—Excerpts from the Letters of Father DavidCompiled 1/82DFO1109

1. I've never seen a child yet that didn't need a father or a father image, somebody to play the part of a father. But I'll tell you I've sure seen some kids without fathers who sure needed them! They needed a father's heavy hand to straighten them out when the mother didn't have what it took.

2. There aren't too many women capable of being both a mother and a father to a child. They don't have the guts‚ firmness and hardness that it takes to lay down the law. Fathers are usually the disciplinarians of the family who won't let the kids get away with it and who really sock it to them.

3. Mothers are inclined to be a lot more easy going, lenient, tolerant, indulgent, and really spoil the kids, especially if they have to handle the job alone. They just don't have the strength to have to both care of them and discipline them too, especially as they get older, so they're inclined to let the kids get away with more.

4. Every child needs a father. Especially as he grows older he needs a father more than a mother. A father comes into the picture loud and clear in the later years when the child really needs discipline and strength.

5. It's alot like our relationship with God: in some ways the Holy Spirit is like a mother‚ sweet, loving, gentle; the Spirit that conceives a spiritual babe, brings it to birth & bears it and gives birth to to a new-born babe in the Kingdom of God‚ a Child of God. But as we grow older and become aware of what's going on we're apt to need a father's image of God Himself and be more afraid of Him than we are of the Holy Spirit, a gentle wooing dove-afraid of His word of correction and His judgements and His very heavy hand that enforces His strict rules. So that's the way I see it.

6. My father's teaching was a tremendous influence in my life. That's when I was beginning to be a young teenager and very interested in the Bible and Bible prophecy and current events, and my father taught me a lot in those days as a young teenager.

7. The one I admired the most in those days was a man, dear old Leland Valentine who acted like a father to us and was sweet, humble, loving, kind, faithful and funny but firm. He really made us kids toe the mark but we knew he loved us so we really tried hard to do what was right.

8. Of course old. Dr. Koger was like a foster father to me. I almost worshipped him he was such a saint, such a great man of God. I knew he was the real thing, so loving and sacrificial and sincere. He taught me more by example than by word with his love and sacrifice and caring for the poor and the sick and I admired him tremendously.

9. Put almost the greatest influence in my life were my own children! I'll tell you, they really make you serious and inspire you to be good and be an example and train them up in the way they should go and try to do what's right. You realise the serious sober responsibility of a little child's life in your hands and that they're going to be what you make them. Boy, oh boy, I tell you that's an influence in your life.

10. Even if you can't take care of them physically the Lord must hold you responsible spiritually. I tried to spend at least an hour or two with my kids everyday reading and teaching them the Bible‚ and I think they now show the good results, PTL!

11. I started reading them Bible stories as soon as they could understand speech, as soon as they knew how to talk. Ho and Faithie were only one or two; of course they couldn't understand an awful lot so the littlest usually dropped off to sleep first.

12. I'd take the King James version and I would translate it into the Daddy version, about every verse, almost every phrase you'd have to explain exactly what was happening. I'd reach each verse and translate it, then I'd act it out, and they were just fascinated even without pictures or anything.

13. I was once thinking my life was behind me and I'd never accomplished much for the Lord, and my whole life's work I only had my own little family and my own children to show for it‚ living in the equivalent of a tent by the wayside watching over nothing but one tiny little flock with seemingly nothing but wood in my hands, no gold, no job, no home, no nothing but those little lives that He had given me to rule with the authority of His Word!

14. Who was I? What was I? What could I do? I was now less than nothing after those years of training and the education and the opportunities I had had! I was still nothing!

15. But God kept saying, "What is that in thy hands?" and still I questioned, "What do you mean Lord? You can see what I have in my hands!—Nothing! Nothing but this Rod (the Word) and my little lambs! What can I do with these? They're nothing! We're nobody!" But He said, "If you will go in My Name and say only that I have sent thee, I will do great things which thou knowest not of!"

16. When I finally really insisted on serving God full-time by faith with our little family of six, believe it or not those children began to support me in their service of the Lord! God began to bless their ministry so much it didn't seem like I needed my ministry anymore! I was nothing but the driver, the chauffeur, the car repairman, the flunky! I no longer did any preaching or teaching or had any public ministry whatsoever!

17. All I did was drive the car or the camper! The only ministry I had besides the gift of helps--helping them to minister—was to teach those four little children the Word of God when they were at home, to have classes, sometimes all day teaching them the Word‚ reading the Word, telling them stories‚ absolutely baptising them in the Word, immersing them in the Word! Sometimes I think they thought they were almost drowning in the Word!

18. Someday you're probably going to be thankful you had a part in those little rascals' care and their training. one of these days you're going to be proud of them. I wouldn't be surprised, amen?

19. Why everybody wouldn't be fascinated with this kind of work I don't know! I wish I had time to be a parent, I just loved it when I did. I spent a lot of time at it, hours and hours everyday. (Maria: The compensations are so great, for all the sacrifices.)

20. I used to fix a bottle in the night and fix them breakfast in the morning. I used to teach them how to eat and all kinds of things, how to dress themselves. I used to take full care of Hosea. I taught him to feed himself, dress himself, go to the bathroom, all those kinds of things. Faithie was still a baby so her mother took care of her and the elder two could take care of themselves pretty much. But she just sort of turned Hosea over to me when he was about one.

21. I think I did a pretty good job, it was very interesting. I got a lot of satisfaction out of it and a feeling of accomplishment, a real feeling of reward, that I really taught him how to talk and walk and eat and dress and all that sort of thing.

22. (Maria: It may be one of the hardest jobs‚ but it's one of the most rewarding so it really evens out.) You have made a human being, you taught a little computer how to compute‚ I mean you've made a living, walking, talking machine out of a little dummy. It's thrilling! It would be a fulltime totally absorbing job if you had time to do it like you should, and like most mothers really should with the help of fathers.

23. The babies and children are not just womens' work! They used to have a song, "Let the women do the work, do the work, do the work!"—Well that's not supposed to be true of our Family. We're all supposed to have our jobs, that's true, and the old-fashioned idea was that inside work is for women, outside work is for the men. And some of the old-fashioned people still stick to that sort of thing.

24. In the Family we're supposed to be willing to do whatever needs to be done. If you have real love for the Lord and each other and the children you will do whatever needs to be done.

25. Every child has got to have a father-even if it's not his own! What the hell difference does it make whose seed it was! Now maybe that's a pretty revolutionary concept of having children but that's why I believe children are the heritage of the Lord! If God gives it, what the hell difference does it make what instrument God used, whose penis God used‚ whose seed God used!

26. Now I have taught this since our first days on the ranch actually. I told some parents there who were making trouble, "Wait a minute! Don't go around here talking about your children and my children and making some kind of a difference between them! They are our children and we are one family‚ and all our children are just as much mine as they are yours!"

27. God gives a baby and both the father and mother had better want it. I can't imagine any people who don't want babies, at least not any of our people! I can't imagine why they wouldn't want babies! Especially when it's a gift and a creation of God! You'd better want it and be thankful for it and start off by taking good care of the baby by taking good care of the mother! Any man who's not going to take good care of the mother is not going to take good care of the baby either, and that's plain pure selfishness! Very selfish! God give us fathers!

28. I don't mind you men going around fucking the girls even if it's just for fun. But once God has made a baby out of that, let me tell you‚ in a way the fun is over and now you're down to serious business!—Well it's still fun!

29. It can be fun too if you're thankful and grateful and realise what a marvellous miracle has happened! What an amazing thing! God is creating a new immortal human soul that's going to live forever!

30. (Maria: A lot of the girls in our family don't know who the father is and so that means some of them don't have anybody that feels responsible for their child when all of them should feel responsible.) And if the father's like so many fathers are, selfish and don't want children, pure selfishness, they need to learn to want children and to love children. They need to learn to take care of a pregnant mother and learn to help her with the children. I mean it's not all fun getting up in the middle of the night and changing the baby and mixing its bottle and all the rest of that and losing sleep.

31. That's what makes a mother wonderful, that self-sacrificial spirit that is willing to sacrifice her own time, her strength‚ even her heath for the sake of that child. That's what makes a father wonderful, that willingness to sacrifice himself and his strength and his time to help take care of the mother and the child, amen?

32. Our fathers have no excuses. They're living together in a home—of course most of them have some job, but we all have jobs of some kind. We all have work to do, but you're usually right there together unless you're out litnessing, witnessing or FFing or something. You should be able to take good care of that girl and that child and help at least take care of it or of her.

33. Do you boys have your sisters? It doesn't matter what home you live in. The girls in that home are bound to be ministering to you in some way even if you don't do anything but eat their cooking. But most likely you're even enjoying their fucking, to put it bluntly, so you're responsible! Even if you aren't the father you are responsible. She's your sister, she's part of your family and she's your responsibility.

34. I guess I deal with you kids today the way I dealt with my four then—head on! I figure if they can take it, good, and if not that's tough!

35. Are you equal to the task?—No, but God is!—And He will help you to make them His good children, His faithful witnesses and His future rulers if you'll do your best as His queen mothers and kingly fathers to rear them in His house as the fine and worthy princes and princesses that they should and must be to rule His future kingdom with us! What a future! What a kingdom! What a task! Are you fit for it?—God will help you if you try! Amen?—AMEN!

Paragraph #ML #s

1-5 — 332:63-67

6 — 389:49

7 — 389:36

8 — 389:48

9 — 389:58

10a — 389:61

10b — 389:73

11a — 389:74

11b — 687:5

12 — 687:8

13-14 — 315:39-40

15 — 315:43

16-17 — 835:44-46

18 — 746:64

19 — 715:24

20-22 — 715:26–29

23–24 — 746:22-23

25a — 715:49

25b — 739:56-57

25c-26 — 739:74-75

27-29 — 744:36-39

30a — 745:3

30b-32 — 745:42-45

33 — 746:10-12

34 — 915:6

35 — 315:35

Complied by Fay Grace. Typed by Mark Rasputin

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family