HomeARC ML 2239
OUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO JESUS! 25/12/86 DO 2239
1. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL! (Dad kisses each girl as they arrive at the meeting!) I said I was too sick to kiss anybody this morning, but I guess I'm not! When I see you pretty girls, you're irresistible! Sorry boys, but I'll leave the boys for you girls to kiss! When I see you lovely girls come, I can't resist! Come, come! ILY! I'm not going to kiss you very much, just a little kiss and a little squeeze is about all I've got in me today! I ate some bad soup last night and it kept me up half the night sick, so I'm not feeling very good. But I finally decided "all things work together for good" and it's for your benefit so that I won't keep you too long this morning! I just have a few announcements to make!
2. WELL, YOU COULDN'T ALL BE EXPECTED TO GET HERE AHEAD OF TIME, IT'S STILL TWO MINUTES TO 11! AS MAMA KNOWS, I ALWAYS BELIEVE IN BEING EARLY! A lot of times I'm sitting here waiting for the rest of you to come! Sometimes I've come and started singing all by myself! I figure, well, at least I can sing and pray! Me and the Lord are here, I'm just waiting on you! Well, I like to come early and make sure we're set up. As you can see, I'm wired for sound!--Although I don't think you're going to get very much this morning, I'm too tired and sick, but I didn't want to miss Christmas with you! At least you can remember that we came together to praise the Lord! PTL! Amen! Hallelujah! TYL!
3. SO YOU GOT YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT--TWO EXTRA HOURS SLEEP! Let's sing "Happy Birthday Dear Jesus!" (Family sings!) Well, I couldn't have had a better Christmas present than all of you this morning! Praise God! TYJ!
DAD'S CHURCH IN ARIZONA!
4. THIS LITTLE GATHERING REMINDS ME OF SOME OF THE CHURCHES MAMA AND I BELONGED TO WHEN WE WERE YOUNG! They were small denominations and the meetings were held in houses like this, converted houses!--The Christian Missionary Alliance, God bless them! They preached the Gospel, they preached Salvation, and they practiced it too! They believed in the Holy Spirit and the gifts--only they don't have many of them--but they do have a lot of missionaries. They specialised in Pioneer Missions.
5. CHRISTMAS EVE WAS ABOUT THE ONLY TIME OF YEAR OUR CHURCH EVER WENT WITNESSING, AND WE WENT OUT CAROLLING. We didn't expect anything from anybody, but we usually went to the homes of the poor, and took them boxes of groceries.
6. FAITHY WAS BORN RIGHT AFTER THEY KICKED ME OUT OF THE CHURCH I BUILT! Actually, they let us stay on just until she was born, wasn't that kind of them? Mother Eve said she felt like Mary because for awhile there we didn't even know if they were going to let us stay long enough to have the baby! But as hard as their hearts may be--and they're some of the worst--when the District Superintendent saw Eve was almost due, he decided, "It might give the denomination a bad name if we kick this pregnant woman out of her house and home with no place to go just before she's about to have a baby!" The word would have spread like wildfire throughout the community to all the residents who mostly hated the church anyhow, and given them another thing to complain about what the churches are really like! So they decided it would be better to let us stay, at least until after the baby was born. Thank the Lord, I had found another house by that time so we could move out!
7. SO MOST OF THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY ALLIANCE CHURCHES, GOD BLESS THEM, ARE LITTLE CONVERTED HOUSES with a dozen or two dozen people at best, except on Christmas. We didn't have very big crowds--our kind of Gospel didn't appeal to most people. They didn't do too much witnessing, but they did really believe in supporting missionaries. They expected you to give at least 10% of your income to the church, plus about 25% more to the missionaries! That kind of religion doesn't appeal too much to the average Christian! They averaged about 35% giving to the church and missions, whereas the largest Protestant denomination in the World, the Methodists, average only about 5% giving to foreign missions and the church, and of course most of it goes to the church, so God knows how little the missionaries get!
8. ANYHOW, THANK THE LORD FAITHY CAME ALONG IN TIME TO GET BORN BEFORE WE HAD TO LEAVE, so she was just a wee tiny baby in arms when we went to Scottsdale, Arizona. And leave it to the World, they had more mercy than the church! I'd just been going to the college for a few months, taking a couple of days classes trying to get some benefit out of my GI bill because we needed the income.--Not that I needed the classes, but we got $120-a-month support, plus they paid for all the books and tuition etc. So just to get the income I took a Greyhound bus twice a week to Arizona State College in Tempe, which is now part of the University of Arizona. So nowadays I tell people I'm from the University of Arizona--it sounds better than a State College! At that time it was a State Teacher's College.
9. SO I WENT THERE AND TOOK A FEW CLASSES THAT I WAS INTERESTED IN--literally just to get the money, the extra support, because the little church only gave us about $10 a week, and we couldn't even eat on that!--And nothing toward the building of the church! We raised all that ourselves by faith and by prayer letters etc. They hardly put a dime into the church! The only thing they paid for was the rent, or the payments, that is. First it was the rent, then they changed it to the payments on the property, $25 a month, plus the Sunday morning offering, which averaged about $10 for us. The other went to payments on the property. So how's that for a church?
10. OF COURSE, IT WAS A LITTLE PIONEER CHURCH, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND HARDLY ANYBODY ELSE. Their top crowd was only about 25 people including the women and children. So of course they didn't have very much and were not very rich, except for one family who owned the post office and the grocery store and thought they owned me! So when I began preaching stuff they didn't like, that was it!
11. BUT PRAISE THE LORD ANYHOW, I WENT TO THE COLLEGE WHERE I WAS ALREADY TAKING CLASSES, and I went to my counsellor or somebody and asked did they know of any house? I said, "We're being evicted!" And he said, "Yes, we do! We just had some of our faculty members, a couple move out of a nice house we have here just a mile or so from the college and you're welcome to rent that for only $40 a month!"--$10 a week, a nice big three-bedroom house, nice and big and airy and cool!--An old-fashioned house, but it was lovely! And they were literally kinder to us than the church! And we weren't faculty, we were just students, think of it! They helped us find furniture and were just so lovely to us and tried to help us in every way.
DAD'S HEALING TESTIMONY!
12. WELL, PRAISE THE LORD! YOU ALL LOOK GOOD THIS MORNING! Is everybody feeling all right? Everybody well? Everybody happy? (Fam: Yes, Sir!) Who's sick besides me? Well, I'm better now. I'm just kind of weak from being up half the night, sitting on the toilet most of the time. But anyway, praise the Lord! With me I don't throw up, except if I gag, and I used to have trouble with gagging.
13. BY THE WAY, THE LORD'S REALLY HEALED ME OF THAT AND I'M EATING ALL KINDS OF FOOD NOW! I can't exactly chew steak yet, but I'm eating solid food every day! I had one of the most delicious omelettes for lunch you ever ate, and I taught John how to make it! What did we have in it, John, you tell'm! I'm about out of breath! (John: We had three eggs, half-a-potato chopped up, green beans chopped up, two tablespoons of grated ham and two tablespoons of grated cheese--protein, starch, vegetables, everything!) It's a whole meal!
14. WELL, OF COURSE, IT'S MY MAIN MEAL OF THE DAY, BECAUSE WHEN I EAT THAT, USUALLY I'VE NOT HAD ANYTHING TO EAT ANYWHERE FROM 6, 7 TO 8 OR 9 HOURS. The only thing I have is my coffee in the morning. Of course, it's quite a coffee with quite a bit in it, but it's just a drink. I usually have that about 5 or 6 in the morning, and now dear Mama's being so good to me she brings it up to me and I get to drink it before I get out of bed. But then I don't usually eat until about 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon, so that's really my first solid meal of the day, and I've really been enjoying it!
15. GOD BLESS JOHN, HE'S BEEN A FAITHFUL COOK, he doesn't kill me very often, just once in a great while when he concocts something that just doesn't go down very good. But it's not his fault, it's usually my fault because I hate to send it back. I figure, well, after all, I'm hungry and I ought to be able to eat this stuff!--And I cram it down and sometimes pay for it! He was apologising this morning and I said, "Don't worry, it's not your fault, it's our fault! If I didn't like it I should have sent it back!"
16. BUT ANYWAY, I'M STILL ALIVE, THANK THE LORD! Forgive me for talking so much about myself, but I'm trying to apologise and explain why I'm a little draggy and lazy this morning and why I'm not going to keep you very long! We're not going to have some big Christmas celebration--this is it! If you want any more than this, you'll have to "get it up for yourself"! That's what a lot of people spend Christmas in bed doing besides sleeping! Some of you women are pretty good at that, GBY! I think some of you missed that joke--"Getting it up for yourself"! This little girl here never misses my sexy jokes! (She's laughing!)
ALLIANCE PIONEERED PAPUA NEW GUINEA!
17. I LOVE TO BE SHOCKING! That's one of the characteristics of an Aquarian, they love to shock people and be different! That's why I had to have a different kind of church, a shocking church, to try to wake up Christians to get out and witness! And although the Alliance didn't do much in the way of local witnessing or passing out tracts on street corners or going down to the bums or going door-to-door, they did give heavily, sacrificially, to Missions.
18. THEY SPECIALISED IN PIONEER MISSIONS, THEY DIDN'T LIKE TO GO WHERE SOMEBODY HAD ALREADY BEEN, so they were famous for pioneering fields where the savages were still running around naked! They pioneered a mission field in Papua New Guinea, this tribe up in the hills there that had never seen a White Man! They flew in by plane, they didn't have helicopters in those days, but they had little light planes which they could land almost on a dime and just land in a clearing if it was clear.
19. SO THESE NATIVE PEOPLE THOUGHT THEY WERE GODS THAT HAD COME DOWN FROM THE SKY! And at first they did like the Apostles, they nearly worshipped them, then later they nearly killed them, like happened to the Apostles when they found out they weren't gods! But anyhow, they stuck it out! A few of them got killed and whatnot, but they finally got nearly the whole tribe converted up in the remote mountains of Papua New Guinea. Isn't that the name of it?
20. MY EASTERN GEOGRAPHY IS NOT SO HOT! I can draw you a map of the U.S. and draw in every state there and pinpoint the capital, because I've been to all those places and driven. Later on I found my kids didn't even know much about the U.S., although they travelled a lot with me, so we got'm a jigsaw puzzle map where every state is a new piece and they learned where every state was that way. But I'm just beginning to learn geography in the East, slow but sure, & I hope you are too. Instead of just pretty pictures, why not put up a nice educational map of the East so people can go to the map and find out where these places are they're hearing about in the news!
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS!
21. I JUST CAME HERE TO ANNOUNCE YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS! Number one Christmas present was four hours extra sleep this morning! We don't really believe in giving Christmas presents to each other, it's a big waste of time and a big waste of money. Deborah used to nearly kill herself staying up all night decorating the tree and wrapping presents and all that time wasted! My Mother was the same way, she had Christmas in her blood! And she was always writing cards on the presents, "From Santa Claus"--and she was Santa Claus, of course!
22. SHE USED TO GIVE ME $5 TO GO OUT AND BUY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FOR ABOUT 25 PEOPLE, so you can see about how much I could spend on each person, about 20-25 cents a person. But you could buy quite a bit in those days for 25 cents! You could buy a lot of nice little things. I had to buy paper and string too, and cards, tags to go on them, and I did all my own Christmas shopping when I was about David's age. I wrapped all the presents and tied them with pretty bows and tagged them for all those people! Oh, what a waste of time! I'll bet I spent a whole week trying to pick out 25 presents out of that $5, plus wrapping paper and string and cards and whatnot! We spent at least a day or two wrapping them and tagging them and all that, then we'd pile them up under the tree. We had so many presents with everybody buying 25 presents for everybody else! 25 people times 25 is 625 presents!
23. ONE OF OUR FIRST CHRISTMASES WHEN THE CHILDREN WERE SMALL, I WOULDN'T EVEN LET THEM HAVE A TREE! Boy, I was really an old Scrooge! Well, we were very poor, living in a trailer, and there wasn't any room for a tree anyway. I'd read all this stuff the Alliance put out about Christmas originally being a pagan holiday started by the Druids worshipping the spirits in the tree. Then when the Catholic church came along they kind of revamped and renamed the holiday, because it closely coincided with Jesus' Birthday, and they just kind of helped the pagans transfer their worship to Christ!
24. --LIKE THE OLD STORY ABOUT THE PAGAN TEMPLE IN INDIA. The dear Pope was hearing about so many new Christian churches in India--when India was thrown open by the British to the Gospel and to Christian religion --so he sent somebody down there to figure out how they were doing it, how they were converting so many people so fast! And it turned out most of them were just building a fence around the temple and putting up a sign in front that it was a Roman Catholic church! It was the same temple they'd been going to all the time and still going to worshipping their heathen idols! Well, of course, that's not too much different from Catholic churches today anyway!
25. SO WHERE WAS I? ANYBODY LISTENING? (FAM: CHRISTMAS PRESENTS!) Good for you! Our Christmas tree would be half-buried in presents, I mean really built up around the base completely. And what a job Christmas was, everybody was so thankful when it was over! The poor girls worked on the huge Christmas dinner--like probably you girls have been doing, God bless you, which you hope to get if I ever quit--and everybody was nearly dead when Christmas was over, from all that time spent and all the shopping and wrapping!
26. OPENING THE PRESENTS WAS A HOLY CEREMONY WITH MY MOTHER, AS PROBABLY MY FIRST KIDS CAN REMEMBER!--In fact, we spent our last Christmas with Grandma this way, she tried to enforce it. You can imagine 25 people sitting around in a circle in the livingroom on Christmas day, and we kids used to be the little elves who delivered the packages. We'd run to the tree and grab a couple of packages and see who they were for and deliver them to the people sitting around, and nobody was supposed to open their present until everybody had received their presents! This was a regular family ritual ever since I was a little boy.
27. THEN, SHE DIDN'T SAY "1..2..3..GO" AND EVERYBODY START OPENING THEIR PRESENTS AS FAST AS THEY COULD, they had to go around the circle and each one had to open his present and say, "Oh, isn't this lovely, thank you so much! Oh, that was so nice of you!"--Open it and show everybody what they got and thank the person that gave it. It literally took all afternoon! And we were all starving to death and we hardly ever got that supposed-to-be noon Christmas dinner until about 5 or 6 at night!
28. I THINK MAYBE MY MOTHER HAD SOME KIND OF A SECRET IDEA IN MIND!--THAT WAY WE COULD SKIP A MEAL AND SHE WOULDN'T HAVE TO COOK ANYTHING BUT CHRISTMAS DINNER! She made Christmas dinner enough for 2 or 3 meals anyhow! So all we got was a late breakfast and then all this ceremony of gift opening. And you weren't allowed to leave until everybody had opened every single present and told who it was from and "thank you" and all the rest!
29. ONLY ONE THING SHE DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT ME, I used to open them and say, "Oh my, look at that, would you! I'll bet that cost 50 cents!" Like that TV program in the States, "The Price is Right!", I was pricing everything that came out of the package! Well, I was complimenting them, thanking them for having spent so much money on the gift! Then we spent one Christmas with the Haases and by this time I was a teenager and she said, "David, now don't you say a word about how much you think it costs when we open our presents at their house!" You can see I was a good old Jew already, figuring out prices and money etc.!
THE GIVING MINISTRY!
30. I WAS TELLING THE KIDS HOW MY SISTER WAS MY BITTER ENEMY AND SHE DID EVERYTHING SHE COULD TO MAKE MY LIFE MISERABLE! They said, "What about your brother?" I said, well, he really didn't care much, he was so interested in girls he didn't pay much attention to anything, he didn't care what happened! The worst thing he ever did with me was put a big piece of bubble gum in his palm and slap me on the head with it!--And I think that was at my sister's instigation! Otherwise, the only time he ever paid any attention to me was when he needed money!
31. AND I ALWAYS HAD MONEY! I was always working and making money somehow! On weekends I sold magazines--Boy's Life and Colliers and Liberty Magazine. You got five cents per magazine and you got to keep one penny! And then if you sold the most in your district you got a special prize, and I was always winning prizes! I even won a motion picture machine one time. It used old-fashioned 35mm film and you turned a crank and if you stopped, all of a sudden there was a big explosion! They didn't have safety film yet and I'd have to quick run it through so the whole film didn't catch fire.--Till I loaned it to some little friend of mine and the whole film caught fire and burned up my prize machine!
32. BUT I ALWAYS WAS OUT SELLING PERFUME OR CLOVERINE SALVE OR SOMETHING! I'd lug around this 20-pound suitcase of samples and I think most of the women bought from me just because they felt sorry for this poor little boy dragging a suitcase up the steps! I mean literally dragging it up the steps to get to the door! So I hardly ever missed a sale, they always bought something. And I've always been the same way with salesmen that came to the door or anybody. I guess maybe I had a kind of a giving heart even then. We could never resist people coming to our door to do something, buy something, give'm something.
33. SO MY BROTHER ALWAYS KNEW I HAD SOME MONEY TUCKED AWAY SOMEWHERE AND HE WAS ALWAYS BORROWING IT. Of course he was always going to pay me back in the future, but seldom ever did. And he went broke and I'm still going, thanks to the Lord! I really trusted the Lord, but I put feet to my prayers too! I got out and hoofed it and I worked for it and I made it!
34. THANK GOD, HE'S EVEN MADE THIS BUSINESS PAY AND REAL WELL, THANK THE LORD! We'd have gone broke long ago if it hadn't been for the Lord and a few emergency measures and things that the Lord led us to do.--Mostly, that when we were about to go broke like at the RNR etc., just to start giving away money! Give some more! We'd cut this and cut that but give more and the Lord has always prospered us for giving!
35. THE MORE WE GIVE, THE MORE HE GIVES! So we never ever suffer for giving, ever! All the gifts we give, we can't sacrifice, they're no sacrifice, because by this time even Mama and Peter have learned that I can't give too much, that the Lord always gives more in return! The more we give, the more He gives! We've been through several financial crises, and it doesn't matter what, if we give, the Lord gives! But if we withhold, well, He withholds. But I don't think we've withheld very many times, I can't think of any, really! PTL!
36. HE'S GOOD TO US, SO WHY SHOULDN'T WE BE GOOD TO OTHER PEOPLE? Frankly, I enjoy it! It's fun! It's wonderful to be able to give, and the Lord has enabled us to give, so we give! We try to give according to what we figure they need, we're not just throwing money away! We're still living by faith, don't get the wrong idea! We still depend from month to month on the gifts we get from the Family and the Lord, but we're just a little bit better off than we used to be in the Early Days.
FAMILY FINANCIAL HISTORY!
37. DEAR PETER CAME ALONG TO HELP US MANAGE FINANCES JUST ABOUT THE TIME OF THE RNR WHEN WE NEARLY FLOUNDERED! Our income dropped off to about 25% of what it had been. We nearly went broke until the Lord told me I couldn't depend on those Chain leaders any more. The way it used to be, they collected the money and sent us 10%, but they mostly had gone bad and rotten under Jethro and Deborah, who got to be extortionists!
38. I HAD TOLD THEM TIME AND AGAIN THAT THEY SHOULD NEVER KEEP MORE THAN 10% OF THE MONEY, and I found out they'd gone up to 25% as a regular minimum, and some 35% under Rachel, and finally 50% under Jethro in Latin America! Can you imagine! He was keeping half, insisting they send him half of everything they took in! It's no wonder he wrecked the Latin American field and turned so many people away from us! We lost so many good folks through his covetousness and greediness and his extortion and his tyrannical methods of running things, it was horrible! Lord help us!--And Lord forgive me for ever sending him there!
39. HE JUST WENT FROM BAD TO WORSE AND BAD TO WORSE AND WE KEPT DEMOTING HIM DOWN TO A LOWER FIELD! We figured, "Well, this field's so bad anyhow he can't much hurt'm!" And by that time Latin America had gone from bad to worse, so we thought, "Well, at least maybe they can do some good down there." And boy, they did, they did the goodest worst we'd ever had done, till they nearly wrecked the place!
40. SO I SAID, "WELL, WE JUST CAN'T DEPEND ON THEM ANY MORE, I CAN'T TRUST THEM, THEY'RE TOO GREEDY, THEY'RE LITERALLY CRUSHING THE POOR"--our poor, our own Family! I said, "I'm going to have to get in touch with the folks directly myself somehow!"--And that's when we established WIMM, the Worldwide International Mail Ministry! We began to get names and addresses and the mailing lists from some of those people. Pulling a mailing list out of Deb and Jeth was like pulling teeth, trying to get the source of their income, but we finally got'm!--Due to some dear loyal personnel, God bless them! They had some underlings who at least were willing to be loyal to us and send us the names and addresses of our own people, imagine, that we didn't even have, that all these extortioners of the Chain-Saul were rippin' apart!
41. WE FINALLY MANAGED TO SCRAPE UP ENOUGH NAMES AND ADDRESSES THAT WE BEGAN MAILING OUT THE LETTERS DIRECTLY FROM SWITZERLAND TO EVERYBODY IN THE WHOLE WORLD! Dear Peter was one of the first directors of the WIMM, and Damaris his wife, and we got in touch with those people finally and were personally corresponding then with our own people and our own Family all over the World, not going through those Chain leaders any more! We decided the only way to rescue the Work was to have a direct contact with everybody in the whole Family all over the World. And we finally managed to salvage the Family and the Family finances, and we established what had all along been our rules from the Sterling Buildings in downtown London, that 10% of everything that came in went to the administration of the work!
42. IN THE EARLIEST DAYS OF THE FAMILY MAMA & I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE OUR INCOME WAS COMING FROM, it just came in gifts from different people and different members of the Family. If they felt like giving us something or being thankful for the Letters, they just sent us gifts from here or there. They at least knew our address even though we didn't know theirs, and the Lord never failed, He always sent it in! We had no set system of tithing or anything, no system of keeping in touch with them except by the Letters.
43. AND IN THOSE DAYS EVEN THE LETTERS HAD TO GO THROUGH THE CHAIN, THROUGH JETH AND DEB! I used to get my tongue twisted and say, "Now be sure that Deth and Jeb get that!" They turned out to be Death and Jeb! And sometimes Jeth would hold the Letters for weeks because he was afraid to read them to those 300 people at TSC! So finally I found out about it and we started sending enough Letters to enough people there that somebody was going to let the cat out of the bag! And I'll tell you, sometimes when that cat got out, it scratched!--Mostly the leadership!
44. SO WE NEVER KNEW WHERE OUR INCOME WAS GOING TO COME FROM UNLESS THEY JUST HAPPENED TO SEND US SOMETHING. Even some of those Chain leaders finally realised that they owed us something and they would send us a little gift once in awhile, nothing special, nothing set, nothing definite.
45. WE HAD TO PAY $70 A MONTH RENT FOR THE LITTLE CABIN WE LIVED IN IN DOWNHAM, THE SUBURBS OF LONDON. It was a little tiny house with only two bedrooms and a little tiny furnace that I used to spend half my time sitting in front of, stoking it and trying to figure out how to get the house warm enough to keep from freezing! So I finally said, "Now listen, Jeth, we've got to have at least enough money to pay that rent! If you guys can't do anything else but pay the rent, we can trust the Lord for our food etc. and I know the Lord won't fail us. But you guys ought to have at least some certain set sum that you've gotta feel obligated to pay! Now fork over that $70 a month!"--And so he did! Finally I said, "Well, there are a few other expenses" and I upped it to $100 a month. Imagine, the Family had been going for three years already. It began in '69 and that was '73.
46. THEN WE HAD TO FLEE LONDON BECAUSE OF PERSECUTION! We were being howled at in Parliament and the members of Parliament were taking it up with the authorities that the Family should be run out of England, and they were after us, really out to get us! Faithy stirred up most of the trouble, getting on television and telling them off, God bless her!--Just like I would have done if I had been on there! She had the spirit of her father, and still has I hope! She doesn't get to run around quite as wild as she used to, but when she does, she still socks it to'm, thank the Lord!
47. SO SHE WAS MAKING HEADLINES IN THE NEWSPAPERS AND TELEVISION AND EVERYTHING ELSE AND REALLY STIRRING UP THE POT THERE IN LONDON! And they were so furious they began the same kind of campaign, you know, "They're stealing our children, kidnapping them, keeping them locked up in prison!" They were accusing us of all this when it was the parents that actually did it, we didn't do it! But anyhow, that's what they were saying, all these terrible smear stories in the papers!
48. THE LORD FINALLY GAVE ME A WARNING THAT I'D BETTER GET OUT OF THERE OR THEY WERE FINALLY GOING TO TRACE IT DOWN TO ME! So we asked the Lord where to go, as you recall, and in the middle of the night I got that vision of the word "TENERIFE" in big red letters right in front of me in the pitch dark, just like a neon sign! Hallelujah! TYL! I'd never heard of it! But we were praying about where to go, and I said, "Well Honey, it must be some place! I have the impression it's a place where we're supposed to go! So we got out our little atlas that you almost had to have a microscope to read even the index, and sure enough, there it was, a place called Tenerife! I knew how to spell it because it was spelled out right in front of me as plain as day: T-E-N-E-R-I-F-E! Just like that! Talk about leadings of the Lord!
49. WE DON'T HAVE TO HAVE QUITE AS MANY SUPERNATURAL LEADINGS ANY MORE because the Lord has blessed us and prospered us and increased us and we don't have quite as many troubles along that line any more, thank the Lord! We've learned a little more about security and that all that publicity isn't necessarily the best thing in the World and we'd just as soon keep undercover and keep out of sight! So we have learned a few things!
50. REMEMBER THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN WE USED TO GO ON TELEVISION DOWN IN TENERIFE WITH ALL MY GIRLS, headlines in the paper every day, magazines all over the World talking about the Family of Love!--People coming in from everywhere, reporters and everyone coming to Tenerife to find out all about it!
51. ANYHOW, WHEN WE FINALLY WENT TO TENERIFE AND HAD TO SCOOT OUT OF LONDON, I TOLD JETH, "WE'VE GOT TO HAVE A LITTLE MORE NOW. We're going to have to be living down there in an apartment, paying for all our food and no place to get anything. You guys are going to have to fork over a little more!" We had to stay in hotels at first and eat all our meals out, so we had to go up to $300 a month, think of that!--And I think we were still a bargain!
52. NOW WE HAVE A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF PEOPLE ON OUR FAMILY-WIDE BUDGET! We call it "budget" as we don't like to associate it with "payroll" like it's a secular job or wages. We don't pay wages, we just pay expenses! We ask a Unit, "What do you think it's going to cost you to live?" And they give us an estimated amount and then we try to give them that if we can. And if they can get along on it, fine; if they can't, they tell us they need a little more. But it's better than being on the payroll, it's better than being on a salary, because it never runs out!
53. WHEN I WAS ON A MONTHLY SALARY, WE WERE ALWAYS BROKE BEFORE THE END OF THE MONTH AND NEXT PAYDAY AND NEARLY STARVING BEFORE WE GOT OUR NEXT CHECK! But with the Lord and living by faith and just asking God for our expenses and that's all, just what we need, we've never run out yet! We've never borrowed a nickel, never actually gone in the hole, never run out of what we really needed! In fact, you can look around you and see that you've got a lot more than even your needs! You have luxuries! You've got everything you want, literally!
54. I CAN'T EVEN THINK OF ANYTHING I NEED! I wear the same clothes about every day, I don't eat very much, so what do I need?--Just a place to live. And we've probably got the smallest, humblest rooms here! I told the kids this morning, "Well, it's real crowded, we have to sleep in narrow beds, but it's like living in a trailer! We're campin' out!" I don't know how John and his girlfriends manage to make out on that little single bed off the kitchen there, but he seems to do pretty well! Apparently he's got it, so they like it! God bless'm! They get it whether they like it or not! PTL! (John: It's your influence!) Ha! He's blaming it on me! Well, I'll agree to that! You have a sexy leader because we have a sexy God and He made it all and expected us to enjoy it! TTL!
55. MY GOODNESS, I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO SPEND ABOUT A HALF-AN-HOUR JUST GIVING YOU ANNOUNCEMENTS, BUT I HAVE TO TELL YOU THE HISTORY OF THE WHOLE FAMILY FINANCES! I don't think I've ever given the Financial History before though, have I? (Fam: No!)
56. SO FINALLY WHEN I WAS DOWN IN TENERIFE I HEARD JETH WAS RIDING AROUND IN A MERCEDES BENZ and living in style in a fancy villa and the money was pouring in in France, the converts were pouring in and the forsake-alls were pouring in and he was having an income of thousands of Dollars! So I said to Mama, "Well, I guess we ought to at least get our expenses, we'll up it to $500 a month!" And it was costing us that! I never asked for more than we needed, just barely what we actually had to have to live on!
57. OF COURSE, THERE WAS ONLY MAMA AND ME THEN, NOBODY ELSE. These children here are to blame for all of you folks! There was nobody but Mama and me living in hotel-apartments, hotel rooms, and fixing most of our own meals after we ran off the room-&-board of the tour. We got a one-month tour to Tenerife because it was so cheap, you got a round-trip fare and a hotel room and three square meals a day all paid for in advance! I figured that was a good idea because I didn't know how we were going to pay for all that after our month ran out. The tour was great, we were living in style for a little while, but come the end of the month, we began to look around for another place to live where we could do our own cooking!
58. GOD BLESS MAMA, SHE'S A GOOD LITTLE COOK! She can cook hamburger steaks, mashed potatoes and string beans--providing they come out of a can! (Maria: I just follow "Kim in the Kitchen"!) What's "Kim in the Kitchen"? (Maria: It's the children's little recipes that we publish.) Come on, you didn't even have that yet! But I can remember when we were back in Texas and we'd moved back into the Cruiser again, that was our first home. We left Huntington Beach in that Camper, Mama and I and Mother Eve, and finally when we came back to Texas we moved back into that Camper again, which was the cheapest place for us to live and the most secure place, because we could move around and hide!
59. I CAN REMEMBER DEAR MAMA SITTING THERE ON THAT BACK BED WITH HER COOKBOOK! The kitchen and everything was all together, and she was sitting there studying this big cookbook and trying to figure out how to cook this next meal! (Maria: It was my salvation!) She did great, she can cook! She did fine! She even learned how to use a pressure cooker and things like that! Of course, I had always been a good breakfast cook, cooking my own breakfast, and I wouldn't even trust anybody else to cook. I don't think I ever trusted anybody else to cook until John came along!
60. (MARIA: I DID MAKE YOU SOME PANCAKES!) Yes, at the Girasol Hotel down in Tenerife. Girasol means sunflower. Yes, she did! I got a hankering for some of those old Swedish pancakes my Mother used to make. They're sort of like cheese blintzes. You put yogurt and strawberries inside of them and you roll them up! (Family: Ooooh!) I can hear some people here that must have gotten up a little late and missed breakfast or you wouldn't be drooling at the mouth like that! Ha! Well, I'll quit pretty soon and you can go eat lunch! (Hope: You give such good descriptions!) Hope can cook too, let me tell you, she's a good cook, and Sara's a good cook! Every one of the girls that came along had to be good cooks, and finally we even started getting men who were good cooks!
61. BUT UNTIL WE STARTED HAVING THIS GREAT BIG BABY HERE (DAVID)--HE'S BIG NOW, HE WASN'T THEN--WE DIDN'T NEED ANYBODY ELSE! We could just live in a cheap little room and eat a couple of meals a day, breakfast and lunch in the room, and even one hot meal out every day someplace. It was interesting and it was cheap, especially down there. Wasn't it, Mama? But then David came along and that changed the whole picture of our economy! You were our first luxury, Son! We decided we were going to have to have a little bigger apartment with an extra bedroom. Everything so far had been one room. Remember the Cliffhouse? It was right on the edge of this cliff and you could see the whole city before you! It was beautiful! It wasn't a very good place for a baby boy toddling around, but he wasn't even born yet. But we decided it would be a good place to maybe have a baby and we got that first.
62. THEN WE DECIDED WE'D NEED SOMEBODY TO HELP TAKE CARE OF MAMA AND THE BABY, we'd need a maid, and we hired Elaine, an English nurse, God bless her, the one that I had the dream about, "Which Way to Ellensburg?" and "The Wizard of Ahs!" (See Nos. 1231 & 517) (Tongues and weeping:) "This one still loveth thee from afar and this one is still thine in her heart, this one still loves her Father!" Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL! Amen, thank You Lord! Well, that's encouraging! Isn't that wonderful? I think for one or two years afterward we did get Christmas cards from her for awhile. She did love us, bless her heart, and no sex involved either. At that time we were a little more conservative.--Not that I didn't try, but anyway!
63. SO AFTER THE CLIFFHOUSE WE FINALLY FOUND A NICE LITTLE HOUSE UP IN A LITTLE VILLAGE CALLED LAS CUEVAS. That's where Sara and Alf first came to us to help us. Elaine had run off with this handsome Spanish rich boy and we kind of had to leave her behind. So we needed somebody and we decided we should send for a member of the Family who knew about babies and how to deliver them and whatnot. Sara was World Director of Childcare for awhile, or she became that, so we got dear Sara to come help take care of this new baby! And of course she had a husband, dear Alf, we couldn't leave him behind, & he turned out to be a very valuable member of our staff as well!
64. SO WITH THIS COMING BABY OUR EXPENSES BEGAN TO INCREASE AND WE HAD TO GET BIGGER HOUSES. We had to not only have us, but we also had to have personnel to take care of the babies and us, and we had to have a secretary. Dear Sally Scribe was one of our first fulltime secretaries, God bless her. She started out in London. But she didn't live with us in Tenerife, she was living in another Unit, and we even had security where she didn't know where we lived and we only knew where she lived!
65. WELL, I DIDN'T INTEND TO GIVE YOU THIS ENTIRE LONG STORY, BUT AS OUR FAMILY GREW, OUR EXPENSES GREW! Maybe the Lord is trying to tell you how good and thankful you ought to be!--How here at Christmas He's the One that's really giving the presents to you, instead of you to Him. You can be very thankful, therefore, and thank the Lord for those 3 or 4 extra hours sleep you had this morning, even if you did miss breakfast! It wasn't my fault! If you didn't get up early enough to eat breakfast, don't blame that gnawing hunger in your stomach right this minute on me! You preferred sleep to eats!
66. SO ANYHOW, TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT, IT JUST GREW AND GREW LIKE TOPSY, "SHE JUST GROWED"!--Our Family grew and our children grew and the expenses grew, houses grew, bills grew, everything grew! But the more our expenses grew, the more our income grew, thank the Lord! The Lord never fails! He promises to supply all your need according to His riches in Glory! (Phil.4:19) So as our needs have grown, our blessings have grown too, and we have a lot to be thankful for this morning, including a few hours extra sleep! Lord help us, I've been here an-hour-and-a-half already just talkin'. But that's my style! I don't know what else to do but just sit here and talk to you about all kinds of crazy things! So praise the Lord anyhow!
VACATIONS!
67. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR NEXT CHRISTMAS PRESENT FROM THE LORD? Well, I guess it's from me, the Lord gives it to you via me! I thought, my oh my, our people have never had a vacation! I doubt if there's anyone in the whole Family that's ever had a vacation since they've joined the Family! How many of you have ever had an entire week off, since you joined the Family? Let me see your hands! (Only two hands are raised!) How many years ago was that, Honey? (Fam: 13 years ago.) And you h! (Makes walking motion with his fingers!) Sleep in as long as you want every morning!
68. SO HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THAT FOR YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT? You can start counting the days off now! (Sings:) "The first day of Christmas I slept till 10 o'clock, till 10 o'clock, till 10 o'clock, da, da, da, da, da! The second day of Christmas I'm going to sleep till 11 o'clock!" It's an old Christmas song, you know? You can have eight days of Christmas, from today through January 1, New Year's Day! How would you like that?--A week's vacation! Sleep in as long as you want. In fact, you don't have to come to breakfast at all! Look how much money we'd save if they'd sleep instead of eat! No, really, that wasn't my motive, but that was an encouraging second thought! Ha! You can miss lunch too if you want to. After all, the Arabs only eat one meal a day and it's about the size of your fist!
VACATION FOR WORKAHOLICS!
69. SO DO YOU THINK YOU CAN SURVIVE A WEEK OFF AND NO WORK DONE EXCEPT NECESSARY WORK? Of course, that'll take most of your time anyhow! Somebody's gotta cook, somebody's gotta wash dishes, somebody's still gotta take care of the babies and change diapers and do the washin'! The papers keep coming in and going out no matter what happens! Time and tide and literature wait for no man around here! We still have to have literature for the Family every week and it seems like all you paper-pushers aren't going to get much time off! But at least you can sleep in later in the morning, and you can take a little time off helping to cook, do dishes, clean house and take turns carrying the babies! (Maria: At least they won't feel guilty if they want to take a nap!) (One of the boys: Amen!) Ha, ha, ha!
70. OUR PEOPLE ARE WORKAHOLICS! I mean that Chain must have really drilled it into you that you've gotta be working every minute, night and day! Well, Mama and Peter know I've always been the guy that's been pushing for more time off, haven't I? I used to insist they have Saturday and Sunday both off, but Mama said, "My goodness, we'll never get everything done if we have Saturday off! The papers keep coming and going, we can't give all the typists Saturday and Sunday both off!" So she's the slave driver, not me! (Maria: That's right, don't blame it on Dad, it's not his fault.) She's the one that's pushing and pushing those papers, it's gotta get done, God bless her! Praise the Lord!
71. SO A WEEK OFF, HOW'S THAT? You can spend the week thinking of how many things you don't have to do, or how many things you can get out of doing! "Well, Dad said I had the day off!" So how about a whole week off and doing nothing but work that absolutely has to be done? (Everyone laughs!) I noticed you were laughing the loudest, Son! He knows that we don't do anything that doesn't have to be done anyhow! Everything we do has to be done, so praise the Lord!
72. WELL, ANYHOW, TRY! IT'S WORTH A TRY! You don't have to get up for breakfast, you don't have to be at work at any certain time. You don't even have to show up for work at all in the morning if you don't want to, just sleep in, as long as you're willing to miss breakfast. As long as it doesn't have to be done. Is that fair enough? (Fam: Yes, Sir!) As long as there's no work to be done and you don't have to do it, you can knock off the whole morning, and you only have to do work that you think really needs to be done. And anything you can skip, you can skip and take a nap instead.
73. DON'T FEEL GUILTY ANY MORE, SON! JUST GO AHEAD AND TAKE THAT NAP WHEN YOU FEEL TIRED, THAT'S WHAT I DO. I figure the time to sleep is when you feel tired. Well, of course some of you guys are like my Daddy used to say about me, "Son, I think you were born tired!" He got sick of hearing me say, "Oh, Dad, I'm too tired to do that! I'm too tired to do that right now!" He'd say, "Mow the lawn, boy, clean up the yard, empty the trash!" "Oh Dad, I'm too tired!" He'd say, "I think you were born tired!" Well, it's paid off! Because I'm so lazy I keep trying to find shorter, easier ways of doing things and trying to keep these guys from working too hard. I wouldn't want to do it, so why should I let them do it that way? So we do the shortcuts! It may not look pretty, it may not look like a work of art like Adam would like to do!
74. WHEN ADAM FINISHES A JOB IT'S A WORK OF ART! He does beautiful work! He's not just a workman, he's not even just a skilled workman, he's an artist, and he wants to make everything look beautiful! No matter what he's building, a table or anything else, he can spend weeks at it! I had to kind of shorten the time because he likes to make it beautiful! I had to talk to one of you other guys too about these people that want beautiful desks. They can just get along with something that's not quite so beautiful as long as they've got something to work on, because we haven't got time for all that!
EVERY DAY IS THE LORD'S DAY!
75. ALL RIGHT, THAT'S YOUR OTHER CHRISTMAS PRESENT, and my goodness, I thought I'd only be here half-an-hour! I really didn't have the strength for this! Let's see, did I have another Christmas present for you? I might have a little Christmas present for some of you girls, and you might have a few Christmas presents for me! But the main One Who's going to get the Christmas presents from us is the Lord, praise the Lord? And whatever you do, you do it as unto the Lord! Whatever you do, do it with your might and as unto the Lord! (Ecc.9:10)
76. OUR WHOLE LIFE IS A CHRISTMAS THE WAY THE LORD GIVES US GIFTS! And our whole life is spent in giving gifts to the Lord, not only on His Birthday but all year long! PTL!--So that we don't celebrate the Lord's Birthday just once a year, we don't have one day a week that we call "the Lord's Day", every day is the Lord's Day! That's what my Father used to say and I've stuck to it ever since! Every day is the Lord's day!
77. EVERY OTHER RELIGION BUT OURS HAS A CERTAIN SPECIAL WORSHIP DAY THAT THEY CLAIM IS THE DAY WHEN YOU OUGHT TO WORSHIP. For the Muslims it's Friday, for the Jews it's Saturday, Christians it's Sunday. I don't know who has Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but I'm sure there must be somebody. Oh, that's us! We have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday! Every day is the Lord's Day! PTL! So let's make it a whole year of Lord's Days!
"WHAT SHALL I GIVE THEE, MASTER?"
78. WHEN CHRISTMAS COMES I'M ALREADY THINKING ABOUT THE NEW YEAR, and every time I meet with you I always wonder if this is going to be my last time. Not that I'm necessarily going to die, although that might happen too, but I'm hoping I'll last till the Lord comes now under our new schedule, our new interpretation, the "What If?" series. (See No.2211) Could be!
79. BUT A LOT OF TIMES I'VE BEEN WITH PEOPLE AND THEY DIDN'T REALISE IT WAS THEIR LAST MEETING WITH ME, and by the next meeting I was gone somewhere else! We had moved and disappeared suddenly, and we never tell people when we're going to go, it's bad security. When we vanish, you will never know it until you just miss us and we're gone! There was an old song about "When I'm gone, then you'll miss me!" When we leave it's usually because of security for some reason. Sometimes it's just for a little while and we come back; other times it's for good, we never come back! You come to us instead!--Usually, right?
80. SO WHEN YOU GET NEAR THE END OF THE YEAR YOU START THINKING ABOUT WHAT HAVEN'T WE DONE? We know we've done a lot, but what haven't we done that we should have done? It's kind of like an old song we used to sing, "What Shall I Give Thee, Master?" I don't know if I can remember all the words or not. Isn't that good that song came back to me after so many years? I don't think I've sung it for years, but at least a few of the words came back.
81. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT JESUS' BIRTHDAY, AND WHAT COULD WE GIVE JESUS', ANYHOW?--Buy Him presents at the store? How ridiculous! I don't know where this custom came from of buying each other presents on His Birthday and neglecting Him altogether! At least in our church, when we were in churches, on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, whatever it was, we usually had a church service at which people brought either groceries for the poor or took an offering for the poor, and in that way you are giving to the Lord. Because the Lord has said that "he that fed or gave to drink" or whatever it was you did, "unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me"! (Mat.25:40)
82. SO WHAT THE FAMILY HAS BEEN DOING TO HELP PEOPLE HASN'T JUST BEEN TO THOSE PEOPLE, BUT IF YOU DID IT IN THE RIGHT SPIRIT, YOU DID IT AS UNTO THE LORD! PTL! "Whatsoever you do in word or in deed, do all to the glory of God!" (Col.3:17, 1Cor. 10:31) He said "If you have done it unto the least of these My brethren"--a lot of them may not have been brethren, but they're brethren now, and sistern too--"you've done it unto Me!"
83. SO IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT TO DO FOR JESUS, THANK GOD, MOST OF YOU ALREADY KNOW, THAT'S WHY YOU'RE HERE! You're not just giving a few Christmas presents to the Lord, you're not even just giving baskets to the poor one time a year, you're not just taking an offering for the poor--none of you guys have any money anyhow--but it's gone out as "bread on the waters" and crumbs and bits of food to the thousands, and the Lord has multiplied it until it has fed literally millions! Come New Years Day, Peter is going to give you a report on what we've accomplished this past year, and we have really accomplished a lot!
84. IF GIVING THESE POSTERS AND TAPES, OR EVEN SELLING THEM OR WHATEVER, HAS NOT BEEN GIVING TO THE POOR MATERIALLY, IT HAS BEEN GIVING TO THE POOR IN HEART! It is given to the poor to be rich in spirit! (Jam.2:5) It is given to the rich to be poor in spirit, sad to say. He said that He filled the hungry hearts, but the rich He hath sent empty away! (Luk.1:53) Those who have rejected Jesus, who thought they were so rich they didn't need the Lord, went away empty-hearted. But if they received the Lord, they received the greatest riches anybody could ever receive!
85. SO YOU'RE THE RICHEST PEOPLE ON EARTH, AND HE'S THROWN IN ALL OF THIS TO BOOT! PTL! You received Him, and like Solomon asking for wisdom, he got everything else besides, because with wisdom you have the wisdom to get everything else! And the Lord will bless you for having wisdom to preach the Gospel. That's wisdom! (Pro. 11:30) Our Family is very wise, giving Jesus to those souls!
86. AND ALL OF YOU HERE ARE DOING IT ALL THE TIME TOO, BECAUSE WHATEVER YOU DO, YOU'RE DOING IT ALL FOR THE LORD! You live your whole life daily for the Lord and for others, because you're helping to make this whole worldwide ministry possible! With every Poster that is given out, a part of you is in that Poster, because without you there would have been no Posters. With every tape that is distributed, there's part of you in that tape, because those tapes wouldn't have been possible without you. With every piece of literature that is given out, you're going with that piece of literature, because it was your work here that made it possible! If you hadn't cooked and scrubbed floors and washed toilets, taken care of babies, cooked meals, typed, did repairs, whatever you did, it wouldn't have been possible for the people to be here that are responsible for the Word that we get out to the World!
87. EVERY ONE OF YOU HAVE A PART IN EVERY PIECE OF LITERATURE THAT GOES OUT TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, AND HAVE A SHARE IN EVERY SINGLE SOUL THAT'S WON! You're like the folks that stood by the stuff! God's Word says that you'll share equally with those that go forth to the battle! (1Sam.30:24; Psa.68:12) So your reward is going to be just as great as all those people out there on the front lines peddling papers and tapes and Posters and witnessing and litnessing and tapenessing and going door-to-door and office-to-office and whatever it may be! Your share in the souls won is going to be 50/50 with them, in every soul won, because they couldn't have done it without you! PTL?
88. EVERY SOUL WON THAT RECEIVES THE GOSPEL THROUGH ALL OF THIS AND OUR MINISTRY, even the least of them, it's been done as unto the Lord, because of love of the Lord, and because the Lord loves them, right? So that's your Christmas present to Jesus! Every one of you are giving a Christmas present to Jesus every day. In every job you do, you're making it possible to give the Gospel, God's Word, to millions of people, and millions of souls are getting saved!
89. REMEMBER I TOLD YOU THAT WE WERE GOING TO GET OUT MILLIONS OF THOSE POSTERS? --MILLIONS FOR THE BILLIONS? Some people kind of thought, "Big expensive colour Posters like that--millions of them? That's going to run up into millions of Dollars!--Just in printing and getting out there in the Field and distributing and all the rest!" It costs money! All those Homes cost carfare, footwork, it costs room and board! They're labourers, reapers who are reaping down the fields! It costs literally millions of Dollars a year to get that Word out to the billions!--But we're doing it! We've already pubbed over 16 million Posters & gotten out over a million tapes!
90. MAYBE YOU THOUGHT, "WELL, LORD, WE TALK ABOUT THIS BEING YOUR BIRTHDAY, BUT LIKE THE OLD SONG GOES..." (Sings:)
"What shall I give Thee, Master?
Thou Who didst die for me!
How can I give less than give of my best,
When Thou hast given all to me!
What shall I give Thee, Master?
Thou Who didst die for me!
How can I give less than all of my best,
I must give all to Thee!"
Hallelujah! Praise You Jesus! Thank You Lord! Lift up your voice and give Him praise right now! (Family praises!) (Dad, tongues) Hallelujah! TYL! TYJ!
91. THE DAY CAME WHEN I DECIDED I SHOULD GIVE ALL TO THE LORD--THE LORD HAD DONE MORE THAN ALL FOR ME! And when I gave my all, I encouraged you to give your all, and we've given our all to the World in order to give it to Jesus! We've given them our lives, our love, laid down our lives for them, some of our FFers lay down their bodies for them and their very lives to give the Lord's Love to the unsaved. PTL? You have given yourself to the Lord! If you have given yourself to someone else in the Love of the Lord, then you've given yourself to Jesus! PTL? (Sings:)
92. "WHAT SHALL I GIVE THEE, MASTER?"
Thou hast given all to me!
How can I give less, than give of my best
When Thou gavest all to me!
What shall I give Thee, Master?
Thou Who didst die for me!
How can I give less, than all of my best!
When Thou hast given all to me!"
--That's what Jesus did, He gave you all! PTL? So how can I give less than all of my best, when Jesus gave all for me! Thank the Lord, you're giving all for Him too! PTL! Amen! TYJ! Hallelujah!
93. WHILE YOU WERE PRAISING THE LORD THE LORD WAS PRAISING YOU FOR GIVING YOUR ALL TO HIM: "These have given all to Me! These who have given all to Me shall receive in abundance many times over what they have given, and they shall receive reward beyond their comprehension, and beyond all that they could ask or think shall I give unto them when they are come into My house!" Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL! Amen!
94. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE LORD HAS STORED UP FOR YOU! It's been Heaven on Earth already! Like the old lady said, "Even if there was no Heaven, I've had a wonderful time getting this far!" We couldn't have had any more fun and pleasure and everything than God has given us! The Lord's been so good to us! But He just said that He's going to give you more beyond what you can even imagine! He's laying in store rewards and treasures and things for you beyond your wildest imagination!
95. SO ALL THIS, AND YET HEAVEN TOO, THINK OF THAT! My, the Lord is so good to us! Even if we never got any further than this, it's been worth it! PTL! It's been wonderful just getting this far. The Lord couldn't have been better to us, we've just had everything, we have everything! I don't think there's a person here that can think of anything that you don't have that you really need! Anybody here that needs something you haven't got? Come on now, let's be honest! Are there any of your needs that haven't been met? You say, "Well, my wife didn't make love to me last night" or "my roommate didn't give me as much love as I wanted!" Well, maybe you wanted too much, I don't know! Maybe you didn't need that much! Most of us get more than we need, the Lord is so good to us!
96. I GAVE ONE WIFE TO THE LORD AND LOOK HOW MANY HE GAVE ME BACK! PRAISE GOD! When I was growing up and a teenager, skinny and ugly and quiet and studious, there weren't really any girls that liked me. They wanted some big husky bruiser that played football and that kind of junk! But I gave my life to the Lord and now there are literally thousands of women who love me and would like to make love to me if they could!
97. WELL, I SAID, "I'M JUST GOING TO TAKE A FEW MINUTES AND MAKE A FEW ANNOUNCEMENTS", AND HERE I'VE BEEN TWO-AND-A-HALF HOURS!--And I felt better every minute, thank the Lord! See, you just do what the Lord wants you to do and He'll give you the strength and He'll do the job! I thought, "Well, Lord, what am I going to talk about? I haven't had any great revelations lately, I haven't had any special messages, about all I've got to make is a few announcements!" It's a good thing I'm not the guy that makes the announcements in church! Anyway, thank You Lord! (Sings:)
98. "WHAT SHALL I GIVE THEE, MASTER?
Thou Who didst die for me!
How can I give less than give You my best
When Thou hast done all for me!
What can I give Thee, Master?
Thou Who didst die for me!
How can I give less than give of my best
When Thou didst give all to me!"
--PTL! I think we got a few of the words right, but that's the general idea!
99. MAYBE THAT CAN BE OUR THEME SONG FOR THIS COMING YEAR, AMEN? Let's give of our best to the Lord, and that's giving gifts to the Lord and even our praises are gifts to the Lord. "Offer unto Him the sacrifice of praise" (Heb.13:15), meaning a gift, an offering to the Lord of praise, and that's giving to the Lord. To praise the Lord and thank Him for all His gifts is giving to the Lord! And giving the Gospel is giving to the Lord, and giving to the poor is giving to the Lord! There are so many things! Giving out the Word is giving to the Lord!
100. WHATEVER YOU DO FOR SOMEONE ELSE IS GIVING TO THE LORD, because that's what He would rather have you do than anything else, is help others, give out the Word, get folks saved, new citizens for the Kingdom of God and new inhabitants of Heaven! We're helping to fill up all that empty space Up There! He doesn't want any vacancies! PTL! So if we don't get done in this era, we'll get done in the next! I'm already planning the Millennium, how we're going to do things there, and I've given you quite a bit of that. I don't know whether I'll get inspired to give you any more or not, but I gave you a pretty good idea what the Millennium is like! From all I can read in the Bible and all I can tell from what the Lord has predicted, the Earth is going to be a lot like it was when I was a kid!--Back to the Future!
101. THAT'S A GOOD TITLE FOR THE MILLENNIAL SERIES, "BACK TO THE FUTURE", BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT AMOUNTS TO! The future is like the past in the life of this World, and the Millennium is going back to the Heaven on Earth that used to be before Man messed it up! So praise the Lord, let's go back to the Future! Amen?--Travel in time! We're travelling in time already, praise the Lord! TYJ!
102. ALL RIGHT, TIME TO QUIT! Nobody said anything! Boy, if I'd've been in church there would have been a louder "amen" than ever! Anyhow, that's my Christmas Gift for you! PTL! Have the cooks got anything for you to eat? What's cookin', good-lookin'? (Fam: Chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes and...) Wow! Don't say any more or you'll have water running out their mouths! We don't want to dirty up the floor! So I'd better quit! Shall we pray? Just grab ahold of the hands nearest you! PTL! TYL! Hallelujah!
103. THANK THE LORD FOR A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS! I didn't feel like coming in here, but I said, "Mama, I've gotta be with them for Christmas!" I haven't missed many Christmases with you, have I? I think I missed my own birthday last year because we were moving! I was so busy packing, we had to leave the next morning, I didn't have time to come to my own birthday party that night! You had a birthday party that night for me, but I wasn't there! Well, we're having a Birthday Party for the Lord today and He is here, thank the Lord! But I didn't want to miss being with you too! I gave you enough in one day, that ought to last you a few weeks now! I might see you on New Year's Day!
104. LET'S STAND UP AND JOIN HANDS! GET CONNECTED! This is a little custom we started at the Light Club, and I notice now a lot of Christian groups are doing it all over the World, joining hands when they pray, and they never did that before in church, never! I mean if you shook hands you were doing well! (Maria: We were scared to touch each other!) Joining hands for prayer looked too much like a spiritual seance! One guy came back to his house where we were staying and we were just sitting around the table with our hands joined having closing prayer, and he stormed in, a businessman, and said, "What is this? Some kind of a spiritism seance?" I said, "Yes!--With the Holy Spirit! PTL! Do you want to join us?" And he finally cooled off when he realised we were just having prayer! PTL! Well, we have seances too, but we won't go into that!
105. AMEN, I KNOW OF NO BETTER PRAYER THAN THE LORD HIMSELF TAUGHT US TO PRAY! It's part of our Family liturgy, if you want to call it that, and it covers everything! Just don't say it as a form, don't just have vain repetitions or for your much-speaking, and don't use the Name of the Lord in vain! When you pray it, think of Jesus and pray to Him and the Father! And don't get so late coming in on the prayer that you pray to the "witches in Heaven" instead of "Our Father"! I say "Our Father", then everybody else says, "witches in Heaven"! So please join in on the first word! Your cue is when I say, "So let's pray the prayer the Lord taught us to pray"--cue! (Prays the Lord's Prayer)
106. IT'S ALL HIS, AMEN?--THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER AND THE GLORY!--AND BECAUSE IT'S HIS, HE'S GIVING IT ALL TO YOU! TYL! SO YOU'RE GIVING IT ALL TO HIM! PTL! So that's your Christmas present for Jesus! Do you think that would be a good title for this, Mama? "Our Christmas Present for Jesus!" I never even thought about that, but that's a good idea! I never think about things until the Lord gives them to me, and I didn't know what I was going to say to you today! I probably said too much, but anyway, that's just me! You can blame whatever was not good on me, and the rest you can give credit to the Lord for! PTL! Hallelujah! I love you!
107. TYL! BLESS AND KEEP US TODAY AND GIVE US A GOOD DAY OF REST AND FELLOWSHIP AND EVEN FEASTING, LORD, ON ALL THE GOODNESS YOU'VE GIVEN US! Bless the dear girls who have worked hard to prepare the meal, and those who will work hard to clean it up, and all those who work hard to keep the yard looking beautiful and useful, Lord, and those who work on Thy Words, our main job, and teaching the children, all these many ministries! Everyone here is a minister of Thine and in some kind of ministry. Bless it and make it a blessing, in Jesus' name! Amen! PTL!
108. WELL, I'VE ALREADY KISSED ALL YOU GIRLS, BUT I CAN KISS A FEW MORE! How could I resist? I don't want to resist! Come on, girls! It says "Kiss the Son!" It doesn't say the Son should have to run after you to kiss you! (Girls come running!) Now I'm getting my Christmas presents! I love you! (Dad kisses all the girls again and has his picture taken cheek to cheek with each one!) It looks like this is going down in history! This is better than a handshake, isn't it? I'll bet most of those women that shook the preacher's hand would like this! Hallelujah! What a church! The preacher's giving his handshakes! God bless you all! It's two o'clock and we've gotta quit! PTL! Everybody looks so beautiful and you all look happy and I know you won't go till I go, so I gotta go! Are you boys happy too? If you're not, the girls will now make you happy! I love you all!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
