ground, with which you get less results, less genuine witnessing, certainly less souls won & certainly very much less in the way of real permanent discipleship results, as well as less results per Poster. If you witness & really teach somebody a Poster, they're going to give you a lot more than 15 cents, 12 cents or 9 cents, like some get when you're just running down the street handing them out right & left for whatever little coin somebody happens to stick in your hand! You may get out more Posters that way & get credit for more pages, but you're certainly not going to get credit with the Lord for more souls & more real substantial results in disciples, & support as well!
43. MAYBE IT'S A GOOD THING I'M TELLING ALL OF YOU THIS, BECAUSE SOME OF YOU GUYS MAY BE OUT IN THE STREETS BEFORE LONG! We're trimming down & winding-down all of our staffs & even our WS Units. We're cutting off many WS Units & missionaries that we've supported now for years. Now because of the coming Crash we've got to wind-down & we've gotta cut'm off whether we like it or not, & certainly whether they like it or not! Sorry, but we just can't do it any longer.
44. WELL, I TOLD YOU HOW MANY CHILDREN WE AVERAGE PER COUPLE IN VARIOUS AREAS, THE NOSEDIVE OF LATIN AMERICAN LIT, & PAGE SIZES! Don't you folks forget, first of all you printers, that for every old GN & WND page you get credit for two pages! And you folks that are out there in the field, thank the Lord, get eight-page credit for every Poster! The Posters are literally twice the size of those little TKs or the usual GP lit. They only had four pages & our Posters have eight pages! So for every Poster you get twice as much credit as for the other lit. And of course, you're going to go slower if you use them right. So maybe that's why Latin American lit distribution stats have declined, & there could be some other reasons which we'd better pry into & find out why!
45. HOWEVER, I'LL GIVE LATIN AMERICA CREDIT FOR HAVING THE BEST CONVERT STATS OF ANY AREA IN THE WORLD! They may be going slower with the lit, but they're winning more souls & getting more disciples, so give'm credit for that. There are also more converts-per-adult in Latin America than any area in the whole World except the Mideast & Africa, who are one point above'm. They've gotta make it count because we've got so few people down there. So do you think these stats are interesting to kind of ferret out the meaning of the stats? This is interpretation of stats & the meaning of stats!
SECURITY!
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47. THE BIGGER YOU GET & THE MORE NUMEROUS YOU SEEM & THE MORE ACTIVITIES THEY SEE, THE SCAREDER THEY GET! It's amazing how the System is so afraid of us! My Lord, they've got terrorists & criminals & murderers & whatnot, but they're more scared of the cults than anything!--Like that little cult of a dozen people in one little house in Philadelphia!--Of course, it's a crazy cult, it certainly wasn't Christian & didn't sound like it--a naturist cult of some kind--but the System got so scared they assembled 500 policemen to surround the whole neighbourhood & shot up the house, bombed it, sprayed it & burned it down along with 61 others!
48. I JUST PUT A FUNNY CARTOON IN THE {\b \i WND} OF THIS BIG FAT POLICEMAN STANDING THERE WITH A TORCH WITH ALL THESE BURNING HOMES IN THE BACKGROUND! (WND 84, pg.15) He says, "We heard dere were a bunch of dese loonies in one of dese houses who were going to blow up the neighbourbood, so we burned it down!"--That's System sensibility, System lunacy! They burned down the whole neighbourhood!--Not just one house, but 61 houses, leaving hundreds of people homeless who lost everything! My goodness, that one little cult, no matter how bad it was, couldn't have done as much damage in that neighbourbood as the police did!
49. THE SYSTEM IS SO CRAZY SOMETIMES IT'S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE IT! They exaggerate the danger so much that they over-react & the System does more damage! My goodness, I've certainly brought out how the System is always more dangerous than we are! We don't pick up weapons & fight, we don't fight wars, we don't kill millions of people!--But they're afraid of us! They ought to be more afraid of themselves! They're the ones that fight wars & kill millions & are about to blow up the world & totally annihilate humanity & yet they're afraid of us!
50. I'LL TELL YOU WHO'S AFRAID OF US, THE ONE WHO REALLY RUNS THE SYSTEM!--The one who inspires it, its god, the god of this World, & who's that? (Fam: The Devil!) He's afraid of us, because he knows we're the most dangerous to his System & his World & his kingdom, therefore he stirs up the whole World against us! We're the greatest danger in this World to the Devil's System & his World, & his Kingdom so he greatly magnifies & multiplies & exaggerates our threat & our danger to them & their System & their children & their homes, etc.: "Let's get rid of these cults! They're going to destroy the nation, destroy our churches, destroy our children! Let's get rid of them!"
51. WE'RE TRYING TO SAVE THE CHILDREN, THEREBY SAVE THE NATION & EVEN THE PARENTS IF THEY'D LISTEN! But the Devil just lies to them & turns it completely around just like he did in the Garden of Eden & says, "It isn't so, they're going to destroy you!" Well ... , one of these days ... we're going to replace it with the best System this World ever had, thank the Lord!--Amen?--The Kingdom of God on Earth! ...
MORE ON STATS
Harvesting with tapes & Posters!--And FFing!
52. BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THE MATTER WITH THESE STATS! That doesn't jive! Latin America is the World Shiner in the printing of literature last month, & the World's nosediver when it comes to distribution! Something's wrong somewhere, something's haywire, & we need to find out why! They've got a record of 2.7 million pages printed this past month, more than any other area on Earth! What are they doing?--Stuffing it all in their pockets or keeping it home? Do you think our printing boost is what's boosted their printing, but they haven't got them out yet? Do you suppose the printers are counting the pages right but the people reporting distribution aren't counting the pages right? Well, let's find out! I'm trying to show you why we have stats! I analyse them! A doctor has to know the symptoms before he can analyse the disease & prescribe the remedy, & the earlier you tell him the symptoms & find out something's wrong, the quicker you might be able to stop it.
53. WE'RE NOT SORRY TO SEE THE NUMBER OF OUR RADIO STATIONS & LISTENERS DECLINING, BECAUSE WE'RE DELIBERATELY PHASING OUT RADIO AS NOT NEARLY AS PROFITABLE AS PERSONAL WITNESSING! So the lines of radio listeners & radio stations are going down, but you ought to see the stats going up when it comes to meeting, reaping, harvesting, souls, disciples, etc.! That's different, thank the Lord, we're getting results! Although the radio stations & listeners have nose-dived, the Mail Ministry is going up & the visiting Ministry of reaping & personal follow-up is going up! And guess what? Out of the monthly total number of those saved by mail, guess how many they're getting as disciples? This is from the former Radio Ministry & the mail follow-up. Guess what the proportion is of those who are becoming disciples compared to the number who are getting saved?--And this is high, believe it or not, because Salvation stats can skyrocket, even in a Mail Ministry. Out of every ten saved through the mail follow-up, one is joining as a disciple! That's the personal touch, the fruitfulness of personal soul-winning even through the mail! Isn't that wonderful?
54. WE OUGHT TO FIGURE OUT SOME KIND OF COMPARISON BETWEEN TAPES & LITERATURE BY THE PAGE. Maybe we could figure it out by the number of songs. What could we do to compare a tape with so many pages? Latin America distributes more tapes than anybody in the World, but they're not getting credit for literature on the page-to-page basis. I think we need to figure out a proportionate relationship between tapes & pages & give them so many pages credit for every tape distributed. Why not make each tape the equivalent of 5 Posters, or 40 pages.
55. WELL, I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT WE'RE ALMOST EVENLY DIVIDED EAST TO WEST THANK THE LORD, ACCORDING TO POPULATION, & this is very good news! Just think, remember when we all lived in the North?--All of us to begin with! Nobody was even outside of Huntington Beach, much less Orange County or California! I was even almost scared to interpret the vision we got of us spreading all over the United States like a forest fire! I thought, "Lord, that's too big! That's too much! We're little nobodies, nothing, & here You're saying we're going to spread all over the United States!"
56. GUESS WHAT PROPORTION OF OUR POPULATION ARE NOW ALL IN THE SOUTH? Have any of your read the stats lately?--Ha! I told Maria, "What's the use of getting out all these books when even our own Family here hardly have enough time to read the GN & the WND & the Posters!" (Maria: They will later.) I agree. They're helpful books & we hope that you will have a chance to read'm later, & we hope you'll have room in your suitcases to take them with you when you move--we hope! But our experience has been that the books & even FNs & a lot of things were left behind when we had to move, especially to go by plane to the mission field, when you have to cut it down to 44 pounds per person & that sort of thing! You can leave a lot behind that you've already read that you figure you don't need any more. The only hope is that you've already arrived in your fields now & you'll be able to stay there & use all these new books we're mailing to you! I'll admit they're excellent, good tools, wonderful, but people have had to leave a lot of lit behind.
57. HALF OF US HAVE ALREADY MOVED EAST, & guess how many have moved South? (Peter: 63%?) It's now 65%! Two-thirds of us are now in the South! PTL? And although for awhile the line showing how many people were moving South & East greatly increased, all of a sudden it began to decline in the number of Homes in the East & in the South again because of Combos!
58. THE EFFICIENCY OF OUR FFing WORK IS MEASURED NOT BY HOW MANY GUYS WE FUCKED, BUT HOW MANY SOULS WE'VE WON! BRAZIL TOPS THE LIST with the number saved, but according to this, they had to fuck just as many! I'm just being shocking now saying "fucked."--They may not have fucked them, so we call it "loved." But the top soul-winner in the number of Salvations compared to the number they had to love to get them saved is Costa Rica with 4.7 souls saved per number loved! In other words, Costa Rica averaged almost five Salvations to each one loved in their FF witnessing. That's quite a record! I think that's really good. The World average used to be one saved out of every two loved, & that's a pretty high percentage when it comes to personal witnessing. You don't get that kind of percentage in any other kind of personal witnessing, actually one out of two, one saved for every two loved.
59. THEN THE STATS BEGIN TO GET A LITTLE LOOSER & I THINK A LITTLE MORE CONSCIOUS OF SUPPORT. Would you like to hear one of the saddest cases?--In fact, it is the saddest case in the World! Guess what country has the highest number loved compared to the fewest number saved?)--(Family: The U.S.) The U.S.! Guess what the proportion is. The World average used to be one out of two, now it's one out of 2-1/2.--One saved out of 2-1/2 loved. How can you love half-a-man? Well, it's an average, see? We can split up bodies & people when they average out, & in your math class Sara can explain what averages are. You take the whole number loved & compare it with the whole number saved, & you get a Worldwide average.
60. SO FAR AS I CAN SEE, THE WORST AVERAGE IN THE WHOLE WORLD NOW IS THE U.S.A. WITH 81 SAVED OUT OF 822 LOVED!--ONE OUT OF 10! Those gals who go home must certainly do a lot of fuckin'! Are they all going in the business on the street or what? Is it for support? That's only one saved out of 10 loved! That's a terrible average, when the World average is one out of 2-1/2! Those girls must not do much witnessing, not much real hard soul-winning! Are they going back & going into that kind of business instead of getting a job or something? Did they decide that's the best money-earner & fastest & quickest way to go into business just for financial support? What's the matter with'm? Well, thank God they're winning a few souls, but one out of 10 is not a very good average when the World average is one out of 2-1/2! I won't go into the details of the others, but that was just about the worst.
61. (MARIA: WE'VE HAD A QUESTION ALONG THIS LINE that has come up several times it seems that the girls who have regular fish to whom they minister often don't get proper credit in the stats. They have fish that they've won to the Lord & who are helping & supporting the Homes, but the girl makes love to him 4 times in the month, then on the stat it shows as 4 times loved but no souls saved. So, it looks pretty bad, whereas maybe it's more important for her, to be ministering to this fish than it is to be out winning more. Is there some way we can give these girls credit?)--I don't know!--Have you got any ideas?
62. AS FAR AS THE RATING ANALYSIS IS CONCERNED, I'M GLAD TO SAY THAT SOUTHEAST ASIA IS NUMBER ONE, EUROPE IS NUMBER 2 & LATIN AMERICA IS NUMBER 3! This is based on how they rate in number of converts per adult, lit per adult, Home size percentage of gain in Homes, gain in population, etc. Southeast Asia, Europe & Latin America lead the World, with India next, Pacific next, North America & Mideast & Africa at the bottom.
63. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR THE FIRST POSTER STATS?--THE PUB SHINERS! That means what pubs are Top of the Pops! Guess how many of the Top Ten of all of our GP pubs all over the world are Posters? You know how they do in the popularity contests for records & songs, etc.? They say how many got this in the Top Ten & how many times they were in the Top Ten, etc. Guess how many places in the Top Ten are Poster numbers? (Fam: All ten?) Not yet, remember they're just getting started. (Fam: 7?)--7 out of 10! You must be psychic, Dear! I'm expecting it to be 9 out of 10 or all 10, for the Posters to be Top of the Pops when they get'm! But you see, North America hasn't yet had any general publishing or distribution, & neither has Europe, all they've gotten is what we've been able to send them. They're not yet publishing them locally, which is the only way they can publish & distribute them in large quantities. (Maria: They could have done the black-&-whites.) Yes, but apparently some of them just aren't doing it.
64. WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW BY AREAS HOW MANY PLACES THE POSTERS TOOK OUT OF THE TOP TEN?--The Top Ten most popular items distributed in the largest numbers. All of these are based on how many of that particular item were printed, in other worlds, which items were printed the most. I hate to give you the saddest stat first, but in North America, only one of the Top 15 was a Poster, & it's in 6th place! (Maria: What are they giving out?) Do you want to know? It's the same old stuff! Do you want me to read North America's list of the Top 15 items that they are distributing the most? "Lover of All Lovers", "You Can Understand the Future", those were little tracts, those little tiny things. "Love Is News", "Easter Story", "Change the World". Then comes the Poster, the "Endtime News", & they only distributed 4000 of those. "Stand Up for Jesus" TK, Good's Only Law Is Love" tract. Some of these are little tiny micros! "Evolution or Creation" TK, "You've Got to Be a Baby" TK, "Freedom from Fear" TK, "Jesus Bore Our Diseases" TK, "Heaven, Hell or In-Between" TK,--Those old milk-&-water-&-honey watered-down things! Apparently they think that that's the only thing the Americans will stand, the only thing they can take!
65. THERE IS NOT A WARNING TRACT OR WARNING PIECE OF LIT IN THE WHOLE BUNCH OF 15!--Only the ETN! Unless you want to classify "You Can Know the Future" as a warning.--Or "Heaven, Hell or In-Between," that's on our doctrine of the in-between. The "Endtime News" was the only real warning literature, & we're getting out tremendous warning literature now, Poster warnings! If I don't see that improve & if they don't get busy, let me tell you, I've got a notion to cut off the whole bunch & start enforcing the old lit requirements of the New revolution of 1975!--The edict sent out in Tenerife from the King's Councilors, that they had to distribute so many pieces of lit per adult or we'd excommunicate'm! They're just not doing enough! And what little they're passing out, what good does it do?--Little old milk-&-honey watered-down stuff that's not going to offend anybody or cause anybody to object or make any trouble or create any problems, little tracts that churches & church people could be passing out! That's the kind of stuff they pass out in North America!
66. WELL, THANK GOD EUROPE DID A LITTLE BIT BETTER: TWO OF THE TOP TEN WERE POSTERS in Europe, another home field. The Mideast & Africa, well, I don't know what happened to them, but none, no Posters. They're afraid of being seen, I think. For goodness sake, they could have given one Poster to somebody! India guess what's their Top Ten? (Fam: 10.)--All of them! Their Top Ten were all Posters! Southeast Asia, guess how many of their Top Ten are posters? (David: 7.) You must have read it! He can read minds!--Really he can! He knows what's going to happen in the video sometimes ahead of time. Then comes the Pacific with five of their Top Ten Posters. By the way, the Words are now printed in 54 languages!
67. NOW, WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW WHO THE TOP SCORES ARE WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING GIFTS FOR THE POSTERS? Guess what area is getting the most per Poster? (Davida: Europe?)--Right! There's another little ESPer! Don't pee here though! Europe is averaging the most! You've got to give Europe credit for that! Maybe they know they've got to raise support to get out & get to the field, so they're making every Poster count like we said, really witnessing & getting support!
68. GUESS WHAT AREA RUNS THE NEXT HIGHEST IN GIFTS PER FOSTER? Anybody want to hazard a guess? Come on, are you afraid of being wrong? Good night, you're not gamblers, are you? I must be somewhat of a gambler at heart, my Mother was. We're talking about continental areas, & it's the Pacific next! Imagine, out in what's supposed to be the poor Third World! Japan is probably one of the countries that brings that figure up. This ought to make some of the rest of those people ashamed who live in rich countries.
69. GUESS WHO'S THIRD? IT happens to be a country. (Fam: Brazil? Peru? Australia? Philippines? Japan?) We don't really know that stats for some of these specific countries, because on some they just listed the continent, but it's Mexico! Those dear Catholics appreciate pictures!
70. CONTINENTAL-WISE, GUESS WHO'S NEXT? I'm surprised some of you haven't guessed that one each time in the top bracket. (Fam: North America?)--North America! Just think, they're getting more per Poster in poor Mexico than in North America! No wonder God's going to have to destroy America, they're so far back behind it's pitiful! Even the Family Members who live there are doing so little for the Lord, about the best they're doing is they are faithfully supporting the Foreign Missions Work. Apparently about all they're doing is just working, getting a salary & sending their money to help support us & God bless them for that! Maybe that's all they've got time to do. When you've got a system job that's about all you've got time to do, it takes all your strength, & taking care of a family the rest of the time. What time have they got to litness or poster of witness or win souls or anything? That's all you had time to do, you hardly even went to church!--Right?
71. I'LL JUST READ THE REST OF THESE OFF FOR YOU QUICKLY: Central America & Argentina are rivaling each other, next is Venezuela, Brazil, & Southeast Asia, they're not doing so good. Of course, they're poor countries, but they must not be doing it in the right areas with the right people, because there are oodles of rich people in those countries too. Maybe the poor countries are pulling the averages down. Next comes the Mideast & Africa & last down at the bottom, of course, because they're very poor people, I wouldn't blame them for that, is India.
72. BUT NONE OF THEN ARE GETTING AS LITTLE AS WE BASED OUR ORIGINAL PROJECTION ON, THAT IF THEY COULD GET AT LEAST 10 CENTS APIECE THEY COULD STILL GET ENOUGH FOR THEIR OWN SUPPORT--50/50--50% FOR POSTERS & 50% FOR THEIR PERSONAL SUPPORT! In other words, they could use half their income for buying more Posters, & half for their self-support. They could virtually double their income to twice their support if they'd do enough of it! But according to these stats, nobody even did that bad! Even in poor, poverty-stricken India they average more than that! But who knows? Maybe they're just going out handing them out right & left like some of those people suggested.
73. ONE COUPLE SAID THEY DECIDED THE POSTERS HAD THE MESSAGE & THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO WAIT TO GET DECISIONS, the people could make them on their own. They said, 'We decided the best way to do it was just get out the Posters, fast!" Of course, the day that they went slow & only got out something like 20 or 25 Posters, they made as much as the day they decided to go fast & got out over 100 Posters, get out the Word, let the chips fall where they may!! They said, "We didn't get any more total support going fast than we did the day we went slow." I think their average was 20 cents a Poster, over 100 Posters a day! But even India gets almost three times that cost of the Poster, at least their cost. If they only knew the cost in blood, sweat, tears & the total cost we put into it, that would raise the cost quite a bit!
MAIL STATS!
74. I'LL GIVE YOU ONE LAST STAT--WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW HOW SAFELY OUR MAIL GETS WHERE IT'S GOING? Out of nearly 3,000 mailings, guess how many pieces had any problems? They don't report any lost, & only 30 were tampered with in some way. Only one out of 100 had any problems & were slightly torn or looked like they'd been opened, maybe they just came open, or were actually inspected. But how would you like to know how fast our mail gets to our people?--71% of our people get their mail within one week from when it's mailed, & 95% get it within two weeks! That's pretty good.
75. WELL, YOU'VE HAD AN HOUR-&-A-HALF CLASS & I GUESS THOSE OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH STATS FOR TODAY! PTL! You didn't have a Bible Class, but that was a Class I think maybe we needed & it was important. Maybe that was a little inspiration & a little education & gave you a little idea of what we're doing. Those are really only the first Poster stats, the first results, & I'm sure we're going to get a lot more. We're sending out a Poster Report Form now with each TRF so we'll be betting a lot more reports back. They're also getting a lot more Posters, so they're going to be distributing a lot more. May be when they hear these comparative stats some will be provoked to jealousy to get out & be a little more zealous & distribute more Posters & get more for'm & win more souls!--Amen? PTL!
76. WELL ANYHOW, WE'RE STILL FIGHTIN' & WE'RE STILL WINNIN'! The Posters were kind of off to a slow start & it was a big job to get them this far, but they're going, they're really rolling now! And, good news!--We finished all the Posters! Guess how many we have decided to limit it to?--How many different Posters all together? (Techi: 63?) You missed it by one--62! Talk about ESP here, how about that? And the reason we're leaving it at that is because 62 Posters makes 62 pages plus 62 pages of text makes 124 pages, which makes four 32-page signatures, plus enough for a cover for our new little Children's poster Storybook in colour! It'll be like a catalogue of all the Posters, you'll all get one! Our Posters are scattered all around the wells & you never can see them all at once, but you'll be able to just thumb right through & see all the Posters & read all the stories & they're all right there! Isn't that wonderful? PTL! So shall we pray?
77. TYJ! THANK YOU FOR ALL THESE VICTORIES, LORD! We're sorry for apparently a few defeats, but most of us are winning victories, most of us are forging ahead & really making tremendous progress, Lord. Sprint is making tremendous progress in producing the posters, getting them producing the Posters, getting them published so fast & dear Apollos has worked so hard. We ask Thee to inspire him! We thank thee for the marvelous, thrilling stories that he's written to fit the Posters, especially good for children & outsiders, really exciting stories, Lord! They're terrific!--Wonderful! ( I like the story form best, don't you? We started out with sermons, now we're getting stories which are a lot more exciting & more dramatic & I think more effective to the General Public & with children. So PTL!)
78. THANK YOU JESUS FOR ALL OF THESE THAT HAVE MADE IT POSSIBLE, these sitting right here & standing here this morning, Lord, or we couldn't have done it,--And all of those in the other Units scattered all over the World that helped & made it possible or we couldn't have done it, Lord--art from lots of places & all these wonderful things! TYJ! Bless & help Maria & Peter with the tremendous loads that they've been carrying of the other Pubs while we've been busy on the Posters. Help them to complete whatever ones you want them to complete in the time we have left, & bless them all, Lord, & make them a blessing! Keep us safely today now & help us to have a good day of rest, inspiration & be prepared for tomorrow's labours. Bless those that still have work they have to do today.
79. BLESS IT ALL, LORD, & MAKE IT A BLESSING TO THE WORLD, SO THAT AS MANY CAN BE SAVED & GO TO HEAVEN WITH US AS POSSIBLE! TYJ! That's our goal! Bless the Posters, make them a blessing, Lord, bless the lit, all of it! We're especially burdened for the Posters, that they should get out the Message in our last, great, most effective witness to the General Public!--In Jesus' name we ask. As we pray Thy prayer: (Prays the Lord's Prayer) TYJ!--Amen!--Are you doing your best? God bless & keep you going for Jesus!--In Jesus' name, amen!--ILY!--D.
Copyright (c) 1997 by The Family
