HomeARC ML 1590
MASS MEDIA MINISTRY vs. Personal Witnessing! DFO 1590 8/83
1. WHEN YOU START PROMISCUOUS HELTER-SKELTER OPEN PUBLIC ADVERTISING like in the newspaper & radio or television, you're laying yourself wide open [DELETED] to the critics, you're revealing yourself, exposing yourself, so you shouldn't be surprised when you're in turn exposed by our enemies, primarily the church people. My opinion of newspaper ads & radio & TV spots is that actually we have found that about the only people paying any attention to that sort of ads in the newspaper or on broadcasts are religious people who are interested in religion & who write in to see what it is & who it is, mostly just to find out who you are, & they have found out! So I don't think that kind of advertising does us much good, but that it can do us a great deal more harm than good, frankly!
2. I CAN SEE RIGHT NOW THAT THE FAMILY IS GOING TO HAVE TO START LEARNING [EDITED: "WISDOM"], & IN SOME PLACES IT MAY ALREADY BE TOO LATE! I think right now if it hadn't been for friends [DELETED], you'd have been finished in some countries already, but I think because of protectors [DELETED], that thus far no outright action has been taken against you [DELETED] probably only because of those friends, & the Lord's protection of course.
3. BUT AS I SAID BEFORE, WHEN I SAW WHAT SOME WERE DOING IN GOING TO BIG CHURCH COLLEGES & HAVING BIG PUBLIC PROGRAMMES, ETC., this was bound to inspire jealousy & investigation to see who we really are. Likewise, with all this widespread public media advertising, jealous religionists are bound to investigate who it is, & having found out, they will spread the word, like in those religious magazine articles, meaning that your days of any identifying public ministry are virtually numbered or almost over!
4. (MARIA: ONCE YOU START DMs ON RADIO & TV & NEWSPAPERS, YOU CAN'T JUST ABRUPTLY WITHDRAW THEM. You've started something that you've got to continue.) And once the newspapers & radio & TV have started, they're a little embarrassed & they hate to back down. Unless somebody comes out right in the open & proves something against us, they'll try to continue, but as far as I'm concerned, that kind of advertising in the long run does us more harm than good. I would like to know how much real fruit you have gotten from radio, TV & newspaper ads. I mean real fruit, Members & disciples! I'd like to know. I hope some, but you're more likely to make enemies!
5. YOU CAN GET UP QUITE A MAILING LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS, mostly religious & church members, & the reason they've written in is that they're already religious & interested in religion & they noticed it's a religious message, & nine times out of ten they write just to find out what your religion is. But how many real disciples have we gotten from it?
6. I WOULD SAY PROBABLY WITH THIS EXPOSURE BEGINNING AMONGST THE CHURCH PEOPLE, THAT KIND OF STORY WILL SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE amongst the churches & church people & probably already has! The churches have known this for years about us. As soon as they find out that these articles & ads & TV spots are the Family & we're it, they'll begin a campaign against us. They'll go to the TV stations, radio, etc., & lay out all their FreeCOG material & everything else, & sooner or later for one excuse or another the media will have to drop it.
7. IF THE FIGHT REALLY GETS VICIOUS & THEY REALLY GET ANGRY ENOUGH--like parents starting to organise against us--then they'll go to the government & officials & authorities trying to stop us & complaining, & then it could even become difficult to openly litness on the streets. I would say, considering the length of time they've been there & saturated that country, that it looks like exposure is coming, which is the predecessor of persecution, & that the days of the Family's open ministry there are probably numbered, so they'd probably better prepare accordingly & pick their future fields!
8. OF COURSE, A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF THAT IS TO BE EXPECTED, & if you're going to do any open public witnessing or litnessing at all, I would say it's virtually unavoidable. But unnecessary risks [DELETED] & unnecessary exposure, unnecessary foolishness [DELETED] could have been avoided, but I would say now it's almost too late for some.
9. YOU KNOW HOW FAST RUMOURS SPREAD AMONGST CHURCHY CHRISTIANS--THAT'S THEIR MAJOR OCCUPATION! They don't witness, but they sure can gossip! They've haven't got anything more interesting to do than gossip, & you know how fast any kind of news about religious people or any kind of scandal spreads amongst the church people. I mean, it doesn't have to be a very big or popular magazine to reach most church people, they're a pretty close little bunch.
10. MWM, ON THE OTHER HAND, CREATES ACTUAL RADIO FANS & FOLLOWERS, regular listeners, & if they respond to the mail follow-up & really show a very favourable reaction & a growing interest & response, showing that they're really truly coming in, you can tell the difference between people who are just casually curious & people who are genuinely interested & really favourably responding to the literature, which is the final acid test. Then perhaps with actual personal contact you'll soon be able to sort out the sheep from the goats & the wheat from the tares so that you will at least find out if there's any possibility to reap any real disciples & genuine Members, if you really push MWM.
11. BUT FRANKLY, I THINK WE'D DO FAR BETTER TO CANCEL THIS WIDE-OPEN PUBLIC EXPOSURE ON TV & NEWSPAPERS WITH DMs, ETC. BUT I DON'T WANT TO HURT THESE PEOPLE'S FEELINGS FOR WHOM THIS IS THEIR WHOLE MINISTRY! The people involved have to find out for their own satisfaction that they are not genuinely deeply fruitful ministries & that there is more risk & danger involved than there is fruitfulness. I would say they themselves need to take an honest genuine survey of all of their correspondents, their mailing list, & see in this length of time how many genuine disciples & members they have reaped from those ministries.
12. I BELIEVE DM & SUCH NOW HAS BEEN BOTH IN THE NEWSPAPERS & THE LIKE ON TV RAGING RAMPANT ACROSS ONE NATION FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS, & Thoughts being a successor to the daily newspaper DM has simply been a switchover to try to avoid identification since the other one was cancelled.--And I'm sure the other one was cancelled probably because the newspaper got some things like a bad news article from the church critics! So they thought they could get away with Thoughts [DELETED], but now it's been quite identified & I believe it's only a matter of time till they drop Thoughts too.
13. I'M SURE PEOPLE HAVE SENT COPIES OF THAT ARTICLE TO THE NEWSPAPER, & it will only be a matter of time until somebody there in authority hears about it & decides it's just not profitable & is a danger to their paper. I know I would if I were a responsible officer of that newspaper. Anything that highly controversial & questionable that offends some people, especially the church people who are in the majority in that country, I would think twice before carrying it any further & probably drop it at some opportunity for some good excuse or some reason.
14. THEY SELDOM EVER REALLY TELL YOU WHY!--I found that in working with radio & TV with Fred's show. They seldom really told us the real reason they dropped us. They just said it was pre-empted for other programming, there was a programme change or it was squeezed out for this reason or that reason, & they seldom really tell you they heard from your enemies & the churches criticised the show & condemned it & were publicly speaking against it, etc. So that, rather than carry a highly controversial programme, they just give you some lame excuse, & that's probably what's going to happen to the TV & newspaper ministry of DMs & Thoughts, etc.
15. MAYBE IN THIS CASE WE COULD APPLY THE OLD RULE: "DON'T RUN WHEN THE DEVIL SAYS BOO!" Wait till he actually comes out & fights & actually drives you off the air & out of the papers, & then that's just one battle that's finished. Otherwise, especially the people involved whose ministry it is might feel that we are retreating from the battle without really being beaten, that we're just calling off our dogs & calling a retreat without actually having been driven off. (Maria: But if it's getting the wrong people involved & if it's not a fruitful ministry, don't you think they ought to withdraw slowly, that the time to retreat is when you find out that you're fighting the wrong battle?)
16. I THINK THEY NEED TO HAVE A GREAT DEAL OF SAGACIOUS WISDOM IN SIFTING OUT THE MAIL & THE RESPONSE to see who is really coming along & who is just maybe some curious church member to see how far we'll go, & a spy funneling information to the Enemy! I think it shouldn't be too difficult if the people are really wise who handle the mail response in these various public ministries. It shouldn't be too difficult for them to sift out the tares from the wheat & the goats from the sheep & those who really mean business & those who are just curious & spying.
17. THE PROBLEM IS THAT ONCE YOU'RE IN THE BATTLE, LIKE THESE OPEN PUBLIC MINISTRIES OF TELEVISION, RADIO & WIDESPREAD OPEN PUBLIC MINISTRY IN THE NEWSPAPERS, YOU HATE TO RETREAT UNLESS YOU'RE REALLY BEAT! Although I now feel it would have been better never to have begun this battle, such as the DMs & the TV spots, etc., once you're in the battle it's too late to sit down & count the cost, you've either got to win or lose, & I hate to lose just by retreating. Unless we're really beaten, we've almost got to let these people carry on until they're off the air & out of the papers, because that's about the only thing that will ever prove it to them. Besides, that's their major ministry, some of them, & they'd just be hurt & disappointed if they had to cancel it because we say so. I think even as dangerous as it is, we are just going to have to almost wait until they see how dangerous it is & either voluntarily withdraw it themselves or are driven off.
18. (MARIA: WOULD IT BE ALL RIGHT TO VOLUNTARILY WITHDRAW?) When you voluntarily withdraw, the media wonders, "When you were going great guns & we were giving you all this time & space & everything, how come you suddenly dropped us?" Then they want to know why. Their curiosity is apt to be aroused, & if they've already heard some of the criticism & some of the scandalous reports, the fact that you retreated & withdrew for no apparent reason is apt to make them think that this confirms these scandalous reports & maybe they're true because you're on the run! It's just like an innocent party who retreats from the scene of the crime & runs! This is almost convincing proof to the police that they must be guilty or they wouldn't be running. So once you're in the battle & engaged in these ministries, you almost have to keep fighting until they drive you off & think that they've gotten rid of you, & to their way of thinking, they've won the battle.
19. ACTUALLY, AS LONG AS YOU'VE BEEN ON THE AIR & SPREAD THE WORD THAT LONG, WHY, THAT'S A VICTORY AS FAR AS WE'RE CONCERNED! Even when the time comes that you're exposed & cancelled & driven off & driven out through persecution, then your job is done, & for us that's a victory! For our enemies it seems to be a victory for them & defeat for us, but it's proof to us that we have won the victory, finished the job we came to do, & we've done enough & God's ready to have us move on to someplace else. So He says, "When they persecute you in one city, flee to another." (Mt.10:23)
20. AS WE'VE OFTEN COUNSELLED, IT'S OUR GENERAL POLICY NOT TO JUST GET SCARED OUT BY A FEW RUMOURS & REPORTS WHEN THE DEVIL SAYS "BOO!" & our enemies start exposing us & we start getting bad publicity, but to keep right on going, sometimes taking advantage of the bad publicity to even give a harder final last-ditch push like we've done some other places in which we increased our lit distribution phenomenally when we were in the newspaper & magazine headlines almost continually, like in Spain. They almost quadrupled their literature distribution under those attacks of the various news media over the Family of Love ministries. It roused the curiosity & interest of the public & our literature went like hotcakes on the streets!
21. BUT THEN WHEN THEY ACTUALLY BEGIN TO CLAMP DOWN ON YOU [EDITED: "and"] make it impossible for you to litness or witness in this way & begin to literally persecute you & forbid you & stop you so that you can't openly minister or litness any more, the first thing it does is drive you [EDITED: "to"] less exposed forms of witnessing such as door-to-door, & this I've advocated for 10 or 15 years since we were in California. I promoted that there when we got so much adverse publicity, etc.
22. I SAID, WHERE THEY FORBID YOU & RUN YOU IN WHEN THEY CATCH YOU ON THE STREETS LITNESSING, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO START GOING DOOR-TO-DOOR where you can't be so highly visible & you have a lower profile or no profile at all, where you can't be seen publicly on the streets but you're just going house-to-house like the Jehovah's Witnesses & the Mormons & the Seventh-day Adventists. They've really made house-to-house pay even when they were driven off the streets.
23. SO THAT'S YOUR NEXT LAST-DITCH STAND! When they drive you off the air & out of the newspapers & off the streets, about one of the last things a general Family Home can do is go door-to-door & office-to-office. And when you become so notorious that they don't even let you do that or give you trouble in it or run you in for it or refuse it & people keep slamming doors in your face because they've already heard about you--like they've done Jehovah's Witnesses a lot of places--then you have to close up that kind of witnessing & go to something even less visible such as FFing, or take a job & just personally witness, because it's impossible to support the Work through litnessing or even door-to-door, office-to-office witnessing. Unless you've got very good Home Support, you can hardly continue it.
24. AS LONG AS POSSIBLE YOU CAN CONTINUE DOOR-TO-DOOR, OFFICE-TO-OFFICE WITNESSING which is a much more concealed form of witnessing where you spend most of your time inside & out of sight, personally witnessing & litnessing to receptive people with a very good chance of actual follow-up by re-visitation. This has been a long-time confirmed extremely fruitful type of ministry which I've always advocated in such cases, & proven by some of the biggest, you might say, "outcast" denominations in the World who are still the fastest-growing religious organisations on Earth, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists & the Mormons, etc.
25. THEY HAVE MADE IT PAY-OFF IN WITNESSING, LITNESSING, FRUIT & MEMBERS, GENUINE DISCIPLES, because door-to-door, house-to-house witnessing is a much more secretive type of witnessing where you spend most of your time out of sight & really effectively, fruitfully ministering to individuals in person with a personal witness & litness, with an opportunity to return to those who are responsive & a very good source of good solid support from such people & an opportunity to even go back & hold little Bible Studies in their homes & get them to invite their friends!--Until you've got an actual little Church in the Home or Church of Love in operation in the quiet seclusion of a private home off the streets & out of the public eye!
26. JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES, MORMONS & SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS HAVE REALLY MADE THAT PAY & HAVE FLOURISHED & PROSPERED & BOOMED WITH THAT TYPE OF MINISTRY! Of course, they will also street litness where they're permitted to do so, but so many towns & cities & even small villages in the U.S. have laws prohibiting street litnessing. Some of them even prohibit door-to-door witnessing so that it's almost made it impossible to do that sort of thing in many cities in the U.S. They have laws against it & at the least you have to go down & buy a permit, & in order to buy a permit you've got to get their consent & permission, that's what the permit means, & if they don't like Jehovah's Witnesses or door-to-door religious book salesmen like the Seventh-day Adventists are, they just refuse to give you a permit! So then you have to take the chance of doing it illegally, which is very risky, & they could fine you heavily & put you in jail! When it comes to that point, I think it's time to move on. They've made it virtually impossible for you to witness unless you take a job like anybody else & you visibly become a part of the System & you just personally witness to your friends & acquaintances & business associates, etc., personally & in private.
27. OR YOU CAN FF, WHICH OF COURSE IS ALMOST THE ULTIMATE WITNESS both in its effectiveness & its being [EDITED: "personal"]. [DELETED] Because it's a ministry that's [DELETED] completely private, extremely private by virtue of necessity & its nature, it is virtually the final possible witness in a country which is otherwise closed to you for any form of public witness or even semi-private witness such as door-to-door. [EDITED: "HomeARC note (9/98): FFing was discontinued in 1987."]
28. AND THAT'S BEEN OUR HISTORY IN MOST AREAS WHERE WE'VE HAD A BIG SPLASH OF WIDE OPEN PUBLIC WITNESSING, LITNESSING, MEDIA PUBLICITY, ETC. We've reaped a harvest of souls, disciples & members, & then because of our success the Devil began to attack. And because we had already saturated the field & reaped the harvest, the Lord let him attack in order to further publicise our Message & give it its final publicity by total exposure in the media by our enemies along with the Message.
29. IT'S GOD GIVING THEM THEIR LAST CHANCE, & then if through such severe persecution they make it impossible for you to carry on in that city or country, the Lord allows the Devil to force you to move on. Because as far as God is concerned, you're through there, you've done your job, you're finished. You have saturated the country with your message, your ministry, your literature & you've reaped all the souls & disciples & members you possibly can safely. God is then interested in not only saving souls, but saving His witnesses so that they can survive & witness or work somewhere else. You remember the old saying, "He who fights & runs away, lives to fight another day!"
30. WHEREAS IF YOU INSIST ON STAYING THERE & BEING A MARTYR, THEN THAT'S YOUR FINAL WITNESS & THE END OF YOUR WORK & MINISTRY IN THIS WORLD & THIS LIFE. Whereas Jesus Himself literally commands us that when we are persecuted in one city we are to flee to another, not stay there & be martyred, which would be the end of our ministry. The Gospel & the Early Church & Early Christianity was spread abroad by persecution driving the early disciples out of Jerusalem & even out of Israel & around the World spreading the Gospel as they went. Persecution helped to engineer that, but if they had been too stubborn to go & refused to leave & insisted on staying there & dying as martyrs, the Church would have died a long time ago in genocide just from insisting on staying there & being killed off by the persecutors instead of fleeing to another city in another country & even other continents to spread the Gospel throughout the whole World!
31. SOMETIMES SOME BOLD WITNESS IS CAUGHT, SOME STRAGGLER MAYBE, or some fanatical too-bold witness who annoys the System too much & especially the religious system, & he is caught & taken before the government & tried & condemned & punished or jailed or killed & dies as a martyr. But perhaps in many of those cases it would have been better if they had seen the handwriting on the wall & felt which way the wind was blowing & if they'd gotten out in time to save their lives & gone someplace else to evangelise another country & continue their witness & soul-winning elsewhere.
32. BUT ONCE THEY HAVE EXPOSED THEMSELVES LIKE THEY HAVE IN SOME COUNTRIES & THOROUGHLY SATURATED THAT COUNTRY WITH THE GOSPEL, our gospel, the literature, & public & private witness in every way for so many years, the time will probably come when the churches will rise up against us & condemn us before Pilate. And for the sake of political necessity the government will clamp down on us & start forbidding & limiting & restricting & persecuting because the Scribes & Pharisees insist on it, & they're very influential in greatly religious countries regardless of their religion. They have a lot of influence & if they get stirred up enough & angry enough, they know how to put a stop to you. They work with the government, & the government is virtually forced to work with them to keep its place & the politicians to keep their positions.
33. SO WHEN THAT TIME COMES [DELETED] about the only things you can do then when you're driven off the streets is go door-to-door, & if that's prohibited, then join the System, get a job & just personally witness, which doesn't give you very much opportunity to witness. It's a part-time job & not a full-time service for the Lord, & in some cases I would say such job-holding part-time witnesses & FFers are virtually a rearguard in that case & they'll probably find that the field has been reaped & they're only gleaning & it's taking too much time, too much manpower & womanpower & it's too ineffective & unfruitful, & as the results grow less & less that even they too will probably have to leave.
34. SO WHY STAY IN A WORNOUT OVERWORKED SATURATED FIELD WHERE YOU'VE ALREADY REAPED & MADE YOUR HARVEST & JUST INSIST ON DELIBERATELY & STUBBORNLY HANGING ON? Unless the Lord gives you some special revelation for it, why not do what the Lord says?--Go into some other city, some more fruitful field & greener fields where the harvest is not only green but white & ripe unto harvest, where you can get more tremendous results instead of continuing to insist on trying to glean a little bit here & there in an already harvested & exhausted field where it's dangerous & difficult, if not impossible.
35. SO WHEN YOUR PUBLIC WITNESS HAS BECOME SO UNWISE[DELETED], THEN IT'S THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL! Your days are numbered. Because once you've gotten that far, your enemies consider you're a genuine threat & they have to take actual action to put a stop to you. They always go to the government for assistance & say, "Except you do what we say, you're no friend of Caesar's! And if you let these people go you're disloyal to the nation & your position as a politician is threatened!" They don't hesitate to threaten them! The churches or the religion or whatever it may be have got the votes in countries like that, & when that happens, that's the beginning of the end of your witness in that country & you'd better move on before it's too late!
36. BUT WORSE, HAVING STARTED SOME OF THESE BATTLES LIKE DMs, THOUGHTS, MOMENTS & ALL THESE PUBLIC MEDIA MINISTRIES, YOU CAN HARDLY BACK OUT WITHOUT ADMITTING DEFEAT before you're even beaten, & actually give in & give up & retreat just because the Devil says "Boo!"--So that you almost have to continue until you're actually stopped. Meanwhile, you are really dangerously exposing us to our enemies & you are provoking & inviting opposition & persecution by being so highly, widely publicised & openly exposing yourselves to the general public, which usually in the long run means our enemies & the System.
37. THERE'S NOT MUCH WE CAN DO ABOUT IT THEN. It's too late now. For the sake of friends who have carried these ministries & the people who promoted them, we have to let them go on as long as they're able until they see that they can't carry on any more. You have to let the ministry itself prove that it's no longer possible, rather than just give up & cut out prematurely & make your sponsors wonder why. I think you should just sort of let things expire & die a natural death & not just up & suddenly prematurely cancel, but just sort of let it peter out. (Maria: Give them notice maybe that in a month or two that will be the end of your material.) Tell them you no longer have any material & that's all they're going to get. Don't make it too obvious you're quitting, just sort of let it die a natural death. [DELETED]
38. ONE THING THEY OUGHT TO DO IS ANALYSE THEIR RESULTS & PROVE IT TO THEMSELVES THAT THEY'RE NOT GETTING THE KIND OF RESULTS THEY SHOULD BE GETTING IF IT WERE THE KIND OF A MINISTRY THAT IT SHOULD BE! They need to count how many actual disciples & members we have actually gotten out of that kind of ministry. I dare say about the only ones you're going to get, if any, is through personal follow-up, personal contact & finding out who are sheep & who are goats.
39. OVER-EXPOSURE PUBLICLY IN THE MEDIA IN REACHING THE WRONG KIND OF PEOPLE, THE RELIGIOUS & THE CHURCH PEOPLE, OUR ENEMIES, NUMBERS THE DAYS OF YOUR MINISTRY! That's sort of like trying to beat the church people at their own game with the public ministry & publicity. This is what the churches do & what they thrive on & what they're good at because of their enormous numbers & favour of the government, virtually by votes. They've got the votes & therefore they've got the vote & the politicians & the power. You can't fight City Hall once they're determined to clamp down on you.
40. MWM DOES NOT NECESSARILY APPEAL TO CHURCH PEOPLE AT ALL, EXCEPT PERHAPS SOME OF THEIR YOUNG PEOPLE, & THEIR YOUNG PEOPLE ARE ALREADY USUALLY REBELS, AS YOU RECALL! In the average church the teenagers were considered rebels & problem cases as they didn't always agree with their parents & were pretty much in rebellion against the churchy system already & frequently looking for an alternative. That's the kind of young people that I would say MWM reaches if they reach any of the religious element at all. But our greatest appeal is even to the people who are outside the churches, the youth, & in most countries that means people who are already rebels & more or less outside the religious system & are already rebelling against it. They welcome the kind, loving message & modern presentation of MWM, especially the music.
41. (MARIA: BUT SEE, IN A CASE LIKE THIS EVEN WHERE THE CHILDREN MAY BE A LITTLE BIT OUTSIDE THE CHURCH SYSTEM, THEIR PARENTS AREN'T, & so many of their parents would be religious & would find out immediately that we were connected, & therefore we would be exposed almost immediately.) Just like has happened in Europe & many other countries, some countries of Latin America where we've gone as far as we could, spread the Message, got the harvest & the publicity & the persecution ran us out. (Maria: But again, are we obliged to push a public ministry like MWM even though the Family has been in a Christian country so long, & they've witnessed in every other way, everybody has gotten the Message & they're either already Christians or they could be evangelised by the Church?)
42. I DON'T THINK THAT THE POTENTIALITIES OF THE MWM MINISTRY HAVE BEEN SUFFICIENTLY PUSHED OR THE MEANS EXHAUSTED IN SOME AREAS, for the plain & simple reason they didn't have a real follow-up ministry there & the mail ministry is virtually defeated by the cost of postage since the poor couldn't even afford to write to Greece, they couldn't afford the price of an international airmail stamp even to respond. I don't think that there has been the personal follow-up there of MWM Club Members that there has been in other countries, & we know that they neglected MWM there. They even neglected booking, they neglected follow-up because they were so interested in pushing that other thing & their other media ministries. They neglected the actually most effective & most fruitful half-an-hour Show & a real thorough literature follow-up in favour of little one-minute commercials & little tiny one-column pictures & a little tiny quote in a paper!
43. MWM WINS FRIENDS, FOLLOWERS, SOULS, DISCIPLES & MEMBERS, & THAT IS PROVEN WORLDWIDE! We are reaping genuine disciples through MWM, but I don't know that you could say that of these other media ministries at all, & I'd like to see them prove it. Give me the names, the cases, describe them, of the people who are now ardent Family Members after a year or two of other media ministries such as DM, Thoughts & Moments, radio & newspaper ministries which only give a little momentary message. I just don't think the response could possibly equal what comes from a half-an-hour musical radio show like MWM!
44. I THINK IF THE PROMOTERS OF THESE OTHER MINISTRIES WOULD SINCERELY, HONESTLY & EXHAUSTIVELY ANALYSE THEIR RESULTS, their concrete results of how many actual real disciples & new members we have gotten out of these ministries, I think they'll soon see it has not been as profitable & effective as they thought it was going to be. And I would say it's been actually more dangerous & in some ways more harmful & a greater exposure & a greater aggravation to our enemies, inviting trouble, because about the only people appealed to by a little one-minute spot on TV or a ten-second spot or a tiny little cartoon in the newspaper are going to be people who are already interested in religion & curious to see what yours is, & they can soon find out, & then that's it!--And you just started making enemies & not friends!
45. I FRANKLY BELIEVE, HONESTLY, (& THIS MAY BE A HARSH STATEMENT) BUT I BELIEVE THESE TV, RADIO & NEWSPAPER SPOTS HAVE PROBABLY EXPOSED US MORE & MADE MORE ENEMIES THAN FRIENDS OR DISCIPLES! But now that they've started they can hardly back out! About all they can do is back off a little bit & let it peter out & just die a natural death & try to get out of them the best they can & concentrate their efforts on pushing MWM instead & try to divorce it as much as possible from their former ministries. Of course, you can't very well do that when you've got the same box number for MWM as you had for the former ministries, because that's a dead giveaway right off the bat!
46. THESE PEOPLE HAVE GOT THEIR PROBLEMS, & I WOULD SAY ALMOST THE BEST THING THAT THOSE FOLKS CAN DO IS START LOOKING AROUND & TRY & FIGURE OUT WHERE THEY CAN GO FROM HERE, because at the rate this bad publicity is moving it'll catch up with them sooner or later & it'll become more & more difficult. I'm not saying that they should quit now--they're not licked yet! They're still able to openly litness & witness & even carry on the highly-exposed public media ministry, but I think they should prepare for the worst, because it's always going to come through their open, sometimes careless & insecure & unwise types of ministries to the wrong people.
47. WITNESSING CAN NEVER BE TOTALLY SECURE! It is always risky because we have bitter enemies & the Devil hates us, so he is bound to fight it somehow sooner or later. But you have to try to exhaust all possible means & measures & ministries to make sure you have finished your job & reaped the harvest & exhausted the field & saved everybody you can & won all the disciples you possibly can before you quit, & I don't think MWM has ever really had a fair chance in some of these countries.
48. I'D SAY THAT'S SOMETHING WE VIRTUALLY HAVE TO DO! We have to finish the job & make sure we've done all we can & saved the last possible soul & won the last possible disciple & given everybody a chance! And since MWM has never really been pushed & never really had a full chance to really see what it can do, I think we still have to push MWM, but we have to ease off on these other ministries. I think MWM needs a better chance before we quit. I don't know, it might be too late, but I believe if it had been pushed like these other ministries & really given a fair chance of being promoted as they promoted their other personal ministries, MWM would have reaped a lot better harvest than these other media ministries have reaped.
49. (MARIA: I THINK AT THE BEGINNING NO ONE KNEW, OF COURSE, THE EXTENT TO WHICH THEY WERE GOING TO GO & WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN! When we got video tapes of the DM Ministry & we got letters from the promoters of it, it sounded like a good idea to get out the Word, & I know that we made some very encouraging comments to them about it even in the public Letters that DM was doing such a great job & they were really getting out the Word to so many people. So I think it's like one of those things that had sort of never been proved before, it had never been done.) Now we know that it mainly just reaches already religious church people who are already Christians & merely curious as to what this new religion is, & they're finding out & most of them don't like it & they're now beginning to fight it.
50. SO NOW WE KNOW WHAT THE RESULTS ARE & WHAT THE EFFECTS ARE, & THEY'RE NOT VERY GOOD. In fact, some of them are very bad, like some of the big mass meetings at these religious schools where the officials are finding out afterwards to their dismay what kind of cat got in the door & they're embarrassed! I feel kind of sorry for the people responsible. [DELETED] Now they're ashamed that they admitted you & you'll certainly never get in again! They'll probably even make it tough for you to operate in those areas, as I said before. That's the trouble with that kind of ministry, once you have soured them on you, you're finished! It may so turn them against you that all of your ministries in those areas will be negated & stopped or made very difficult, if not impossible.
51. SO I WOULD SIMPLY SAY THAT ANY MINISTRY THAT BRINGS MORE TROUBLE & AROUSES MORE ANTAGONISM & MORE CRITICISM & STIRS UP MORE ENEMIES THAN IT DOES GOOD IS NOT A GOOD MINISTRY! It merely aggravates the situation & makes it much more difficult for others who could have continued a long time in the ministries they're in, bearing good fruit. These other highly-exposed widely-publicised media ministries are making it difficult now for the others. They're apt to make the others have to close down because of their lack of wisdom in promoting this high media exposure to the public & to the church people & our enemies.
52. I'M SORRY, BUT THAT'S JUST MY OPINION & I THINK YOU'LL FIND IT SO!--And we certainly found it so in the past in every country where we've had tremendous open public ministry in every way & been highly publicised & had high exposure media ministries. It has always riled the opposition & roused their antagonism & soon resulted in such severe persecution we could no longer operate there in any kind of ministry. It virtually killed the possibilities & opportunities for all ministries through such wide publicity to the wrong people. It roused such opposition that people were even driven off the streets or out of the city & out of the country, people who could have stayed there a lot longer & ministered much more & reaped far greater harvests. Unwise publicity has cancelled all that. Unwise exposure to the public & our enemies has brought down their ire on our heads until we were all driven out & nobody could stay, nobody could witness!
53. I DON'T THINK IT'S WORTH IT! I think the price of the big-publicity, high-exposure media ministries is too dangerous & jeopardises all of the other ministries in that area, city or country, so that they are apt to rise up & kill them all & put a stop to all of them! Whereas some of them could have continued for far longer if the others hadn't exposed them to our enemies. I would say that kind of publicity we don't need! We become, in a sense, our own worst enemies, & with friends like that, who needs enemies?
54. THAT'S MY OPINION! YOU CAN TAKE IT FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT, but in such countries where this has already occurred now, I think it's too late!--Too late to back down or quit or withdraw, we just have to fight it out now to the bitter end. You've already got the bad publicity, you've already saturated the country & reaped whatever harvest you can, & at the rate this publicity is going with this high exposure to our enemies, it's just a matter of time before they'll put the pressure on & start stopping you until you will find it very difficult to operate in any exposed form of ministry, even litnessing, perhaps even door-to-door litnessing.
55. IN SOME COUNTRIES THEY'VE EVEN MADE IT DIFFICULT FOR OUR FFers WHO ARE OUR LAST-DITCH STAND & OUR REAP REARGUARD! When we started getting too much publicity in Tenerife they began to clamp down on them, taking many of them into court before judges & put restrictions on them, & if they hadn't [EDITED: "left"] at the time, a lot of them would have probably suffered for it--fines, punishment, imprisonment, persecution & whatnot! But we nearly all [EDITED: "left"], & when we were gone things cooled off & some time later when things had pretty well cooled off, then they began to return [DELETED], but keep a much more unexposed profile. As long as they kept pretty much out of sight & out of the papers & away from fanfare & publicity, the government has tolerated them & allowed them to continue [DELETED] without embarrassing officialdom.
56. I AGREE WITH THE BISHOP OF TENERIFE: ONE OF THE WORST THINGS FOR YOUR PUBLIC MINISTRY IS PUBLIC SCANDAL! That's what he accused us of, & when our so-called "public scandal" hit the newspapers & radio & television & became famous, it brought an end to our ministry there. We were doing just fine as long as we operated [EDITED: "quietly"] & before we began to get newspaper, radio & television publicity. But that was the beginning of the end, because that was more than our enemies could stomach! We were flaunting our FFing in their faces & they couldn't take it & tolerate it. [DELETED]
57. AS LONG AS IT WAS ONLY RUMOURED AROUND & IT WAS ONLY HEARSAY & we kept it pretty [EDITED: "quiet"] [DELETED] & we won a lot of friends through it, [DELETED] & kept it quiet so that we didn't embarrass them, they could put up with it & just sort of closed their eyes. But when we began hitting the headlines & the radio & television news with publicity going not only all over Tenerife, but all over the World, well, it just embarrassed them & made them ashamed, & in their self-righteous hypocrisy they had to clamp down on us to save their reputation as well as the local religion. So then that's usually the end.
58. I'M NOT SAYING THAT FOLKS SHOULD QUIT BEFORE THEY'RE ACTUALLY STOPPED, but I'm saying that it's about time for them to start looking around for an alternative & have contingency plans as to what they're going to do next or where they're going to go next when this comes to an end. Some places they've hit the jackpot as far as support & favour is concerned & had a windfall of freedom of litnessing, witnessing & everything, but I think they've pushed it too far & advertised themselves too much to the wrong people so that the enemies feel obligated now to rise up & oppose us & fight us & expose us & put the pressure on the government to stop us, & that time always comes when we're through & the Lord figures we've done enough.
59. OF COURSE, IT COMES SOMETIMES A LITTLE TOO SOON THROUGH SOME PEOPLE'S FOOLISHNESS & LACK OF WISDOM [DELETED] & too much premature publicity--our own publicity much less that of the Enemy's--when we might have continued much longer [DELETED] with less exposure & less publicity in milder, quieter forms of ministry. But when you get on television & in the newspaper & radio & shove it down their throats & they just can't get away from it or away from you anywhere, then this is more than our enemies can usually bear, & they rise up & oppose & expose & drive you either out or [DELETED] you're finished as far as open freedom & the easy ministries go.
60. WE HAVE HUNDREDS OF OUR FAMILY IN SOME OF THESE COUNTRIES & THEY'VE BEEN SATURATING THEM WITH OUR MESSAGE & witness & litness & personal contact for years, & who knows, maybe we have reaped the harvest or all we're going to get a chance to reap, considering the unwise exposure we're getting now. So the Lord may know their time is just about up & that they may have to move whether they like it or not, so I would suggest they do the best they can to back off a bit & slow down regarding some of this media ministry high-exposure & excessive publicity to the wrong people. In other words, try to quiet down, simmer down & have much less exposure & a much lower profile to try to last a little longer, if possible, in the more fruitful ministries of personal witnessing & litnessing & personal contact, fellowships, door-to-door, etc.
61. I THINK THEY'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GO ON WITH SOME OF THESE LIKE MWM AS LONG AS THEY CAN, but they ought to back off on the unfruitful ones & push the fruitful ones while we still have a chance. I think MWM is their last chance at any type of media ministry that might be worthwhile or reap sufficiently fruitful results to make it worth the risks, because some places they never really pushed MWM or reaped a very big MWM harvest. They really haven't pushed or promoted it or exhausted its possibilities with the right kind of follow-up, so I would hate to see MWM quit before it's even tried.
62. IT'S LIKE WHAT THE FAMOUS HUMOURIST, GEORGE BERNARD SHAW SAID ABOUT CHRISTIANITY: "IT'S A GREAT RELIGION, THE ONLY TROUBLE IS NOT MANY PEOPLE HAVE TRIED IT!" I think MWM is a great show, but the trouble is they just haven't really tried it in some of these countries, not really, not with really thorough follow-up & exhausting all possibilities. I think if they had spent as much time & effort & personnel & money on pushing MWM & its follow up, they would have reaped a much greater harvest of souls & even disciples than they have through their other public media ministries all put together! That's my opinion & you can believe it or not, & I just hope it's not too late for MWM! MWM really has not had a fair chance some places, & I don't think I'll be satisfied until it's really tried! And I believe it's their last chance, that's for sure!
63. BUT SOME OF THESE OTHER BATTLES THEY'VE GOTTEN THEMSELVES INTO WHICH HAVE PROVEN UNPROFITABLE, I BELIEVE THEY'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GET THEMSELVES OUT THE BEST THEY KNOW HOW, LIKE FARMER BROWN'S WIFE & THE BEAR! Just because a ministry has had extremely wide exposure, publicity & huge witnessing stats does not necessarily mean that it is fruitful & profitable & has been bearing the right kind of fruits. The Lord Himself said that we were to bear fruit, & fruit means more souls won, more disciples won & Family Members joined. "This is the Will of My Father," He said, "that you should bear much fruit & that your fruit should remain!" (Jn.15:16)
64. WHERE IS THE LASTING FRUIT OF THESE OTHER MINISTRIES, BESIDES JUST HUGE WITNESSING STATS & NUMBERS OF NEWSPAPERS PUBLISHED & SPOTS AIRED & SO-CALLED MEDIA COVERAGE? Where are the results? Where is the fruit? Let me see the disciples! Let me hear about how many have joined the Family & are now really witnessing themselves & winning souls. That's the acid test as to whether the ministry is actually fruitful or not, not just newspaper stats & airtime! That's fine, but if it doesn't get lasting results & bear remaining fruit, it's unprofitable. It doesn't matter how much seed a farmer sows, if he doesn't get a crop, he's going to go broke & starve & he won't survive & his field won't survive nor his work! It's got to bear fruit! It's got to reap results! It's got to be profitable & fruitful or he'll go out of business!
65. HE CAN BRAG ALL HE WANTS TO ABOUT HOW MANY FIELDS HE'S PLOWED, how much seed he's sown & how huge his farm is, but if he doesn't grow anything, if it doesn't bear fruit, if it doesn't sprout & grow & bear more fruit, then it's totally unprofitable & unfruitful if it has no lasting results of permanent fruit. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit" & "that your fruit should remain"--& very much fruit, not just sowing much seed! You may bear much fruit from sowing much seed, & you have to sow much seed in order to bear much fruit, but if you're not doing the kind of seed-sowing that bears fruit, if you're scattering your seeds on hard stony ground or shallow ground or amongst the thorns & thistles & briars that choke it out instead of on good ground that bears fruit, then it's an unprofitable ministry!
66. SO I'M SORRY! I'M NOT CONVINCED OF THE PROFITABILITY & FRUITFULNESS OF THESE OTHER TYPES OF MASS MEDIA MINISTRIES. You'll have to prove it to me! Show me something besides just seed stats & the size of your field & the volume of seed you've sown. Let me see the results! Let me see the fruit, the finished product!--Souls won, disciples joined & new Family Members & new workers & missionaries for the Lord! Let me see it!
67. YOUR WITNESS IS TREMENDOUS, BUT WHAT KIND OF A WITNESS IS IT & what good does it do if it doesn't bear fruit & get lasting results?--Souls, disciples, members & supporters! Where are they? Show'm to me! Show me the ones that have come as the result of the mass media ministries of newspapers & radio & television. They haven't really given MWM radio a chance, so we'll see. Amen?
68. ABOUT ALL I CAN SAY IS, IT LOOKS TO ME LIKE THEY HAVE JUST ABOUT EXHAUSTED THE POSSIBILITIES EXCEPT FOR MWM, & with the kind of publicity & opposition they are arousing & the kind of exposure they're now getting, I believe that their days are numbered! So they'd better start looking around for something else or some other ministry or method or even some other cities or countries & have some alternative & contingency plans for moving [DELETED] from a persecution that is bound to follow & always does follow this kind of saturation & that kind of publicity!
69. SO GOD HELP US & KEEP US IN SUCH FIELDS AS LONG AS HE CAN, but He could do it a lot easier if we'd give Him a little better cooperation & not be so foolish & unwise & insecure in the kind of ministries we push & publicise & the kind of people we witness to. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under feet & turn again & rend you." (Mt.7:6)--The swine & the dogs who are our enemies, usually the self-righteous, hypocritical Scribes & Pharisees, the same kind Jesus had to fight with! So that when He finally came out & openly condemned & fought them, in the 23rd Chapter of Matthew, that was almost the end of the Book of Matthew & it was the end of Jesus' ministry, His public Earthly ministry!
70. SO IF YOU'RE READY TO END YOUR MINISTRY WITH MARTYRDOM, THEN SOCK IT TO'M & THEY'LL END IT FOR YOU! But if you want to continue on for a little while & still bear a little fruit that remains with lasting results, disciples, members & support through quiet, wise, unpublicised personal witnessing, then you'd better keep your mouth shut except where it really pays & bears fruit & remains & doesn't get you thrown out too soon & stopped prematurely through unwise, insecure, excessive public exposure & dangerous publicity to your enemies, aggravating them to expose & oppose you to the bitter end of any ministry in that area!
71. GOD HELP YOU TO KNOW WHAT'S WISE, PROFITABLE, FRUITFUL & SAFE & WHAT IS NOT & to know the difference & to act accordingly & not bring a too-soon end to your ministry anywhere!--In Jesus' name, amen.--Amen?
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
