—MO March 12, 1972 NO.156A—LTA

Copyrighted March, 1972 by The Children of God

P.O. Box 31, London WC2E 7LX, England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan‚ Puerto Rico 00936

1. IT'S TOO LATE TO WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT ARRANGEMENT AND PERFECTION—THE KIDS NEED THESE LETTERS NOW!—It may be even too late to worry too much about too many corrections‚ since each page on which corrections are necessary may have to be completely retyped, re-photocopied and plated, except for those which you may be able to simply block out of the plate or negative, such as the many repetitions, some names, etc. Even the less serious misspellings might be overlooked, if the meaning is still clear, although they be sad reflections on our intelligence and typing!

2. BUT THOSE CORRECTIONS WHICH ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO CLARIFY THE MEANING MUST BE MADE! We cannot have going into print and possibly falling into the hands of our enemies such mistakes as that classic which was supposed to read: "It was God!"—but they dropped the "t" on the "It", completely changing the entire meaning and turning it into the horrendous and blasphemous pronouncement: "I was God!"—exactly what our enemies accuse us of claiming! Such corrections must be made! Thank God this one is in one of your two as yet unpublished Volumes 2 or 3, Ho!

3. BUT ALL OF THESE ERRORS ARE ALREADY AND STILL IN ALL THESE 3x5 LESSONS which were already printed up for the students' notebooks already in existence!—And are therefore still in circulation amongst our members, and some of these have already fallen into the hands of our enemies and are even being published by them!

4. THEREFORE I SUGGEST THE ABOVE LIST OF CORRECTIONS BE PUBLISHED and distributed to all the kids who still have these 3x5 notebooks throughout all our colonies, and those who've already received even the new uncorrected editions of "Letters from a Shepherd" Volumes 1 and 2, so that they can at least correct their own with pen in hand if necessary! Some of the mistakes are horrible, unintelligible, totally change or miss the entire meaning‚ or even make it downright dangerous! So let's please get these corrections into their hands as soon as possible!

5. I SUGGEST YOU PUBLISH THIS LIST OF CORRECTIONS FIRST before you do anything else, so you can get them into the hands of those who already have these 3x5 copies of these Letters before they go any further and do anymore damage or cause any more confusion! (These typographical errors in this Letter are my own, as Maria is busy working on getting the Letters organised, titled, classified, etc., ready for total publication of those publishable as soon as possible.)

6. THEN GO AHEAD WITH THE CORRECTION OF NEGATIVES AND PLATES necessary to be retyped etc. for further publication a soon as possible of the remaining Letters in your little "MO Gospels" form of "Letters from a Shepherd" as quickly as you can.—The kids are crying for them‚ especially the new Leaders, new LTs and whole new Colonies!—Hurry!—But not as fast as did the original typists who made all those mistakes we now have to correct!—Be sure they're letter-perfect before making negatives again!—Have at least two or three people proofread your final finished copy who know spelling, grammar‚ punctuation, capitalisation and even understand the meaning of the letter and will make it right!

(See!)—NOTHING SHORT OF RIGHT IS RIGHT!

7. AND?—AS A LAST RESORT, I'D RATHER SEE THEM GET THE LETTERS NOW, mistakes and all, than too late—and it's already almost too late! If it's going to take too much trouble, time and expense to correct them, then let's get on with the publication of them, and publish this list of Corrections and let the kids correct their own necessary!—This would be better than not getting them soon enough!—Many young leaders and Colonies are writing us for answers to questions which have already been thoroughly dealt with in these past MO Letters! All they need is the Letters so we can refer them to the answers and not have to continually repeat these in unnecessary replies and special communications, and oftentimes too late to prevent the trouble! An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Let's publish them now!

8. WE ARE ALSO WORKING ON A SUBJECT INDEX OF CHAIN REFERENCES, alphabetically listed, for READY REFERENCE to all MO Letters by subjects, including Name of Letter‚ Page and Paragraph where these subjects are dealt with in all the Letters, so that a young leader or member may quickly look up the answers he needs on all these subjects at once! without having to try to remember which Letter or what page amongst thousands!—A sort of MO Letter Concordance!—How's that? Hallelujah! We've found it's certainly needed, as we can't even find certain subject references ourselves ofttimes! to which to refer them!

9. THEN, WHEN THIS IS COMPLETED (ON WHICH SHIF IS WORKING), WE HOPE TO WORK ON A CONDENSATION OF MO LETTERS OR THEIR SUBJECTS‚ like the Topic Bible, in which all the points are listed briefly and together for even easier and faster reference, without all the funny stories, rantings and ravings of the madman himself—just a sort of skeleton of hard, brief facts without all those funny little anecdotes, laughs and illustrations and juicy meat, which is nice for flavour and amusement, but not essential to the simple facts and vital points to someone in a hurry for answers. These are big jobs‚ so please pray for us concerned.

10. WE CONSIDER THESE PROJECTS ALL VITAL TO A COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING of the Revolution, our message, method, way of life and operation of our Colonies according to the ideas God has given us. Many pitfalls could have been avoided if the kids had the Letters in their own hands and been familiar with their answers to their problems. But you can't blame them if they've never even heard them!

11. SOME COLONIES EITHER DON'T HAVE ANY OF THE OLDER MOO LETTERS OR AREN'T READING THEM daily as suggested, or in a regular daily course of MO classes for both Babes and LTs, as they should. So it's no wonder the kids are making so many mistakes!—How can they do the job without the instruction and training they need?—And the main source of this specific instruction on nearly every subject is in the MO Letters!—Especially for Leaders—And for the conduct, organisation an operation of Colonies and answers to their usual problems as the Lord has shown us.

12. SO LET'S PLEASE GET THESE MO LETTERS INTO THE APPROPRIATE HANDS as soon as possible! I notice there are 40 Days Tapes and Joel classes on the split hairs of prophetic interpretation all over the place, and hardly a student who doesn't know all the details of Bible Prophecy! But when it comes to MO Letters or classes, except for recent ones, the kids are woefully ignorant and almost totally unprepared for leadership! If this situation is not corrected at once you're going to be sorry! They cannot find the way without the Shepherd's voice, no matter how much they know about Joel's theories! So get the "Little Books" out now! Tomorrow will be too late!—And it's already too late for some!

13. WE SURELY APPRECIATE THOSE OF YOU WHO'VE HAD THE BURDEN A LONG TIME TO DO THIS‚ particularly Josh, Aaron and Justin so long ago‚ and lately you, Ho. You didn't talk about it—you did it!—Even though poorly! Deb and Jeth have done a good job in getting out the recent ones, but even these need more printing and wider distribution, so let's get with it! Amen?—Thanks for your help‚ each one of you! Keep up the good work!

14. WE HAVE COMPLETED OUR CORRECTIONS OF ALL BASIC EARLIER MO LETTERS that you had outlined in the 3x5 Index, Ho, under Early MO Loads I and II and later MO Load and younger Brothers' Load, and arranged by you into Five Volumes of Gospel-size editions under the "Shepherd Letters" title, and have already sent you the first, and enclose the rest herewith. I think these are all good for most of your basic students and beginner, and I hope you get them all out at once! They're desperately needed! Perhaps you can send the negatives or plates over here to Dallas for printing wholesale on this side as quickly as possible by Deb. We need them now! Colonies and leaders are struggling for lack of them!

15. I WILL SEND YOU THE CORRECTIONS FOR THE REMAINING LT 3x5s as soon as possible, and you can get these out too as quickly as you can. Amen? It's later than you think!—Ha! Then if we can rake up original copies of the more recent and current Letters‚ you can begin printing these up for wider distribution too. They are virtually photo-ready and should need no corrections, as we tried to have them letter-perfect, and should need no recopying if you can adapt their shape to your printing area. Please try to use them as–is, as retyping only means more errors and more hours of wasted valuable time! Please let's get them out now, regardless of how or what shape, as long as the poor kids get the info! We can polish them up in later editions if we have time—Which I doubt!

16. AND WE SHOULD INSIST HERE AND NOW THAT EVERY COLONY HAVE AT LEAST A ONE OR TWO HOUR DAILY MO CLASS TO READ AND STUDY THESE LETTERS TOGETHER! Basic classes can be reviewed together by the whole Colony together, including its leadership! LT classes can be studied and taught together by the leaders to the LTs in a separate session. And this must be done at once‚ as we've found the Colonies and Leaders making the most mistakes and asking the most questions, are those who've had the Least MO Letters!—There is a definite relationship here to their many problems!

17. IF THIS IS NOT DONE IMMEDIATELY, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A RUNAWAY REVOLUTION THAT DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT'S DOING OR SUPPOSED TO DO! May God help us!—This is how most Movements go astray, when they get away from their original leadership, vision and instruction and lose the real meaning of it all!—Read "Dropouts" and you'll see! God forbid that it should happen to us!—But it will, and it already has, because some of these young Leaders and Colonies are getting completely out of touch with the original teaching‚ plans and purposes of the Revolution!—One report even commented recently that some were getting back into that "old Revolutionary spirit"!—Would to God they were!—I don't know what Shiloh meant by this‚ but I'm sure she didn't mean the original spirit!—Maybe she just wasn't going back far enough!—Some of them only remember back as far as TSC's materialistic spirit, or L.A.'s hard‚ tough militant attitude, etc.‚ which were unauthorised and unjustified changes in the original ways that we taught some of you personally. It was your own personal interpretations and revisions—revisionists, as the Commies would say!

18. THIS IS WHY MAO HAD TO GET OUT HIS LITTLE RED BOOKS, "Thoughts of Mao", and make'em memorise it, so they wouldn't stray away from the original ideas of their leadership, every man doing that which seems right in his own eyes!—Which may be entirely contrary to the original! If you want to keep the whole Revolution on the straight and narrow path to ultimate victory, you'd better publish these "Thoughts of MO" now to keep'em straight!—Or the whole thing can wind up in a spirit of "I'm of Jeth" and "I'm of Josh" and "I'm of Faith" and "I'm of Ho" confusion!—Whether you or they realise it or not! Only MO Letters and the Lord can keep us unified and united in ideals‚ actions, spirit and goals!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family