HomeARC ML 2268
HOME AGAIN! 31/8/86--The New Heaven's Children!--Chapter 19! ML#2268
1. PRAISE THE LORD! THANK YOU JESUS! Hallelujah! Amen!--Yes, there it was, right below us, our old Latin American homestead in the mountains, looking almost as good as it did before we left it!
2. WHEN WE HAD FIRST FLED FROM THE CITY during the Tribulation & found this hide-away in the hills, it had stood idle & unoccupied for some time, & so was in a terrible mess! Most of the grass, trees, flowers, etc. looked like they were already dead, & the rest dying for lack of water. But we were so pleased with its size & location & housing facilities & cheap rental that we took it anyhow, envisioning what we might be able to make it look like, with a lot of hard work.
3. MY MOTHER & I USED TO TAKE OVER PLACES LIKE THIS as we moved about the country from home-to-home in our evangelistic work & many changes of pastorates & schools & fields, etc. Because we had vision for what could be done to a place with a little time & labour & fixing up & prettying up, we had taken many an old, dilapidated house or apartment at very cheap rental, & then had fixed them up so nicely, even the owner hardly recognised them! It's wonderful what you can do with a little paint & fixing here & there on the house & a little water & gardening on the yard!
4. SO AS THINGS GOT HOTTER IN THE CITY because of the urban guerrillas & criminal gangs who were so easily persuaded to follow the Antichrists, & we had been warned of the Lord to flee, we had desperately been looking for just such a place where we could not only hide away to continue our work, but even do a little farming to feed ourselves in the emergency.
5. IT HAD A GOOD SOURCE OF PLENTIFUL WATER & was located out amongst the good Christian well-behaving country folks in a rural area near a small village where we could buy plentiful country produce without returning to the dangerous city. So we struck a bargain with the owners for the rent, & it really was a bargain, despite its neglected condition! We settled & paid the rent & sent a team in even before the day of occupancy to start cleaning up, which in these poorer countries is sometimes quite a job! The natives don't seem to fear the bugs or the rats or the varmints as much as we do!
6. SO THE FIRST THING OUR CLEAN-UP TEAM DID WAS TO CLEAN IT OUT GOOD & spray it good with insecticide & rat poison, not only spraying the bugs' usual habitats, but also the floors & carpets & cupboards & even the furniture--especially the upholstered furniture. It's amazing how dirty a place can get just standing idle & unoccupied for so long without maintenance or constant care. But the owner was very kind, & even sent her helpers to assist us with the clean-up.
7. THE FIRST DAY OUR TEAM CLEANED UP MOM'S & MY QUARTERS & then moved in there themselves for the night after they were sure it was rid of all varmints, & stayed there for the next couple days while they cleaned up the quarters for the rest of the Family. Then our clean-up team moved into the larger household & domestic staff's quarters & vacated Mom's & my quarters so that we could move in, which we promptly did--a place that the Lord had absolutely designed for us, although it had been built many years before as a mountain retreat for its owners & their younger children.
8. BUT AS WE HAVE OFTEN FOUND TO BE TRUE OF SOME OF THESE LARGE, OLD PLACES that the owners had expected to live in forever with their children, the owners had grown old & the children had married & gone away & they were left alone in a huge house, far more than they needed or could take care of. So they moved to smaller quarters themselves & rented out their big old home to others. But although it had had some other renters before us, each one had only stayed a while & then moved to some more easily accessible location because of the remoteness of the place.
9. BUT AS WE DID NOT HAVE A BUSINESS OR A JOB IN THE CITY, the place was perfect for us, thank the Lord!--A real mountain hideaway for God's Own children, where we could continue to work for Him & feed the Family right up to the End! Then after we all got finally moved in & settled, we began the big job of really improving the place for our safety & comfort & convenience, including the many necessary repairs, additions, alterations & improvements.
10. THE GROUNDS HAD SUFFERED THE WORST from lack of care & water for so long, until many of the flowering shrubs, bushes & trees looked like they were dead & gone forever! Many of the shade trees were leafless & even looked lifeless! But we began to water anyway & soon the brown, dead-looking grass sprang to a beautiful lush green carpet, to our astonishment! The "dead" trees sprang to life & began to leaf out & turn a gorgeous green & the garden came back to life, & it was such a wonderful transformation--you might even call it a resurrection! We were all absolutely amazed at what a little water can do, or rather a whole lot of water! Just like the water of His Word can revive the seemingly dead lives of His children, if they'll only drink it in so that they will again become beautiful & fruitful! So, although everything looked dead or dying, all it needed was water to become productive again. (John 7:37,38; Rev.22:17)
11. WAS THAT YOUR PROBLEM IN THOSE DAYS? Did you neglect the Word & dry up & become unfruitful & following afar off? But at least you were following, & most of you only needed a little more water, or a lot more Word to bring you back to life again & make you beautiful & happy & fruitful for the Lord in those last awful days on Earth!
12. ACTUALLY, IN THESE LOVELY LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES far from the long arm of the awful laws of the Antichrist, here only the great cities had become an abomination, as many of them became infiltrated by his poisonous doctrines & evil followers! But out here in the country things really seemed hardly changed at all! The poor peasants are living on the land as they always have for generations, with plenty to eat, produced by their own hard fruitful labours, & at peace with each other & God, due to the absence of the greedy rich of the cities & the criminal elements which thrive in those filthy places!
13. SO OUT HERE WE WERE FREE OF THE CONTAMINATION & POLLUTION OF THE STINKING CITY, both physically & spiritually, & these country people were far more deeply religious & kind & helpful & faithful to one another, believing firmly in God & the Bible & His Son Jesus, & many faithfully attending church as well, as that was the only kind of religion most of them had heard of, Church!
14. HOWEVER, THERE WERE ALSO GROUPS OF TRULY SAVED BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIANS in this country, due to the faithful labours by missionaries, including our own. So many of these had risen in the Rapture along with us when we left. (1Th.4:16-17) This great mass departure of the Saints had been a mystery to many, but to those who had heard our message but had either rejected or procrastinated & delayed their decision, put it off until too late, they understood what had happened & explained it to the ignorant, so that most people were soon aware of the reasons for our Great Escape! Even the antichrists were furious at our having eluded them at last forever! Some of the unreceptive had hardened their hearts the more, & even joined forces with the Marked of the Beast.
15. BUT MANY OF THOSE TO WHOM WE HAD WITNESSED who had merely put off their decision, then realised their mistake & were sorry & repentant & even afterward received the Lord in their hearts! They'd missed the Rapture & had to suffer through the Wrath of God upon the wicked, but were allowed to survive, thank God, on into the Millennium, to now join us & help us with our great task of worldwide evangelisation & rehabilitation!
16. SO EVEN THOUGH THEY DIDN'T ALL RECEIVE THE LORD when we were speaking to them, the Lord Himself reaped a great harvest of souls during the Wrath after we were gone, whom He then blessed by permitting them to live on into the Millennium to join us. So now many of these native Saints from before & after the Rapture are now working here on Earth as part of God's Government & participating in the clean-up & reconstruction & resettlement of their own country, as well as its evangelisation.
17. SO IT TAKES ALL KINDS TO MAKE A KINGDOM & to run it, & there's plenty of work for everybody, whatever your talent may be! Our job had been producing the printed & recorded Word for the World & God's Family everywhere around the World. That printed Word had been so effective in winning so many souls for the Lord before we left, & even the scraps of it remaining after our departure had found their way into the hands of many who then appreciated them for the first time, really, as they dug them out of their drawers & desks & bookcases to read them with renewed & fascinated interest, as they then realised that they were true & the only answer that could give them life & help them endure the hard days through which they were living & dying.
18. SO NOW THAT WE HAD FOUND THAT THERE WAS STILL A GREAT NEED FOR THE PRINTED WORD to reach all & leave with them for its continued feeding & regenerating effect, we had come back here to see if we could still find any of our materials existing, in order to revive their use again.
19. SO OUR HEARTS BEAT WITH HOPE AS WE FLEW DOWN to meet the familiar faces below us, the helpers of the landlady who had come out to meet us, who, having heard from Heavenly sources that we were returning, had come over to clean up things once again for our use, including some of our own Heavenly Saints who had heard we were coming & had come to help us get settled. We were amazed at the beautiful condition of the place & were thankful that God had helped us to "make it strong" (see Chapter 18, par. 34), so that when we did leave, it was left strong to withstand in our absence.
20. OUR LANDLADY, though a formal church member, had never truly been saved, &, as a result, had been left behind in the Rapture, although a good woman & very kind to us. We had witnessed a bit to her, but due to the selah nature of our particular Home & the very high risk of identification through too much witnessing, we had been unable to have much outreach personally. So that although our Word work had helped tens of thousands to win millions, we ourselves personally were very limited & proscribed in our own personal witnessing, so that we had been handicapped & restricted in our witnessing to our own neighbours.
21. SO IT REMINDS ME OF WHAT WAS SAID OF JESUS AS HE DIED ON THE CROSS, "HE SAVED OTHERS, BUT HIMSELF HE COULD NOT SAVE". (Mat.27:42) Although we had literally saved millions through our own feeding & helping & encouraging & leading our own precious Family, nevertheless we had been very cautious in witnessing to our own neighbours. They all knew, of course, that we acted like Christians & showed them love & consideration & were helpful to the poor, nevertheless we could not come on too strong as a selah Home, lest they recognise & identify us with you-know-who!
22. NOW, THANK GOD AT LAST WE'RE FREE! We are the Government & we can do as we please & witness to all without fear, thank the Lord! So we're looking forward now to revealing who we really are to our precious neighbours & making sure that they all get saved, one of our motives & inspirations for coming back here, for we felt that we really had failed some we might have won if we had dared be a bit bolder! Are you sorry that you didn't do all you could to save your neighbours? Well, thank God, now we can!
23. WELL, ANYHOW, OUR LANDLADY, when she & her helpers found that the place had been vacated, did not know whether we had simply fled to some higher altitude & more remote hiding place as things got worse, or if we too had disappeared in that great Heavenly event of the Rapture which was now apparent to many!
24. WHEN WE HAD FLED TO THE CAVE WE HAD LOCKED UP THE PLACE behind us as best we could, hoping that somehow some of these things might be preserved & weather the storm, & that we might even have opportunity to return, not realising that it would be some time after the Battle of Armageddon before we would be able to come back here, after peace & order had been restored & the cleaning up of the mess the war left behind, & the beginning of the reconstruction, rehabilitation & resettlement of many. Among these events was our own resettlement & rehabilitation in Heaven itself, thank You Jesus! But now that we had found time to come, the Lord had permitted us to return & see what we could do.
25. SO WHEN THE LANDLADY FOUND THE PLACE VACANT, she had sent some of her helpers over frequently to make sure that everything was alright & secure & maintained, hopeful that we might return again soon, since the rent was already paid & the place was still technically ours for some months to come.
26. WELL, IT HAD TAKEN A FEW MONTHS, BUT HERE WE WERE AT LAST! Thank You Lord! We were thrilled to find it was still in very good condition, safe & sound, & had not been attacked by the evil forces of the Antichrist from the city! It was still surrounded by its good peaceful farming neighbours who had scarcely been affected by the storms in the cities, nor the earthquakes & hail & hell which God had rained on the evil wicked city-dwellers!
27. OUR DEAR POOR PEASANT NEIGHBOURS were still living as they always had--poor in the eyes of the World of the city & its lush wealth & extravagance, but rich in the eyes of God in that they had plenty of all their needs--food & peace & love & consideration for each other, which is the greatest wealth anyone could have outside of Salvation. "It is given to the poor to be rich in faith"! (James 2:5)
28. SO WE FOUND THAT EVERYTHING WAS ALMOST EXACTLY AS WE HAD LEFT IT, thank God, including all of our precious, priceless Word materials which we had packed away & hidden in strongly-locked closets & cabinets & even secret places before we left. Even our Word equipment was still safe & sound, packed away where we had hidden it all. And to our delight we still had electricity, since this was one of the places which was still fed electric power from its hydro-electric generators at a distant dam! The water-powered generators were still in operation & had not been damaged during the Wrath, thank the Lord!
29. GOD IS SO MERCIFUL & SO THOUGHTFUL & SO WONDERFUL IN HIS PROVISION for His children, & He had seen to it that it was guarded by His Angels & nothing that we needed was damaged, all that we needed was still here, even electricity for operating our Word machines & still plenty of water from the deep natural wells of our nearby village.
30. SO WE MOVED RIGHT IN & GOT SETTLED IMMEDIATELY, since there wasn't much to move in, it was already here where we'd left it behind in the Rapture, as you can't take it with you! But praise God, you can come back to it, if you've served the Lord & are blessed by Him & have a need for it in the future, as we have now!
31. THANK GOD WE DIDN'T HAVE ANY LUGGAGE, so we didn't have to do any unpacking, as our new miraculous, supernatural Heavenly linen-like robes of light need little changing except for variety, & these miraculous, marvellous bodies need little eating, except for pleasure!
32. SO AFTER A DAY OR TWO OF REST & recuperating & reorientation, we were ready to dig right into the work of the Word, as we are servants of God & His Son, Jesus Christ, King of kings of this now great worldwide Kingdom of God, & there's a world of work to be done, to revive our literature for reuse here in the Millennium! Thank You Jesus! Only now we have lots more help than we ever had before & are much freer & more powerful to do it with an unlimited supply of resources! Of course we had that before too, but we didn't always have enough faith to take advantage of it for all things. However, the Lord certainly had helped us accomplish a great deal, even in our former Earthly bodies & other physical material conditions.
33. BUT NOW WE HAVE SO MANY NEW ADVANTAGES--unlimited strength, supernatural powers, no sickness, no great weariness, no needs to be concerned about as to whether they could be met or not, an abundant, unlimited supply of everything, as well as all the forces of Heaven to help us, & all the evil forces of Hell in Hell with the Devil & his demons!
34. ALL OF OUR FORMER ENEMIES WERE NOW GONE & there were only a few pockets here & there on the Earth of resistant rebels who were still rejecting the love & mercy of the Lord, but were causing very little trouble, & nothing we couldn't handle, & none near here, thank the Lord, as this had been such a good country to begin with, full of lots of good people who had faith in God & His Word & His Son Jesus, although so many still unsaved because they did not know that it only took faith to save them, & were trying to work their way to Heaven by church attendance & being good & going through endless ceremonies & repetitious prayers to try to save themselves. But now we're all free to tell them the good news of Salvation by faith alone! Thank You Jesus! God bless you! Do your best!--Have you?
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
