Dad
April 4, 2003
DO 2052 9/85—New Localised Publishing Method!—The LPM!—More Crash Prep!
Dearest Dad, Maria & Peter,
ILYSSM, & thank you for the flood of pubs that are coming out lately! I pray the Lord keeps your health & security, especially now that you're all so busy. I wanted to write you about an idea I've had about how to distribute & mail the pubs after the Crash when there's no more money. I don't claim that it's the solution, but I wanted to share it in case some of it could be of any good. (—Tx!)
Since by that time there would be no more books to send, just one or two GNs a month & maybe an occasional WND or FSM, perhaps instead of the costly process of doing photowork with expensive film & chemicals, making plates, printing & mailing to every Home the way they're doing it now, they could simply send a good photocopy of the original pub, the kind that comes out nice & clean & almost looking like printed, to each NRO around the World, which in turn would make copies on a similar machine, both in English & the local language, for the Family in their area. This way‚ it wouldn't be so costly & it would all be paid for by every area‚ so it wouldn't be so much expense for WS. Also, those photocopy machines can usually be rented, so in case you suddenly have to flee, you don't have the problem of trying to find somebody who can buy it. (Sounds great! GBY!—TTL for such good ideas!)
In the same way, the Spanish LIM would just send a copy of the translated pub to each NRO in their language area to be duplicated locally. (—Amen!)
I realise it's not going to be as fast as it is now‚ but I think that would be the most economical way. Of course‚ as long as we have the means to do it the fast way like we're doing now, I suppose we should keep doing it that way. Maybe you've already had a better idea than mine, but I wanted to share it anyway in case it would be of any help. I'm sending Mordy a copy of this letter in case he thinks it's good or has some other idea. (—Tx!)
Lots of Love forever, Ezekiel 34
(—I'm sure Mordy will be thrilled!—He needs a rest after the BOOK PUSH!—Ha!—Tx!—GBY!—We'll certainly consider it! How about it, NROs?—Are you game?)
1. IT'S OF COURSE NOTHING NEW AT ALL, THAT SUGGESTION FROM EZEKIEL 34 OF THE SPANISH LIM TO SEND PHOTOCOPIES OF NEW PUBS TO EACH NRO‚ which would in turn make copies for the Family in their area, & I think we need to really seriously consider that & talk about the advantages & the drawbacks & the costs now. It's a lot like some areas are already doing now with the Posters.
2. IT'S AN OLD IDEA THAT WE STARTED OUT WITH‚ OF COURSE, THAT WE WOULD SEND ONE COPY TO EACH OF OUR SIX MAIN COLONIES‚ & then they mimeoed them for the others, in the old days when they had to mimeograph & whatnot. I suppose some of them may have used copiers to do it, but however they did it, it proved very reliable & effective. We started on that basis & pioneered our pubs that way & grew & boomed! It was not until we got to London the second time & Ho organised Chinbrook & we started printing books that we began centralising the publishing with some of the things that couldn't be circulated that way. But now that we're boiling it down to some pretty simplified jobs, I would seriously consider it!
3. HE TALKS ABOUT RENTING OR LEASING COPY MACHINES, leaving them behind if we have to flee etc., & I think that's fine wherever they can do it. Just like we helped the PPCs get started & paid for their first productions until they could pay for themselves. If we could work it out, I think it would be worth helping the NROs get set up for that kind of distribution.
4. IT HAS ALL KINDS OF ADVANTAGES! IT WOULD SAVE A MINT, FIRST OF ALL! Even if we bought'm all machines & paid'm to get started, it would save a mint in the long run! First of all it would save a lot on printing, it would save a mint in postage, but the greatest advantage of all would be security!—To no longer have a centralised mailing list that might get raided & might be picked up some time. There would also be no more international border inspections & that sort of thing, no huge quantities of mailings in any one particular place with all the addresses.—Which of course has always been the major danger of a centralised pub house.
5. NOW THAT WE ARE DONE WITH ALL THESE BIG HEAVY BOOKS & PUBS, if we can keep each of our productions down to that 32-page signature level, it would be fairly easy for the NROs to reproduce them with a good copy machine. And I would suggest for security it would be better to have their own.—Just the cheapest simplest kind!
6. I'LL NEVER FORGET WHEN SOME LITTLE GIRL BABE FISHED SOME VERY IMPORTANT HIGH-SECURITYCOMMUNIQUES TO LEADERS ONLY, OUT OF THE BACK END OF A COPIER THEY WERE USING IN LONDON! She was just a little new disciple‚ a babe, who was running the copy machine! Some leader had run'm off & didn't notice that some of them had gotten caught down below, & there was a major possible leak!
7. THE SAME THING CAN HAPPEN IN A LOT OF THOSE COMMERCIAL COPYING PLACES. They don't want you to run the machine yourself, they want to run it for you. If the NROs could rent or lease machines, fine, but it's not every place you can do that! Even in some big cities we haven't found it was too easy to do that sort of thing. And if you do, they want to count the copies & they want to buy the paper & get nosy & maybe start wondering why you're doing so many copies & all kinds of things!
8. WE'VE GOT TO REALLY START PUTTING SECURITY FIRST, & for the sake of security, I think we're already in danger regarding our pubs house! It's just a miracle of God it's lasted as long as it has without a closedown or an investigation or confiscation or God knows what! It's just a miracle of the Lord we've gotten out all these books & everything! And I think that this idea is fairly simple enough & safe enough that it's worth considering not just for the future, but right now!
9. I'M TRYING TO THINK OF PLACES TO INVEST OUR MONEY WHERE IT COULD BE BEST USED, & I'm willing to go ahead in an all-out effort to take whatever it costs, even if we have to buy copy machines for these NROs! Let's send out a general call & ask each one of them to send in a prospectus—just like we did with the PPCs—of how much they think they could buy a machine for that would be adequate for the job, to do as many copies as they need to cover their area, & to get them started.
10. IT'S THE BEST, SAFEST DISPERSAL SYSTEM THAT WE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE, BECAUSE IT'S DECENTRALISED & IT'S SCATTERED & the only kind of mailing list we would have to have is that of the NROs.—And the only kind of mailing list each one of them would have to have would be their local area mailing list! About the only problem areas are where we don't have any NROs.—Europe & N.America.
11. SO I THINK WE REALLY OUGHT TO SERIOUSLY CONSIDER AT LEAST THE POSSIBILITIES & THE SPECIFICS—numerics, costs & everything else—of what it would take to put that into practice now! As I've said before, it's always better to have it & not need it than need it & not have it, & it's always better to start it before you need it & have it already in practice! In fact, we already need it because we need it for security if nothing else.
12. WE HAVE THE FUNDS THAT WE WANT TO INVEST & THERE'S NO BETTER PLACE TO INVEST THEM THAN IN THE LORD'S WORK, & WHERE IT WILL DO THE MOST WORK! I'd be willing to buy them the machines or let them tell us how much they'll need for the machines & how much they're going to need for paper & postage etc.
13. I THINK THE ONLY WAY THIS WOULD WORK IS TO MAKE THE INDIVIDUAL HOMES RESPONSIBLE TO GO DOWN & COPY THEM THEMSELVES IF THEY WANT MORE COPIES.—And originally we found that this method went fairly well! The average number of people per Home has gone up to about 12, of which the average is half adults & half children. They would have mostly small children, many of whom can't even read yet. So if the local Home didn't have a copier available, they could go out & pay 25 cents a copy or whatever it is to get more copies. We can leave that up to them as to how many copies they want to print.
14. THIS BRINGS UP ANOTHER THING THAT I'VE BEEN MEANING TO SUGGEST BECAUSE OF THE UPCOMING WORLD CRISIS & THE CRASH. Since each Home will be having to make their own extra copies, in some LAFs or GAFs they could pool that & run off all their copies locally without all that much trouble, but we could leave that up to them. The LPCs would furnish each Home with at least one original, & if the Home is small enough they could either pass it around, or as we used to do, have somebody read it publicly. Of course it would be far better to simply pass it around.
15. THIS WOULD ALSO CUT DOWN ON THE MASS OF MATERIAL THE HOMES HAVE BEEN ACCUMULATING! Right now we've been publishing on a wholesale, very generous scale of production & tried to give everybody all they could possibly swallow & more, & they're probably choking on some of it!
16. THIS IS IMPORTANT! I'VE HAD THIS BURDEN ON MY HEART, & EZEKIEL'S NOTE JUST TRIGGERED IT! I've been thinking about having you figure it out & plan what we could do & what would be the simplest way to do it‚ but maybe the Lord knows that we need to get busy on it quicker, by having him give us that little push to suggest it. The Lord works through our own people, He can speak through the littlest saints!
17. ANYWAY, IT WOULD BE UP TO THE LOCAL HOME HOW MANY THEY WANTED TO REPRODUCE. Smaller Homes could just pass it around & take turns reading it, & it'd reduce the size of the library they're accumulating. I would say for a small Home one GN would be sufficient‚ they could pass it around. I'd say one FSM would definitely be sufficient to pass around. The average Home only has half-a-dozen adults. Couples could read it together.—And keep'm in the Home Library.
18. LET'S MAKE AN ESTIMATE RIGHT NOW & CONSIDER EACH PUB IN THE AVERAGE–SIZED HOME. I'm not talking about big Homes, but the average-sized Home of about a dozen‚ which is our international average, which consists of half adults & half children, six adults & six children. One copy of the GN would be enough to pass around.
19. I THINK THIS IDEA WAS INSPIRED BY THE LORD! I've had it hazily in the back of my mind considering it, but this Member's suggestion has just suddenly crystallised it & I began to realise, almost like the voice of the Lord, "Why not now?"
20. I'D SAY IF WE WERE PUSHED ECONOMICALLY & EVEN SECURITY-WISE NOW, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! I think it's better to get the jump on our enemies & do this sort of thing before they finally figure out how to nail us! First of all they've got to find us, & the more scattered our publishing is, the harder it will be to find us, especially if they can't find a central publishing house! By this time they're pretty well aware that we have now been doing all of our publishing, all of our books from one place‚ which I have been very leery about & concerned about for a couple of years. It has been a tremendous asset as far as this big pubs push is concerned & the Poster push & all the rest, but even with the Posters we found out we couldn't do it all in one place.
21. LET'S TAKE THE AVERAGE HOME:—WITH ONLY 6 ADULTS, INCLUDING TEENAGERS‚ IF THEY HAD TO, THEY COULD GET BY WITH ONE GN, ONE FSM & ONE WND by passing it around, as only the adults are interested in these more serious adult pubs. They certainly could get by with one LIN & one Kidz, I think they already more or less do that. And with only five small children, probably only half of them can actually read, 2 or 3 of them, so they could get by easily with one "Life With Grandpa" & I don't see why they couldn't get by with one Heaven's Girl as well! They would get their copy & they would grab it as soon as the other guy was done & they'd see to it that they got it & read it, let me tell you‚ just like Techi does! The first thing she wants to know is if there's a new Grandpa Story or a new Heaven's Girl Story!
22. I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE EXCEPTIONS, BUT I WOULD SAY THE AVERAGE HOME—& THAT ALSO INCLUDES ALL OF THOSE UNDER THAT MEDIAN OF 12—COULD CERTAINLY GET BY WITH ONLY ONE COPY OF EACH! Even those with higher populations per Home, we could just tell them, "Sorry, but this is all your NRO can handle! If you want more copies for your Home, run down to the local store & run off a few for yourself!"
ABOLISH TITHE MINIMUMS!
23. NOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET THE SHOCKER! WE'RE GOING TO START ECONOMISING NOW & WE'RE GOING TO HELP OUR FOLKS ECONOMISE! To assuage the hurt feelings or disappointment of some of our Homes & people that now we're not giving them as many copies & giving them as much service & it's not getting to them as fast by direct airmail from a centralised office, we're going to give them a bonus!—And I guess you can guess already what I mean by that!—We're going to cut down the minimum tithe per area!
24. WE ARE GOING TO CUT OUR OWN INCOME! We've talked about sharing these reserves & investing them wherever we possibly can to make it possible for the PPCs to produce more Posters & the Homes to stock up reserves of Posters & all that sort of thing, but we've never gotten down to the point of actually considering investing cash in each individual Home.—And that's how we can do it, by literally cutting our own income & telling them from now on their minimum tithe only has to be 10%! Of course we're going to have to figure out all these expenses & numbers & what it's going to cost.
25. WE'VE GOT ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY THE MACHINES & GET THE LOCAL NRO PUBLISHING CENTERS SET UP. What shall we call them?—We now call them National Reporting Offices‚ why not National Publishing Centers?—NPCs! We already have PPCs, how about NPCs? We need handles on things! So they can be the NPCs, National Publishing Centers, some of which will only be publishing for just one country. Others, like in South America, will publish for two or three countries.
26. SO ONCE WE'VE FIGURED OUT WHAT IT'S GOING TO COST & WHAT IT'S GOING TO COST THE AVERAGE LITTLE NPC—which may include more than one nation—we can then estimate our needs, as we always have. We have simply estimated what we would need, & we have adjusted our tithing levels to what we felt was necessary & what we needed.
27. WE RAISED THE TITHING MINIMUMS VERY HIGH, NOT ONLY TO COVER THIS FINAL BIG PUBS PUSH, BUT BECAUSE OUR ACTUAL MAJOR CONCERN WAS SECURITY! We tried to make them so costly that most of our enemies wouldn't want to have to pay $100 a month just to find out what we were having to say in our pubs! In fact, I think we're being a little more discreet & security–conscious in our pubs now. We've trimmed an awful lot of that fat & names & photos out of the FSM & whatnot so that we're not revealing so much specific information. We've trimmed up a lot of things security–wise.
28. BUT WITH THIS METHOD OF DISTRIBUTION WE WOULDN'T HAVE TO BE SO CONCERNED ABOUT SECURITY! The local NPCs would be so familiar, even personally familiar with the people & the Homes in their area, they would be able to catch any sneak who's trying to sneak in by paying this lower minimum tithe in order to get our pubs! They would actually know these people & these Homes personally‚ & if the National Office didn't, they could ask the local GAS or LAS or whoever to go & investigate this new person who is sending in a TRF & see just who & what they are & if they're safe to send our mailings to. In other words, it would be even safer now to lower the tithe levels.
29. THIS WOULD HAVE TWO MAJOR CAUSES AS WELL AS EFFECTS.—Number one, the local Homes would be doing more for themselves, spreading it out that thin, so that one World office doesn't do it all for them. Number two, the National Offices would be doing more for their areas, which we'd help them get started doing, & the local Homes themselves will each be doing more for themselves. If they need extra copies, they can go down & run'm off themselves!—And what do you bet most of them won't? They'll find it's just as feasible as it used to be to pass them around‚ just like we used to. The average Home would not have to have any more copies than what the local NPCs send them! (Maria: Some of the areas might even provision printing.)—Right, but let's not get into too many details yet. There are all kinds of variations but I'm just going on an average median. We can get more into details once we've figured out what it's going to cost & what it isn't going to cost.
30. THE BOOKS ARE PUBBED NOW & THERE ARE VERY FEW BOOKS TO COME‚ JUST AN OCCASIONAL ONE HERE & THERE, which would still be safe to have Sprint do. It'll be more economical & quicker to still have Sprint handling an occasional booksize pub‚ which we will have as we continue making KWICs & various more appendices to the PUBDEX & WNDEX etc.‚ these reference works. If we can send them out in small 32-page signatures, fine, but at least in as small copies as possible which Sprint can continue to do on a World scale, since it would be much easier to get them printed in one place as long as possible. Of course, if the crunch really comes or if investigation or shutdown comes, they'd just have to clear out & discontinue big pubs for awhile until we found someplace else, if at all, to continue them!
31. AS I WAS SAYING, THE AVERAGE HOME OF A DOZEN PEOPLE, HALF ADULTS & ABOUT A QUARTER OF THEM READING CHILDREN, CAN CERTAINLY DO WITH ONLY ONE COPY of all these pubs, an average of 20 copies per month altogether, by just passing them around or reading them to the Family or reading them like bedtime stories to the kids, & they can be very thankful they get one copy!—Or they can make more copies for themselves if they have to & want to go to that expense.
32. SHALL WE CALL THIS THE LOCALISED PUBLISHING SYSTEM, THE LPS? I always like to get handles for all of our operations! If they don't like the word "system", we could say Localised Publishing Method!—The LPM! That's better! LPM has a natural flow to it that's easy to say, even better than LPS. An "S" can be misconstrued to be "F" sometimes. "M" can be confused with "N", but anyhow, let's call it the LPM!—The new Localised Publishing Method by the NPCs, & even the Homes themselves if they have to!
33. WHEN WE FIND OUT THE GENERAL COST SURVEY OF THIS WHOLE NEW LOCALISED PUBLISHING METHOD, we could figure out what our costs are going to be & the continued operation of a minimum number of Creations Units & other national & international Units & offices, & simply figure our costs just like any business or factory or merchant does. He figures his costs‚ he figures how much profit or margin he's got to have for, you might say, seed corn in order to plant the next crop & continue in business. Then after he has figured his overhead, which is his cost, including his rent & everything else, he figures his profit or margin which he needs to make in order to continue in business to make more. They teach you this in the simplest kind of business practice course in high school.
34. EVEN A FARMER FIGURES HIS TOTAL ACTUAL COST & THE AMOUNT HE NEEDS TO CONTINUE IN OPERATION & STAY IN BUSINESS, including seedcorn for future production etc. Then he figures his prices for the product. He figures then how much money he's going to need to produce so many items of this product & to have enough left over to keep on going & produce next month's crop or production. He figures that all out & he figures then where to set his price to foot the bill, how low he can afford to set his prices for his products etc. Well, we need to do exactly the same thing.
35. PREVIOUSLY WE PRETTY MUCH SET OUR MINIMUM TITHE PER HOME, which in a sense was our price, relating it in business terms, & we have literally flooded them with productions since then in order to get as many of these big books off of our chests or presses as possible. Now in order to be prepared for the Crash, we're trying to trim everything down to just 20 copies of seven periodicals.
36. THIS IS TAKING A FORWARD & IMMEDIATE STEP SO THAT WE CAN WORK IT OUT NOW & prepare it now & figure it out & experiment with it now & get it started working now, before the crunch comes when it may be too late! We don't know what blow is going to suddenly fall, it could happen at any moment! As I have said regarding our finances & our wind-down, it's better that we already be wound-down & operating at that level so it would hardly even affect us. So would it be with this Localised Publishing Method!
37. ONCE WE'VE FIGURED OUT WHAT OUR TOTAL COSTS ARE GOING TO BE operating in our publishing with that method, including what margin we need to keep up our reserves & continue our production & to not deplete those reserves because we're always having emergencies when we need to pay out reserves, we could figure out for World Services alone what our total World costs would be. Then once we've set up the NPCs & we've notified the local Homes & we've figured out what our total costs are actually going to be, how much the NROs are going to have to take out of their TRFs to maintain this method & how much that's going to cut down our income, we can figure new tithe rates.
38. WHEN WE GET THIS WHOLE THING IN OPERATION & FIND OUT SPECIFICALLY HOW MUCH & HOW LITTLE IT'S GOING TO COST, I believe we'll find out that even with 20 periodicals a month—without all that high-priced around–the-World air-mail postage, which usually costs us more than the printing—we'll save money if we even continue to pay the local NROs' postage! It simply means local, even overland postage, surface postage in most places. And even the local air mail would be a fraction of what it's costing now! Even in the worst possible situation‚ such as feeding North America from a localised NPC, it would still be much cheaper than the way we're doing it now!
39. IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO FIND OUT THE DIFFERENCE IN COST, & WE CAN THEN MAKE A ROUGH ESTIMATE OF HOW MUCH WE CAN DELIBERATELY & WILFULLY & CALCULATEDLY CUT DOWN OUR INCOME in order to literally make it easier on the individual Homes, to prepare them for the crunch! We will help them cut down their expenses by cutting down how much they have to pay us for our services! We can give them advance notice: "Here's what we're going to do for you‚ & we're going to do it now with your help & cooperation & sacrifice to help you get wound–down & prepared for the Crash just like we're doing. From now on this is going to be your minimum tithe!—Only the 10%!"
40. IT WOULD CUT DOWN OUR INCOME RIGHT THERE AT THE SOURCE‚ AT THE NRO LEVEL, BECAUSE THEY'D BE TAKING OUT MORE FOR LOCAL PUBLISHING. And because we don't want them to have to publish too much, more than they can handle‚ the Homes are going to have to sacrifice by getting by with one copy of each pub each time. I think 20 32-page pubs a month is plenty! Even if they were all 32 pages, that would be quite a bit, over 600 pages a month, & they'd be doing very well to read'm at the rate of 20 pages a day! That will give them about all they can read per month & I don't think they're going to want to make too many extra copies on the local level. We'll make it possible for the NPCs to print however many they need in their particular NPC area‚ or two or three together. We'll just have to figure out all those details & find the cost structure & see approximately what it's going to cost us & how much less it's going to cost us.
41. WE'RE GOING TO BE LIKE ANY HONEST BUSINESSMAN, ANY HONEST MANUFACTURER, ANY FAIR-TRADE PRACTITIONER, WE ARE GOING TO CUT DOWN OUR PRICES TO FIT THE COST OF THE PRODUCT & their ability to pay, which is going to be a lot less, come the Crash! So they're not going to look on that as something that's absolutely utterly impossible, which probably some of those poor families gone back there without jobs are already finding almost impossible! We've lost quite a few North American Homes, needless to say, probably some Europeans too. But I think our greatest decline of Homes has been in North America.
42. YOU MAY SAY THAT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE GOING TO THE FIELD, BUT OUR TOTAL NUMBER OF FIELD HOMES IS NOT INCREASING THAT MUCH. In fact, our total World number of Homes is gradually declining, I would say at the moment‚ optimistically, largely because of Comboing.—But pessimistically perhaps it's because some are actually already beginning to find that it's difficult for them to meet the minimum tithe. So we're going to put our cookies on a lower shelf & make it more available to people & easier to pay, & I think we need to do it now!
THE TARIFF TRIGGER!
43. THE PINCH IS ALREADY COMING IN A GREAT MANY PLACES, & WHEN THE U.S. PASSES THAT HIGH-TARIFF BILL this month they claim, or they say at least before December, that'll really bring it on! They may not get it passed in September. They were hot enough & mad enough they said they were going to start considering it before the end of the month. But they're positive it's going to pass, & they figure they've already got over the 2/3 majority to override Reagan's veto!
44. THE U.S.A. IS UP IN ARMS!—And the more people are out of work, the more factories closing down, the more competition they're getting from not only Japan but Brazil & South Korea & all these other places that's driving them out of business & creating more unemployment, the madder the people are getting!—Until the lawmakers in the Capital are absolutely positive now they're going to be able to pass this new overall flat 25% tariff on all imports!
45. IT'S A SCREAM THE WAY THEY FIGURE IT! THE PROPONENTS ARE SAYING, "IT'S GOING TO TAKE THE SHOCK TREATMENT TO AWAKEN THE WORLD TO THE UNFAIRNESS OF PROTECTIONISM!—Their protectionism, not ours!" The U.S. is saying, "We're only doing this because of your unfair trade practices. We're retaliating! We're hiking all of our tariffs on all your goods so you can see what it feels like!—Sockeroo!" This is their logic & reasoning, that this shock treatment is what is needed to wake up the World to the danger of protectionism, so that the whole World will get together & agree on abandoning all protectionism!—Ha!
46. THAT'S WHAT I CALL WISHFUL THINKING!—BECAUSE THE LAST TIME THEY DID THAT TRICK IT BROUGHT ON THE GREAT WORLD DEPRESSION OF THE 30'S, & I wouldn't expect it to happen any different this time! Before it would shock the World into unitedly deciding to unselfishly abandon all of their protectionism—in other words, all of their trade restrictions & high tariffs & duties etc.—it would just absolutely knock the whole World into an economic tailspin from which they would not recover without superhuman talent & superhuman leadership & superhuman wisdom & superhuman skill & a One-World Government of you-know-who!
47. SO I HAVE A FEELING THAT NEW TARIFF BILL IS PROBABLY WHAT IS GOING TO START THE BALL ROLLING & IS GOING TO PRECIPITATE A NEW WORLD DEPRESSION just like it did last time! It will probably be the greatest the World has ever known, from which it cannot recover without the superhuman government that they're going to get from the Antichrist!
48. THAT U.S. ACTION ON TARIFFS ETC. COULD BE THE TRIGGER THAT IS GOING TO SHOOT THE LOADED GUN & FIRE THE BULLET THAT'S GOING TO KILL THE WORLD ECONOMY! It may take a little while to die & bring on the super–events of 1986, next year, which can bring about the Superman, but it's going to start the ball rolling!—The musket ball! They used to call the shot "balls" even in rifles, small balls, & in pistols too. The modern term is bullets. They used to call them balls because they were round, like beebees & birdshot.
49. BUT ANYHOW, IT COULD BE THE SHOT THAT'S GOING TO BE HEARD AROUND THE WORLD that is going to absolutely kill World economy & bring on the great World Depression‚ great World Famine & great World Government! In other words, this is what I'm anticipating & what I'm reading in the newspaper every day, they're just as sure of it as they can be‚ they're going to do it, & they're even using it as an excuse that they're doing it to kill protectionism!
50. DID YOU KNOW THAT'S THE SAME EXCUSE THEY USE FOR ARMAMENTS?—That the more arms they have, the less likelihood there is of war! But I've never seen a time yet that as long as they had the arms they didn't eventually use them! Dear Reagan named one of his newest missiles the Peacekeeper, but arms in the hands of the wrong people have never been peacekeepers, they've always been warmongers! The more arms they have‚ the more likelihood there has been of them wanting to use them if they thought they could get the advantage.
51. SO THAT'S THE SAME KIND OF LOGIC THEY'RE USING ON THE TRADE WAR.—Which, by the way, has always been what has precipitated the hot wars! The trade wars always came first. The U.S. was having a severe trade war with Germany before WW1. It had a much more severe trade war with Japan before WW2, & that's what precipitated the War! This time I believe they're not going to be able to pull themselves out with another war because they're afraid to have a war—we hope! They're going to try a Depression first!—Ha!
52. THEY'VE HAD THE BOOM, NOW IT'S TIME FOR THE BUST!—And they've always pulled themselves out of the bust with another war. War-boom–bust‚ war-boom, bust! It's going to follow the cycle. We've had the boom & we're entering the bust‚ but I think they're going to be afraid to have the war & they're going to turn to the Antichrist as the only alternative—World Government for World peace. So when the war comes, it's his last desperate situation he's going to precipitate! Because he's unable to conquer all the countries & unable to get everybody to bow down, he'll finally use the atomic weapon on the U.S.A. & her friends first, which will bring on the final destruction of the Tribulation period.—At least that's the way we see it. Whether it's going to happen that way is up to the Lord, but that's as good a prognosis as I think anybody can give. And from the Scripture & from God's Word & His revelations to us, it sure looks like it to me! If we're wrong, well, I'd rather be prepared & not need it, than need it & not have it!
NO MORE TITHE MINIMUMS!
53. SO I PROPOSE THAT WE FIGURE THIS OUT RIGHT NOW & INITIATE IT NOW, OR AS SOON AS WE CAN!—As soon as we can get the Centers set up & instructed what to do & how to do it, & the Homes warned & also cheerfully informed of how much less it's going to cost them, & how drastically we are going to reduce their contributions, their minimum tithes, as we drastically reduce our actual cost of operation!
54. THE BIG BOOK PUSH & PUBS PUSH IS OVER & WE'RE TRIMMING DOWN ALL THE PUBS TO SO FEW & SO LITTLE—although I don't think 20 32-pagers of pubs a month is so very little! I've never heard of any other denomination publishing that many periodicals, 568 pages per month! Even the big hefty multi-million-dollar Alliance only had one little weekly paper of 12 pages, the Alliance Weekly! We are prolific! It's absolutely prodigious what we still will be producing even as we cut down to nothing now but the little periodicals. It's spectacular! Colossal! Monumental! Enormous! Tremendous! Phenomenal!—Ha! TYJ!
55. BUT IT'S POSSIBLE SOME HOMES ARE ALREADY WONDERING, "WELL‚ NOW THAT THE BIG BOOK PUSH IS OVER & they don't need the money for that, what are they using all this money for anyhow? They've already publicised & advertised worldwide that they're cutting down their expenses & winding down their Units & turning out their personnel to the field, what are they doing with all this money we're giving them? It doesn't look to me like they need so much of my money any more! They're not supporting as many missionaries, they're not supporting so many Units, they're not publishing so many books & they're not even sending out as many copies! My local Office is doing the work & I'm only getting one copy of each, how come I have to pay such a high tithe?" Well, let's let'm know in advance that they don't, they're not going to!
56. WE'RE GOING TO CUT TITHES DRASTICALLY JUST TO FIT THE REMAINING EXPENSES. In other words, if we were talking like a business, we're going to cut our prices! As things go down, usually prices go down, because costs go down & there is deflation after the inflation, therefore we will be able to cut prices, our minimum tithe, to fit our greatly reduced expenses.—Only 10%!
57. AND THANK GOD IT'S ALREADY PAID OFF! We said we were winding-down ahead of time, when actually we just barely did it in time! If we had not already been winding-down the past several months, we would already be operating either in the red or unable to produce as much as we have produced! And since we never operate in the red—we don't borrow money or spend more than our income—we would've just cut down our services!
58. THEREFORE LET'S GIVE'M THE GOOD NEWS TO PREPARE THEM TO ONLY PAY AS MUCH TITHE AS THEY ARE GOING TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD TO PAY WHEN THE CRUNCH COMES! It would still be 10% as far as most of them are concerned, we simply made a minimum especially for the U.S.A. & Europe, the rich countries. We just said it's got to be a minimum amount or nothing. We can cut it down now & say, "Okay‚ just give a flat 10% of your income, period!"—In fact we could even say no more minimums! That might be the simplest way to do it.—No more minimums, just 10% of your income, whatever it is. And as their income then goes down due to the Crash, their tithe will go down, & we will just simply keep our operation within the limitations of our income, whatever it may be, even if we have to lop off a pub here or there. No more tithe minimums!
59. (MARIA: SO THEY WILL CONTINUE TO PAY THEIR 10% ACCORDING TO THE BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES.)—Yes, but we will expect their incomes to decline‚ just like our income is declining right now. Thank God we started winding-down before it did or we wouldn't have been having any margins‚ we would have been going in the hole!
FIGURING THE COST!
60. WE NEED TO GET THIS OUT SOON, THE REVELATION OF THIS NEW PLAN OF THE LOCAL PUBLISHING METHOD, THE LPM!—It sounds like LPG. Is there something called LPG? Is it one of those little records? (Peter: They're LPs.)—Long playing! Well, this is the Long Playing Publishing System!—The Local Publishing Method, the LPM! We've got a bunch of alphabets already in our new soup! They used to call FDR's many agencies "alphabet soup" because he had initials for all of them. It's handy to have initials & it's handy to have abbreviated initials. I think we've used some of our initials so long we've even forgotten what they stand for! I was using one the other day & I couldn't even remember what it originally meant!—Ha! We had just used it so long I couldn't remember what the original words were! But we know what the initials mean anyhow‚ what they apply to‚ what they're a handle for. (Oh‚ somebody says that LPG stands for Liquified Petroleum Gas!—I knew it sounded familiar!—Ha!—The condensed Wordpower!)
61. WE NEED AN ASSESSMENT OF THE INITIAL COST‚ THEN WE NEED AN ASSESSMENT ALSO OF THE POTENTIAL RUNNING EXPENSES OF THAT METHOD, what it's going to cost them, & how much we may have to help them even at that. Then we need an assessment of how much less it's going to cost us to publish those 20 periodicals with that method, the Local Publishing Method.
62. I ONLY EXPECTED TO BE HERE A MOMENT TO DISCUSS SOMETHING ELSE WITH YOU, BUT I WAS INSPIRED BY THIS LETTER! This precipitated something that I have been thinking about for quite some time, & that I've been suggesting all along in all of our wind-down theories & plans for the last two or three years! Now I believe the time has come! We have wound down, or we're in the process of finishing our wind-down, & I think it's time to get this new Local Publishing Method rolling so we can figure how much less it's going to cost us‚ so we can figure how much less to charge the local Homes, & hopefully abandon these tithe minimums entirely & again operate strictly on a straight 10% tithing basis, as not the minimum but the maximum! Well, it is the minimum, but most of them give more than that. TTL! GB'm!
63. (THUNDER!) THE DEVIL MUST BE MAD! Bless the electricity, Lord! Bless & protect the power houses & the equipment & the lines & all, in Jesus' name!
64. SO LET'S FIRST FIGURE THE INITIAL COST, THEN THE RUNNING EXPENSE COST, & then figure our minimum or maximum cost in that wound-down condition with that maximum number of pubs, plus Sprint's cost for an occasional book-sized pub that's probably still going to come out like the KWIC & various reference works we're still in the process of making, things like your Catechism. We still have a few to get out.
65. BUT WE'VE LEFT THEM TILL LAST & HOPEFULLY WE'LL PUT THEM OUT IN SMALL EDITIONS OR EVEN IN A SERIES so we won't have so much to worry about, & not save them up until the last minute & try to publish a big book all at once! It's better to get a little into people's hands now, a constant flow, rather than save it up behind a big dam & then suddenly open the floodgates & it nearly drowns them!—Including us!
66. SO THOSE ARE THE 3 FACTORS YOU NEED TO FIGURE: The initial cost of the LPM, the running expenses of that system, how much less World Services' cost of publishing & operation are going to be under that method, & finally, how soon we can lower the taxes!
67. NOW THIS IS SOMETHING THAT I HAVE READ IN THE PAPERS FOR YEARS‚ FROM THE TIME I WAS A YOUNG TEENAGER, THAT GOVERNMENTS WERE PLANNING TO DO—LOWER TAXES! But I think we're probably going to be the first government in history that ever actually made a drastic lowering of its taxes! That's literally what our tithes are, it's a form of taxation. That's what it was in the Bible, but it was considered a voluntary thing & actually gifts, although it always spoke of the tithe & offerings. The tithe was the required 10%, offerings were anything above that. It's right in the Bible & we do the same thing! We have the tithe & then we have extra gifts people give. And most of them, it seems, actually give more than their tithe! GB'm!
68. BUT THERE'S COMING A DAY SOON WHEN THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO GIVE IN SUCH AN ABUNDANCE AS THEY ARE NOW. So we need to cut it down to just a thin flat 10% tithe & go back to that without minimums, so that whatever their income is, however high or however low, it still will be a tithe & only 10% at that, which they can afford to pay regardless. The 10% belongs to the Lord.—Whether they're only earning $10 a month, $1 for the Lord, or $100 a month, $10 for the Lord, or $1000 a month, $100 for the Lord!—Which is what a lot of them are earning now according to what they're giving!
69. I AM JUST AMAZED AT HOW WELL OUR FOLKS ARE GIVING! I've never known any church in my history, in my life time‚ to give as well & as faithfully & as heavily as our people do!—And we could never have gotten the job done if they hadn't! But now that the major part of the job is done & all we have to do is keep up our current pubs, the periodicals, our expenses are going to be a lot lower. We've already cut down & cut out a lot of Units & dispersed a lot of personnel to the field, & I'm expecting costs to be a lot less because I'm expecting our income to be a lot less. That's why we did it! And if our income is a lot less, the reason is going to be because our Members' income is going to be a lot less. That's all they're going to be able to afford to pay. So we're trying to cut down our expenses & our operations & our production to fit our expected much lower income, our already declining income. I think that's wise business planning & I think we need to get with it just as quick as we can!
70. WE NEED TO FIGURE OUT THESE COSTS & FIGURES IMMEDIATELY SO THAT WE WILL BE ABLE TO ANNOUNCE THE EXACT DATE‚ the first of which month they no longer have to pay minimum tithes, but strictly just whatever their tithe amounts to.—Fair enough? So we need to get answers back from the prospective National Publishing Centers—the present NROs—what they're sure they can at least rent or preferably buy a copier for, so they don't have to report anything to anybody‚ of whatever size & capacity it will take to service their particular area. And in order to figure it out, they have to know, of course, how many Homes they've got. With this one–copy–per-Home method they're not going to have to even figure out how many people!
71. IN FACT‚ MAYBE THIS IS GOING TO HELP BREAK UP SOME OF THOSE BLOBS THAT HAVE BEEN DEVELOPING! People are going to have to go out & start their own Homes if they want to get more personal copies! Dear Jeth figured out a way to do it, he took his Blobs & divided them up into floors or apartments or even rooms & each one of those was a Colony, so that he could get credit for it & enough copies & blah blah! We certainly don't recommend that! But some of these over-sized blobs of 100 or 150 people are going to have a Hell of a hard time only getting one copy to read & pass around, or even read publicly! Any Blob that size would have to have its own copier! (Maria: We shouldn't have a problem with that any more since by now everyone has the Word that all Combo populations must be kept down to 35 at the very very maximum!) Well, even with 35, which would include 16 or 17 adults‚ that's quite a number to be passing around one copy! But that's their problem. From now on it's their problem, not ours!
LET'S GET THE BALL ROLLING!
72. IT TAKES TIME FOR THESE WHEELS TO GET MOVING! This machinery grinds exceeding slow, but thank the Lord, exceeding fine, & I think it will refine the whole process to where we can handle it & they can handle it, & it'll be far more secure than our present method.—In every way! It will be cheaper both for us & for them on the local publishing scale.
73. AND IF THEY WORK FAST, I DON'T THINK IT'S GOING TO DELAY THEIR PUBS MUCH MORE THAN MAYBE A WEEK LATER THAN USUAL! They now get their copies directly from Sprint air mail, & most of the Family receives them within the first week! Virtually all the Family receives them in the first two weeks. So let's say the average is that they're getting them one week after they're actually mailed. The NPCs will simply get their original copies within one week, & having their own machine & doing their own stuffing & mailing, they ought to be able to get it to the local Homes which are not too far away within one more week!
74. SO IT'S NOT GOING TO TAKE MORE THAN DOUBLE THE USUAL TIME THAT IT TAKES TO GET'M TO THE WHOLE FAMILY!—Two weeks at the most!—And it could be that it's not going to be very much later than they're receiving them now, since Sprint alone doesn't have to do the whole mass of thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands of copies!
75. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PAGES WE PRINTED THIS LAST MONTH OF AUGUST?—NEARLY 15 MILLION PAGES! I never heard of a little outfit like ours that ever did so much publishing! We really have got a big mouth! We may have a very small body, but we sure have got one Heaven of a mouth! I have never ever heard of such a thing! The Alliance with all their millions & supposedly 50,000 actual dues-paying members & something like 2000 churches, only had one little weekly & only published just a handful of books!
76. WE HAVE FLOODED THE WORLD WITH OUR DOCTRINE! (Acts 5:28) I think we've done the biggest job of it since the Early Church, in fact bigger! "Greater things than these shall ye do!" (Jn.14:12) And what's the greatest thing God wants us to do?—Preach the Word, preach the Gospel, publish the Word! And I think we're doing it greater than anybody's ever done it before, on a worldwide basis in many languages! Although World Services doesn't publish it in so many languages, a lot of our people locally have done it & are doing it! I doubt if any denomination ever before has published in as many languages as we have, over 50 different languages, the major languages of the World!
77. SO WE'RE REALLY DOING A TREMENDOUS JOB & HAVE DONE A TREMENDOUS JOB, & even now trimming it down to approximately 20 32-page pubs a month, we're still doing a tremendous job! But this new Local Publishing Method, the LPM, is going to greatly reduce our costs of World Services & our time & hopefully our personnel & spread more of the load out to where it counts & where it'll be safer & they can do it themselves! It's a do-it-yourself plan & all we have to get to them is one copy!
78. THIS IS JUST THE WAY MARIA & I STARTED OUT WHEN WE ONLY HAD SIX MAJOR CENTERS! We made 7 copies, sent them the original & the best copies, & we kept the one carbon copy that you could hardly read, but at least we knew we had it. Then they either read it publicly or they made copies for themselves. So we're getting back to that original method which is actually the safest, surest & cheapest!—And the one which I think will survive in spite of the economic Crash! It will certainly survive longer than the way we're doing it now, & be safer! And I think perhaps it will be just as effective, if not more effective, & perhaps almost as speedy if we have enough of these Centers sprinkled around to give good service!
79. SO LET'S GET THIS BALL ROLLING & LET'S HAVE A BALL DOING IT, learning how to cut down our expenses more than ever, spread out the work more than ever, do the publish-ing more locally than ever & safer & cheaper than ever‚ but almost as fast as ever! So let's get it going now so we'll be ready to abandon & completely omit those minimum tithes by at least the first of the year!—And I wouldn't be surprised that's just about when they're going to need it!
80. THE LORD'S BEEN VERY PATIENT WAITING ON US, WE MOVE AWFUL SLOW, BUT WE'RE GETTING TO WHERE I THINK WE CAN DO IT, & I think now is the time to start, not after the Crash! We need to plan it now, figure it now, start it now & have the thing working & in operation by the time the real Crash comes, the worst of the Crash! It's been crashing for years!—Amen? So PTL! Let's get it rolling!
81. WE NEED TO GET THIS OUT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE SO THE WHOLE FAMILY CAN KNOW ABOUT IT‚ hear about it, look forward to & anticipate—anticipation is 50% of enjoyment—the fact that there will be no more minimums beginning January 1st, just straight tithe!—Plus any gifts or offerings they want to give if they are able, but no more required than just 10% of their income, whatever their income may be, whether it's big or little or nearly nothing! That 10% tithe is not going to hurt'm‚ in fact it's going to bless'm, & God willing‚ they're still going to get as many periodical pubs as possible & as fast as possible & a whole lot safer! The whole Family will be a lot safer if the whole World mailing list is not all in one place! PTL? TYL!
CLOSING PRAYER!
82. AMEN, LORD‚ THANK YOU FOR THIS IDEA & THANK YOU FOR THIS LITTLE ONE WHO GAVE US THAT LITTLE EXTRA PUSH we needed to get really thinking & praying & desperate about it, realising that we've got to start planning it now or we will not be ready for it when the time comes! It's already going to take us about 3 months to get it rolling, so that as their income declines‚ very likely by January 1st, they will only have to pay a flat 10% tithe & no more unless they're able.
83. WE'RE TRYING TO DO EVERYTHING WE CAN FOR THEM, LORD, AT THE LOWEST POSSIBLE COST‚ & WE'RE ASKING NO MORE THAN WHAT WE REALLY NEED. We know then You'll tailor our costs to meet our income. You'll tailor our needs to meet our abilities, & theirs as well.
84. SO BLESS & KEEP OUR FAMILY AROUND THE WORLD, LORD, & continue to prosper & protect them & make them fruitful & keep them going as long as possible, & we believe that's going to be until You come! But do help us now to prepare the means by which we can survive in the coming Dearth of the Earth, & to be able to continue to feed Thy sheep & produce Thy pubs & spread Thy Word until the End really comes!—In Jesus' name we ask for Thy glory! Amen! PTL!
P.S.: SECURITY IS THE NAME OF THE GAME!
85. WELL, IF THERE IS ANY POSTSCRIPT TO THIS WHATSOEVER, I WOULD SAY THAT IT'S A MATTER THAT WE'RE STILL OPERATING BY FAITH & TRUST! In lowering the tithe minimums to what for some people will be very small, or to the point some enemy could even lie & think they're going to get our stuff cheap without it costing much‚ we are shifting the responsibility down to the local level to ascertain & make sure that nobody gets these pubs who shouldn't!
86. THEY SHOULD NOT MAIL ANYTHING TO ANYBODY THEY DON'T KNOW! If they get a new TRF with a new request for all of our pubs & only $10 tithe, blah blah, if they don't know the person, they should not send the pubs until they have found out from somebody locally who knows them or lives in their town or goes there to investigate who they are & what they are & get a little idea of what kind of a job & income they've got & how come they can only pay so little tithe!
87. WE'RE GOING TO SHIFT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SECURITY & finding out who these people are or what they are & what they really are able to pay, right down to the local level where they live, to the people who know them! Therefore we should make these NPCs to be responsible for as small an area & as few Homes as possible so that they're not overloaded & swamped with so many Homes to service they can't make sure whom they're servicing!
88. SECURITY IS THE NAME OF THE GAME & THE ONLY WAY WE CAN PUT THIS OPERATION INTO EFFECT IS TO MAKE SURE THAT IT IS SECURE, & the only way we can make sure of that is for them to be sure on the local level who's getting the pubs & who really deserves to get them, & that they're really paying what they should!
89. SPRINT'S DIRECT CONNECTION WITH THE LOCAL HOMES IS GOING TO BE CUT COMPLETELY SO THEY'LL NEVER KNOW WHERE SPRINT IS! The World right now knows where all of our pubs come from, & it's just absolutely miraculous that we've survived this long without our enemies causing trouble! I'm sure it's been the Lord just to help us get out all these big pubs, but now we're going to have to go more underground. Things are going to get tighter & riskier & more dangerous all the time & we need to get a jump on the System by going more undercover right now! Amen? GBY!
—ARE YOU?—Tx! ILY!—D.
P.P.S.—THE FINAL BOMB!
90. TO IMMEDIATELY ABOLISH ALL TITHE MINIMUMS BY OCT. 1, we're also going to get every Home used to getting one copy per Home of each Pub immediately, beginning with all October Pubs!—So Mordy's Sprint Team will now be sending you only one copy of each Pub per Home—or about 20 copies per month!—About 600 pages a month to keep you busy reading about 20 pages a day!—About all most of you busy folks can handle!—And share!
91. SO WITH YOUR OCTOBER 1st TRF, NO MORE MINIMUMS!—EXCEPT YOUR STRAIGHT 10% TITHE!—Plus, of course, any extra gifts you can send!—There's always somewhere they're needed!—We'll also continue to pass on your designated extra gifts & offerings for your chosen projects, fields or specific missions & missionaries. GBY!—And thanks!
92. —SO NO MORE MULTIPLE COPIES of every Pub for each Home! Pass'm around!—Amen?—WOW!—Better bust that Blob now or get yourselves a copier!—Ha! GBY! Tx! WLY! This'll help us all roll till Jesus comes!—Are you still with us? GBY! ILY!—D.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family