—MODecember 13, 1971NO.145—LTA

MY PRECIOUS CHILDREN: GREETINGS IN JESUS' DEAR NAME! Thank you again for all your good reports and letters, tapes, photos‚ articles, and sweet little love letters! I'm sorry we cannot respond to each one of you individually‚ but we read them, enjoy them, appreciate your thoughtfulness and pray for you and your need. Some of your most prevalent questions and suggestions we hope to deal with in this letter, God Willing! We're going to try to go from Colony to Colony geographically, so as to try not to miss anyone, and dealing with the problems of each area, as He leads.

1. WE ARE PLEASED TO NOTE THE PROGRESS MANY OF YOU ARE MAKING IN DECENTRALISING, trimming down your big Colonies and sending out teams to new areas. As described in "Let My People Go", the little six- or seven-man team seems to be able to do wonders along this line! Almost any reasonable parent would be willing to take in their dear little darling and only five of his friends for a few days in a new area, until they get so fed up with you that they're willing to pay the first month's rent on housing for you just to get rid of you! This has really worked in a number of instances. So keep up the good work! It has already resulted in new Colonies in about a dozen new cities, so that according to our latest count you are now a total of fifty-one Colonies throughout the world, praise the Lord! "New Colonies!—For Jesus!"

2. THE WAVE OF RECENT CRITICISM AND UNFAVORABLE PUBLICITY ALSO SEEMS TO BE SUBSIDING SOMEWHAT, and our recent dramatic Holiday Homegoing, called by many of you "Operation Gideon"—seems to have helped nullify a lot of it‚ thanks to the Lord!—After all, what can they say after that? Even the "Newsweek" article, obviously written before the Homegoing and slanted somewhat in sympathy for the parents, was not entirely without its good points: Like most of the other controversial articles about us, it continues to also portray our side of the story, the Truth, our Message, Method, and way of life, so that nevertheless, Christ is preached, even though it be the Gospel of contention, as Paul brought out when admonishing his own followers not to worry about adverse criticism, or those who were preaching against them.

3. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT OF THE WORLD'S OWN NEWS MEDIA, predominantly controlled by the Enemy, the parents‚ and the System? After all, who reads and buys their news magazines and papers anyhow? If they want to keep their subscribers and keep on selling them, they'd better tickle their ears with what they want to hear! So it's nothing but the miraculous power of God and His total control of everything, in spite of the Enemy, that has gotten us any favourable publicity at all! And after that first big wave of almost totally favourable publicity in nearly all the news media, since all good news gets a little boring to some‚ how could you expect the Lord to keep the subject alive as a constant witness before the public unless He would now permit it to be controversial, which the media love and which the public eats up‚ with everybody taking sides and fanning the flame from both directions! Hallelujah!

4. THROUGH THIS GOD IS ALSO BRINGING EVERYONE TO A DECISION TO ACCEPT EITHER THE TRUTH OR THE LIE, to join our supporters or our enemies, and thereby clearly separating the wheat from the tares and the sheep from the goats, so He can judge them accordingly! It's all part of God's Plan, as we told you before! So don't let these lies bother you! For God Himself has promised to "send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believe not the Truth," "because they receive not he love of the Truth."

5. SO IT'S ALL PART OF GOD'S PLAN TO USE US AS HIS FAITHFUL WITNESSES OF THE TRUTH and to act as His catalysts to divide the Truth from the lies, and the Children of God from the children of the Devil, so He can judge every man according to His works, whether they be good or whether they be evil. Remember‚ when the Enemy comes out against us, he is exposing himself and thus ensuring his damnation: "Then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of His Mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His Coming"! Hallelujah! So see "that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled", for‚ as we pointed out to you before, such persecutions and tribulations are "a manifest token of the righteous judgement of God that ye may be counted worthy", and so that God can "recompense tribulation to them that trouble you...in flaming fire taking vengeance on them...who shall be punished with everlasting destruction"! PTL!—2Thess.1 and 2. Therefore, "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you‚ as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that‚ when His Glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy!..." So, "if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but glorify God!"

6. YOUR GENERAL REACTION TO THE HOMEGOING HAS THUS FAR BEEN GOOD, POSITIVE, AND UNDERSTANDING, with a few exceptions. From the excellent tapes we have received from many of you in which you recorded the session in which you gave the Homegoing Proclamation with its reactions, this drastic move was received by most of you in the same spirit in which it was made by us: you realised that it had to be done to stop the lies of the Enemy, to prove they were not so, as well as to test both you and the quality of your disciples in how all of you received it and acted upon it, to sift out the wheat from the chaff and to give many a necessary opportunity to deliver their souls to their relatives, as well as win more souls, find new disciples, further spoil Egypt, and even start some new Colonies! It was a move similar to the one in which Jesus sent forth the Seventy two–by-two, as many of you did, "as sheep in the midst of wolves"; and even as they came back rejoicing that even the demons were subject unto them and their every need was supplied, so we have already been getting reports from many of you that you, too, have won great victories during this Homegoing! Hallelujah! Most of you have proven yourselves good soldiers!

7. THE FINAL RESULTS ARE NOT ALL IN YET, but if this move did nothing more than to purge any leaven from our ranks, it was worth it all, even as the Lord purged Gideon's ranks. But I believe it is also proving what strong soldiers we have, how faithful and loyal you are to the Lord and His message, and how trustworthy you can be as even an individual messenger, what leadership qualities you can display, and what fruitfulness you can manifest when given a chance!

8. AS WITH GIDEON'S FORCES, I BELIEVE THE HOMEGOING HAS ACTUALLY ONLY BEEN THE PREPARATION FOR MAJOR BATTLES AHEAD, the weeding out of the tares and the finding of the good wheat preparatory to the organising or our present major onslaught in the sending forth of many new teams to establish a multitude of new Colonies, saturate the world with our doctrine, and reap a mighty harvest of disciples for Jesus! Hallelujah? Amen! Praise the Lord!

9. A VERY FEW OF YOU DID NOT SEEM TO QUITE UNDERSTAND WHAT WE WERE DOING or why we were doing it, and were not exactly in agreement with it or how it affected you, particularly in some areas where there's been a lot of name changing going on recently! You see? When you start getting confused about one thing, you're apt to wind up in a state of confusion about everything else! As we quoted in a recent letter, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

10. IN FACT, THOSE VERY FEW OF YOU SEEMED ALMOST DOWNRIGHT DISAPPOINTED THAT WE WERE SENDING YOUR DISCIPLES HOME, probably being afraid they'd go home to roost, like Liza's chickens!—showing they were not true disciples after all, and therefore they were not very good fruit, and perhaps you were afraid that this might reflect on the quality of your own work! However, take heart: When Jesus saw the thousands He had fed and healed leaving Him one day because of a tough new doctrine they didn't understand, He finally turned even to the Twelve, and asked, "Will ye also go away?" Thank God they proved their quality, though somewhat negatively by replying, "To whom shall we go?—Thou alone hast the words of Eternal Life!"—As though even they might have left if they could have thought of any place else to go!— And which they finally did at time of His arrest! And pity poor Gideon who lost over 99 percent of his men!—And even Paul said there were occasions when "all men forsook me"! So don't feel too bad if you lost a few!"

11. BUT FROM WHAT WE HAVE HEARD SO FAR, MANY HAVE ALREADY RETURNED, some within a day or two, and some couldn't even stand more than a few hours at home, fleeing to the nearest colony as soon as they had fulfilled their difficult mission! So having cast your bread upon the waters, have faith that it will return unto you!—If it was good bread and not moldy and rotten, it will! Praise the Lord? Even the little lambs know the Voice of their true Shepherd! Although, if any of them got caught in the brambles while straying away in the Wilderness, you may have to go after them to rescue them, as Jesus did the one lost sheep, and as we have had to do on a few occasions! Thank God we have been successful in most of these liberations from monstrous so-called parents who would rather see their children behind bars or on mental institution drugs than living with the Lord and His Children! May God give these fiends what they deserve! Indeed they are wolves in sheep's clothing!—But they have fooled neither the wolves nor the true sheep! Praise God! God bless those of you who have recently gone through such trials of your faith and come forth as gold! Pray for those who are not yet delivered!—He has promised that He "will yet deliver"! Amen!

12. A VERY FEW OF YOU ALSO SEEMED TO MISS THE WHOLE POINT of this massive demonstration, and that was that we were doing it on such a vast scale and all at once at this particular time because it was an ideal opportunity during the festive Holiday season when most families gather together for you to reach as many of them as possible with the Gospel as well as well as to disprove the lies of the Enemy. Instead, some of you acted like this was a great exception to what you seemed to think was our usual rule of not letting them go home, and in your quotes to the news media, sad to say‚ that attitude showed through and only helped to defeat your very purpose! Like: "We usually make them stay here‚ but we're just letting them go home now to prove we don't!" This just made you look like a big hypocrite who was only pretending, and I noticed that it made some of the reporters a little skeptical about your motives also! God give you more wisdom! In case you don't know it, and obviously you're one of the guilty ones who doesn't, and perhaps one of those who has cause much of this criticism‚ our usual rule is: They can go home whenever they want to‚ and far be it from us to try to dissuade those who want to! You missed the point!

13. ONE OR TWO, from the very tapes that you sent us, in the way that you presented the proclamation to your flocks, showed rather obviously that you didn't agree with this move and you hoped they wouldn't go home‚ even advising them against it, which nullified the whole purpose of both the testing of your flock and the demonstration to the world. You‚ therefore, of course, resulted in keeping a higher percentage of them with you than going home‚ above those shepherds who presented the idea cheerfully, positively, in good faith, and even enthusiastically! Again you missed the point, and I'm sure you know who you are! I don't want to embarrass you! But you who had the highest percentage of those not going home could possibly be the guilty ones!

14. THE LEADER OF ONE OF OUR LARGEST COLONIES EVEN READ THE PROCLAMATION SO FAST that I couldn't understand it, much less his flock, and gave them no time for response, even if they'd understood it! However, after much explanation, they did seem to finally get the point and went home rejoicing! Another major leader of one of our smaller flocks didn't even read it to them at all, at first, he tried to present it in his own words and finally merely played them a taped recording of the very rapidly read telephone message, which also gave them no significant opportunity of response, and it's a wonder they even got the message!—since he said it didn't apply to them because they had change their name! You see how far this name-changing can take you? Pretty soon you'll be denying you're even one of us, like Peter, and perhaps even be betraying us, like Judas! It's like backsliding: there's no limit to how far you can go back!—which by the way, is a term which this poor little leader kept applying to the action of those who went home—he kept calling it "going back"—which showed how he really felt about it—not as a positive missionary journey. Poor boy!—He was really stunned and we sympathise, but he should have had more confidence in the wisdom of his leadership without having to phone and ask what to do!

15. THERE WERE OF COURSE EXCEPTIONS, EXCEPTIONAL CASES WHICH WE RECOGNISED COULD NOT POSSIBLY GO HOME, such as Selahs, severe 10:36ers, and some of those across the ocean from their homes, but some of these went home anyway, by faith! God bless them! One of these whom it seemed was sent home accidentally through some misunderstanding we were shocked to hear of because we were afraid she would have serious trouble—which she did! However‚ when we prayed about this—and we were terribly burdened in prayer for her for several days before we even knew she had gone home!—the Lord told us He was going to get a great victory out of seeming defeat and through it expose the enemy's lies and show him up for the villain that he is!—Which He did! Hallelujah! And the Lord delivered her out of the mouth of the lion without even a helping hand form any of us just as we had said in the Proclamation that the Lord would! Praise His Name forever! Amen!

16. THIS LITTLE SOLDIER WAS SO COURAGEOUS that she not only survived and was miraculously delivered, but she also came through with colours flying in public statements to the Press exposing her own parents perfidy and lies about us and vindicating the Lord's Truth!—Which is exactly what the Lord told me would happen, and why He let it happen! Hallelujah! God bless her! This is the kind of soldiers we need in the frontlines of Europe and the world! Praise God! March on!

17. SOME OF YOU WHO DIDN'T GET THE POINT AND DIDN'T SEND YOUR PEOPLE HOME on this witnessing journey, especially those who have not yet delivered their souls in person to parents and relatives, should by all means not fail to do so, at least at the coming Christmastide, God Willing. Amen?

18. NEARLY ALL OF YOU LEADERS DID VERY WELL IN YOUR PRESENTATION, showed great wisdom, great spiritual understanding, a cheerful, positive, enthusiastic attitude, and an obviously eager desire to cooperate. Some of the women leaders of some of the largest Colonies did even better than the men, and seemed to enjoy it, and some of the men leaders of some of the smaller colonies handled it so beautifully we were amazed at the power of the Spirit in them! Hallelujah! This was our first chance to hear some of you in action with your flock and we were thrillingly surprised at how well some of you little folks did! Better watch out, you hares at the top!—Some of these little tortoises are gonna plug right on past you one of these days soon! God bless them! We were actually excited to discover what leadership potential we have in our ranks! More power to ya!

19. TO SAY THE LEAST, IT WAS THE BEST FELLOWSHIP WE'VE HAD WITH MOST OF YOU FOR A LONG TIME and we enjoyed it immensely and learned a lot about you and yours just through listening to those little tapes! Thank you so much for doing as we requested and recording your session! Which reminds us that a lot of you have still not sent us tapes of your session! Please do so at once! We are eager to hear from you and how you handled it. Perhaps some of you failed to hear that you were supposed to tape it, but if you'd been listening to the Spirit I'm sure he would have reminded you who foolishly failed to do so! Better touch next time!

20. WHAT AMAZED US ALMOST AS MUCH AS ANYTHING WAS HOW WELL AND ACCURATELY YOU RECEIVED THE MESSAGE‚ transcribed and related it, with very few of you even missing a word!—Only we had a few good laughs over those who incorporated a few words of their own, or of the one who telephoned them. We also had to chuckle at the guilty way some of you zoomed through the passages describing leaders who had not been following this policy all along! But at least you got the point!

21. SOME OF YOU DID REMARKABLY WELL IN ANSWERING SOME PRETTY TOUGH QUESTIONS AFTERWARDS which even we would have had a hard time answering—but the Spirit truly led you! Which just shows that often a bigshot who has too big a shot of his own ego can't do as well as some little shots who have a good shot of the Holy Spirit! Amen? And some of you were so in the Spirit and in tune that you had sweet and beautiful prayer both before and afterward along with much freedom of the Spirit and inspired manifestations and prophecies, "the Lord working with them confirming the Word with signs following"! Whereas on the other hand, a very few of you sounded like you thought it was nothing but a business session that you wanted to rattle off as fast as you could and get it over with as soon as possible! Apparently you had other more important things to do! And some of these same seemed to be almost completely out of tune and out of communication with their own congregations, rebuking them for even asking a question or condemning them for a mere natural observation! What a pity you have no more love or patience for your flock! As we've said before‚ a few little insecure leaders, unsure of themselves, cry "Foul" or "Pride!" or "Murmur" everytime one of their flock even dares to open his mouth, and can't stand to be questioned! I recommend that such leaders need to go back to doing chores again until they learn what it's like to be a follower again before they will ever learn to be a real leader and not just a pusher!

22. SOME OF YOU ALSO DID BEAUTIFULLY WITH YOUR PUBLIC RELATIONS AND PUBLICITY OF THE EVENT, getting good notices on TV‚ radio‚ and in the papers, most of which was very favourable and should help to counteract the previous lies of the Enemy. Even some of the smallest Colonies managed to get some of the best publicity!—Again, there's nothing like those small Colonies and their precious little leaders and dear little flocks! They're wonderful! We love you! The leaders of one small Colony even took the trouble to go around and call on his TV stations and papers in person‚ making a very good impression face-to-face and reaping good favourable notice! We have already received some of your articles and recordings of some of your shows or announcements! Please continue to send them in so we can enjoy them all and congratulate you on your good work!

23. SOME OF YOU WERE WISE ENOUGH TO ENCOURAGE YOUR DISCIPLES TO MAKE COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS on the Homegoing, and it was wonderful how the Holy Spirit led most of you unanimously along the same lines, such as: taking a buddy who had no where to go; bringing back more disciples; further spoiling Egypt; treating your parents with love and patience, showing them a good sample, not just a sermon; and visiting and encouraging other Colonies on your way. We've already heard some glowing testimonies of your victories and achievements!—Keep'em comin'! Leaders, be sure to give your folks a chance to tell their stories, and scribes record them, and follow up any open doors! PTL!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family