DO 20731/1/86

1. PTL! WE MADE IT!—THROUGH 1985! Now it's behind us‚ TTL! Just think, last year we sat at the table & we faced a whole year of '85 & we were wondering just how we were going to get through it!

2. SO‚ WE'VE GOT A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR, & PETER'S GOING TO TELL YOU WHAT WE HAVE TO BE THANKFUL FOR ALL LAST YEAR! I think nearly every year for about the last ten years I've said, "Well, this is probably the last & greatest year we will ever have, we could certainly never have another one this good," & every single year we beat the last one!

3. EVERY YEAR'S BEEN BETTER THAN EVER! We produced more literature this past year than ever before, we're winning more souls, doing much better than with all that mass evangelism, sticking to more personal witnessing. So we have gone out of the mass media business pretty much‚ I think we've only got about 150 stations left. Some people would think that was a lot, but when once upon a time we had about 2000, that's down to a minimum!

4. BUT WE'RE WINNING MORE SOULS NOW, GETTING OFF THE RADIO & OUT OF THE NEWSPAPERS‚ THANK GOD, & going personally house-to-house, door-to-door, store-to-store etc., especially with the tapes & the Posters & all. We're winning more souls now than ever before‚ TTL! So Peter's got all the good news to tell you tonight & I guess he might as well get started with it!

"LET NOT HIM THAT PUTTETH HIS ARMOUR ON BOAST AS HIM THAT PUTTETH IT OFF!"

5. THE BIBLE SAYS, "LET NOT HIM THAT PUTTETH HIS ARMOUR ON, BOAST AS HIM THAT PUTTETH IT OFF." (1Ki.20:11) Can any of you young people tell me what that means? What is armour? (Fam: It's what you put on before you go to war.) It's what the knights & soldiers used to wear, in fact‚ they're getting back to that now since they have all this hand-to-hand street fighting. They're using shields & helmets & batons instead of swords & all kinds of armour. You're seeing hand-to–hand fighting again, now, right in the streets!—Real personal combat! They have to put it on for protection.

6. WHEN YOU'RE PUTTING YOUR ARMOUR ON, DOES THAT MEAN BEFORE OR AFTER THE BATTLE? (David: Before the battle.) So it says‚ "Let not him that putteth his armour on"—when is that? (Fam: Before the battle.) "Boast as he which putteth his armour off."—When is that? (Fam: After a battle.) In other words, if he hasn't fought the battle & won, or whatever‚ he shouldn't brag about what he's going to do, but he can boast about what he has done when the battle's done, finished or over.

7. SO THAT'S WHAT WE'RE GOING TO DO TONIGHT! We're not going to put our armour off, really, but for tonight‚ at least, we have put off the armour of 1985 & Peter can tell you some of the marvellous things which occurred in 1985.

DECREASE IN MASS MEDIA MINISTRIES!

8. (PETER: OUR TOTAL WITNESS WAS 1.05 BILLION. THIS IS A BIG DECREASE DUE TO THE WIND-DOWN OF OUR MASS MEDIA MINISTRIES.)—A deliberate decrease, going out of the Mass Media Ministries. They served their purpose in their day, but right now we're already famous, we don't need any more of that kind of fame!—Especially the kind they've been dishing up lately! (Peter: So our mass witness again is way way down, TTL, to 1.04 billion. That's a blessing.)—Yes! The main reason being that it's giving us much more time for personal witnessing!

MOST WITNESSING BUNCH IN WORLD!

9. (PETER: OUR PERSONAL WITNESSING IS UP TO 12.6 MILLION‚ WHICH IS 35,000 A DAY!) I'll dare say we're the most witnessing bunch there is in the whole World!—With the most Truth too! I'll bet we're getting more people saved per member compared to any other religious group on Earth! We're probably one of the smallest groups, but I think we're accomplishing more, & I think these stats prove it!

CHILD WITNESSERS, AGE OF ACCOUNTABILITY!

10. (MARIA: ANOTHER WAY IN WHICH WE'RE VERY EXCEPTIONAL IS THE FACT THAT OUR CHILDREN DO SO MUCH OF THE WITNESSING & ACTUALLY WINNING PEOPLE TO THE LORD. I've never seen it in any other group, the children hardly witness at all! They don't even get saved till they're 5 or 6, that's about the minimum! But our kids work hard & win many souls.)

11. I CAN REMEMBER THEM PREACHING WHEN I WAS A KID IN CHURCH THAT A CHILD COULDN'T REALLY BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS ACTIONS UNTIL THEY WERE 7 YEARS OF AGE. That was the age of accountability, that's what theologians taught. After that they had the responsibility of making their own decisions about whether they accepted Christ or not. My goodness, we think the age of accountability in this Family is 2 years old, as soon as they learn how to talk & can understand what you're saying! So PTL! We have lowered the age of accountability!

12. (TO NEW BABY:) SO YOU WATCH YOUR STEP, YOUNG LADY! I wasn't talking to you, Mary Dear, you've already accounted for things. I was talking to your little baby sister!

POSTERS!

13. (PETER: THE POSTERS STARTED THIS YEAR & WE PRINTED 9-1/2 MILLION POSTERS!) How's that! I told you we were going to get those out by the millions, millions for the billions! And they're going everywhere! Wait'll you hear the stats from the closed countries.

14. I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY WERE SO STINGY WITH THOSE POSTERS AT FIRST. Now they know they've got lots of'm! We've given almost every Home in the World a 6–month's supply of Posters! So now that they know they have plenty of them & they don't have to save them, they're really getting them out! PTL!—Even to heads of governments! We're advertising our Government & our Capital City & letting them know how our real kings are going to live!

SOULS SAVED!

15. (PETER: 725,000 SOULS SAVED!)—That's about 3/4 of a million! (Peter: It means that every day, 1,988 souls get saved, 1.4 every minute!) That's a fact! Because our Family is working around the clock, 24 hours a day, around the World! Every two minutes 3 souls are getting saved, it averages out to that anyhow.

FF SOULS SAVED!

16. (PETER: FF SOULS SAVED WAS 10,830, & THAT WORKS OUT TO 30 A DAY, 1.25 EVERY HOUR.) That's pretty good for an hour's work! Nice work if you can get it, & you can get it if you try! All we had to do was try! Our average is going up better too! (Peter: 1 out of every 3 is getting saved.) It got down to where about 1 out of 4 of those loved were getting saved, so we're getting back now to 1 out of 3. When we first started we were doing even better than that, 1 out of 2! But the girls began to get kind of slack about salvations & some of them got their eyes on the money instead of the man & they got kind of careless & we had to kind of get after them! So they're getting back to being soul winners again! PTL! It's still the most fruitful of all of our witnessing ministries! It wins a higher proportion of fruit per witness than any other method. No other ministry averages 1 out of 3! PTL!

BABIES!

17. (PETER: WE HAD 658 BABIES BORN, WHICH IS ALMOST 2 A DAY!) We're really bearing fruit! You girls are really doing a good job! We get almost 2 babies every day, think of that! You've done your part, Sara‚ GBY!

NEW DISCIPLES!

18. (PETER: WE HAD 1‚767 NEW DISCIPLES, WHICH IS ALMOST 5 A DAY, & it's an increase of 27% over last year!) So we're bearing real spiritual disciples even faster than babies, TTL!

"IT'S AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NOBODY ANY GOOD"!

19. (PETER: THE FAMILY PRAYER VIGILS BEGAN THIS YEAR.) THAT'S ONE GOOD THING I DID FOR YOU, I GOT YOU ALL TO PRAY FOR ME! It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. You guys don't understand those old adages any more. I used to wonder about that myself. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good." Why should we want that kind of a wind? Do you know what it means? In other words‚ it would have to be a very bad wind not to do some good somewhere to somebody! It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, meaning that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, even me!

WITNESSED TO 52 BILLION!

20. (PETER: WE'VE WITNESSED TO 52 BILLION PEOPLE.)—YOU MUST HAVE TOLD A FEW OF THEM SEVERAL TIMES! There are supposed to be about five billion people in the World, so according to that‚ we've told every one of them about 10 times or some of them more than that! So they're without excuse!

MOTHER'S HELPERS!

21. (PETER: WE'VE HAD ALMOST 7000 BABIES!) Think of how many baby-care girls that required!—Because every mother needs a mother's helper! You've come to the right place to get good training! That's probably why the Lord let Mama Sara have this new baby, so she could train you teenagers how to take care of babies! So you can blame it on these teenagers, Sara!

LOWEST DEATH RATE‚ HIGHEST BIRTH RATE!

22. (PETER: WE'VE HAD 125 GRADUATES TO OUR HEAVENLY KINGDOM.) That's since the very beginning. I was asking somebody the other day about the stats on World population & how many people die every day & that sort of thing, trying to figure out how they handle those things Up There, & while he was at it he was going through the birth rates & death rates, & of all the countries listed, we have the lowest death rate & the highest birth rate of any people on Earth! That's a blessing! It's phenomenal! Miraculous! You know it's the Lord!

BIG COMPANY!

23. (PETER: WS FULLY OR PARTIALLY SUPPORTED 97 UNITS CONSISTING OF 1‚270 PEOPLE.) THAT'S A PRETTY BIG COMPANY!—1200-&-some employees that we support, some of them entirely, others partially!—Besides all our local representatives who are self-supporting.

RED ALERT!

24. (PETER: WE PRINTED 140,000 PAGES PER DAY, 66% MORE THAN WE DID IN 1984.) I don't think we'll ever top that, not till the Millennium! I almost said I hope we never do! When I think about how hard these people were working during those last few months getting out all those books & everything, I don't want to see them work that hard any more. Mama almost ruined her eyes!

MILLENNIAL PUBLISHING, GIRL BABIES!

25. (PETER: WE PUBLISHED 28 MAJOR BOOKS, WHICH IS 1 EVERY 2 WEEKS!) Think of that! Besides all the little things we publish‚ which most people would think were pretty big, we published an average of 2 books a month last year! Thank God, most of that we won't have to publish again till the Millennium, then we've got to publish them by the billions so we can train all those people that have been having the wrong kind of education all their lives, & all the new children & babies! The Lord certainly must know we're going to need lots of girls! Every time He keeps giving us more girls! Hallelujah! I'm glad! I'm like the Gypsies when it comes to having more girls!

1000 KILOMETERS OF TAPE!

26. (PETER: THERE WERE 28 DIFFERENT MICRO TAPES SENT OUT, WHICH AMOUNTED TO 25,000 TAPES, WHICH WORKED OUT TO 1090 KM. worth of tape.) Did you get that? That ought to be a stat you remember! We have produced more than 1000 kilometers of tape this past year!

WND STATS, IMPENDING CRASH!

27. MY WND EDITOR & I HAVE TO READ NEARLY 100 PAGES OF NEWSPAPER EVERY WEEK IN ORDER TO GLEAN YOU OUT A LITTLE 16-PAGE WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE of pages that are even only half as big as the newspaper pages. And we read it all, every little squib‚ because sometimes you just get the hint of something in the tiniest little squibs! They're coming out with it now right before the whole World that if something doesn't happen, if somebody doesn't save it, the whole thing's going to go crash! They tried to hide it for a long time. Excuse me, we're supposed to be telling you the good news tonight, not the bad news! So we read 5,200 pages a year. I'd say I average at least one hour a day reading the paper gleaning little diamonds here & there out of the muck! And that all takes time! You only get the end result, you just get the nice little delicacies served up to you on a silver platter of paper. But it takes somebody a lot of time to do it!

TAPE HARVEST!

28. (PETER: SAVED AS A RESULT OF THE TAPE MINISTRY WERE 80,880 PEOPLE! And fulltime disciples won through the Tape Ministry were 73.)—That's a real harvest! "Whatsoever ye sow‚ that shall ye also reap!" (Gal.6:7) We've been sowing the seed & we're reaping it too!

CLOSED COUNTRIES!

29. WE'RE PREACHING THE GOSPEL BEHIND THE IRON & BAMBOO CURTAINS! They've won over 1,000 souls in those closed countries. They may call them closed, but we get in‚ TTL! (Peter: They distributed 5,157 Posters.) Wow! That Poster's going to be up in that train station yet! (See No.279.) It's really possible now! Boy, that's a dangerous ministry, but look how the Lord takes care of it! He must want those people to hear the Gospel, the sheep to be fed!

GIFTS TO MISSIONARIES!

30. (PETER: AID WAS GIVEN TO 23 TEAMS OF 126 ADULTS & 137 CHILDREN, FOR A TOTAL OF 263 PEOPLE.) That's just the teams helped by WS, not the hundreds of other teams of the Family who are around the World! Let's face it, we're all missionaries‚ all 10‚000 of us including the kids! And that's not counting all the designated gifts which we process free, which come in through us & they tell us who to send it to or how they'd like to have it spent etc. (Peter: Our offices processed 20,000 special gifts this year.) That's not counting how much money it was either. It's a free service we perform for our missionaries. (Peter: It's a real big job!)

31. MOST MISSIONARY SOCIETIES I EVER HEARD OF, AVERAGE FROM OPPOSITE EXTREMES: The Christian Missionary Alliance used to boast that of all these missionary's designated gifts to the field, they only took out 10% for operating costs & administration.—To the Methodists who took out 50%! 50% of what's given to missions goes into their overhead administration, operational costs of distributing the gifts. We take out nothing for the distribution of designated gifts to missionaries! They get every single penny of it & we do all that free as a service to the missionaries. PTL! But thank God for the people who support us & help us do that from their tithe!

WE'VE NEVER LOST BY GIVING!

32. BY THE WAY, SINCE WE DROPPED THE TITHING MINIMUMS, HOW MUCH INCOME DID WE LOSE‚ PETER? (Peter: We didn't lose any!) It went up! We do the craziest things! Jeth used to say‚ "Oh, if we do that we'll go broke! If we do this crazy idea you have, Dad, we're going to go broke!" We haven't gone broke yet! The fact is, it's getting better every year!—Doing more, printing more, the Lord's blessing more! More souls, most of all, PTL!

33. WHEN GOD GIVES AN IDEA, HE BLESSES IT! It may seem crazy at the time, like when we said, "Let's get off of radio, it's not really profitable." We weren't getting a high enough harvest of souls considering all the hard work we were going to. So we just about dropped radio & went into greater emphasis on personal soul-winning, dropped mass meetings & that sort of thing‚ got out of virtually all the Mass Media methods & went into more personal methods, & you heard the stats! We're winning many more souls through personal witnessing, instead of wasting our time on all that other folderol of that public preaching that the preachers do so dearly love to get on radio & television. Most of it goes in one ear & out the other eye!

34. WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE GETTING, WE SEE'M FACE-TO-FACE, & WE GET DECISIONS!—Not just going by the studio ratings of what the potential audience of their coverage area is, blah blah, when probably only half-a-dozen people are listening or watching! We know who we're preaching to! We see it & we hold them by the hand, we pray with them, we know what we're doing, & we're getting results too! Those guys get on & hope maybe somebody's listening, hope maybe somebody will make a decision. Except for a little bit of mail, what they have to beg for most of the time is money‚ which doesn't set too well with the sinners they're supposedly trying to reach. They have to preach to Christians in order to get them to give & support the program.

35. THANK GOD OUR CHRISTIANS, OUR CHURCH MEMBERS, GIVE SO MUCH & SO HEAVILY WE CAN GO OUT & PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE SINNERS FOR NOTHING! We don't have to beg them for money on radio or TV, "Please write in & send us your gift to support the work." We don't mind the gifts, but thank God we're free to preach the Gospel.

36. (PETER: AND OF ALL THE FUNDS THAT CAME IN‚ 100% WAS SPENT THROUGH THE FAMILY! Of everything that came in‚ everything went back to the Family. 48% was spent to get all those 2-1/2 times as many pubs to the Family. 43% was gifts to the Mission Field & only 8.6% was Administration.)

37. THAT'S JUST ABOUT THE LOWEST COST I'VE HEARD OF ANY GROUP! And they all publish financial reports every year. We used to have to read them. I must say, the Alliance did pretty good. They had the highest percentage of per capita giving to missions of any denomination in the U.S. Their membership & churches averaged 20 to 25 cents per person. Whereas for the largest Protestant denomination in the World, the Methodists, their average giving was 5 cents per person per year!—The largest & richest Protestant denomination in the World!

38. YOU JUST HEARD SOMETHING ABOUT OUR GIVING BEING 100%, IT ALL GOES BACK IN‚ & almost half of it to publications & most of the other half for missionaries! Most of our families are heavy givers, but they couldn't be that way unless the Lord's blessing them! Amen? I don't think we lost a single giver from dropping the minimums‚ if anything, they've been giving more! Isn't that wonderful? PTL! I think we only had about 5 people in the whole Family who didn't even give enough to pay for their pubs last month, & they had legitimate excuses!—How about you?

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family