HomeARC ML 0316A
"THE BIRDS AND THE SEEDS!"MO October 18, 1974 NO.316A--DFO
Copyrighted October, 1974 by The Children of God
P.O. Box 31, London WC2E 7LX, England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936
Greetings in Jesus' Precious Name! Thank you so much for your many good reports of your progress there, as well as your sweet personal notes and love letters, etc.
2. BY NOW YOU HAVE READ "INDIGENOUS", SO YOU KNOW WHAT WE'RE ABOUT TO TRY TO DO--again! Praise the Lord! It's sort of like our fourth or fifth Declaration of Independence for the kids around the world, each of which some of you said might not work and could even cause us to fall apart! You were afraid that in the resultant explosion we might be blown to bits instead of simply expanding and growing stronger and more widespread!
3. BUT INSTEAD, EACH NEW EXPLOSION HAS SET THE KIDS FREER to operate directly under the Lord according to their own faith for their local situation which they understood much better than we! Each new earth-shaking blast, which actually frightened some of you, instead opened up new wellsprings of power that we never even knew existed below before! Each has caused the water of His Word to flow more freely than ever before! Each has helped tiny new rivulets turn into mighty torrents that have opened up whole new channels and swollen to irrepressible and mighty rivers of the Words of God in totally new fields! Hallelujah! Amen? Praise the Lord!
4. EACH NEW BLAST OF THE POWER OF GOD AND HIS WORDS HAVE BROKEN THE CHAINS THAT BOUND THEM, shattered the locks of their prison doors, destroyed the walls that surrounded them and set them free to flood the earth with their doctrine! Instead of weakening our own structure, each new liberation has helped destroy the Enemy's opposition and attempts to contain us and detain us from the work God wants us to do!
5. EVEN OUR MASSIVE EVACUATION OF AMERICA CAUSED US TO ROLL LIKE A TIDAL WAVE AROUND THE EARTH into more countries and languages and reaching more people then some of you ever dreamed, and even helped strengthen the brave brethren who remained into such tough rearguard street fighters that their distribution record is now the highest in the world and one of our greatest and most faithful sources of support--more than before! Hallelujah!
6. IT REMINDS ME OF THE TIME WE SENT THEM HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS and some of you said they'd never come back, but instead the truly strong ones returned with even new disciples and we grew even more rapidly then before! This was the result of one of our first Declarations of Independence, "The Emergency Call Home" of November '71, followed by another blast the following month, "Let My People Go!" the principles and results of which are described in the "Homegoing" Letter of the same month--Read them for yourselves! They'll encourage you it works!
7. "THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE" WAS WRITTEN ONLY SIX MONTHS LATER in July of '72 just after our "Great Escape" of April the same year. "Old Bottles" was called "Your Third Declaration of Independence", but by that time we had really lost count and it was actually about your sixth or seventh! In fact, we've tried to set the kids free so many times in so many Letters in so many moves they're almost innumerable! God help us!
8. IN THESE LETTERS WE DEALT MOSTLY WITH INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, the setting free of those who had the faith to go it alone, hit the road, invade a new area or country or whole new world to sow new seed in new places which would grow in new, more receptive and fertile soil into a whole new plant, an entirely new colony in a different field! Some took this to mean that we were abandoning the Colony method entirely, but what we were really doing was trying to break up some of the old bottles and blobs into a wider coverage of much smaller and individualistic Colonies, more independent and indigenous and ministering to more people in more places than ever before!
9. A FEW CARRIED THIS TO THE EXTREME AND THOUGHT WE WEREN'T TO HAVE COLONIES ANY MORE, and some are still preaching against any kind of Colonies at all, which is not at all what we intended not what has resulted. We were trying to break up the big blobs so bogged down with numbers they could hardly move, and scatter them in smaller units and more effective little families all over the world! We dealt with this again and again in Letters as early as 1971 such as " Gypsies", "Decentralisation", "Specifics", "Details", etc., some of which, or portions of which, we are republishing now to remind you of God's plan and principles along this line!
10. WE EVEN LECTURED SOME OF YOU PRESENT TOP LEADERS WHO WERE AT TSC AS EARLY AS 1970 ON "COLONISATION", describing the revelation the Lord had given us on how to win the youth of the world for Christ. It was not to be by total scatteration of helpless individuals and their individual infiltration through the enemy's lines without any help, organisation or Colony backing and encouragement, but it was to be by the sending forth of those who had the faith to almost individually pioneer small new Colonies with our encouragement, help and laborers.
11. THAT THIS METHOD OF COLONISATION HAS WORKED IS EVIDENT THROUGH THE WORLDWIDE RESULTS of the present; thousands of new disciples in hundreds of new colonies in scores of new countries on every Continent speaking dozens of languages and publishing millions of Letters to billions worldwide!
12. BUT SOME OF YOU ARE LIKE THE MAN IN THE BIBLE WHO WANTED TO BUILD BIGGER BARNS to hold more grain instead of scattering it abroad to the hungry and starving multitudes!
13. OR YOU'RE LIKE THE FLOWERS IN OUR GARDEN WHO WANT TO REMAIN BIG AND BRIGHT AND SHOWY instead of fading, losing their petals and going to seed which is being scattered by the birds to grow new flowers in other places, the fruit of the bloom and its original purpose in the first place! The blooms must die that others may live! That is their fruit and method of multiplication, their true intent and purpose in existing at all, in order that they mights produce seed or fruit which will perpetuate the entire plant to reproduce more plants, more seed, more fruit!
14. THE BIRDS, LIKE THE CHILDREN OF GOD, HAVE BEEN PLUCKING AWAY THE SHOWY PETALS TO GET AT THE SEEDS with which they fly away, scattering then abroad in their droppings so that even a new island and the desolate places are soon covered with new verdure, new flowers, new plants, new trees and new fruit with new seed from the same!
15. I REMEMBER AS A BOY A MUD BANK POLED UP IN A BAY by the dredges which were deepening the channel, and soon these mud banks were turned into little islands covered with grass and plants and flowers and trees! Yet it seemed that no one lived there but the birds!
16. SO I ASKED MY FATHER HOW ALL THAT VEGETATION GOT THERE WHERE NO MAN HAD EVER SET FOOT, AND HE SAID, "THE WIND AND THE BIRDS, MY SON!--The wind and the birds!" Then he explained how God made some seeds so small and light they could be carried by the wind to far away places, and others, a little larger and heavier, by the birds and animals in their droppings to populate other places with the plants so necessary for man's environment and existence!
17. SO EVERY TIME I LOOKED AT THOSE NEW LITTLE ISLANDS WITH THEIR NEW LITTLE PLANTS AND TREES I MARVELLED AT THE WISDOM OF GOD, for this is God's first principle and His first commandment to His whole creation in the very first chapter of its first great history ever written; "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth!" The old are constantly dying so the new and the young must be continually reproduced and constantly growing to have a living new world day by day! "For except a seed fall into the ground and die it abideth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit!"
18. THE BLOSSOMS MUST FADE, WITHER AND DIE THAT THEIR SEEDS MIGHT FALL AND BE SCATTERED or blow or be carried and planted on new ground to die there to themselves that a new plant might be born, springing forth from the death of the old and multiplying its members manyfold! This is God's principle of life and growth and strength and reproduction and multiplication throughout all nature:
19. THE OLD MUST GIVE WAY TO THE NEW and the parents must suffer pain, separation and even death for their young that all things might be recreated, reproduced and repopulate the earth day after day! Even the Earth itself must die one day that it may give birth to a New World! So all things must come to an end sometime except that which is eternal! All things must die sooner or later that others may live!
20. BIRDS MUST BUILD NESTS FOR AWHILE THAT THEY MAY LAY THEIR EGGS AND BREED THEIR YOUNG. But soon the new little fledglings themselves must be pushed out of the nest to fly on their own, fend for themselves to build new nests to breed more birds to fly away and build more nests to breed more birds, etc., etc., ad infinitum! Each time the nest must be deserted and the fledgling scattered abroad to build birds' nests elsewhere!
21. BUT SOME OF YOU AS YOU MULTIPLY DON'T WANT TO LEAVE THE NEST--you simply want to build a bigger nest in which you can concentrate more baby birds to have one big baby bird choir all in one place all singing gloriously together for the entertainment of those nearby while the rest of the world is dying to hear your music!
22. OR SOME OF YOU ARE LIKE THE CARTOON I ONCE SAW OF THIS HUGE OVERGROWN BIG BABY FLEDGLING spread out and occupying the whole nest to himself and refusing to leave it, saying "But I don't want to leave the nest!--I wanna stay and be a problem child!"--And that's what you really become when you won't go into all the world!
23. THE CHURCHES HAVE DONE THIS: THEY HAVE BUILT BIGGER NESTS AND BIGGER BARNS and refused to share their babes and seeds with the rest of the world. Some of them have become monstrous nests full of retarded monstrosities who are nothing but problems! They have become bigger and bigger barns, often so bursting with grain that much of it is spilled and spoiled and lost instead of sharing with the rest of the world that is starving for hunger!
24. SOME OF OUR OWN COLONIES HAVE DONE THE SAME, SELFISHLY HOARDING their birds and bulbs to enjoy each other and "Behold, what a great tower of Babel (Confusion!) we have built!", while the rest of the world is dying for your music and your words of life!--Is it your Colony?
25. SO BOTH GOD AND WE HAVE WRITTEN YOU LETTER AFTER LETTER BEGGING YOU TO DISPERSE throughout all the world instead of bunching up in these big blobs which are nothing but headaches, overgrown nests, bursting barns and towers of babbling confusion! Must God Himself scatter you?
26. MANY TIMES THROUGHOUT HISTORY GOD HAS HAD TO SCATTER HIS OWN PEOPLE WHEN THEY REFUSED TO GO after warning after warning by His own prophets! Since the beginning of time this, too, has been God's way: If you refuse to leave the nest, the nest is blown away! If you refuse to share the contents of the barn, the barn is torn down! If your blossom refuses to die to scatter its seed, it is plucked apart by the birds and carried far away, like it or not!
27. SO NOW WE ARE AGAIN WARNING YOU, FOR THE LAST TIME WE HOPE, THAT YOU MUST DIVIDE IN ORDER TO MULTIPLY AND ADD BEFORE GOD SUBTRACTS YOU! I even threatened you long ago that if any Colony became larger than about a couple dozen we would no longer consider you a part of the Revolution! Do we have to declare you Associates or only Friends or outsiders or even enemies in order to get you to obey?
28. DO WE HAVE TO WITHHOLD SOME OF OUR LETTERS FROM YOU UNTIL YOU DO? Must we cut you off from our news of the world and our fellowship to make you realise that we mean business about dividing to conquer the world?--Divide and conquer!--Or the world will divide and conquer you! That's the way God works: If you won't do it, the Devil will!
29. IF YOU HAVE A BIG BLOB OF A COLONY OR A CONGLOMERATE MESS OF COLONIES ALL IN ONE PLACE, PLEASE BREAK IT UP now before God has to let the Devil do it for you! If you've become too big as an Headquarters for your city, District, Region, Bishopric, or even the world, then break it up now before you are broken up by some God--Ordained catastrophe, confusion, persecution, poverty or pain--such as losing your building or property or rights to live or distribute there, or your Club or your publishing rights, or even your city or your country, your literature banned and yourselves banished in order for God to get you to move some place else!
30. BETTER A LITTLE COLONY WITH A LITTLE LITNESSING THAN NONE AT ALL! When will you ever learn? God uses the weak things to confound the mighty, the foolish things to bring to naught the wisdom of the wise and the things that are not, or seemingly nothing to bring to naught the things that are, or think they are! For it is the base things and the things which are despised of the world which God hath chosen, like you and me and our tiny Colonies! If your Colony's getting big enough to brag about, look out!--Pride cometh before a fall, and you're doomed!
31. SO WHY NOT DO IT NOW BEFORE THE DEVIL HAS TO DO IT FOR YOU! Most big Colonies are big bases for big jobs which could be broken down into smaller jobs, departmentalised or specialised in different ministries in different places. As I have often said, good leaders are those who never do anything they can get someone else to do for them!--Only do the things which you alone can do and must be done by you only!
32. SHOVE PART OF YOUR LOAD DOWN THE LADDER on someone else who's coming up before it gets too heavy and breaks with both of you! Spread out the load on more shoulders so that no one will collapse under too much weight!
33. IN MAO'S CHINA EVERYBODY USES HIS OWN LITTLE HOE OR SPADE AND EACH CARRIES HIS OWN little basket of dirt or rocks by the thousands upon thousands, thus keeping everybody busy, productive, out of mischief, efficient with what little they can do with what little they've got to do it with, and of whom there are always plenty more spread out all over China in case anybody fails!
34. SOMEBODY'S BOUND TO SUCCEED! In fact, a lot of somebodies in a lot of places are building a great nation out of nothing and nobodies living in tiny villages throughout the whole land!--Everybody back to the land!
35. AND THIS IS HOW THEY'RE GOING TO SURVIVE, each on his own little plot in his own tiny village, while the super-powers destroy their super-selves and their super-cities with just a few well placed super-bombs!--All because of their concentration of so many in so few places instead of decentralising and dispersing the many to a few in many places!--What are you doing?
36. WHAT IF MAO HAD BROUGHT IN THE BIG BULLDOZERS TO DO THE JOB?--They would have soon broken down with unskilled labour and unsupplied parts and left to rust in the ruts while the people sat twiddling their thumbs and getting in each other's hair with nothing to do or so much to do they've forgotten how to do it for themselves the way they used to!--Have you?
37. SOME OF YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN FROM WHENCE YE CAME AND HOW TO DO LITTLE JOBS WITH LITTLE PEOPLE and stay small yourselves with a simple little operation that almost anybody can handle, Instead, you have become such a monstrous, complicated, intricate and highly sophisticated machine that hardly anybody knows how to operate it, and if it breaks down nobody knows how to fix it or what it needs! You've forgotten "You Gotta Be a Baby!" not only to get to Heaven but also to survive here!
38. TRIM IT DOWN! SPREAD IT OUT! KEEP IT SMALL AND SIMPLE!--And then almost anybody can run it, even the small and simple-minded! Even the biggest newspapers in the world are distributed by the millions by small little simple-minded newsboys on street corners or bicycles! Yes, but you say, what about those big presses that produce them?--Fine!--Use'em! Let them do it for you! The newsboys don't try to run the presses!--All that newsboys need are two feet, one hand, a loud voice and a strong heart for the job and maybe only a park bench to sleep on!--Have you? "Despise not the day of small things!"--Amen?
39. NEWSBOYS DON'T WRITE, COMPOSE OR PRINT PAPERS--THEY LET THE SYSTEM DO IT FOR 'EM!--And yet the largest papers in the world could not exist without them and the lowly postman hoofing his beat! No matter how big your brain, it takes your feet to get you there and your hands to do the job! Management and machinery are nothing without labourers! Though the harvest truly is plenteous, the labourers are always too few!
40. IF THERE'S UNEMPLOYMENT, IT'S NEVER BECAUSE THERE'S NOT ENOUGH WORK or jobs to be done and it's not even the labourers' fault if management doesn't supply the seed or sent them into the fields and show them how to sow it, tend it and harvest it and live off the land! Depressions are caused by the rich, not the poor!
41. IS YOUR COLONY BIG AND RICH AND ROBBING THE POOR OF THEIR NEEDS and so selfish you're robbing the world of labourers? We don't need many managers, writers, artists, composers, editors and printers. It takes only a few of us to do these jobs, and even the System can print them for us by the billions with the greatest of ease! What we need is newsboys who are willing to go into all the world and proclaim the Good News to all the people!
42. IT'S NEWSBOYS WHO NEED TO BE NUMEROUS-NOT MANAGEMENT WITH OVERGROWN STAFFS AND OUTGROWN HOUSING! A small efficient staff can help simplify and speed production of good originals for all to reproduce. But if it's going to get bogged down in a big blob of other less essential jobs, other departments and excess personnel getting in each other's way and requiring too much housing and causing too many problems, living in too much luxury and costing too much expense, I'd rather see you all go back to the streets as the original good newsboys you used to be!
43. WE CAN GO BACK TO OUR TYPEWRITER AND SEND YOU THE ORIGINAL COPIES if we have to, as we used to do, for you to print as is wherever you are however you can as long as you're in the field getting the job done, sowing the seed and reaping the harvest! That's where we started and that's where we'll go back to if we have to, if we don't get rid of these big bureaucracies and their bureaucrats which have bulged up into big blobs that are too big to house and so bogged down with other business they are blocking Publications of the Glad Tidings!
44. I'LL GET THE MESSAGE, MARIA CAN TYPE IT, SOMEBODY CAN XEROX IT AND SEND JUST ONE COPY TO EACH of hundreds of little Colonies around the Globe, and each of you little fellows can mimeograph your own for your own street sales if we have to--just like we used to do! That's what started the Revolution and that's the way we did it, and we can do it again if we have to!--Or the big blob'll get you if you don't watch out!
45. WATCH OUT FOR BIG BLOB BOGEY MEN!--THE WHOLE WORLD'S BOGGED DOWN WITH'EM! A big blob job can be corn on the cob for the few instead of millions in the cans for the billions! If your complicated machinery can't get the seed corn off the cob and into the cans for every kitchen in this starving world, then for God's sake let's do it by hand if we have to, like Mao does and Jesus did and we used to do!--At least we could keep thousands of little people busy doing thousands of little jobs while the big shots are still trying to figure out their big-shot machinery!
46. WE'VE ALREADY EXPLAINED IN "INDIGENOUS" HOW YOU LITTLE FOLKS IN THE FIELDS CAN HANDLE MOST OF THE PICK AND SHOVEL WORK and carry your own baskets under your own steam, printing and distributing your own lit locally with your own local address as many are already doing. But you should also be answering your own local mail, following up your own friends and reaping your own results!
47. ONLY PLEASE SEND US A LITTLE IN RETURN SO WE CAN KEEP SENDING YOU THE SEED CORN-or corny seed, whichever you prefer to call it!--But whatever you think of it, the hungry millions are eatin' it up!--Amen?--And it's growin' like mad!--Hallelujah!
48. BUT IF YOU'VE GOT ANY OTHER BIG-BLOB-BOMBS OUT THERE ABOUT TO EXPLODE, LONDON'S GOING TO BE THE FIRST TO SHOW YOU HOW TO BURST THEM INTO BITS! Since Publications is our No.1 job, we want you to give their little two dozen (and that's the limit!) the best housing in London where they can shift for themselves into whatever gears are their highest speed!--Amen?
49. THE INTERNATIONAL OFFICE FOR COLONY COMMUNICATIONS AND ADMINISTRATION CAN MOVE their two dozen into the next best housing where they can read your mail, compile your reports, deal with your problems and minister to you needs and attend to any international business which may be necessary, supervising, advising, sympathising, advertising and coordinating your efforts as needed!
50. EVERY LITTLE LOCAL COLONY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, OR AT LEAST ITS DISTRICT OR REGIONAL OFFICE, WILL HANDLE ALL LOCAL MAIL LOCALLY as soon as possible, so the International Office's outside mailing ministry with the public can be gradually phased out as you local yokels take over your own local loads, so maybe its head can soon go to France where Paris is screaming for help on the thousands of pieces of mail they're getting as a result of their records, stage, radio and TV shows and massive litnessing which has now far surpassed London!
51. THE LOCAL LONDON CHILDREN'S COLONY CAN HAVE THE NEXT BEST HOUSING, which makes three, the exact number of nice houses you have there in one nice location if you can still use them! Then the local London Babes Colony could probably house both the MO Education and Poorboy staffs or split into a few more cracked houses! The Foreign Ministry can either get those Arabs to support'em or hit the road and supervise the world!
52. THIS WILL LIBERATE ABOUT EVERYBODY WE DON'T NEED IN LONDON TO HELP YOU OUT THERE IN YOUR LOCAL FIELDS, while you help what's left, Publications and Office, with your new "Top-Ten-percent" donations from each local Colony all over the world, plus the gifts and offerings of those who can help take care of Maria and me too! The rest of the Londoners can raise their own corn in London or join you in the fields!--Amen? Thanks! God bless you all! You're really doing a great job!--We just know you can do even greater if we let you!--Amen?--So get with it and get off it and get on it and get going again!--Amen?--We love you all!--PTL! He does too!--Love, Dad--Remember the "Birds and the Seeds" and "Despise not the day of small things!"--The Word we got from the Lord for you!--Amen? Scatter'em now!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family}
