HomeARC ML 1662
EVENTUALLY--WHY NOT NOW?--Live on Less! DFO 1662 11/83
1. WE'RE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SAVE MONEY & WHAT TO DO WHEN THE CRASH COMES, & THAT'S QUITE A COMPLICATED PROCESS! We're trying to start now. All the countries in the World that have been living on borrowed money & borrowed time, now they've got to pay the fiddler! The World Bank & the IMF are now dictating their internal national policies & telling them what to do & how to run their governments & how to run their economies, just exactly what the Protocols predicted, telling them exactly how they're going to have to save money & cut down on this & that & the other & the wages they're going to have to pay & the prices, virtually dictating everything--policies, prices, wages, governmental policies, everything!
2. THE [EDITED: "ACS"] HAVE ALMOST GOT IT RIGHT WHERE THEY FINALLY WANTED IT!--And of course the countries deserve it because of the way they've borrowed so promiscuously & recklessly, as though it was going to go out of style or something! Well, it has gone out of style & now they've got to pay the price.
3. SO ALL THESE COUNTRIES ARE HAVING TO REALLY TAKE STRINGENT AUSTERITY MEASURES. That's a big word, children, meaning they've got to be careful about how much money they spend & they've gotta try to save more money & learn to live on less!--And we'd better start now because it's coming soon! We've got to learn how to live on less right now & start preparing for it.
4. I HAVE GOOD NEWS, RELIEF IS COMING! That's the last GN you're going to get for awhile, God willing! (Maria: That's not good news at all!) That's the end of Book 16 & 17, the new combo Double Edition we're putting out for Christmas with eight signatures--512 pages that we have put out in, it's amazing, what a short length of time! We've also finished a big giant {\ul \i Index}, the {\ul \i BOF}, the {\ul \i FN Specials}, the colour Poster & the {\ul \i WND}!
5. HOW MANY OF YOU KNOW WHAT THE {\ul \i WND} IS?--It's not windy me, believe it or not! Well, somebody tell me! (Family: The World News Digest!) Do you like it? (Family: Yes!) It's the cheapest little thing we get out & the easiest thing we get out! When we reach 64 pages, that's it!--We slam it shut, shoot it, & they just throw it in the next mailing, whatever it is. It will fit any mailing, just throw it in, & that way they get it real quick. We've got another one ready already! Of course, those are not required reading & you don't have to read them if you don't want to. We're not going to make any corrections, because if there're any mistakes, they made'm, not us! But if you do happen to read'm, we enjoy your comments, or if you have any suggestions.
6. SOMEONE ELSE GETS THE CREDIT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL LAY-OUTS & ALL! He's made a thing of beauty out of it considering the way I used to slop it up & James used to slap it together. James gets the laurels & the credits for bearing it for a good many years, but he's got other more important work to do now so we've taken that layout job off of his hands. The only thing he lays out now is some of the girls!
7. ANYHOW, IF YOU FELT KIND OF RUSHED TRYING TO READ ALL THIS SUDDEN DELUGE OF {\ul \i GNs}, IT'S GOING TO BE THE END FOR AWHILE & YOU'LL HAVE AT LEAST MAYBE TWO OR THREE DAYS OFF! The reason this thing stacked up like this--I've said this before I think--is because we start one GN on a certain theme, then we get some other theme. We were working on the "Heavenly Colour" edition, & then the Lord dropped the "Heaven's Girl" dream right in the middle of it all & we got started on that! So here we're working on two GNs at the same time, & like I said before, sometimes they come to the finish line about the same time till we've got two books instead of one, which is what happened this time.
8. I KEEP ALMOST SWEARING I WAS GOING TO CUT THEM DOWN TO ONLY TWO OR THREE SIGNATURES EACH, & INSTEAD WE WOUND UP WITH EIGHT SIGNATURES THIS TIME! But it took the little simple WND to really show us that if we could just close the book at 64 pages we could get out a little quick easy one like that about once a week, easily. Whereas we get started on this Book & then we put some more in that one, then more in this one & have even three sometimes going at once! This new way would just be a hodge-podge conglomeration, miscellaneous soup, & the minute we reach 64 pages, shut the book, shoot it & print it!
9. THE {\ul \i GN} STARTED OUT AS A LITTLE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER--BUT IT WOUND UP A MONTHLY BOOK INSTEAD! Well, we're just about deciding to go back to the original plan to try to keep it moving. The only thing is we can't have a nice big thick book & a fancy binding. In other words, we're right back about where we were in the early Letters when you got just a little tiny thin package of Letters. And during the security scares & economic scares & whatnot they were just about the same size as the GN, weren't they?--But not so many. We'd send you just a few of these Letters in one envelope each month or every few weeks or whenever we got them ready, & we got along fine then, didn't we?
10. BUT THEN WE HAD A LITTLE PROBLEM THAT EVERYBODY WANTED THEM IN BOOKS, because a lot of people missed this & they missed that & they wanted to preserve them in books. So then we had to reprint the whole thing & bind them in these big expensive books that cost us thousands & thousands of dollars. So by trying to sort of baby everybody & pamper everybody & give them these fancy books, we have really, what I would consider, wasted a lot of money on what amounts to a luxury.
11. TO PRODUCE ONE {\ul \i GN} BOOK IT TAKES ABOUT A MONTH, & if we produce two & they're going neck-&-neck, we're actually not saving any time because we can only produce so much at a time. It just means that we have saved up two GNs for two months, that's about what it amounts to, & some of that news is that old!--In fact, a lot older than that from the time we first started really processing it.
12. OUR FAMILY HERE IS A TEST CASE, BECAUSE IN A WAY, THAT'S THE WAY YOU ALWAYS GET YOUR {\ul \i GNs} & VERY FEW OF YOU GET THE FINAL FINISHED PRODUCT. You've got that big mess of little Xeroxed 64-page signatures which you have to put up with. But are you getting by? What do you do with them to try to keep them together? I put rubber bands around mine, around each book of signatures. Are you managing to survive that way? You're a good test case because that's all you get! We can't get big packages of printed material in the mail. The bigger the package the more it slows it down & they want to know what's in it or they want to inspect it or charge duty or it gets delayed in customs, things like that. Therefore we here don't get very many of the actual finished, beautifully-bound, printed Books.
13. WE FIGURED THAT AT LEAST WE WERE GOING TO SAVE REPRINTING THEM IN VOLUMES & THEY COULD HAVE A NICE LITTLE SHELF FULL OF BOOKS! They're going to have about 17 of them now--in fact, they've had more GNs than that--but since we went to this book form, we've now had about 17 Books besides the various other formats we tried before that, beginning with the big tabloid newspaper-size GNs. Those were our first GNs & they looked sort of like a newspaper, only 18 pages. Then we tried this size & that size & we kept cutting down until we finally wound up with a little book-size which worked out very practically, pocketsize & easy to carry.
14. YOU FOLKS HERE HAVE ACCESS TO THE LIBRARY & THOSE NICE LITTLE PRINTED BOOKS, BUT FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL COPIES, ALL YOU'VE GOT ARE THE SIGNATURES. Are you managing to make do with them? Do you think you can survive? (Family: Yes, Sir!) Do you think you'll be able to preserve those even if you move? Dead silence!--Ha! Well, probably if that happened you'd have to forsake-all & take the printed books, three copies of each for the Family Library.
15. (SARA: YOU KNOW THE {\ul \i KIDZ MAGS}, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT ARE PRINTED ON VERY THIN PAPER? We just bind 6 or 8 copies at a time, the boys do it in just a few minutes. They put a big staple through it & put tape around it & they've held together just fine. If you needed to bind your own, like the WND-size book, it would be real easy.)
16. HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE SEEN THE FIRST PRINTED COPY OF THE {\ul \i WND}? I mean, it is so thin you could stick it in an envelope & somebody would just think it was a letter! And that's the way we're now planning, God willing, to do the GN!--Maybe I'm boasting before I put my armour on instead of putting it off (1Kg.20:11), but that's the way we're thinking of trying it! That way it will move along faster, get there sooner & the news be fresher than letting it stack up into four, five, six or eight signatures. And that way we're not going to be able to put any fancy doodads on it, no fancy bound cover. With a good stapler I think they could easily staple four of them together themselves or figure out some way to bind them or preserve them. They could probably bind more than we bind in one Book, or get somebody to bind'm for them. We've had binding classes in the FN time & again.
17. IT'LL SAVE US LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS & DAYS & WEEKS OF TIME, & we are still in, you might say, a financial emergency--because the whole World is in a financial emergency! There's a severe Recession that's getting worse all the time, coming into a Depression which will wind up in the final Crash, or the End of the Crash. It's been going on a long time, it's just kind of going like that. Of course as I told you before, any time it stops going down so fast & just levels off a little bit they say, "Oh, Recovery!"
18. DID YOU KNOW THAT BANKS ARE FAILING IN THE U.S. RIGHT NOW AT THE RATE OF ONE A WEEK?--That's Recovery? But they're trying to play it down, hush it up & not make any big news about it, scare headlines like those which brought on the Great Crash of October 29, 1929, Black Monday--because then there were no brakes, there were no safety measures. But the banks are failing, the businesses are failing one right after the other, big corporations are going down. It's on the financial page every day, but they're trying to tone it down now & they don't have as much publicity.
19. THESE ARE THE BIGGEST FAILURES THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN! This is actually coming to the greatest Depression they will ever know, & yet they're trying to hush it up & quiet it down! The only headline news they put up is: "Recovery! Slight gain in this! Slight gain in that! Not diving quite as fast in this!" That's the headlines. The bank failures & business failures they put in that little column with little tiny squibs down at the bottom, giant corporations that are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt & have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in even the first quarter or last quarter of the year, whatever it is. This is the third quarter now that they're reporting. Businesses failing right & left!--Mostly because they over-extended themselves, borrowed too much money & they didn't make as much as they thought they were going to make, so they can't pay their debts & they go broke!
20. I NOTICE THEY DON'T CALL IT BANKRUPTCY ANY MORE, THEY DON'T EVEN CALL IT GOING INTO RECEIVERSHIP. They say that "Such-&-such a company has filed for Chapter 11 of the Banking Code" or something, some nice name they've got for it now, because they don't want to scare the people with the words "receivership" or "bankruptcy." Those are those old scare words that frighten people. They don't want to wake the people up! "Let's keep the public asleep, don't let'm know what's happening. Keep'm calm, otherwise it may result in political turmoil & upset!" (Family: They always say: "Such-&-such a bank closed for two days while negotiating with other big banks that are buying them.")--Yes, & you can imagine who runs the big banks!
21. THEY'RE GETTING CONTROL OF EVERYTHING BY EVERYBODY ELSE GOING BANKRUPT! They literally tempted & deliberately even persuaded & sold a lot of these companies & banks & countries on borrowing too much money--it was all in the Protocols exactly what they were going to do--until they couldn't pay it back, so they take over! That's exactly what they did in the Great Depression, the big Crash then, & it happened in Miami two years earlier, in 1927.--And there it was notorious that it was the big [EDITED: "AC"] bankers who did it! There was a crazy land boom where the price of a lot would be $1000 one night & $10,000 the next morning, so speculators were coming down by the thousands from the North & just borrowing money any way they could right & left to buy property fast so they could cash in on this big boom.
22. THEN ALL OF SUDDEN THE BIG BOYS IN THE BIG BANKS BEGAN TO CALL IN THEIR LOANS & THINGS SLOWED DOWN. Actually it was the beginning of the Depression, but it hit Miami first because it was a case of an extreme real estate boom. So they began to insist that they get their money back, & when they didn't get it back, the boom tapered off, the market slowed down, they couldn't sell the property & the price of property began to take a nosedive. The guys that borrowed money to buy it couldn't pay it back, so the banks just foreclosed on property by the droves until the big [EDITED: "AC"] banks just practically took over Miami!
23. [DELETED] But you see, it's the fault of those old-fashioned Southerners themselves for borrowing too much money from those [EDITED: "ACs"]! Then they got to where they couldn't pay it back & the [EDITED: "ACs"] just took it. They just took it. So it hit Miami two years before it hit the U.S. nationally.
24. WELL, THEY'RE BACK AT THE SAME OLD GAME NOW, BUT THE MAJOR DIFFERENCE IS that they've put all kinds of credit controls & supposed banking controls & financial cushions & government laws so it's practically outlawed Depression. They were going to make it impossible to have another Depression by instituting all these banking rules & all these deposit guarantees, etc., but the only problem is, it was the Federal Government that was making the guarantees, that "If the banks fail, we'll pay!" It never dawned on the people that the Federal Government, the big governments of countries, could also go broke!
25. THE U.S. IS ALREADY BROKE, IT'S JUST CONTINUING WHAT AMOUNTS TO FORCED BORROWING FROM THE PEOPLE, HIGH TAXATION & COUNTERFEITING! They print millions of dollars that they don't have any backing for whatsoever & it's just as worthless as the ones that the criminal counterfeiters print. As I've told you before, the penalties for counterfeiting are much more severe than they are for murder in some States, because it's a Federal offence & the Feds really get'm. The Federal Government wants an exclusive monopoly on counterfeiting & doesn't want any competition!--Although their money isn't worth any more than counterfeited money, nothing to back it.
26. WELL, I'M JUST TELLING YOU WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE WORLD. How many times do I have to say it? The World is not going bankrupt, it's already bankrupt, but they're just trying their best to hide it! What I'm trying to say is this, the Crash is inevitable, & I've been saying it for years, it's just a matter of taking its course. One nice thing about it, the governments want to keep the people asleep, & they don't have too hard a time doing it because the people don't want to wake up! They like to be asleep, they don't want to know it. They're just shutting their eyes hoping it will somehow go away, but it won't.
27. YOU SAY, "SO WHAT? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO US?" Well, it means that as the World economy goes down & things get worse, that means that money is tighter & it's harder for our Family to have income. People in the United States now are really bad off. They've got soup lines & soup kitchens & the people are actually not getting enough to eat. There's terrific unemployment. If there's the slightest little slow-down in the unemployment they have big headlines right away: "Unemployment is up one-tenth of one percent! It's up!"--Meaning it's up from where it went down. You'd think the economy was dying from improvements, like the old lady! That story fits the economic situation perfectly. How many of you heard that story? You all remember that one so I don't have to tell you, right? (Techi: I don't remember it!)
28. WELL, THE OLD LADY WAS VERY SICK & SEEMED TO BE DYING, BUT EVERY TIME HER HUSBAND ASKED THE DOCTOR HOW SHE WAS, THE DOCTOR SAID, "OH, SHE'S IMPROVING, SHE'S IMPROVING!"--That means she's getting better.--Till finally she died. So then some neighbour asked the husband, "Well, what did she die of?" He said, "Well, according to the doctor, she died of improvements!" She died of getting better!--According to the Doctor! That's typical of the World economy.
29. ACCORDING TO THE WORLD ECONOMIC DOCTORS, THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER! In spite of how bad they're getting, they're getting better, they're improving, the World's not dying quite as fast now. Every now & then some little tiny grain or drop of encouragement, some little tiny speck or ray of light makes headlines!--Whereas all the bank failures, business failures & countries going bankrupt don't make very much news! People don't want to hear that kind of bad news, they want to hear the good news & it's kind of hard to find.
30. YOU SAY, "WELL, THE LORD CAN DO MIRACLES, HE CAN KEEP OUR INCOME UP!" Well, I don't know that I have the faith for God to save the World economy just for our sakes when they deserve it, any more that I have faith that He'll spare the World from a major war just for our sakes. I think He's been delaying it as long as He can for our sake so we can be prepared for it & get ready for it & get our job done, our work done, but sooner or later it has to come.
31. HE PUT OFF ISRAEL'S DESTRUCTION FOR YEARS DUE TO THE PRAYERS & REPENTANCE OF VARIOUS KINGS & PROPHETS & PEOPLE, ETC., BUT FINALLY THEIR CUP OF INIQUITY WAS FULL & HE'D HAD ENOUGH & HE COULDN'T SPARE'M ANY LONGER. So He told the Prophet & anybody that would believe him to get out & save themselves as He had to destroy it. He did that with many a nation. Well, we got out of the nation most likely to get destroyed & most likely to get destroyed first & most, the U.S., & we're in a part of the World which probably won't feel the shock of it as badly as the industrialised North & West.
32. BUT THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING TO FEEL THE EFFECTS, & A LOT OF OUR FAMILY SUPPORT STILL COMES FROM THE NORTH & THE WEST, SAD TO SAY. God bless them! Thank the Lord for those who are still there in Europe & America--if they can't be missionaries at least they're really trying to heavily support the missionaries. But the time is coming when they won't be able to do that any more, & we have to prepare for it now!
33. NOW WHICH IS BETTER?--FOR US TO GO ON PUBLISHING THESE LUXURIOUS BOOKS? You say, "Well, they aren't very luxurious compared to what we used to publish." No, thank God we've come down quite a bit. I call it the wind-down. We have virtually hit the top already & I don't expect anything much more. Of course, I said that at the end of '78 in France after coming back from Malta. (No.766.) I said, "Well, I guess this is it, we hit the top & we can't do much better!"--And we've done a whole lot better ever since! Every year's been better!
34. BUT I DON'T KNOW THAT I CAN HAVE THE FAITH FOR THE WORLD SITUATION TO IMPROVE. The Lord Himself promises it's going to get worse, so finances are going to get worse & harder. Family income has already been tapering off. Thank the Lord it's held fairly steady for about the past two years, & although we've had to cut checks frequently, one reason we had to cut checks is because we probably set our original figures too high.--Like the old darky & the five-dollar-bill. Any of you remember that story? (Techi: No.) You didn't hear about that one? Well, every generation's got to have the good news at least once, you've got to evangelise every new generation! So here goes!
35. WELL, THERE WAS AN OLD COLOURED PORTER ON THE TRAIN, & THE ENGLISHMAN GOT ON THE TRAIN & THE PORTER HELPED HIM WITH HIS BAGGAGE & MADE UP HIS BUNK. Then the Englishman took out his wallet & said, "What's the average tip, Son?"--And the old [EDITED: "porter"] saw his opportunity. The average tip in those days was about 50 cents for such service, but he said, "Oh, $5 boss, $5!" So the Englishman sort of slowly pulled a five out of his wallet & handed it to him & said, "Doesn't that seem a little bit high?" And he said, "Well boss, you's the first one what's come up to the average!"--The "average" tip. Ha! He set his sights pretty high!
36. WELL, WE JUST HAVEN'T QUITE COME UP TO THE AVERAGE TO KEEP PAYING SUCH HIGH CHECKS TO UNITS. Our income has not been what we estimated it might average, but it's stayed steadily below that so that we've had to keep on cutting checks almost every month. So I said, maybe we'd better just set our sights a little lower & our budgets a little lower & tell'm this is it, because that's all we get & that's all you're going to get! That way we wouldn't have to make it sound like we were being defeated every month by having to cut checks 5 or 10%. Just tell'm, "Well this is the income & that's as much as we can pay."
37. SO THE LORD HAS BEEN VERY GOOD TO US & IN SPITE OF WORLD RECESSION FOR THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, OUR INCOME HAS STAYED FAIRLY STEADY AT ABOUT THE SAME FIGURE, THANK THE LORD! But with the same amount of income we have probably accomplished more & more every year & I never saw the like of what we're doing! It's amazing! But the Crash is bound to come, & if it affects the World, it affects the nations, it affects the countries where our people are & it's going to affect their income. That is bound to come. Therefore it is going to affect World Service income & how much we can produce & what we can pay for.
38. SO WE'RE NOW TRYING TO PREPARE AUSTERITY MEASURES--SAVING MEASURES, IN OTHER WORDS--& FIGURE OUT HOW TO LIVE ON LESS, HOW TO CUT DOWN. And all that to say this, our new idea for cutting the GN is one of them--perhaps not so much the quantity or the flow, but the luxury of the form. In other words, no more fancy little Books with fancy colour plastic bindings, etc. You'll just get one little 64-page GN at a time just like the WND--no cover, no binding, no nothing but a staple. The first page will be the cover. Well, we put a nice little cover on the WND, but it's just a paper cover, the same kind of paper we print the whole thing on, & a 64-page signature that can be run on one press in one run, not bound, nothing!--Just folded & stapled, that's all!
39. BUT WHO KNOWS?--THE LORD MAY KNOW THEY NEED TO GET'M QUICKER & FASTER, & they'll be so small & so tiny they can stick'm in a shirt pocket or almost anywhere, not even as big as the Books. Maybe the Lord's trying to teach us greater security. That size you can just slip in an ordinary letter envelope & the post office wouldn't know the difference between that & an ordinary letter.
40. SO MAYBE THE LORD'S TRYING TO TEACH US ECONOMY & TO GET RID OF SOME OF THIS LUXURY WE'VE BEEN ENJOYING, TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE & THE CRUNCH & PINCH THAT'S COMING, AS WELL AS TO PREPARE FOR IT SECURITY-WISE. So we're going to try it, God willing. Book 16 & 17 is the last Book we're going to put out. That'll be their Christmas gift, a nice big Double Issue, & that's it. From now on we're going to do with the GN just like we do with the WND, we hit 64 pages of material & we slap it shut & get it printed very easily, simply, quickly & throw it in the next mailing, whatever it is. It's so small they can stick it in any mailing, or if necessary, send it out in a special mailing.
41. BUT ANYHOW, THE DAYS OF LUXURY ARE ABOUT OVER, I'VE WARNED YOU OF THIS BEFORE, & that is one of our austerity measures that we are going to put into effect now regarding the GNs, God willing. Actually, we're not much different from where we started on them, in fact not much different than where we started on the Letters. That's how big they were & that's the way we put'm out in almost the beginning of our printing days, so they could be put into letter envelopes & sent out like an ordinary letter. In fact we still call them Letters, but the Letters have turned into Books!
42. SO WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT? ARE YOU GAME? (Family: Yes!) Well, you have the advantage of having to suffer that already since you just get yours by signatures & you have to bind them or tie them together any way you can. Remember when we finally got the GN down to Mag size, we went around & found binders that you could clamp'm into, 10 or 12 Issues in a binder? So the Family can buy binders.
43. THEY'RE EITHER GOING TO HAVE TO BIND THEM THEMSELVES OR FIND SOME KIND OF BINDER, BECAUSE WE JUST CAN'T AFFORD TO PAY FOR IT ANY MORE! They were never bound in the beginning until we started putting out those Books, & that Book business nearly sank the ship!--Tens of thousands of dollars for those Books which could have been better spent instead of having to reprint all the Letters all over again. Think of that!
44. WE MAY HAVE GOTTEN OUT OUR LAST DIARY TOO! Thank the Lord for that! We showed'm how to divide the pages so they could make it last either two or three years, depending on how small a column they write in, & I have reduced it even further than that. For the past year-&-a-half or almost two years I've been keeping my whole Diary on the Monthly Summary pages, believe it or not, where there's just one line for each day, the length of the page. I go to all the trouble of dividing the day into hours from six o'clock in the morning till one o'clock at night--my usual hours--& in only about half-a-centimeter wide spaces I can put some code or abbreviation or something into that little space & on that one line & write two lines. In an hour's time I don't do much that's significant that I can't write it into a space a half-a-centimeter wide!
45. IT'S KIND OF HARD FOR YOU GUYS THAT NEVER LEARNED TO PRINT MICROSCOPICALLY, I REALISE THAT! Okay, you can be luxurious in your flourishes & your penmanship, but you're going to have to go down to the dime store & buy yourself a nice big diary that you can flourish in all you want to!
46. BUT I HAVE LONG AGO LEARNED TO ECONOMISE! I used to take my textbooks in school, & because I was kind of slow & thorough, I just had to analyse everything. I not only underlined the most important things in the paragraphs--that's where we started our underlining, when I was in high school, junior high in fact--but in junior high school I started captions in this way. I would put out in the margin on each page--just as big as the margin was--about four or five lines in microscopic print summarising what was on that page.
47. SO WHEN I HAD TO STUDY FOR A TEST IT WAS SIMPLE! I'd just go through & read my underlinings & my little captions & I had the whole thing summed up! But that took time, it took thorough study & I had to figure out how to abbreviate everything & how to sum it all up in a little summary--I shouldn't say caption, it was kind of a little summary on each page. I would get that material from just looking at the underlinings, & then I'd put that little summary up there. And that made it so easy for me to then review & prepare for a test. I mean, anybody can get 100 that way!
48. BUT IT WAS MORE WORK WHILE I WAS AT IT! The other guys would just sit there & skim through & read the chapter & not remember a thing that they read. Then they'd have to go back & review it & they'd have to read it all over again because it was all the same maze of text. So I learned a long time ago how to economise on space. I guess a lot of that comes from having to travel so much, you learn how to economise on packing & even on writing.--Although maybe you don't think so from the length of these GNs you're getting & how many you have to read!
49. BUT ANYHOW, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO ECONOMISE & IF YOU THINK WE CUT YOU DOWN ON SPACE ON THE LAST DIARY, YOU OUGHT TO SEE THE WAY I KEEP MINE UP! Before we left South Africa I took out that whole section on daily pages. I figured, "Well I don't have room to carry all this dead weight around!"--So I just ripped it out! I just cut out all those daily pages, the whole works, so my Diary's down to a little thin thing like that! All I have in there is the Monthly Summaries--on which I write a whole day's activities, one line each--& the Alphabetical listing where I've got names & addresses & mostly just abbreviations. There's one of the main space-saving things, in the Alphabetical Listing I've got all my abbreviations listed & all my signs & symbols so that if I ever have to go back & read it myself, I can interpret it!
50. THEN I'VE TAKEN THE YEARLY SUMMARY PAGE & IT IS ALREADY ABOUT AS BOILED DOWN AS FAR AS YOU CAN GET, EACH MONTH & THE WHOLE YEAR SUMMARY ON ONE PAGE! I keep it just like it is there & all the blank spaces are for outstanding events of that month. I mean, how many more outstanding events can we have than about 8 or 10 in one month that are really worth remembering & jotting down? By the time the year's over, I've got such a record of that year, I could throw away my Monthly Summaries! Everything of importance that's happened that year is just on one page! So I can wind up in the long run with the only amount of a Diary that I need to keep on 12 of those pages, one page for each year, 12 months on each page! And so far I've got my Diary like that, one page to the year, since 1974! I didn't keep a Diary before that for a long time.
51. I BEGAN IN '74 IN TENERIFE PRIMARILY TO KEEP DEAR MARIA'S FF SCORE--WHICH KEPT ME QUITE BUSY KEEPING SCORE! God bless her! She was the pioneer, bless her heart! Look at that brave pioneer! She pioneered one of the greatest ministries we have today, which has turned out to be one of the greatest protections, provisions, supporters & influences, thank the Lord, & one of the most fruitful in soul-winning! TYL!
52. BUT ANYHOW, I NOW HAVE TEN PAGES FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS & on any move where I didn't want anybody to find my Diary, I could stick those ten pages in my shoe or in my sock & I wouldn't lose any vital information that I really needed to keep. That's economising!--Not only in money, but in time & space. The thing that got me started on that was every time at the end of the month or each day I'd have to copy everything right off the daily pages onto the daily lines in the Monthly Summaries. I looked at those Daily Summaries there & the Monthly Summaries, & I thought, "Well, what do I need more than this? Why should I have to write it twice? Why should I have to write it into columns on the daily page, a whole page divided into hours & not much written in there at that, when I could just keep up the lines in the Monthly Summaries alone?"
53. YOU SAY, "WELL I CAN'T DO THAT!" Well, see, I do my writing & my spouting & my ranting & raving or whatever you want to call it in the Letters, so I don't have to write my life story into my Diary like maybe you are doing. So maybe you do need a little more space than I do. Everything else that I ever thought or said or have written about is in the Letters. And of course those are quite a few Volumes, I didn't save any space there, I'm sorry. No, I'm not sorry, I'm just sorry for you!
54. BUT THERE'S JUST A LITTLE IDEA ON ECONOMICS & ECONOMY & HOW TO SAVE TIME, SPACE, PAPER, PACKING SPACE & EVEN GET BETTER SECURITY! The smaller it gets the better! I think the average investigator or customs man or whoever it might be that ever opened my Diary would look at that microscopic scribble that they can't even understand anyhow even if they could read it, & would just slam the thing shut in despair & say, "Forget it!" It would take a master cryptologist to figure it out! I'm about the only person that can understand it. Well, nobody has to read my Diary, even Maria. After all, she's living with me every day, she knows what I do, so she doesn't have to read my Diary.
55. ALL I REALLY KEEP IT FOR IS A RECORD. I especially like to know different little things like temperature each day, what the weather was like--I have symbols now for all these things so they don't take up much room at all--& what I did each hour, what time I ate, what time I swam. Any important events I usually put a little headline in & circle it so I won't forget it & can transfer that to the Yearly. It's not hard to do that way, & look at the space you save! You wind up with just one page for each year of your life!
56. OF COURSE, I ALWAYS LIKE TO KEEP A RECORD OF MY LOVE AFFAIRS & ALL THAT SORT OF THING, BUT IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH SPACE FOR THAT EITHER! I have an initial or a symbol for each one of you girls & insert the symbols for what we did & how many times & all that sort of thing. So that's very easy too. But I don't think you could even read it, you wouldn't even understand it. So woe be to the poor person who ever tries to read my Diary after I'm dead!--Especially when I'm going to wind up throwing away all the Monthly Summaries & have nothing but Yearly Summaries, only one page for each year! At least it wouldn't take very long to read it, a lot less time than it took to read my life story.--Of course, that has occupied Volumes!
57. SO WE NEED TO CUT DOWN, WE NEED TO SAVE, WE NEED TO ECONOMISE, WE NEED TO CUT EVERYTHING TO THE BONE OF ABSOLUTE ESSENTIALS & NECESSITIES that we cannot do without, & cut out the luxuries & the little fineries & things which the Lord has let us enjoy for awhile. "The days of this ignorance He winked at, but now He calls us to repent" (Ac.17:30) & get busy & try to economise & save money & prepare to live on less & austere measures that will help us to survive!
58. THE TROUBLE WITH SOME OF THESE BIG BUSINESSES & RICH PEOPLE & the reason they were jumping out of windows during the '29 Crash, was they lived in these big huge mansions & were used to living high & they couldn't stand the thought of having to be poor! They'd rather jump out the window than face having to be poor! They would rather not survive!
59. WELL LISTEN BROTHER, I'D RATHER SURVIVE! I'd rather keep on working for the Lord even if it's on a shoestring!--That's the way I started & that's probably the way I'll end! "Why Dad, how could you say such a thing? You mean you're planning your own demise, you're planning your own failure? You're planning your own collapse? You're planning the decline of the Family?"--No, I'm just planning to survive as the World declines, & as therefore Family income declines, & therefore our ministries decline because we can't afford'm, except what they can do locally. Do you understand?
60. YOU SAY, "WHAT A PESSIMISTIC OUTLOOK! UP TO THIS TIME WE'VE BEEN GROWING & BOOMING & THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER & BETTER EVERY DAY IN EVERY WAY! EVERYTHING'S GETTING BETTER & BETTER!" Well, I'll tell you, we've about reached the limit now & things aren't getting better now. Have you noticed how the Family population has stabilised?--And our income has pretty well stabilised--thank God it hasn't started going down yet! The number of Homes has declined because there are more Co-ops now, more people in a Home, which is good. That's preparation for economy, preparation for the squeeze & the bottom falling out of the Crash. The more people living together the more economically you can live!
61. YOU SAY, "I THOUGHT YOU WERE AGAINST BLOBS!"--NOT ON THE MISSION FIELD! Blobs really work on the mission field where you have as many different kinds of ministries & support represented as possible & you can cooperate together & work together & do a better job as a Co-op.--As long as they don't get too big & keep you busier taking care of yourself than you do of your work!
62. BUT ALL OF THESE THINGS HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER & WE HAVE TO PREPARE NOW! IF WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT LATER, WHY NOT NOW?--That good old Pillsbury Flour slogan which you probably never even saw or heard of! It used to be on every sack of flour, that was their slogan, & they built a whole big business of it & with all that ballyhoo & advertising! They not only made their flour sacks out of dress material from which you could make nice cotton print dresses afterward, but they had on there: "Eventually--Why Not Now?" It's funny, I almost always get the title at the end of the story! That's a good title for this one!
63. EVENTUALLY WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT, WHY NOT NOW? LET'S DO IT NOW! We might as well do it now & get used to it & get the Family used to it, like this side of the World is used to it. They've been so poor for so many millenniums, they don't know anything else. They won't even know there is a collapse! The whole present World capitalistic economic system could collapse & this guy living in his little shanty or his little hut on his tiny piece of farmland won't know the difference! He's always had his one or two little animals & his little farm & his little hut & his little family & he lives from hand-to-mouth & grows his little crops, so unless the Lord does something to the weather, his life's just the same. All he does is live to feed himself & survive.--As long as he hasn't gone into some other kind of business, some luxury business of some kind or demanding too many luxuries.
64. I USED TO LAUGH AT SOME OF THOSE BIG FIELDS IN CALIFORNIA. It didn't matter whether it was just a little tent sitting out there--the migrant workers in the middle of a big lettuce field around Salinas, & around Los Angeles you can probably see them too, tens of thousands of acres of lettuce with little huts, shacks & tents for the migrant labourers--but I hardly ever saw one that didn't have a TV antenna sticking out!
65. NOW OF COURSE IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE A PEASANT OR A PEON ON YOUR PARCEL OF LAND & INSIST ON HAVING A TV, WELL THAT MIGHT BE A LITTLE PROBLEM! But you don't really need TV to survive, especially when you don't understand the language that well. It's nice to get the news & weather report, but you can get that on a nice little tiny transistor radio, right?--And the news too, even shortwave, which you can't get on TV.
66. YOU SAY, "DAD, YOU SOUND LIKE YOU'RE PLANNING TO DIE, THE FAMILY'S GOING TO DIE OUT, YOU'RE WINDING DOWN!"--I AM WINDING DOWN SO WE CAN SURVIVE! I'm planning to live through it & help you to live through it so you can keep working till Jesus comes! Do you understand? I'm not officiating at the death & the funeral of the Family, I'm trying to make sure we don't land in a coffin with the rest of the World & the rest of the people who have lived beyond their means now for years!--Not only people, but businesses & whole governments that are going to collapse.
67. I WANT TO GET DOWN TO WHERE IT WON'T EVEN AFFECT US ALL THAT MUCH, where we can manage to figure out ways to survive, contingency plans, alternatives, options, doing things different ways to be able to survive without hardly even feeling it. And if eventually, why not now? Amen? Do you agree? (Family: Amen!) So are you willing to put up with a less fancy GN? Of course, you guys have to put up with them all the time anyhow. Are you willing to put up with a few less frills & fancy pubs & all that sort of thing?
68. I TOLD MARIA, "WHATEVER YOU'RE GOING TO GET OUT, YOU'D BETTER GET IT OUT NOW BECAUSE WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO PAY FOR IT PRETTY SOON!" The World's been in recession for several years now, things are getting worse, so this may be our last good year. Income from certain areas that are first & worst hit, like South America, has already tapered off & declined significantly. Even North America & Europe are not what they used to be. So we had better get ready for it now & learn now how to get along on less & live on less so it won't hurt when it happens!--So we'll be prepared & have not only our fleebags handy & be able to move easily whenever we need to, but also be able to get by on less expensive pubs, fewer pubs, less missionary support, lower budgets & fewer Units.
69. WE'RE ALREADY COMBINING UNITS! Both of our Musical Units which used to be nearly a hundred people each, MCV & MWM, are now whittled down to a one-Unit Combo of about one or two dozen people! So you'd better pick your ministry, Folks! Don't let me scare you, you're going to be the last ones to go, I promise you, because we'll be the last dogs at the bone if there's any meat left!
70. THIS IS THE MINISTRY THAT HAS TO SURVIVE--THE WORD! Others can be cut off & lopped off if we have to, to prune the tree. It might bear a little less fruit, I don't know, but who knows, maybe the remaining branches will bear more fruit! That's what the Lord said. More fruit, good fruit! Right? Isn't that what He said? Didn't He say that's why they pruned it & cut off branches?--Not so it will bear less fruit, but more fruit, so that the remaining branches can be more fruitful! (Jn.15:2.) And the unnecessary or less fruitful branches can be trimmed off, cut off, so they won't be such a drag on the tree & the fruitful branches. So that's what we're up to.
71. SO ALL THAT TO TELL YOU WHY THE FAMILY'S GOING TO GET FEWER & LESS & SMALLER {\ul \i GNs} FROM NOW ON!--Maybe not less Word. In fact, you here have already been practising what we're going to now initiate on the whole Family, just getting one little signature at a time, & having to do with that & keep that as your own only copy!--No big fancy Books any more. So see? You've been putting up with that for years now, really. You've gotten used to it, you don't think anything of it, it doesn't even hurt any more? You're thankful to get that, aren't you? Well, we've got to get the Family used to being thankful to get that too.
72. I'M NOT TRYING TO DO LIKE THE FARMER DID WITH THE COW--HE GOT IT USED TO NOT EATING & IT COULD HAVE GOTTEN USED TO NOT DRINKING TOO IF IT HADN'T DIED!--We're just trying to taper off & cut down, not starve the cow to death or have it die of thirst! We're going to keep the nourishment coming & we're going to keep the water flowing, but it's going to be at the least possible expense & packaging & bottling & the easiest, cheapest way we possibly can so that when it happens we may not hardly even feel it.--Just like you won't know the difference in GNs, only the Family will tell the difference when we go to this new size, etc.
73. (TO TECHI:) YOU'RE SO PATIENT! ISN'T SHE PATIENT SITTING HERE ALL THIS TIME? She can't exactly hold perfectly still, of course not, she was born a little wiggle-worm! You're full of life & activity, you've just gotta keep movin'! (Techi: When I hold my legs still they hurt!) I don't doubt it, probably so. Well, maybe it's the position you're sitting in. Jesus bless her & strengthen her & heal her, in Jesus' name, all of our children, Lord, & all the folks too. Protect us from colds & help us to be more cautious about how we dress & how we protect ourselves from the drafts & the fans, etc., & yet keep comfortable, Lord.
74. THANK YOU LORD THAT YOU'VE HELPED US TO LEARN HOW TO LIVE WITH IT, NOW HELP US TO LEARN HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT IT & how to learn to economise & to trim down & get by with just the necessities & essentials so that we can survive & carry on & keep doing Thy work as long as we can. And we know if we do, Lord, You'll help us to make it & You'll continue our ministries that are necessary & You will help us to do the things that have to be done, even if we do have to leave a few other things undone. Help us, Lord, in Jesus' name.
75. BLESS & KEEP US, GIVE US A GOOD NIGHT'S REST. Strengthen those that are weary & weak & sick & thank You for how You have protected our children, Lord, & we've had no serious troubles, so that even a little cold is almost a surprise & something different. So Lord, do bless & touch & heal'm in Jesus' name & keep us all safely & help us to sleep well tonight.
76. THANK YOU FOR HOW YOU HAVE PROTECTED US & PROVIDED FOR US! We know that if we will be wise, Lord, & if we will save, a penny saved is a penny earned, & if we will use Thy money wisely & invest what little or much we have wisely, You will bless it & make it a blessing & make it fruitful & even increase it. So we do ask Thee to just help us, Lord, to prepare, in Jesus' name. TYL! PYL! Help us to be willing to sacrifice, willing to do without some things so that we can enjoy the most important things, the essential things, the necessities, mostly Thy Word, Lord.
77. THANK YOU FOR HOW ABUNDANTLY YOU'VE POURED OUT THY WORD, LORD, MORE THAN WE HAVE ROOM TO HOLD IT! Certainly these here can testify to that, as much as they've had to read lately! There's not even hardly room for them to hold it & have time to read it. But give them a little time now so that they can catch up as we ease up now, having finished this major drive in our publications. In Jesus' name, bless & keep & help them to read these things the best they can, as well as they can, that we can get them done soon, in Jesus' name. TYL! PYL!
78. WE'VE GOTTA GO BACK TO LETTERS NOW, FOLKS, INSTEAD OF BOOKS! Amen? Well, that's what you started on & it worked, didn't it? It did the trick, we did fine & here we are! Well, the Lord made possible the Books, thank the Lord for the Books. But if we can't do Books any more, we're not any worse off than we were to begin with, we'll still have the Letters! PTL!
79. LET'S SAY OUR PRAYER, SHALL WE? AS WE PRAY THE PRAYER THAT YOU TAUGHT US TO PRAY, LORD: (Prays the Lord's Prayer, Ps.19:14 & "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.") In Jesus' name, Lord, we put our lives in Thy hands & our economics in Thy hands, Lord, our ministry in Thy hands. We know that You will help us to get done what You know needs to be done & has to be done & we'll be thankful for it, in Jesus' name, amen! PTL! TYL!
80. WELL, I HOPE THAT WASN'T BAD NEWS OR SAD NEWS, I THINK IT'S GOOD NEWS if we're going to learn how to survive & carry on when others have collapsed & gone down the drain. Eventually--why not now? If we can get by without it then, why not get by without it now? Amen? PTL? ILY! GBYAKY going!--In Jesus' name, amen.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
