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"THE CHURCH OF LOVE!"--A Dream?--MO 3-9-77 DO NO.617
Copyrighted November 1977 by the Children of God
1. WE HAVE NOT REACHED THE NICE LITTLE WIVES WITH THE NICE LITTLE CHILDREN and families like one we met last night. I came home and I said, "We are never going to reach women like that with what we're doing now!"
2. THEY'RE FED UP WITH THE CHURCH, they've quit going to church, they're somewhat liberated. But now they've got small children and they want to know what to do with them. They want them to have some religion, but they don't want to take them back to the church.
3. BUT THEY ARE CHURCH GEARED, CHURCH-CONDITIONED AND CHURCH-ORIENTED. I told Maria once in Tenerife, "If we had some kind of a meeting place like church they'd come!" Look what Ninos did!--The Babes' Ranch we had there, look what it did for those people who are still of a partially church mentality.
4. THEY'VE GOT TO HAVE SOME KIND OF A MEETING PLACE and you have to have some kind of a class for them, they've got to feel like they're having some kind of a little gathering or church of some kind.
5. I'M SORT OF INTERPRETING THE DREAM IN ADVANCE. I'm going backwards to understand what the Lord showed me, because I saw it clear as anything. I had to laugh when I woke up, because it's so funny!
6. IT'S AGAINST ALMOST EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER PREACHED ABOUT CHURCHES! Well, I'm not afraid to turn around and go the other direction a bit if we've been going this one too long!
7. A REVOLUTION KEEPS TURNING AROUND, RIGHT? It's made up of many U-turns, and you just keep going round and round. When you've made a complete revolution going this way, and you're going too long in that direction until you're getting in a rut, then you've got to turn around and come back this way again, right?
8. ISN'T THAT WHAT A PENDULUM DOES? Marx taught that history is like a pendulum: It swings from one extreme to the other in its dialectics. It sweeps to the extreme of democratic governments then it sweeps clear back to dictatorships and monarchies again. People get fed up with democracy and they go back to monarchy. Then they get fed up with the autocrats and they go back the other way.
9. PEOPLE ARE FICKLE AND CHANGEABLE AND THEY HAVE TO HAVE VARIETY. As Paul said, "I became all things to all men in order that I might win some," and the only time it didn't work was with the Temple Jews! The religious Jews were a hopeless case! Although he went back to the Temple and had his hair cut and everything else--forget it! He couldn't please'em!
10. BUT THE AMAZING THING ABOUT THIS DREAM WAS, THE NAME WAS SO CLEAR! I have never heard such a name! I have heard churches called by every kind of name in the world, but why didn't somebody think of this name? It's just like the Lord reserved the names "Children of God" and "Family of Love" for us!
11. THERE ARE SOME WOMEN WITH THEIR LITTLE FAMILIES AND RELUCTANT HUSBANDS ... I mean, you have to take people where they're at, and just take them as far as you can get them to go. Jesus did: He said I've got a lot of things to tell you, but you can't even bear them yet--right? (Jn.16:12.)
12. SO THERE ARE ALL STAGES OF CHRISTIANS, there are all kinds of stages of Christian development, and you've got to reach people where they're at, right? It's just like all the other revelations I've had, so it must be from the Lord. It was so beautiful and it was such an amazing thing, I thought,
13. "WHY, HOW COME WE NEVER EVER HEARD OF A CHURCH BY THAT NAME!"--Just like God reserved it for us all these years! For example, I've heard religious groups called by all kinds of names, but never Children of God or Family of Love! Isn't that amazing? Not since Bible times! Well, all I can say is:
14. THERE WAS THIS CUTE QUAINT LITTLE CHAPEL, a very modest little chapel but like a small church. It reminded me of the cute little chapel Fred had in his mission in downtown Los Angeles for the bums.--Or Dr. Martin's little chapel in his mansion in that French town in Canada--a mission to French Catholics.
15. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL, WITH LOVELY WINDOWS, A LITTLE PULPIT AND A FEW NICE LITTLE BENCHES. I mean, the place wasn't bigger than this apartment. It had little short benches, a little central aisle, and all the little things that church people love and are used to that help get them in the Spirit.
16. AND THERE WERE THESE WOMEN! It seemed like mostly women and a few husbands, as usual, sitting there with their little children and families. And I asked the Lord, "What's this? What are You taking me to church for?" There are small churches that are really sweet that way, you know? I can see it yet, that cute little chapel and them singing hymns!
17. THERE ARE OODLES OF PEOPLE WHO CAN NEVER JOIN US AND LIVE LIKE WE DO, laboring people, professional people, families and so on, and they are absolutely convinced that to be a Christian they have got to go to church on Sunday. If they have any kind of religion at all, it's got to be some kind of a church building or chapel where they can feel like they're worshipping.
18. IT'S INGRAINED IN THEM! You talk about being brainwashed and mentally conditioned--the Church has been at it for 2000 years! Oh, it goes back further than that! The first church buildings were the old heathen temples: In the third century of Christianity they simply threw out the old pagan idols and put in new Christian ones, and there was hardly any difference between the priesthood from one to the other!--A little bit different trappings and different words and a different message.
19. THEY TOOK THE PEOPLE WHERE THEY WERE AT, according to what they were mentally conditioned to: That they had to go to some building to worship God. They just had to go to church or to temple or they just didn't feel religious.--And for some people that's all they can do.
20. THERE WERE ALL THOSE NICE LITTLE FAMILIES IN MY DREAM, and I particularly remember looking at the nice little young mothers with children. It was just like I was coming through the front door--you know how the front door is always in the back--and looking at the people from behind. Here was this aisle going down the center, flanked on each side by these cute little simple wooden pews, and then a little platform and a simple little rostrum.
21. MARIA AND I HAVE BEEN IN OODLES OF LITTLE CHURCHES LIKE THAT, the poorest churches there are, who have hardly anything, but they always fix themselves up a nice little chapel of some kind.
22. I GUESS I MUST HAVE BUILT THE POOREST CHURCH BUILDING ANYBODY EVER HAD!--I made mine out of mud! It didn't have any stained glass windows, but I found these old rippled windows that came out of some wrecked building, and some old doors from a scrap salvage yard, and an old roof, and I built my church building around them!--And the total cost was only $2000!
23. MANY TIMES IN THOSE POOR LITTLE DENOMINATIONS THEY MADE CHAPELS RIGHT OUT OF THE MAIN ROOM OF SOME OLD MANSION. Ninos had a built-in chapel and the house we just moved out of had a small theater in the basement--it would have been perfect for little chapel services. I even made a chapel of our screened porch in Arizona before I built my church! Well anyhow.
24. I WAS LOOKING IN THE BACK DOOR OF THIS LITTLE CHAPEL and I don't think it could have held more than 50 people, 25 on each side, maybe a little more, I don't know, but it was pretty small--about like Dr. Martin's.--And there they were sitting there singing happily!
25. AND THERE I WAS UP FRONT LEADING THE SINGING just like I used to do when I was young, singing away and the piano was playing! (Maria: Mother's been practicing up on the piano!--Ha!) Oh, this will really cheer her dear heart, ho ho ho! And so I looked at it all and I asked, "Lord, what is this? My Lord, what is this?" I was almost afraid of what He was showing me!
26. THE BEST PART ABOUT CHURCH WAS GOING TO SUNDAY SCHOOL. I don't know whether you ever went to Sunday School, but it was real nice for kids. There were cute pretty little teenage girl teachers and all those pretty pictures on the walls of Jesus and the Bible stories.
27. SUNDAY SCHOOL WAS EXACTLY LIKE SARA RUNS HER LITTLE DAILY SCHOOL FOR DAVIDITO EVERYDAY, that was Sunday School. For the little kids his age you also had games and toys and things to play with like he does, and then you had the serious Bible Story of the week, once a week.--What Davidito gets daily! How do Christians expect their children to become anything at all with only one-half-hour of religious training a week?--But it's better'n nuthin'!
28. SO I SAID, "BUT LORD, WHAT IS THIS?"--as I looked in the back door of this little chapel at these little young families all happily singing away, children and all.
29. IT WAS SO MUCH LIKE SOME OF THE LITTLE TINY CHURCHES THAT I PIONEERED WHEN I WAS YOUNG--after all, we didn't know anything else. If you wanted to work for the Lord, of course you went out and pioneered and/or pastored churches! Ha!
30. YOU USUALLY STARTED OFF WITH THE BUILDING, AND THEN YOU'D TRY TO GO OUT AND WIN SOULS TO FILL IT UP! Well, it worked in a way--there are certain people who are geared to that. I got to preaching later that what you ought to do is start off with the people and then worry about the building later.
31. HERE'S THE CLINCHER: This dream is just as clear right this minute as if I was still seeing it. It was just real short and that's all there was to it. I'm giving you all the explanation and trying to rationalise it to help you believe it, because it's such a radical new idea for us! I said,
32. "LORD, WHAT IS THIS?"--And I was almost afraid of what He was going to tell me! But the answer He gave was so surprising that it softened the blow: He said,
33. "THIS IS THE CHURCH OF LOVE!" Did you ever in your whole life hear of any church called the Church of Love? Never! Never in your life! I had never before heard of a religious body called the Children of God nor a family called the Family of Love, and I have never heard of a church called the Church of Love!
34. NOW THINK ABOUT IT! Some of those young women, young mothers of young children: They have strayed away from the church, rebelled against their parents' religion, run off and gotten married and on their own with their own cars, home, families, jobs, etc.
35. BUT THEN THEY START HAVING SMALL CHILDREN and they start thinking, "Well, now what am I going to do?--This poor little child's got to have some kind of a religion!"--And to them that means church.
36. THEY CAN'T IMAGINE JUST HAVING RELIGION in their own home and just reading the Bible and having prayer like we do in our homes and colonies. They've got to have some kind of an organisation, something to belong to, some kind of church on Sunday, or Sunday School.
37. THEY'VE GOT TO HAVE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS OR SMACKS OF OR TASTES LIKE CHURCH! It's not a religion unless it has church or meetings!
38. I USED TO SAY, "FORGET THE CHURCH, forget the Christians, forget the religious people--they're a hopeless case!"--Well, I used to say that about the Systemites too:
39. "FORGET THE GUYS OVER 35! They're an absolutely hopeless case! You'll never be able to reach them, and they won't change anyhow!"--But look what we're doing!--That's the very age we're reaching most with FFing! And I used to say,
40. "THOSE CHURCH WOMEN, THEY ARE THE HARDEST OF ALL!--Forget them!" I've said recently during FFing, "Forget the wives and mothers, the women! They're a hopeless case, and some are our worst enemies!"
41. BUT I BELIEVE SOME OF THOSE HUNGRY YOUNG MOTHERS WOULD COME IF WE HAD SOME KIND OF A LITTLE CHAPEL MEETING where they could feel like they're taking their little families to church on Sunday morning! They are so hungry for something different, so fed up with the old, I really believe they would come.
42. WE'VE ALREADY WON THEIR HUSBANDS to the Lord, but how could the wives come and join this colony of so-called "prostitutes"? That would lose face in the community! But I looked at that little congregation there singing happily with me leading the singing, and just as clear as I ever heard the voice of the Lord, when I said, "What is this, Lord?" He said,
43. "WHY, THIS IS THE CHURCH OF LOVE!" Just like that! Well, I think God has to give me supernatural revelations, because otherwise I could never have the faith for it! I could never have had the faith for the older men, the Systemites, if He hadn't given me the supernatural revelations about FFing. Then He gave me the faith to do it, and has it worked? Amen!
44. WELL, I'VE HAD ABSOLUTELY ALMOST NO FAITH FOR THE WIVES. But I must confess I have thought about that a few times, especially after that pretty young mother came and wanted to meet me and talk to me in the Club, and even asked something like that:
45. "WELL, DO YOU HAVE ANY KIND OF MEETING OR CLASSES OR SOMETHING WE WIVES COULD COME TO?" And I said, "Yes, we've got these little classes." But apparently that wasn't enough, that wasn't church-like enough. She was fed up with the Church and looking for something better to take her children to, but what?
46. LOOK AT WHAT THE LORD GAVE ME ABOUT "OPEN THE DOOR FOR THE CHILDREN": We're reaching our own kids and we go out and we reach other kids and children in our pied-pipering, etc. You read the stories about it all the time in the NNN: We go into the schools and how many kids we're winning to the Lord!
47. BUT WHERE'S OUR FOLLOW-UP? WHAT ARE WE DOING WITH THEM?--All these little lambs being born into the Kingdom, what's happening to them if they don't have a fold? They're far too young to forsake all and join us!
48. BUT WOULDN'T PERHAPS THEIR YOUNG PARENTS BRING THEM TO A LITTLE CHAPEL MEETING that looked and sounded like church and therefore looked more like religion to their church-geared way of thinking?
49. GOD FORBID THAT WE SHOULD EVER GET BACK INTO THE CHURCH RUT! I don't think we ever could, because we've been pretty well brainwashed against it. But it's as though the Lord, having given us such a tremendous explosion of a youth Revolution and then the FF Revolution for the men, maybe now at last we're strong enough in the spirit and in doctrine that He can trust us with the "Church of Love" Revolution!--little chapels for the women and children, without getting back into the old church rut.
50. THEY'RE LIKE NURSERIES for the babes and the weakest of all, the Christians and the religious people, who just have got to have their little buildings to be religious.--They've got to have a place.--And this would give the little mothers a place, a church! I think that's the only way we'd ever get through to some of those "nice" women.
51. PRAISE GOD, HALLELUJAH! I DON'T CARE IF ALL OF OUR GIRLS ARE CALLED HARLOTS AS LONG AS THEY'RE HARLOTS FOR THE LORD!--And I daresay you'll find very few of our girls who haven't had to do with men before they ever came to us! But this shocked me more! I said, "Well Lord, what is this?"
52. I WAS SO SHOCKED! I said, "What is this?" Like, how could You bring me into one of these "abominations"?--We used to call them "delusion centers"! But He said,
53. "WHY, THIS IS THE CHURCH OF LOVE!" I have never in my life thought of that name before, I never would have thought of having a "Church of Love", much less any kind of a church! But where did you ever hear the name of such a church or religious body or individual church or any such religious group? I must have been to literally thousands of churches in my lifetime, that was my life--50 years of my life was going to churches!
54. BUT I NEVER HEARD OF A "CHURCH OF LOVE"!--For one thing, most of them don't have that much love!--And most were anything but churches of love! They not only hated other churches but they hated each other as well! Most of the churches I was ever in, they had more feuds inside the church than outside. They were like a family fighting with each other all the time.
55. MY MOTHER USED TO CALL IT "PLAYING AT CHURCH"--a kind of a game. Well, maybe there are some people who can only be reached that way because that's the best they can do. I always did say the churches were for all the little spiritual babies, invalids and handicapped cases, nurseries for infantile Christians.
56. WELL, MAYBE WE'VE GOTTEN TO THE STAGE NOW WHERE WE CAN TAKE IN THE ORPHANS AND THE HANDICAPPED and the immature and the retarded and the infantile. Maybe we've gotten to where we can also have hospitals for them! I've always called the churches "spiritual hospitals", and that we don't have time to fiddle around with them because we're an army.
57. BUT EVERY STRONG NATION IN THE WORLD NOT ONLY HAS ITS ARMIES, the avant-garde and strongest leaders and revolutionaries, but they've also got orphanages and hospitals for the disabled! Maybe after they get in there and you begin to work on them they'll grow and mature to where you can graduate them out of the civilian church and put them in an army Colony! Ha!
58. OUR COLONIES AT FIRST WERE SORT OF LITTLE SPIRITUAL ORPHANAGES AND HOSPITALS for the young babes and hippies right off the street. They weren't really ready to do much at first, and we had to nurture and care for them in the colony, in the home, until they were sufficiently grown spiritually that they could go out and minister to others.
59. SO WHY NOT THESE LITTLE CHURCH-MINDED YOUNG MOTHERS WITH THEIR CHILDREN? Now they're looking around for a religion, they're worried about their kids and what religion to teach them, especially in recently liberated countries like Spain and Portugal. These places are just awakening and getting their freedom for their first time--at last, and they're let out of their cages and out of their churches, and they're fed up.
60. HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE WE MET THAT WERE FED UP WITH THE CHURCHES? But here now they've got these young children and they're geared to churchgoing even though they've fled from the church for years. The church itself testifies, "Wait till they're married and have young children of their own, then they'll be back."--Because they know nothing else, there's no place else to go. Some may go to the Protestants but it's back to the same church system.
61. WHY COULDN'T WE HAVE "CHURCHES OF LOVE" FOR THE PEOPLE if that's as far as they know how to go--or at least that's the first step? We could have nice little singing and fellowship and a sweet little Bible Study, almost like Sunday School for kids, you know?--The Bible in Pictures and whatnot! I even had some of those old Jews in my hotel on Miami Beach sitting there watching the Bible in Pictures!
62. "WHY LORD, WHAT IS THIS?"--"Why, this is the Church of Love!" Well, praise the Lord! Ever new! We never stop changing, amen? We've got to keep moving!--And that would reach almost the last sector--the wives!
63. THERE WERE A FEW OTHER RADICAL THINGS IN THE DREAM. This was no ordinary church! When He said "Church of Love", He meant "Church of Love"! Praise God?--A ministry for the men too! Amen?
64. THANK YOU LORD! WE'RE GETTING A WHOLE NEW VISION, a whole new picture that You've just given us, a brand new revelation that opens up a whole new world, a whole new ministry, a whole new possibility of reaching a whole new sector of the population that we have left almost untouched!
65. YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD REALLY APPEAL TO THEM, a step that they could take, the weak ones, the churchy ones and the religious ones, Lord: "THE CHURCH OF LOVE"! Thank You Jesus! Help us to do it, Lord, to reach them before it's too late! In Jesus' name, amen!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
