HomeARC ML 0160
"THE GREAT ESCAPE!"--MO April 24, 1972 NO.160--GP
Copyrighted by The Children of God
P.O. Box 31, London WC2E 7LX, England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936
1. My Dearly Beloved Children in the Lord: Greetings in Jesus' Precious Name! We have just had a very remarkable dream from the Lord which has great bearing on our future and the future of our Work for Him in many lands and which must be given your very prayerful consideration in regard to any future plans. It was definitely God-given and Holy Spirit interpreted as a warning, an explanation, and a guide to our present plans and movements in respect to its predictions of what I believe to be the near future, and will affect every one of us! So please give it your earnest attention, and prayerfully heed its warnings! God bless you! I love you! It's called "The Great Escape!"
2. THE FOLLOWING DREAM IS DIRECT GUIDANCE FOR YOU and what you are to do to follow the Flame and fulfil His Will: The setting is a pastoral scene of shepherds grazing their sheep in deep lush green grass in lowland pastures at the foot of some mountains along a beautiful seacoast. It's sunny and warm and the sea is a calm beautiful blue on the one hand with the hills and mountains rising green and brown and distant blue, with lofty snow-capped peaks on the other.
3. THE SHEEP ARE GRAZING SAFELY AND CONTENTEDLY AND GROWING FAT in the rich lush pasture of the lowlands, while the shepherds are lolling here and there, taking it easy in the warm sunshine and the seeming security of their lush lowland pastures, laughing and playing, singing and dancing, and enjoying life, and making love to their fair maidens.
4. OUT OVER THE SEA, HOWEVER, A FIERCE STORM IS BREWING, with dark, black clouds, thunder rolling, lightning flashing and the sea and waves roaring. This ominous storm is moving rapidly toward the fair lowland pastures of the seacoast, but most of the shepherds and their maids seem unaware of its foreboding approach. Only a few of them seem to have caught sight of the storm and are casting a fearful eye at its distant raging on the one hand, while glancing toward the hills for some way of escape on the other. The hills are high, steep, rocky, and their grass is sparse, but they seem to offer definite refuge from the exposed lowlands in danger of being inundated by the rising tides, and flooded by the raging storm!
5. THE ONLY WAY TO THE SAFETY OF THE HILLS ABOVE IS A TUNNEL through the cliffs from the low-lying pastures below. Upon first sight of the scene, in the bright warm sunshine and complacent security before the storm, this tunnel route to higher ground is dry and fairly easy to negotiate, and a mere handful of the shepherds and their sheep--those that have seen the coming storm--are already beginning to herd their sheep through the tunnel to higher ground, but most of the others are refusing to pay any attention to the approaching storm, and seem unaware of their peril in the rich and easy, but dangerous, lowlands. They seem to have turned their backs to the storm, as though trying to ignore it, forget it or hoping it won't come or may even go away, some arguing that it'll be a long time before it strikes, if ever, and they have plenty of time to get to safety!
6. THE SHEPHERDS WHO HAVE ALREADY PASSED THROUGH THE TUNNEL WITH THEIR SHEEP ARE STANDING ON THE HILLS above watching the approaching storm, and crying out to those below to hurry and escape to the safety of the hills. But those in the rich easy pastures below are paying little or no attention to them, or scoffing and saying there's plenty of time, and some below are even still busily working on their folds, repairing, fixing, decorating, and making things more comfortable, with little or no heed to the approaching storm.
7. THE FIELDS ON THE HILLS ABOVE ARE MORE ROCKY AND RUGGED, rougher and harder and steeper, and the grass is not as plentiful as below, and the sheep have to work harder to find it, but the shepherds and their maidens seem to be relieved, feel freer, and breathing more easily now that they have made that difficult climb, knowing they are now out of reach of the storm about to strike the lowlands. They keep calling to those below to come up higher, but only a few stragglers seem to trickle through the tunnel at a slow and reluctant pace, and those below seem unwilling to let them go, and delaying their departure, with one excuse after another, until the storm is almost on them.
8. SUDDENLY THE STORM STRIKES THE COASTAL LOWLANDS WITH ALL ITS FIERCENESS! Giant storm-tossed tidal waves sweep across the lowlands flooding their lush pastures, and sweeping away many of the sheep with their shepherds, while the wind rages, the thunder crackles, and the lightning strikes again and again! The rich lowland fields, which were once such easy pastures have become a flooded sea of water and ferocious waves!
9. SOME OF THE SHEPHERDS HAVE HERDED THEIR LITTLE FLOCKS ONTO SMALL HILLOCKS AND KNOLLS ONLY BARELY ABOVE THE FLOOD in the midst of the lowlands, cowering there with their sheep under the battering of the storm. Others are struggling now desperately towards the tunnel that leads to higher ground! But the tunnel which had been a fairly easy way of escape before the storm struck, has now itself become a raging river, a terrible torrent of water rushing through its darkness. Inside, all is chaos and confusion, with shepherds groping in the darkness and the flood for their poor bleating sheep, and trying to lift them one by one onto a small narrow pathway, like a catwalk, just above the level of the water on the right side of the tunnel leading upward to safety. Many of the sheep are swept away and lost in the darkness and the dark waters, but one by one a few are managing to struggle to safety along the dark narrow pathway! There's much weeping and wailing and bleating and cries for help, but all is confusion and life and death struggle to try to reach safety, for many too late!
10. But for those who make it through the tunnel at that desperate hour, they break forth, to their surprise, into brilliant sunshine above, to their tremendous relief, and with the greatest of thanksgiving, rejoicing just to be there now, however hard the going, whereas only a few of those left below managed to escape the flood in their few, tiny places of refuge. On the hard hills above, though rough and difficult, and the foraging sparse, all is sunshine and gladness and rejoicing to be saved from the storm which continues to rage in the lowlands below. And though the going is harder, they're thankful to be alive and to have brought their sheep to safety. especially those who struggled through the darkness and the flood in those last terrible hours, almost too late. Shouting and praising God, some of the shepherds and shepherdesses with their sheep were already beginning to move onward and upward to even higher mountain pastures above!
11. ALTHOUGH THE SCENERY WAS MAGNIFICENT and the drama thrilling with excitement, I did not understand the dream until I began to describe it by faith, and then the interpretation began to come, and was as clear as can be! For those of you who have not already caught the vision by His Spirit, I'll try to explain it to you: The Lowlands apparently represent lush, affluent societies of the richer nations of the earth, particularly America, where the going is now fairly easy, the provisioning plentiful, and there is still considerable measure of freedom and security.
12. BUT THE STORM OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS upon the ease and luxury of the nations, particularly America, is fast approaching and the sea and waves of the uprising of peoples are about to rage! God has warned us time and again, from the earliest days in 1962, when He first gave us the Message of Jeremiah, that His judgements were going to be soon poured out upon America, and we should flee that country if possible as soon as our prophet's job of warning them was finished, the last Harvest reaped, and the storm about to break!
13. LIKE JERUSALEM IN JEREMIAH'S DAY, surrounded by her enemies and about to fall, His people were warned by His Prophet to flee the city, even into the camp of the enemy, and they would be spared! But that was a long time ago and though He has repeated the warning many times since, and though that Warning Message is supposed to be one of our major missions in America, many of our shepherds seem to have forgotten its meaning, and are failing to heed its portent, they're not preparing to escape, or helping their sheep to do so even now.
14. WE SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN that our message is not only our Sample of the joy and gladness of Salvation and the happiness of forsaking all and living together and preaching the Gospel in our own land, but also to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature!
15. WE'VE ENJOYED SUCH A RICH HARVEST IN NORTH AMERICA, WE HAVE BEEN RELUCTANT TO LEAVE THOSE LUSH LOWLANDS and their present peace and safety to struggle through the difficulties of the long, hard climb through the passageways to other countries on higher safer ground where the going is rough, rocky, and steep, and the pasturage sparse, but to which God has called us in His Great Commission to reach all the world!
16. BUT LET ME TELL YOU RIGHT NOW that the going is not nearly as rough as it's going to be, and the present escape routes not nearly as difficult and dangerous, if not impossible, as they will be in the near future when the storm of God's judgments begins to break upon the wickedness of the lowlands of America! For while they build and they plant, are glutted and drunken and revelling in their adulteries and their fornications with the worldly System, the Storm is about to break and the Flood about to come and sweep them all away, as it was in the days of Noah!
17. AS JEREMIAH WARNED GOD'S PEOPLE IN HIS DAY, if we do not escape now, some of us will be swept away with God's Judgments on the wicked! Nevertheless, He has promised us that in that day, when His Rod of Judgment descends upon America, there will be a very great Harvest of souls, so some of us will have to stay behind to rescue those poor lost sheep in that day. These were no doubt those shepherds huddled together with their sheep in little places of refuge in the midst of the storm, like our farm and ranch Colonies, where you should now be storing food, and be sure of an independent water supply and even provisioning animals and wagons for transportation while others flee!
18. MEANWHILE, WHILE THE ESCAPE ROUTES ARE STILL OPEN and fairly easy to cross, as many of you as possible who are ready with your passports should be moving on to higher ground of the other nations we must reach: First those who already have a knowledge of the languages, customs, and travel in the nations to which they'll be going, together with those who have talents, skills, gifts and abilities which are already needed in these higher fields, such as leaders, inspirationalists, secretaries, mechanics, etc.--Those whose loyalty, love, faith, diligence, and faithfulness has already been tried and proven and ready for new fields of battle, not those who just want to go along for the ride!
19. WE HAVE ALREADY DISCOVERED THAT OUR DISCIPLES IN COUNTRIES OTHER THAN AMERICA SEEM TO BE MORE ADVANCED and make faster progress than those at home. American youth have been too pampered, sheltered and unprepared for the realities of life and are not nearly as knowledgable in the ways of the rest of the world, its languages, geography, or customs as are the average youth of other nations, sad to say. Six month old disciples in Europe are already leaders, whereas in America they're still considered babes--as one European team ruefully discovered while passing through the American Lowlands on their way to their foreign field! The reverse culture shock was almost too much for them and reminded me of what missionaries used to say upon returning to America after years of absence in some far-flung field: "This country makes me sick!--I can't wait to get back to the field!" Sleepy, lazy, lethargic, complacent, indolent and affluent America becomes sickening to those who are awake to the needs abroad!
20. AWAKE, ARISE, AND SHINE, AMERICA--for the glory of the Lord is about to depart from thee, and is already falling upon the nations around about! I believe that this is probably our last year of great harvest in the American Lowlands, perhaps even our last year of freedom there. America's foolish economic policies have robbed the poor to feed the rich, have suppressed labour and the youth while favouring the warmongers and big business, as well as offending most of the rest of the world, including even her friends and neighbours, and is now so power-drunk that she would stop at nothing to keep it, even to the creating of some national or international emergency, as has nearly every other power-mad country throughout history, in many other places! What makes you think it can't happen with America? I believe it can and will--and soon!
21. SO NOW'S THE TIME TO START MOVING OUT and transferring your shepherds and your flocks from those dangerous lowlands to safer, higher ground! Our Canadian Colonies seem filled with more linguists than elsewhere, so perhaps these should be moved to the countries where they're needed as rapidly as possible, and Americans take their places en route to the rest of the world. They seem more ready for the task and more accustomed to its differences and changes and more humble for its leadership than the proverbially "Ugly American", and a little apprenticeship in Canada will do most Americans good, where they are unliked, as in the rest of the world. Others who are ready might be shipped directly abroad, if qualified.
22. WE NOW HAVE TOO MANY COLONIES IN AMERICA AND NOT ENOUGH ABROAD (1972). Many of these smaller colonies in less important areas should probably be closed and their personnel shifted to more important areas while the most experienced personnel should be shipped abroad!--Unless these smaller Colonies are potential refugees, such as our farms and ranches, in which case they should be definitely preparing for what's coming in the way of large numbers of refugees who will be fleeing the cities when the trouble comes. Only volunteers should be accepted for this dangerous duty of remaining behind in these Colonies of refuge in this rearguard action as other troops evacuate the Country, or nation!
23. ALL THOSE WHO SPEAK LATIN AMERICAN LANGUAGES should be evacuated to those countries as rapidly as possible until we haven't a disciple left in the United States who speaks a foreign language! Every opening in foreign countries should be seized immediately, and at least enough personnel transferred to these to hold these forts until reinforcements are available. No stone should be left unturned, and no door left unopened! Every opportunity abroad should be seized immediately and all available personnel transferred there as quickly as possible!
24. IF YOU THINK THE EXODUS OF THE TEENS FOR CHRIST FROM CALIFORNIA MADE NEWS, wait until they hear of the massive Exodus of the Children of God from North America! It has long been predicted and envisioned by prophet after prophet from our earliest days, some even seeing hundreds of red-robed prophets boarding the giant silver birds for parts unknown!
25. HOWEVER, I WOULD NOT PUBLICISE THIS MASS MIGRATION, IF YOU CAN HELP IT! They will discover it soon enough! The quieter, and the less fanfare you have when you go, the better. Small teams departing in unnoticed installments would be best. Let not him that putteth his armour on boast as him that putteth it off! Some teams that did the most bragging before they left, have accomplished the least on the field. Others have gone to fields where they were not led by the Spirit, and may now even have to be evacuated! Be sure you're led of the Lord and it's confirmed by His Spirit and leadership, else you may be doomed to disappointment, disillusionment, discouragement, and even disgrace, as some have been who were led of their own spirits and not the Lord's. We should send no more such teams to already potentially dangerous areas which we may soon have to evacuate at great cost and loss!
26. THE FIELDS TO WHICH GOD HAS GUIDED US BY HIS SPIRIT and to which He has led us by direct revelation are booming and prospering, and God is mightily blessing, but those fields which were someone else's idea have only proven to be a bad mistake, and not sealed by the witness of His Spirit. Some of these fields of which we were very doubtful personally and upon which we received no witness of the Spirit, but on which we yielded to the insistence of others and their supposed faith, have since proven nothing but a disappointment. Even though He gave them the desires of their heart, He sent leanness to their souls, because it was not His perfect Will. God knows where the harvest is ripe! Let's not try to force our way into fields that are either not yet ripe or have already been harvested and there is nothing left but a little gleaning! We have no time to be wasting labourers on fields where there's very little grain left, when they could be in fields where they could be bringing in the sheaves by the armloads. God knows where these ripest harvests are! Pray He'll send you into these! PTL! God bless and keep you all and make you a blessing wherever you are!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family}
