HomeARC ML 1888
WE ARE UNIQUE!--THE BEST! DO 1888 25/12/84
--A Christmas Message to Our Family!
1. SORRY IF YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS ON SHORT NOTICE, BUT I DID PROMISE TO BE BACK TODAY TO GIVE YOU YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT, & I CAN'T THINK OF ANY NICER CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO GIVE YOU THAN THE WORD! PTL! I forgot to tell you to bring your Bibles, but I see you've got'm! Good for you! PTL!--Old & New Testament I hope. We had our wee word of introduction last night, so I don't think we need to go any further with that, maybe I need to dig right into the subject so I don't have to keep you up all night. I'm not sick tonight, thank the Lord, with a tummy-ache or even a heartache. I had a good day, thank the Lord, & a good rest, so I believe I'm ready if you are! PTL?
2. I THOUGHT TODAY PERHAPS IN THE QUIET OF MY ROOM I COULD TAKE THE TAPE RECORDER & DICTATE THIS, BUT AFTER ALL, IT IS CHRISTMAS & I DID PROMISE! And there is something about having your beautiful, eager, shining faces drawing it out of me that often inspires me & gives me a little extra incentive. If any of you children get too tired & want to go to sleep, like Davida, you're welcome, because in some ways it's a rather deep subject tonight. It's not exactly children's material, although I'll try to make it simple for you if I can.
3. APPARENTLY I NEED TO LEARN TO MAKE THINGS MORE SIMPLE, as I have found some of our best Bible experts who help work on our material can sometimes get a little mixed up. Well, after the Lord's already given it & I've written it, some of them are excellent at condensing & compiling & editing & proofreading. As you know, we couldn't possibly do all we do if I, or even I & Maria, did it all.--Or even I & Maria & Peter. Besides, Peter's got enough to do just writing business letters & taking care of administrative matters without trying to write anything inspirational. But his letters are getting more inspirational all the time! PTL!
4. WELL, I'M JUST DIGGING RIGHT INTO THE SUBJECT TONIGHT IF YOU DON'T MIND MY NOT BEATING AROUND THE BUSH IN INTRODUCTIONS! I gave that last night & that's that! Because of the Lord's anointing & His call & His ordination of your leadership, our Family have become experts in what particular subject?--Children? (Children: The Endtime.) Very good!--In the Endtime Message, or as the churches commonly call it, Bible Prophecy, or as the theologians call it ... oh, I've forgotten the big word now. Anybody remember it? I used to tell our folks if they ever ask you what our business is, tell'm that's what it is. (Fam: Eschatology.) Eschatology! Very good! Of all people, Alf remembered that! (Alf: Sara.) Ha! Well, I didn't mean that as anything but a compliment, Alf, that you should have remembered that. But it sure is nice to have a good wife by your side that always helps you when you need it!
5. YOU'RE ALL ESCHATOLOGISTS! It's a Greek word, & words that have "logy" on the end, that Greek suffix--suffix is the last part of a word that usually has the same meaning wherever it's used--that means "study of" or in some cases "science of," but generally speaking, "knowledge of." And "eschato" has to do in Greek with the Future. So if you're an eschatologist, you're an expert on the Future! So here you are! Look how many experts we have on the Future, how many eschatologists we have here! I really believe you are probably the most expert on the Future of any people that I know, at least who are alive today. There may be some others, but I haven't seen or heard of them in recent years.
6. OF COURSE, I'VE BEEN A LITTLE BIT OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE CHURCHES & the preachers & the theologians & Bible College professors, but I'll tell you right now, when I was in those places they sure never knew much about it! Some of them would say, "Well, God didn't intend for you to understand that passage, that's just poetic literature." Some of them even classified the Books of Prophecy like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, etc., as mere poetry & said you weren't supposed to understand all that beautiful language. Well, I hope I get around to reading you some of that beautiful poetry tonight from a very little-studied prophet.
7. SOME OF YOU ARE EXPERTS IN DANIEL, SOME OF YOU ARE EXPERTS IN PARTS OF EZEKIEL, & I'VE TRIED TO MAKE YOU EXPERTS IN THE MESSIANIC PROPHET. Who was the most Messianic Prophet of all the Prophets? (Children: Isaiah.) Very good! Boy, these kids, you really do teach'm, Techi!--I mean, Sara! You teach'm too, Techi, that's for sure. I think she's really going to be a teacher! And what other prophet talked the most about the coming Messiah & the Kingdom of Christ? (Children: John?) No. (Fam: John the Baptist?) No. We don't have the prophecies of John the Baptist. I'm talking about the books of the Bible. Some of you have had the class of Bible Knowledge with me & you're supposed to know the classifications of the various books of the Bible. There's one section of the Bible known as the Major Prophets & right after it come the Minor Prophets. Anybody remember the four Major Prophets? (Fam: Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah...)--And Isaiah!--Only not in that order. What order are they supposed to be in, anybody want to volunteer? (Fam: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel.) Very good! He even hit Lamentations there. Well, we were just thinking of the men themselves, not only the books.
8. LAMENTATIONS WAS ALSO WRITTEN BY JEREMIAH RIGHT AFTER HIS BOOK, WHICH IS ONE OF THE LONGEST & HEAVIEST OF ALL THE PROPHETS TO READ! I took a whole course in it in Bible College, & it was about the heaviest thing I ever had to take! Isaiah is actually easier reading because it's so beautiful & it is poetic & so much about the coming Messiah & the Millennium, His Messianic Kingdom, etc. So Isaiah really is a thrilling, beautiful, even devotional reading, not only just study of Bible Prophecy. But Jeremiah, he's a pretty heavy fellow! It wasn't that easy reading, & we were supposed to have the whole thing read clear through as our first week's assignment! Then we were to study it after that under the professor.
9. OF COURSE, LATER ON I FOUND OUT I LEARNED A LOT MORE ABOUT JEREMIAH FROM THE LORD THAN ANY PROFESSOR COULD EVER TEACH ME!--Especially when the Lord told me that Jeremiah was the message for America today. If you know anything about Jeremiah, it's a message of doom for God's people, His chosen people. Well, America for a long time has thought it was God's chosen people & chosen nation, a supposedly Christian nation, now it's becoming as anti-Christ as Russia with separation of church & state! They're even forbidding manger displays on public, state-owned property, whereas nearly every city used to have one in their city park or some public place.
{\ul 10. THE [EDITED: "ACS"] HAVE FOUGHT THIS TOOTH-&-TOENAIL, & I NOTICE IN THEIR PUBLICATIONS THEY CALL IT A "CRÈCHE}," some kind of a French word that I never heard of before, meaning some kind of baby nursery or something. Anyhow, it sounds bad, & invariably in their publications they use that word. They don't like to say "Manger Scene" or "Nativity Scene," this has too nice a flavour for Christians & even people in general, so they use "crèche" as their name for it, & they consistently, constantly call this beautiful little scene over here a {\ul crèche}! They hate the name Christ & they no doubt hate the name crèche, & it sort of goes along with it. So they don't even apparently like to say "Nativity Scene" or "Manger Scene," that's been immortalised too much in beautiful song & poetry & story & the Bible by Christians & the churches for centuries, in fact 2,000 years.
11. WE SAW A LITTLE VIDEO, A LITTLE SHORT SCENE WHICH WAS DRAMATISED SHOWING WHERE SAINT FRANCIS WAS GIVEN THE CREDIT FOR USING THE FIRST MANGER SCENE as a kind of an illustration or a orders of nuns are cloistered & they live in what some people call nunneries, but more rightly called convents, where they have given everything to the church--they feel like it's to the Lord--forsaken their wealth & their families & devoted their full time to serving the Lord, or the church, as they consider it. The sad part about it is that most of them are cloistered & isolated & totally separated from the World that the church is supposed to evangelise! Isn't that terrible?
12. IF THE DEVIL COULDN'T KEEP THEM FROM SERVING GOD, HE SEWED'M UP & BOTTLED'M UP IN BUILDINGS, JUST LIKE HE HAS DONE TO MOST OF THE CHURCHES IN THE CHURCH BUILDINGS! Instead of really going into all the World to preach the Gospel to every creature as was Christ's commandment & our commission, our job which He gave to everybody, let's face it, the whole church now believes in the false cult of churchianity! I hit that pretty hard in that Letter they thought I was going to hit TM in, didn't I? (See ML #1852.) They're always calling us a cult, why don't we call them a cult? They're as much a cult as anything! There are some pretty big cults, but once they get so big & powerful, nobody dares call them a cult any more without getting in trouble. I'm sure if they could catch me they'd give me lots of trouble. Thank God for your help in keeping them from it. TTL!
13. BUT ANYWAY, I'VE CALLED THEM A "CULT" NOW & THE TRUTH IS OUT! CHURCHIANITY IS A CULT! Building church buildings & having nothing but church-worship all the time & just going to those buildings to worship the Lord, this is totally contrary to what Jesus intended. He did not intend for people to hide their faith & isolate their faith & their worship & their practice & their adoration of the Lord & their prayer & all the rest in a building!--In fact, they hide the truth of the Bible & their preaching & Bible study & all the other things in churches. He never intended for them to bottle it all up inside of church buildings!
14. MOST PEOPLE BLAME IT ON THE CATHOLICS BECAUSE OF THE CONVENTS & MONASTERIES, BUT I ADMIRE THOSE PEOPLE MORE THAN I DO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST GOING TO CHURCH! At least they have given up everything, forsaken all & are doing the best they know how, to devote their whole lives to God & their whole service to the Lord! But then they stick them in some convent or monastery where in some places they're actually locked in their little tiny cubbyhole rooms, like cells, & they're only allowed out for services & for this & that & they're supposed to spend all their time praying & reading--not even the Bible, but all kinds of other Catholic literature. This is supposed to be serving God, bottling up their faith & their service inside of buildings & even little tiny cells, & sometimes even afflicting themselves & flagellating themselves to try to pay for their sins like Martin Luther tried to!
15. HE WAS CRAWLING ALONG ON HIS HANDS & KNEES BEATING HIMSELF ON THE BACK WITH A WHIP WHEN THE LORD FINALLY REVEALED TO HIM THROUGH A SCRIPTURE--EPH.2:8,9--THAT THAT WASN'T NECESSARY! Can anybody quote it? (Fam: Yes, Sir! "For by grace are you saved through faith & that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.") Amen. Did you hear that? Well, if you didn't hear it, you ought to know it anyhow! And it just dawned on him that he wasn't saved by all of his works & trying to merit it & suffer & afflict himself, even beating himself on the back till he was raw, & crawling on his knees till they were bloody! It didn't work that way, it was just a pure gift of the grace & the love of God that you receive by faith. And he just got up & stomped off & wrote his 95 Theses & nailed'm to the door of the Catholic Church, challenging the church to debate these truths of God's Word & doctrines. It didn't happen exactly that fast, but that's the way I like expressing it. I'm a radical & I'm a little extreme & sometimes I kind of hurry things along a little bit. It was a little bit later that he actually nailed the Theses to the door, but that was the start of it.
16. SO WE'RE SAVED BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH & THAT NOT OF OURSELVES. IT'S A GIFT OF GOD, NOT OF WORKS, LEST ANY MAN SHOULD BOAST! Therefore all that the Catholic Church was teaching them about earning merit & buying indulgences & paying for your sins somehow with penance, etc., all this was not true, sad to say. Sorry to have to hit the dear Catholics, but I guess some of you ex-Catholics know what I'm talking about. I don't suppose you heard too much about the grace of God & free Salvation when you were in the Catholic Church, & that you didn't have to work for it. They certainly didn't tell you that you didn't have to go to church for it. I can remember seeing a church in Washington, Pennsylvania that had right over the door engraved in the stone of this big huge temple: "This is the very gate of Heaven!" In other words, to get to Heaven you had to go through the church, or the church building at that!
17. SO CHRISTIANS HAVE CONFINED THEIR FAITH & THE MESSAGE & EVEN THEIR SERVICE & BOTTLED IT ALL UP IN BUILDINGS!--Not only Catholics, not only convents, not only monasteries, but even other churches, Protestant churches, even those who are supposed to know the Lord the most, have the most faith, believe in healing & the life of faith & are saved, baptised & filled with the Spirit & really have gifts of the Spirit & know the Lord! Pentecostal people are doing exactly the same thing. Their religion is based on a building & attendance at that building every Sunday, & if they don't go to church on Sunday they're not considered good Christians.
18. THAT IS THE RELIGION OF THE DEVIL!--THIS DOCTRINE THAT YOU'VE GOT TO GO TO CHURCH ON SUNDAY! I'll never forget when I was teaching in my little school in Miami, my first Soul Clinic school that we ran ourselves, & somebody sent me a whole bunch of little stamps through the mail. They thought they were doing me a favour, I guess, & of course they wanted a little gift in return. You know, like these Christmas seals & Boy's Town seals, etc., only these said "Go to church on Sunday" on every single one! And I'll tell you, Brother, I really blew up & I socked it to that class & I doubt if they'll ever forget it! I said, "I'm going to ruin you forever from going to church! You'll never be a very good church member again. If I can do my job right & well, you'll never be satisfied with just going to church!"
19. NOW JUST LIKE TM, I DON'T SAY THAT THERE AREN'T CERTAIN BENEFITS IN GOING TO CHURCH. You can hear the Gospel there if you don't know it--in some churches at least, real Gospel churches--& you can maybe study the Bible & hear a little bit of it read for maybe half-an-hour each week, or if you go to Sunday School, maybe another half-an-hour. If you go to Wednesday night prayer meeting maybe you'll hear another half-an-hour. But how many Christians are going to be strong & really do the job God called them to do if they only get, even at the best churches, an hour-&-a-half a week of real preaching & Bible teaching?--And not much of that is Bible! Or even if they have an evangelist every night, they tell mostly stories & jokes. They preach some pretty good Gospel, but the churches don't get very much.
20. WELL, THIS IS A SUBJECT MAYBE I SHOULDN'T GET OFF ONTO, BUT IT'S THE TRUTH! AND THE REASON I MENTION THAT IS THAT YOU FOLKS ARE BETTER BIBLE STUDENTS THAN ANY CHURCH PEOPLE I KNOW! In fact, you're better Bible students than the students at the Bible Colleges that I went to, & I went to several of them. I tried this one & tried that one & some of them I didn't last at more than a month! One of them I only lasted three days! I was trying to find a college that was really teaching the Bible, but I found out all they were doing was teaching about the Bible & they weren't really teaching the Bible. One professor even had the honesty to tell us, "If you thought you were coming here to study the Bible, you're mistaken. We're just teaching you the tools wherewith you can study the Bible." Well, that was true in a sense, they taught Greek & homiletics & hermeneutics & all those other big long theological terms that they use, thank God I've forgotten most of them, all important classes & courses you had to take in Bible College, mostly just telling you about the Bible & how to study the Bible someday when you get time.
21. OF COURSE, BY THE TIME THEY GET OUT OF BIBLE COLLEGE & GO TO PASTORING CHURCHES, THAT'S ABOUT THE ONLY TIME THEY EVER REALLY GET INTO THE BIBLE. Then they know they've got to get into it because they've got to preach! But it's pitiful, they don't even teach the Bible in Bible College.--Or very little of it. I know, I've been there! Very few courses were actually chapter by chapter, verse by verse studies of the Bible as you have had. If you didn't get it in your Babes' Classes or you didn't get it in your particular Home wherever you were or you didn't have teachers there, at least I've tried to give it to you in my Letters & in our publications.
22. SO AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED, YOU ARE ACTUALLY MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT THE BIBLE THAN ANY OTHER CHRISTIANS I KNOW! There may be a few college professors who know something more about the Bible than you do. I learned a few handy things in school, I took the three dead languages which are most essential for studying the classics--Latin, Greek & Hebrew. Can you imagine? And they did come in handy when I finally got to using a good concordance such as Young's. I prefer Young's because it's more Fundamental. Strong's is the concordance of the modernists, the unbelievers, so I don't know why anybody ever got a Strong's. I heard that somebody had one. But Young's is the best for the serious Fundamentalists.
23. --AND WE ARE FUNDAMENTALISTS! You say, "Dad, I thought you criticise the Fundamentalists all the time!" Well, I criticise most other Fundamentalists because they're not doing the job. We're also Evangelicals! "Oh my Lord, Dad, I thought you were always clobbering the Evangelicals!" Well, I am, because most of them are our bitter enemies! We are their rivals! It's not the Catholic Church that hates us so much, because they're so far removed from us & so different. In business, it's not the guy that's selling tires that worries the guy that's selling hardware, it's the guy that's in the same business & has the same kind of store & is the closest competitor.
24. SO BELIEVE IT OR NOT, WE ARE FUNDAMENTALISTS, WE ARE EVANGELICALS, WE ARE MILLENNIALISTS, WE ARE EVEN PENTECOSTALS IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD, because we believe in the Holy Spirit & the gifts of the Spirit & healing, etc., we're faith healers to some people, we're all those things! But most of those people who are organised into formal churches & denominations, such as the various Pentecostal denominations, of which the Assemblies of God are the largest, they hate our guts & are our bitter enemies! The Bible Baptist people & all kinds of Evangelical Fundamentalists, real Bible-believing people, Pentecostals, they hate us! We're so close to what they are, & yet we are so wild & different we provoke them to jealousy because such a small group is covering the whole Earth with the Gospel today, probably doing more publishing & more missionary work than any other group our size!
25. WE'RE SMALL BY COMPARISON TO THE GREAT DENOMINATIONS, SMALL BY COMPARISON EVEN TO THE SMALLER DENOMINATIONS! With only about 10 or 15,000 of us most of the time, even including a lot of our mail & radio enthusiasts, we're a pretty small denomination. That's what they call us, only they don't even like to grace us or honour us with the name "denomination." You don't get that kind of classification until you become one of them & you're big enough to merit their respect & you're better behaved & you don't have all these wild doctrines & this wild kind of living! "All those terrible people & the awful things they do, that kind of people you call cults, sects, isms!--But not one of the accepted, honoured, respected denominations!" Just because we're small & we're a little different from them--really quite a bit different in some ways--they call us a cult! That's something you spit on, that's something you hate & you're supposed to fight, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, but even they're becoming more respected now.--Or like the Mormons used to be, but now they're becoming accepted & respected.
26. SEE, IF YOU LAST LONG ENOUGH & YOU BUILD UP ENOUGH MEMBERSHIP & YOU BUILD ENOUGH CHURCHES & YOU BECOME POWERFUL ENOUGH, THEN THEY CAN'T BELITTLE YOU ANY MORE! In fact, sad to say, most of them by that time have become so much like the other denominations you can hardly tell'm apart except for a few doctrines. They all build temples or churches, they all insist you go to their temple or church on Sunday or Saturday or Friday or whatever day it is, & they're all in the same kind of cult business, really, of church-worship & churchianity.
27. WE'RE KIND OF A RARE, PECULIAR, WILD BREED! We don't believe in having church buildings, we don't even believe in having buildings of our own. We don't believe in buying anything if we can help it, we try to just rent, because our kind of business doesn't last very long in one locality if we're very open about witnessing & we're very aggressive about soul-winning. They call it proselytising, "You're stealing our sheep from our churches &, worst of all, stealing our young people," & the 10:36ers pounce on us & we have to run!
28. SO WE'RE A PECULIAR BREED, A VERY SMALL SECT, CULT OR ISM, THEY WOULDN'T EVEN DARE CALL US A DENOMINATION! Cults, isms & sects are things that you try to sort of stamp out like a bug or something that's sort of annoying.--Not any really great threat, but just a pest, so they try to wipe you out. They've even tried to wipe out some of these that have now become great denominations! The Catholics tried to wipe out the Protestants, the Protestants tried to wipe out the Methodists, the Federal Government tried to wipe out the Mormons, the Gospel churches even tried to wipe out the Jehovah's Witnesses, & virtually all the churches tried to wipe out the Seventh-day Adventists, all these new breeds of faith & all these new cults, isms, sects!--Like insects!
29. THE KIND OF SECTS I'M TALKING ABOUT IS NOT THE PHYSICAL SEX, IT'S {\ul \i S-E-C-T}, & THIS LITERALLY MEANS SOMETHING THAT'S CUT OFF, like you dissect or bisect or vivisect & all that kind of horror they perform in biology! It literally means something cut off. Well, I told you a long time ago we were not a sect because we didn't come from any other church. We're not a body that broke away from some existing denomination. Nearly every other denomination or religious group broke away as a group, a big church split from some other denomination.
30. THE ADVENTISTS, AS THEY WERE FIRST CALLED, BROKE AWAY FROM THE METHODIST CHURCH, AS A GROUP, A WHOLE BUNCH OF CHURCHES TOGETHER. Then when Ellen G. White came along & got a revelation that they ought to worship on Saturday instead of Sunday, that split the Adventists into the Adventists & the Seventh-day Adventists, so there was a big church split & most of the churches went after Ellen White & her Seventh-day Adventists. Then along came Pastor Russell & Pastor Rutherford, Russell & Rutherford, two aggressive fighting Jews who were located in Brooklyn in their Seventh-day Adventist church trying to reach the Jews. When they found out the name of Jesus was offensive to the Jews, they started using the name Jehovah instead, which meant the same thing in Hebrew. Jesus is the Greek name, literally meaning Saviour or the Anointed One, & Jehovah is the Hebrew name. In fact, the Jews now say that the name Jehovah is so holy you mustn't even pronounce it or read it or anything! Isn't the Devil clever? He wants to even steal the word Jehovah away from the Jews! Those in the know, know that it means Jesus, so they want to hide the name Jehovah from their people, the Jews, think of that!--So Russell & Rutherford became Jehovah's Witnesses.
31. SO THEN THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS CONDEMNED THE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES AS BEING A SPLIT-OFF & A SECT & A CULT because they preferred to use the name Jehovah with all these Jews they were living amongst in Brooklyn in their big Tabernacle there. So the Seventh-day Adventists threw'm out, & Rutherford & Russell started their own denomination, the Jehovah's Witnesses! That's one thing about'm, they put that word Witnesses in there so that their people will never forget they're supposed to witness! And God bless'm, they do! And most of what they teach is right & they do preach Jesus, don't let'm kid you.--And the Mormons preach Jesus & the Seventh-day Adventists preach Jesus, & so do many Protestant denominations & even some Catholics. So don't condemn'm all that they don't preach Jesus.
32. IT WAS SUCH A JOKE, SUCH A SAD JOKE WHEN WE HEARD THAT GUY PAT ROBERTSON GOT ON THAT "700 CLUB" PROGRAM & SAID THAT WE DIDN'T PREACH CHRIST! Can you imagine that, of all the things? He certainly must not know anything about us & he apparently took Deb's word for it, that we don't exalt Christ, we don't preach Christ at all. You guys are just supposed to be exalting me, that's all, that's what they say. Well, I know you love me & I know you honour me & some of you do rather exalt me, but if I ever do anything, I constantly remind you that it's all the Lord, it's all Jesus! Right? Without Him we can do nothing, & having based our foundation on the only Foundation there can be, & that's Jesus Christ, there is no way in the World that they're ever going to destroy us. Because we are the Church of Christ!--In fact, we are the Church of Christ's Latter Day Saints! We are definitely the Latter Day Saints of the Church of Christ, even more latter than the LDS people, the Mormons! We could call ourselves the Church of Jesus Christ, the Later Latter Day Saints!--Ha!
33. SO YOU SEE, EVERYONE SPLIT OFF & SPLIT OFF & SPLIT OFF, BUT WE WERE NEVER ANY PART OF ANY OTHER DENOMINATION OR CHURCH OR RELIGIOUS GROUP, EVER! Right?--We were an absolutely brand new unique creation of the Lord! Many of you as individuals have come out from other churches, but never having already had our own churches & our own pastors & our own leaders, we didn't at some big convention have a big fight & a big argument & split over doctrine or something & half of us decide to pull out! We were never a part of any of that sort of thing, except some of you were individually. The Lord just went out, like He said in that wonderful passage there in Ezekiel 37, & He sent you a Shepherd that would call you out of the mountains & the hills & the caves & all kinds of places where you were hiding from the System & trying to get away from it. That's a very significant location for that passage too!
34. THE BIBLE IS VERY SENSIBLE & WELL-ORGANISED IN MANY PLACES, & WHEN EZEKIEL STARTS TALKING ABOUT THAT SHEPHERD DAVID WHO IS TO COME IN THE LAST DAYS, DID YOU EVER NOTICE WHAT PASSAGE FOLLOWS THAT IMMEDIATELY?--The very subject that I was going to talk to you about tonight! At the rate I'm going I don't know whether I'll get there or not, but this is important too. Does anybody know what Ezekiel 38 & 39 are about? (Fam: Gog & Magog?) Well, yes, it's talking about Gog & Magog, but what about Gog & Magog? (Fam: The battle?) No, I'm sorry. I have taught some of you that chapter long long ago, & that's one of the things we need to straighten you out on. It speaks of Gog & Magog there, but the battle it's talking about is the Battle of Armageddon. Well, there, now I've dropped one bomb!
35. BUT YOU SEE, IN THE MIND OF GOD & THE VOICE OF THE PROPHET, SOME OF THESE PEOPLE & EVENTS ARE ONE & THE SAME AS FAR AS GOD'S CONCERNED. The people who follow the Antichrist & his System are the same to God as the people who follow the Devil later on in the Battle of Gog & Magog, so that He even uses the term interchangeably. He even uses the term Gog & Magog for Russia & the Antichrist--Gog the Antichrist, Magog Russia--as He also uses later on for Satan & his followers at the end of the Millennium in the Battle of Gog & Magog.--Because just like in many of the prophecies you've already studied, the Beast is all the same, although he has many different manifestations. Although he has seven heads & on one head he has ten horns, he's got all the same body, it's all the same old Dragon, it's all the same old Red Beast. It's all the same to God, though it has many different manifestations. Daniel's Image was all the same figure, but it represented six different World Empires, & of course the Stone represented the seventh, which is Jesus! (Rome/Antichrist = one!)
36. SO HERE WAS ONE FIGURE THAT LOOKED LIKE ONE & THE SAME THING, BUT IT WAS A MANIFESTATION OF ALL MEN'S EMPIRES, all idolatry, worship of the System, worship of power, worship of an idol, worship of government. It's a good thing Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that the beautiful head of gold was him & his government, because that was flattering! He wasn't one of the meaner metals, he was the best & the first! Actually he wasn't the first, but in this Image he was, because Daniel was giving the prophecy & the Lord was giving it at the time of Nebuchadnezzar, so he just started with Nebuchadnezzar & made him the head of gold. Actually there had been two major World Empires before that, what were they? (Children: Egypt & Assyria.) Very good, very very good! Some of these children really know their Bible & their Bible Prophecy!
37. BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT, BECAUSE ALTHOUGH THEY BRAND YOU A CULT, THESE BIG DENOMINATIONS & OTHER CHURCHES ARE THE BIGGEST CULTS ON EARTH!--And they're the worst cults on Earth because they have confined the Message of God's Love in Jesus Christ & His free Salvation through His death to Church Buildings! They have confined it! If the Devil couldn't stop it any other way, if he couldn't even keep them from preaching the Truth, he managed to make'm put it inside of a building & shut the door & keep the Christians there to prevent them from witnessing outside on the street, on the street corner, door-to-door, downtown, in the bars & whorehouses & whatnot! Oh my goodness, the average church member wouldn't be caught dead in a bar! In the type of churches that Maria & I went to, it would have been a disgrace! You'd have probably been excommunicated & thrown out of the church if they ever caught you going into a bar!--Now our FFers go to nightclubs too!
38. THE FIRST KIND OF FUNNY PECULIAR PEOPLE I EVER HEARD ABOUT LIKE THAT WERE TWO BROTHERS, GOD BLESS'M, TWO YOUNG ENGLISH FELLOWS, TEENAGERS, THE SONS OF A DEAR RICH OLD LADY, MRS. STAUNTON, WITH WHOM WE GOT ACQUAINTED IN MIAMI. I don't know where she got it, I never did learn that, but she was an aggressive witness! We got acquainted with her & then she began to help us & support our work, because we were also aggressive witnesses. My Mother was always a real witness & soul-winner, but I had never seen anything quite like them!
39. HER SONS WENT TO BARS & THEY HAD ABOUT 50 RUSSIAN SAILORS DOWN ON THEIR KNEES IN A BAR IN MIAMI, FLORIDA PRAYING! Bernie was the older boy's name, & he would go to the bars where they had these bang'm up pianos in those old bar rooms, bar room pianos, & he'd ask'm if he could sit down there & play a little while. He'd start off with a lot of Worldly popular songs, & he could really bang on that piano! If you ever heard one of those bar room pianos, it's not like these nice beautiful Baby Grands they've got in the cocktail parlours now. I don't think they ever got tuned or anything, & it didn't matter much to those old drunks as long as it made noise. So he'd sit down there & play away, & then all of a sudden he'd drift off into some nice dreamy sweet music, & then all of a sudden he'd play some hymn! He'd say, "What's your favourite hymn, I'll play it for you!" And some of those old drunks at the bar would say, "Play 'The Old Rugged Cross'! Play 'In the Garden'!" They were probably a bunch of ex-church members & they had favourite old hymns. Then he'd go on from that into a witness, & he'd win souls, pray with them right there on his knees beside the tables!
40. HE HAD THESE 50 RUSSIAN SAILORS DOWN ON THEIR KNEES IN A BAR IN MIAMI, THAT'S A FACT! It turned out their Lieutenant who was with them was a Christian, & he was doing the interpreting for Bernie. And Bernie began to really sock it to'm with the Gospel & preach it to'm! Even in those days many Russians who were old enough to be Lieutenants when I was young, were still Russian Orthodox formal church members or Christians. Even though the Reds had taken over, there was still formal church faith left in some of these boys, & Bernie told them, "You'd better really testify & express your faith for Christ or pray for Christ to come in, because now you're going out & going to war, etc., & who knows, you may die!" He really socked it to'm! And the Lieutenant was interpreting the whole thing all the time in Russian! And when Bernie told them, "If you want to receive Christ, get down on your knees right now at that chair beside that beer table & ask Jesus to come into your heart!"--The Russian Lieutenant interpreted & the whole bunch of them got down on their knees! Think of that!
41. I HAD NEVER SEEN ANY CHRISTIANS WITNESS LIKE THAT, EXCEPT JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES, BUT THEY DIDN'T EVEN DO THAT SORT OF CRAZY THING! Later on I found some people that did, & that was the Soul Clinic, believe it or not, they did crazy things like that. They stood up on buses & trains & preached the Gospel. They jumped out on the stage of theatres between scenes or during the intermission & began preaching to the people sitting there waiting for the show to begin, till they got thrown out or something!--Wild witnesses! Wild & willing witnesses!
42. AND DEAR OLD MRS. STAUNTON, I'LL NEVER FORGET THAT TIME WE SAT IN THE CAR WITH HER IN NIAGARA FALLS. She was sitting in the front seat, it was her limousine, & her boy had been driving but he'd gone to get something. Mother & I were sitting in the back seat & Mrs. Staunton was sitting there in the front seat on the curbside. We noticed that she'd opened her door just a little bit, she just opened it a crack, & she was sitting there with a tract in her hand like this. We wondered for a minute just what was going on because she was really looking like she was really fierce! She believed in witnessing!
43. ALONG CAME THESE TWO SAILORS WALKING DOWN THE SIDEWALK & ALL OF A SUDDEN SHE FLUNG THAT DOOR OPEN & SAID, "HERE, TAKE THIS, IT'LL DO YOU GOOD!"--And the guys nearly fell over backward & one reached for his back pocket like he was reaching for a knife! He thought he was being attacked by this mad woman! That's not exactly the way to witness! I've been trying to say, "To win some you must be winsome," & I hope you've read that article in the GN. (See ML #1855.) But at least she was diligent & at least she was faithful & at least she was aggressive & she was trying to do what was right, trying to witness with a Gospel tract, like one of our pieces of literature is a tract, one of our little TKs they pass out on the streets litnessing. The churches called it tract-passing, we call it litnessing because it's literature.
44. SHE TOOK THIS TRACT & SHE SAID, "TAKE THIS, IT'LL DO YOU GOOD!" She nearly poked him in the belly with it & half scared the poor guys! But then she smiled & began talking to them & witnessing to them. But I don't think her type of witnessing got very far because they nodded their heads & smiled & figured she was some kind of a mad woman & they passed on, but at least they took the tracts. But I'd never run into that kind of people before until I ran into her. Then I began to think about it, & that set me thinking about the church people. Goodness gracious! My Mother was a faithful witness & soul-winner individually with people she'd meet on a train or bus or in a restaurant or wherever we happened to be, & I learned that long ago, to always witness to people that you came in contact with, but not so aggressively.--Certainly not like Mrs. Staunton & Bernie Staunton & his 50 Russian sailors! That's a true story! I was there when it happened!
45. SO WE ARE REALLY A RATHER PECULIAR PEOPLE, AND MOST CHURCH PEOPLE DON'T WITNESS LIKE THAT, DO THEY? Most church people don't even witness or litness like that, or at all! They just go to church & figure, "Well, there are a few crackpots in our bunch here."--One old lady or one old bum that goes down & passes out tracts on the street corners on Saturday nights. Or there are a few real overly-zealous young people that go to the jail & sing every Sunday & hold a jail service & preach to the inmates, & that was considered really really zealous witnessing! I mean to tell you, only the most dedicated Christians did that, only the little faithful handful of a few! Most of the times when we went to the jails, etc., there usually weren't more than 3 or 4 of us, maybe at the best a half-a-dozen. If we ever got a group of a dozen from our church to go to the jail to preach or go down Saturday nights & pass out tracts on the street corner, that was rare! We'd go Saturday night because there were so many people on the streets, Saturday night shoppers in the U.S.A. They all go to town on Saturday night. But just a handful of the faithful few would do that, & usually they were kind of looked down on by the rest of the respectable members.
46. SO THERE JUST WERE NOT VERY MANY PEOPLE LIKE THAT IN MOST CHURCHES! The Jehovah's Witnesses & the Mormons require witnessing & so do the Seventh-day Adventists, but those people are usually under sort of a stigma & looked down on by the other respectable, well-behaved denominations who keep their religion to themselves & don't go around broadcasting it to everybody, who behave themselves & come respectably & sit quietly in church on Sunday & don't go screaming down the street preaching "The End is near!" & wearing sandwich boards & crazy things like that! Most denominations don't do that, & even the few Christians who do it are looked down on by their own churches. Even good Fundamentalist, full-Gospel, Evangelical, Pentecostal churches look down on people who do that sort of thing.--Nearly all of them which I ever went to.
47. OUR LITTLE ALLIANCE CHURCHES WERE PROBABLY SOME OF THE MOST DEDICATED & SINCERE & MANY OF THEM SPIRIT-FILLED, had all the right doctrines & everything--except a few we've added since then--but even they were not wild & willing witnesses either. They did hold jail services, they would sometimes go down on Saturday nights & pass out tracts, but that was about the extent of it. But their main message, of course, was foreign missions, & God bless'm, they lived up to that & they sacrificed & they gave, & compared to other denominations, they were heavy givers to missions. A small little tiny denomination of I think not more than 50,000 people altogether--considered very small in religious circles--gave an average of 25% of their total income of the churches to foreign missionaries!
48. THE METHODISTS CLAIM TO BE THE LARGEST PROTESTANT DENOMINATION IN THE WORLD WITH OVER TEN MILLION MEMBERS. The Baptists, of course, claim about the same & they're always arguing about which one is the biggest, but Baptists technically are supposed to have about 9 million.--Of course maybe they claim more now, my churchy stats have gotten a little old since I haven't seen the churches for awhile, but when I was back there in the churches I knew all these things.
49. BUT DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH OF THE AVERAGE METHODIST DOLLAR OF ALL THE MONEY GIVEN TO THE CHURCH WAS SPENT ON MISSIONS? I'm not talking about the total income of their church members, I'm talking about the money which actually went into the church offering basket & went into the Methodist churches dedicated to the Lord's use. Do you know how much of that church dollar was spent by the World's largest & richest Protestant denomination that owned, what is it?--Pepsi Cola? I think the Catholics own Coca Cola & the Methodists own Pepsi Cola & a lot of other businesses.--I mean owned by the church tax-free! At least it used to be, I don't know about now. Some of the biggest corporations they owned were tax-free because they were church-owned. Yet they only give 5% to Missions!
50. BUT DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD LET US GET TAX EXEMPTION?--NO! We were not recognised as a denomination or a church. Poor old Jethro, he tried hard enough, but he got caught every time, it didn't work!--Ha! We were not considered a recognised, organised religious denomination. And the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, the tax organisation of the Federal Government, has a whole long list of requirements which you must fulfil in order to be a recognised, authorised, organised, religious denomination! Imagine the Devil making up his own list of what a church ought to be like! And of course most of it was you had to be big enough to have churches, schools, Bible Colleges & all this sort of thing. Hardly anybody could comply or qualify except some of the biggest denominations.
51. EVEN PREACHERS THAT HAD BIG CHURCHES, IF THEY WERE INDEPENDENT CHURCHES, THE IRS HAS RUN'M OUT OF BUSINESS! I remember one preacher that they padlocked his door because they slapped a tax on him & he refused to pay. He said, "I'm a church, & churches aren't supposed to be taxed!" But that preacher had been attacking the election of somebody, the President I think at that time, & he probably gave instructions to the IRS to sock it to him! If you're going to please the IRS you don't dare mention anything political or attack any political figure or anything. You can't even talk about politics, you can't talk about government, you can hardly talk about anything. Gospel is about all you can preach.
52. YOU CAN'T MONKEY WITH EXPOSING & REVEALING THE HORRIBLE THINGS THE GOVERNMENT DOES & THINGS LIKE THAT OR RIGHT AWAY THEY SLAP THAT RULE ON YOU: "YOU'RE NOT A RELIGIOUS ORGANISATION, YOU'RE A POLITICAL ORGANISATION!" Churches with good Christian Gospel preachers that I have known of have had their churches closed up & padlocked because they slapped taxes on'm, & when they didn't pay or wouldn't pay, they confiscated the church building in lieu of taxes, told them they couldn't operate as a church. Talk about anti-Christ, the U.S. Government has become almost as anti-Christ as can be. [DELETED]Like the crèches! They don't even want to show that Christ was born any more, they hate that!
53. WELL, WE'RE A SMALL GROUP, A VERY SMALL GROUP COMPARITIVELY SPEAKING, BUT AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED YOU DO MORE ... of course you here are mostly involved in administration & publications & support, etc., staff work, & you don't get out to do the actual footwork, mouthwork, litnessing, tapenessing & preaching the Gospel on the street corners any more. Most of you did, thank God, along with me & a few others. But you have a hand in every Word of Gospel that's preached throughout this World by our people, & every piece of lit that's handed out, & every missionary that's in any foreign country & every soul that's won, because you help to make it all possible. Because they'd have a hard time to do without us & our help & our support & backing & production of literature & supervision & leadership & advice & counsel & administration & organisation & all the rest!
54. WE'RE PRETTY WELL ORGANISED! In fact, some of our enemies have meant to slur us & demean us & criticise us by using this criticism, that we are one of the most highly, tightly organised groups of all these crazy cults, that it's an absolute dictatorship, slavery! Well, I believe it! It's true!--The absolute dictatorship of Jesus Christ & slavery to the Lord! Amen?--A love slave of the Lord! But not just to me. Maybe sometimes you feel like a slave when you have to cook my lunch or clean up our room or have to type so many Letters & all this sort of thing, but I hope you're not doing it just for me, I hope you don't feel like you're slaving for me.
55. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE A SLAVE TO JESUS! But the translators of the King James Bible were very sensitive on that issue & didn't use the word "slave" since Britain at that time no longer believed in slaves & had outlawed slavery. So they counselled that they'd better use the word "servant," & all the places in the Greek New Testament where it said "servus," which literally means "slave," they changed to "servant." Well, it could be the same thing. Most poor servants & domestics that work for the rich are glad to just get a place to lay their head & something to eat even if they didn't get a penny, so they can just virtually enslave them. Well, I don't know, maybe you feel that way sometimes too. But of course if you don't like it here, you know what I've always said, you're always welcome to go! Of course, if you go, I'll probably go too, as I have on a few occasions, to prevent you betraying me!
56. BUT ANYWAY, TALKING ABOUT SLAVES, IF YOU ASK ME, THE WORLD IS A SLAVE TO ITS GODS, SO THEY CAN HARDLY TALK ABOUT US! THEY WORSHIP THEIR IDOLS! I never forget that little Jewish boy in the University of Arizona that got all the stuff stolen out or his apartment one night. I thought that was quite a thing for that Jewish boy to say, he wasn't even a Christian! He said, "Well, I'm kind of glad. You know, it got to where I no longer owned those things they owned me! I didn't possess them they possessed me. I was a slave to those things!"--Hi-fi, radio, TV, this, that & the other.
57. SOME PEOPLE ARE SLAVES TO THEIR CARS, SOME PEOPLE ARE SLAVES TO THEIR HOMES, SOME PEOPLE EVEN IDOLISE THEIR CHILDREN & ARE SLAVES OF THEIR CHILDREN. Some women worship their children above God & above even their husbands sometimes or their religion! Well, you children have got some slaves here [EDITED: "your parents, teachers and child-care helpers"] that slave away & serve you & take good care of you, but they don't worship you more than they do the Lord. But some people do.--Slaves to homes, slaves to jobs, slaves to cars, television, slaves to this, slaves to that, money, prestige, power slaves! That's their idol, they worship it, & the Lord says, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God & I will have no other gods before Me!" (Exo.20:3-5) You mean God is jealous sometimes?--Yes! He's jealous of your love! He doesn't want you to love anybody or anything more than you love Him! He certainly doesn't want you to worship anybody or anything more than you worship Him, right? So the Lord really expects you to love Him above all things.
58. WE ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE, & I'M NOT ASHAMED OF IT, I'M PROUD OF IT, AT LEAST I'M THANKFUL FOR IT, BECAUSE WE ARE THE MOST WITNESSING PEOPLE THAT I KNOW ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH! I think we out-do the Seventh-day Adventists, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses & all the rest of them! But God bless the Mormons! The young Mormon labourers or businessmen, whoever, save up money for years in order to have enough money to go out & live on & pay their expenses at their own expense to be a missionary for two solid years on the foreign mission field. But then it's over & he goes home, back to his job, back to his business. Isn't that sad? Well, a few of them are fulltime missionaries.
59. BUT OURS IS THE ONLY OUTFIT I KNOW OF IN WHICH EVERY ONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FULL-TIME MISSIONARY, 100%, TOTALLY DEDICATED TO THE LORD'S WORK, & if at all possible spending their full-time serving the Lord & witnessing, litnessing, evangelising & doing missionary work! That was my idea, & I finally got to the point where I decided every single church member ought to be a witness, ought to be a tract-passer, ought to be a soul-winner, ought to be a missionary! I went from church to church & group to group trying to find any church like that, but I never found any church like that until I hit Fred Jordan, I'll give him credit for that. He believed in his organisation that every single one ought to be a witness & a soul-winner & a litnesser & a missionary. I said, "That's the outfit for me!" And that's why I went in with him, praise God! And I went in with him as far as I could go & as far as he could go. But he was a little bit like King Saul, he didn't go far enough to suit me & finally I had to go beyond him. And whereas he only had a handful of missionaries, at the most at any one time he had 300 missionaries, we've had as high as 10 to 15,000, because I count the children too!
60. DON'T TAKE CREDIT AWAY FROM THESE KIDS, OUR KIDS ARE AS MUCH MISSIONARIES AS THEIR PARENTS, SOMETIMES MORE SO!--And a tool in the hand of the Lord to win hearts & pass tracts & win souls as much, if not more, than some of their parents! I told you the children were going to open doors & open hearts & be some of our greatest witnesses that we've ever known, & their day is even yet coming! Some of them are going to be greater than that when the time comes. Praise God! So don't belittle the children, they're our fulltime missionaries too, let's face it!
61. SO WE'VE GOT A CHURCH OF 10 TO 15,000 FULL-TIME MISSIONARIES & MOST OF OUR PEOPLE ARE FULL-TIME. There are a few that went back home, but God bless'm, at least if they had to go back & they couldn't make it on the mission field, they got a good job, earn money & they're supporting us full-time, giving like no other church I ever heard of gives! Our individual families & Homes give more per month than I ever heard of almost any family in any of the most Gospel churches give to support the Lord's work. Even those that have to work full-time or who couldn't make it on the field & went back because of this trouble or that trouble, God bless them, they're still faithfully giving & supporting the work. They've been there, they know what it's like, they've done it, at least that much, thank God! So if they had to go back for some reason or they didn't have the faith, they couldn't make it on the field, at least they went back & they got a good job to earn enough money to support you & me & the other missionaries that are on the field.
62. I'VE NEVER HEARD OF ANY FAMILIES OF ANY CHURCH THAT GIVE LIKE THEY GIVE!--Sacrificially, faithfully tithing, & not only just tithing, but even giving gifts above their tithing. Now that is really something! God bless our Family!--Even those that can't be on the field. But most of our folks are on mission fields, think of that, & about two-thirds of our Family are on the mission fields of the South & the East! There are only about a third of them now left in the West in Europe & North America. Most of them are on the mission field, real mission fields, foreign fields to most of them, believe it or not!
63. I NEVER HEARD OF A CHURCH LIKE THIS! Fred Jordan was trying to start one, he had the vision for it, but he got involved with too many other things. His wife was more interested in money & power & that's all she could think of, & she led him astray like Solomon got led astray. Thank God I stuck to my guns & my wife wasn't able to lead me astray, she just left. Well, she cooperated for awhile, thank the Lord, give her credit for that. I'm not talking about this one (Maria), this is the one, praise the Lord! But when Eve wouldn't go all the way, praise God, I went on & she went back.
64. SHE'S BACK IN THE U.S. NOW, BACK DOING SOME OF THE SAME OLD STUFF WE USED TO DO IN THE EARLY DAYS. They say they only believe in the early Letters & they don't receive the new wine & these new doctrines & new practices. Dear old Stephen David is using somebody's garage & a mimeograph to reprint some of the very earliest old Letters like "Mountain Men" or "No Neutrals" or a few even more milk-&-water than that & passing them out. They say, "These are the ones we believe in!" I mean, they're so far behind, it's pitiful! They can't even see us for the dust, we're so far ahead of'm! We left'm, well, literally about 10,000 miles behind! Anyhow, I just don't know how to tell you these things without telling you! We spend hours doing other things & I think the Word's important!
65. I'M TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING TO ENCOURAGE YOU, THAT YOU ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE ON EARTH THAT I KNOW OF LIKE YOU! You are the only people who are sold out on witnessing, litnessing, tapenessing, soul-winning, missionary work, & you're the only people that I know of in the whole World that are publishing so much Gospel literature for our size! I have never heard of or known of any group as small as ours that gets out so much literature! It's almost absolutely astronomical, phenomenal, how much literature we produce & distribute for our size, by the millions to billions!--And how much Gospel we have on the air, on radio, not only our own shows, but we get on other people's shows & their TV shows & their programs & rallies & all kinds of things. We get in there & we sock it to'm, praise God!
66. I DON'T KNOW OF ANY OTHER PEOPLE ON EARTH AS ZEALOUS & AS ACTIVE & AS EFFECTIVE AS YOU ARE IN YOUR ACTUAL PRACTICE & YOUR ACTUAL SERVICE FOR THE LORD! But not only that, I don't know of any other people on Earth to whom the Lord has revealed so much in the way of Truth & doctrine--I don't like to use that word doctrine, but it's just a word that means teaching--& that He has taught so much & showed so much to & revealed so much to, particularly as far as what you would call doctrinal beliefs in the Endtime. Well, maybe I'll put that second, I'd say soul-winning first. But next, we are experts, we are scientists, we are technicians, we are eschatologists when it comes to knowledge of Bible Prophecy & the predictions of the Bible regarding the Future! You are!
67. BUT EVEN EVERY SCIENTIST & TECHNICIAN & EVEN THE MOST EDUCATED PROFESSORS CAN MAKE A FEW MISTAKES ONCE IN AWHILE, SO IF YOU HAVEN'T ALWAYS GOT IT STRAIGHT IN YOUR HEAD, DON'T FEEL TOO BAD. Even some of our top leadership sometimes gets a little mixed up. That's one reason we're getting out this Kidz BOF. We're making it so simple even a child can understand it, so you can get all the beads on the string in the proper order & you won't make some of those mistakes any more.
68. APOLLOS DID A MARVELLOUS JOB. He took the Truth & took the Bible & took what we've taught & simply did his best to tell it to his children in his own words, or their words. So it doesn't always sound exactly like me & you couldn't expect it to. He was doing his best to tell the story to his own children about the order of events in Bible Prophecy, & it's amazing how he had it down so well that he could just spout that off to his children without referring to his Bible or the Letters! But in going over it for approval we realised there were a few things we evidently hadn't made clear in the Letters, so consequently he wasn't too clear on'm either.
69. I'VE TOLD YOU A LOT & TAUGHT YOU A LOT & DEAR ADAM FIGURED UP THAT I'VE PROBABLY WRITTEN MORE, MORE BOOKS, ETC., THAN EVEN THE GUY THAT'S LISTED IN THE GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS! So I can't expect you to always get it all. In fact, there's probably a whole lot of it some of you have never even read, some of those old things. You can hardly keep up with the current publications, much less go back & read the old books, ancient history. Well, there's a lot of stuff in those old books that's just as good today as it was then, believe it or not, & would have done you a lot of good if you'd had time to read it, but you haven't got time any more. You're doing well to have time to read the GN & the WND & the FN & the FSM. These are current weekly & monthly publications that you've got to read every week & every month to keep up with them, much less all the big books & other things we get out. Some of you are probably going to save those for the Millennium for sure, or for the Tribulation when maybe you're not going to get any more current ones & you'll just have to catch up then on some of your back reading.
70. I DON'T KNOW OF ANY GROUP AS SMALL AS OURS THAT HAS PUBLISHED SO MUCH GOSPEL & DISTRIBUTED SO MUCH OR WON SO MANY SOULS OR GONE TO SO MANY COUNTRIES AS MISSIONARIES! At least when I was in religious circles I knew'm pretty well, & even the Christian & Missionary Alliance, an organisation of about 50,000 members, at its height only had 2,000 of those members on the mission field, although it was 150 years old! But that was big compared to some, & as I started to say, they gave 25 cents out of every dollar to the missionaries! And the Methodists, did you want to hear that stat? They gave only five cents out of every dollar to Missions!
71. WHEREAS YOU, MY DEAR GRADUATES, ALL OF THOSE WHO GRADUATE FROM OUR COURSES, WHATEVER IT MAY BE & WHATEVER IT WAS, WE EXPECT YOU ALL TO GO INTO FULLTIME SERVICE FOR THE LORD, EVEN TO THE MISSION FIELD IF POSSIBLE! So I'd say that probably about 98% of our group are actual active missionaries, witnesses & soul-winners on the mission field, or even home missions. I'm not going to count the Catholics, but would you like to know what the percentage is of all the Protestant denominations combined, how many of their Bible College graduates who are supposed to be in training to serve the Lord full time finally reach some position of fulltime service, either as a pastor, teacher, evangelist or missionary? Of those who go to Bible school or Bible College or seminary who are supposed to be in training for fulltime service--& that is even a small group--do you know how many of them actually ever reach some field, even home field to pastor a church or be a teacher or whatever it is? Do you know how many of them ever make it to fulltime service in anything which you could actually even call religious?--Of all Protestant denominations combined, only 2%! What are the other 98% doing?--Going to church, that's their service, & supporting the 2% who are in fulltime service. Think of that!
72. I MEAN IT'S ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE WHAT THE CHURCH HAS DONE & THE FALSE CULT, THE FALSE DOCTRINE THEY'VE GOTTEN INTO ABOUT CHURCH-BUILDING & CHURCH ATTENDANCE, WHICH HAS KEPT THEM FROM THE SERVICE THAT GOD CALLED THEM TO, WHICH WAS TO GO INTO ALL THE WORLD & PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY CREATURE! We're the only group I know of that does it virtually 100%! I admire the Jehovah's Witnesses who require all of their people to litness or witness at some time or other, a minimum of 2 to 4 hours a week that they have got to spend in the streets or door-to-door in some form of active witnessing. Think of that! Our folks are actually in fulltime service whether they're just washing the dishes or mopping the floors & helping the other people get out!--And even they are supposed to get out at least an hour or two every day in the average Home to witness & litness & win souls. Right? I don't know of any churches--neither the Jehovah's Witnesses nor the Seventh-day Adventists, who do get out quite often & faithfully go door-to-door or on the street corners, or even the Mormons, who spend a full two years--I don't know any of them that do it like you do & those that you're helping do it!
73. WE'RE A PECULIAR BREED! WE'RE UNUSUAL! I WOULD SAY WE'RE VIRTUALLY UNIQUE AS A CHURCH! We are doing to the best of our ability & to the greatest extent possible just what Jesus told us to do, & that is to go into all the World & preach the Gospel to every creature! Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL? And if you're not actually out there in the field doing the preaching, you're right here helping them to preach! Without you, most of them might not make it. But we supply the lit, the Message, the guidance, the supervision, direction, revelation, organisation, administration & all that they need to keep us as a body, a coordinated body. Everybody's gotta have a brain, right? Everybody's gotta have a vision, right? Everybody's gotta have ears to hear directions, etc., & everybody's gotta have a tongue to preach with! And some of you folks need a good nose to smell a rat when there is one, or bad food! Everybody's gotta have a heart of love, praise God?--And arms & legs to move, etc.--So we're a complete Body!
74. SO I DON'T KNOW OF ANY OTHER GROUP ON EARTH IN WHICH EVERY SINGLE ORGAN & EVERY SINGLE MEMBER & EVERY SINGLE SENSE IS WORKING ALMOST FULL-TIME OR FULL-TIME FOR THE LORD IN GETTING THE GOSPEL OF JESUS' LOVE TO THE WHOLE WORLD! You here constitute, in a sense, part of the brain that helps the body coordinate & organise & move properly & do what it's supposed to do. This great, highly-touted new mechanical heart operation that they brag so much about: "Science finally invented a machine that could replace the human heart!" Well, let's see how long the guy lasts! Is he dead yet? Well, the last I heard he'd had a stroke, & that means brain damage. All of a sudden, "Oh, well, that's right, we forgot, he also needs a brain!" What good's the heart without a brain? So we here sort of act as the brain in a way. Of course, really it's the mind of Christ in us that He promised, to give you direction & leadership & guidance & organisation & all that you need.--Amen! GBAKY different, unique, the best! In Jesus' name, amen!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
