Dad
May 2, 2003
7/92DO 2819
—Know Your Enemy!
—The New Persecution!
Prayer
1. Would you two like to lead us in prayer? (Peter: Thank You so much, Lord, for how good You are to us! It never ceases to amaze us how wonderfully You take care of the whole Family & how You mightily use the Family to preach the Gospel! We're so thankful that they're doing such a wonderful job! And we really thank You for Dad, for all that he's put into the Family to help make it possible to give Thy Word to Thy children. As they've acted on it, it's worked, and it's really changed the World, and we thank You for that. We pray now that You lead and guide during this meeting‚ that You strengthen Dad and anoint him and speak through him. Help us to have open and hungry hearts ready to receive the Word that You have to give, in Jesus' name.)
2. (Maria: Thank You Jesus for the wonderful victories You're gaining worldwide! As we pursue the Enemy‚ resist him & fight him‚ he's retreating. TYJ! Thank You Lord for such a wonderful Family that is willing to obey Thy Word & really fight like Dad has taught us. Now they're really finding out what fighting is, & what it is to be real fighters for the Truth‚ & how You reward it. Help them‚ Lord, to keep fighting‚ no matter what comes‚ & to keep resisting the Enemy. You've promised that You'd protect us & keep us. Bless Dad as he shows us the way & passes on what You've shown him, preparing us for what's ahead. TYL! Strengthen him now & keep him, in Jesus' name. Amen.)
3. PTL! TYL! Thank You, Lord, that You have never failed us! You've always given us the victory in the long run. Although You have allowed us to suffer a little persecution‚ & sometimes a lot of persecution, You have used it to accomplish Your purpose, whatever it was, to either scatter us abroad or to be a witness & a testimony against our enemies, to publicise Thy Message, Lord, & Thy children, so that Thy Message will be heard & spread abroad through all the Earth! You have done it, Lord, & they are doing it, & they're holding up well under all kinds of hardship & persecution. You have continued to supply all of our needs, whatever they were, & been even bountiful with us, Lord! TYJ! You have not made it too hard on us anywhere to the point that we could not survive.
4. You have promised You'd not suffer us to be tested above what we're able to bear.—1Cor.10:13. And now as the End gets nearer, & the battle gets hotter, we know the Enemy is going to be bringing out all of his big guns & making it as hot for us as he can. For he is raging & furious against us‚ Lord, because he knows his time is short, & we are exposing him! He doesn't like his dirty work exposed. He's trying to pretend to be "an angel of light" (2Cor.11:14), when he's just a self–righteous hypocrite!—Trying to pretend to be doing good when he's actually doing evil!
5. On all of these counts, he's tried to bring Man's System laws against us to try to defeat us, but You've helped us to be able to handle every attack so far, every accusation, Lord, & to come out as victors instead of defeated! You've brought victory out of seeming defeat many times, Lord‚ throughout all these 20 some years, & we have grown stronger all the time & more widespread, & now we're being even more publicised through these controversial issues & the lies & false accusations of our enemies.
6. So we know that You have some way of escape with this new persecution that's coming, this new kind of attack on a new front, & You're going to nevertheless get the glory somehow in spite of it all. You're going to be with us to the End. There has never been a time that we haven't had enemies‚ we've had persecution from the very beginning, but now that we're coming out more in the open, we know it's going to be even more severe, with new attacks & new charges, & they're not going to give up, much less give up easily. PYL! Hallelujah! TYL!
7. So we look to Thee for the answers, Lord, You know what's best. We ask Thee to give us the wisdom & the strength & the skill, the faith to follow Thee, because You know what's best. Have Thy way, Lord, Thy Will be done. This is how we've always prayed‚ Lord, & this is no different than all the other times. PTL! Hallelujah!
8. Thank You Lord for how You've kept me in spite of all these attacks of the Enemy‚ that I'm feeling in better health‚ even better all the time, it seems. In spite of some of these small frailties of the flesh, You have brought victory out of seeming defeat. You've answered prayer, Lord, the prayers of Thy children for not only me, but for themselves, for the Family, for Thy Work. Now give us the wisdom, Lord, & the skill & the friends & the legal help & attorneys & whatever it is we're going to need in this new realm of attack. Because of our great publicity & great victories we feel that the Enemy is going to attack on a new front, so prepare us for it‚ Lord. Give Thy children great strength & power & grace & faith & skill & wisdom in how to handle it, in Jesus' name.
9. Lord, persecution is really nothing new, we've had it before, but now we're coming out very publicly & witnessing publicly & being greatly publicised—including not only the charges of our enemies, but the answers & rebuttals of our friends & Family, which thus far, Lord, have simply worked out for good & to Thy glory & to the greater publication of Thy Work & Thy Name & Thy Message. So give us wisdom now as we speak to these, Thy leaders, that they shall be encouraged & inspired & know that You have the answers & will give us the wisdom to know what to do. TYL! Give us the strength for this meeting. Thank You for how You have. Amen, thank You Jesus!
Child Abuse Laws
10. I don't know just exactly what to title this talk, but maybe we could call it "The New Persecution" or "The New Method of Attack!" Well, it's not altogether new, we've had it before, & of course over the years it's the same Enemy, the Devil in some of his people, & it always seems to wind up that somewhere behind the scenes the ACs are involved. There's nothing the Devil hates like having his tactics & his methods & his dirty tricks exposed, showing how evil he really is, because he pretends to be an "angel of light" when he is really a self-righteous hypocrite! He pretends to be good & do good, & has his laws passed in the name of doing good & being beneficial, but the way he uses them is merely as a new means of attack on the Lord's people.
11. There's nothing unusual about that, it even happened in the Bible! The enemies of Daniel, for example, managed to persuade the king to pass a certain law by which they knew they could trap him. (Daniel 6.) And the enemies of the three Hebrew children who were cast in the fiery furnace did the same thing; they had laws passed which the king had approved of, not realising their trickery & the effects & how they were going to use those laws. These so-called "good" laws were then used to attack the Hebrew children. (Daniel 3.)
12. And certainly the most recent methods of attack & laws which I told you about some years ago, when this subject first began to be emphasised, has been their supposed great concern for innocent children. (See "Guard Your Children!" ML #1698.) Let's face it, the Devil is not the least bit concerned about innocent children except that they're his enemies, & he has attacked them since the beginning of time, beginning with Adam & Eve's children.
13. I've told the story before about the little Dauphin of France, the son of King Louis XVI. After the French Revolution they chopped off his mother & father's heads, but even that wasn't sufficient revenge or sufficient evil! When it was all over they put the Dauphin in a whorehouse, at 9 years old, in the charge of the madame, to teach him all kinds of corruption & evil & vile language, to corrupt the remaining heir to the throne. The Dauphin was the crown prince, like the Prince of Wales is to England, the next King. But the story is told that every time she would try to get him to say any evil words, he would stomp his little foot & say, "I won't say it! I won't do it! I was born to be a king!"
14. The kings did come back to France later & the monarchy was revived after Napoleon. In the end, instead of being totally defeated, France became the conqueror of Europe under a brilliant man, Napoleon Bonaparte. I'm sure his wars in Europe were the judgements of God against its wickedness at the time. God has often used various kings to judge His people & even persecute them for their sins. That's been true down through time‚ but we don't have time right now to go into all the examples of all these things.
15. When I first heard about this new term "child abuse," I remembered how when I was young & just a boy, the most popular term at that time was "child neglect." My mother used to tell the story about the little boy looking like a little dirty urchin who was sitting out on the curb, & the society woman came along & said, "Little boy, are you all right?" And he said, "I'm hungry." She said, "Well, where do you live?" And he pointed to this big mansion behind him. "You live there? Where's your mother?" He said‚ "She's gone to a meeting of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children." And this is so often true of the self-righteous hypocrites & emissaries of the Devil who try to dress themselves up in sheep's clothing‚ when inwardly, as Jesus said, they are ravenous wolves!—Mat.7:15.—Not friends of the sheep, but seeking to devour the sheep.
16. So the popular term in those days was "child neglect," because, of course, particularly with many poor families, their children couldn't be well taken care of. They lived in squalid, poverty–stricken conditions‚ & the children were underfed, had insufficient care, etc.‚ so it was very easy to accuse those poor parents of child neglect. The Devil's people never seem to tire of taking children away from their parents to corrupt them in their own way, & this has been the case for generations, in the most civilised countries.
17. In the poor countries‚ the so-called "developing" countries, you don't hear much about this at all. It's totally impossible for them to take care of their children as they would like to, because nearly all the children are neglected, underfed, poorly housed, & living in poverty, filth & insanitary conditions, etc. So if the rich countries are so concerned about child neglect, they ought to go & help some of the poor in Latin America‚ India & God knows how many other places, besides the rich, industrialised countries who have largely been responsible for their poverty!
[The Moneylenders]
18. It's almost unbelievable how the rich countries have persuaded the poor countries to borrow money. There was a time when the IMF & different government agencies came to Latin America & poor countries all over the World & just insisted they take the so-called "aid" money & loans, but then after they were hooked, Shylock began demanding his pound of flesh! It's an actual statistic to this day that many of those countries, in spite of the fact that they still have debts that they can't pay, have already paid back much more than they have borrowed, so that the banks of the rich Northern countries were not suffering.
19. In Shakespeare's play, "The Merchant of Venice," Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, loaned this young nobleman money, who promised Shylock a pound of his flesh as security if he did not repay the loan in three months. So when the young nobleman couldn't repay the loan after three months‚ & refused to give him his pound of flesh, Shylock took him to court.
20. The [moneylenders] were infamous & very notorious for their cruelty throughout history regarding money affairs. They controlled kings‚ as kings borrowed from them‚ & when they couldn't repay, then the [moneylenders] had them over a barrel & the kings had to do whatever they said or pay them back. In Europe [these moneylenders] still look back on the 10th & 11th centuries, about the middle of the Dark Ages, as their "golden age‚" when they were living in great wealth & sumptuous luxury provided by the kings because of their tremendous loans to these kings to keep them going. These moneylenders had great power over these kings, almost always in the background, almost always out of sight, the powers behind the throne.
21. The Devil knows that if his dirty work is publicised, exposed, that that makes it very difficult for him to operate‚ because then he becomes infamous, & his people become infamous & are exposed, as well as all their dirty trickery, & the people get fed up with it, & with them, & often throw them out, which they did in Spain. In the Middle Ages, the kings of Spain finally got fed up with being tortured & tormented & persecuted—financially‚ of course—by these very wealthy [moneylenders] who had loaned them so much money.—So fed up, they threw them out! To [the moneylenders who were Jewish] this is called another great "persecution," "the intolerance of the Spanish Empire," how the Spanish were so racially intolerant & drove them out of Spain & across the Mediterranean to Morocco & the various North African Arabic countries.—Until Morocco became one of the greatest refuges of the Jews.
22. Then of course when finally Israel was opened for Jewish immigration & colonisation, there were floods of Jews coming from Morocco. By this time the kings of Morocco [and] "persecuted" them & drove them out. So they fled to [Israel].
23. So in Israel‚ for the first time in almost 2,000 years, they had their own country with their own rulers.
[The ACs]
25. The [ACs] gave themselves wholeheartedly to the Devil & are his most reliable people & workers. As Jesus Himself said to their faces: "You don't even know My Father. Ye are of your father the Devil, who is a liar & the father of it, & has been since the beginning." (See John 8:44.) So they are the Devil's most dedicated servants, his most zealous. Having given themselves totally to Satan, he has given them what they wanted—money, wealth, power, the governments of the World—& now they're preparing on every front in every way, to take total control so they can bring in their "Supreme Lord," the Antichrist!
26. So when the World's in bad enough shape that they're willing to cry "Uncle" to their AC uncles who are already ruling the countries, & are willing to accept a World king, a World dictator in the person of the Antichrist, the Devil in the flesh‚ they will reveal him. And of course the ACs are bringing about the conditions under which that will be possible in every way, having taken control of the most powerful & rich countries of the World, & made the rest impoverished & poor. And they're even going to let the rich countries tumble into recession & then depression & get so desperate financially that they will be willing to choose him as their saviour!—Any man who can save them from what amounts to their sins & God's judgements upon them. These bad things happening to the rich & powerful nations ruled by the ACs & even brought on by the ACs to make them more subservient, are all a part of their plan.
27. This is nothing new! One of the shining examples of [someone] doing this to a country was Joseph in Egypt. The Lord sent famine to the rest of the World, really as punishment for their sins, & He sent prosperity to Egypt, which was an anti-God country full of devils & demons & idols to Satan's gods! He let Joseph go there & take control, of course with the final good effect of saving His people. But in the meantime it was pretty tough on the Egyptians because they wound up selling their own bodies as slaves to get corn to eat! (See Genesis 47:13-25.)
28. So there's nothing new about their tactics. They work in the same way today, only in more clever & seemingly legitimate methods by the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, & the World Bank—all of course controlled by ACs. When the Devil offered Jesus the World & all these kingdoms, He refused. He said, "I'm not to worship any other god but My Father!"—Mat.4:8-10. Satan said to Jesus, "If you fall down & worship me‚ I'll give you the World."—And that's what Satan finally got the ACs to do‚ to fall down & worship him, & he has given them the World! He's the god of this World! (2Cor.4:4.)
29. And he will give it to them even more so under their "Supreme Lord," whom they're even now preparing to introduce to the World when they get in such a mess that they can't get out of it on their own & he offers them a solution—providing‚ of course, they fall down & worship him, as he tried to get Jesus to do. Having given them the World, he will then take it over himself & eventually even turn on them because of their rebellion against him when they finally wake up to what they've done.
30. But in all of their conniving & their conspiracy worldwide for centuries, they have not liked it to be made known that it is they who were doing the manipulating & that it is they who were acting as the power behind the thrones & the ones to blame for much of what was happening. They have always liked to rule secretly, from behind the scenes, which is exactly what they're doing now, even in their persecution of us. They have done everything they can to keep it a secret that they're ACs. Nowhere in all of these recent articles have they come out in the open as ACs who are backing those whom they're using to persecute us.
[The Jewish Anti-Cult Movement]
31. Well‚ in a recent article in the Jewish Chronicle, a Jewish newspaper published in England, they dared to say that "the biggest threat to the future survival of the Jewish communities lies with the missionaries & the cults!"‚ & that the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York is operating a full-time office, "The Task Force on Missionaries & Cults," to "help individuals & families fight back." This drive against Christians started off being aimed at the cults, the most vulnerable groups who are already hated by the major denominations—the jealous scribes & Pharisees of [today] —Not knowing that those who are behind the persecution are soon to be their own persecutors & would soon be working on them!
33. [T]his recent article in the Jewish Chronicle showed who the battle was against, as they said, "the cults & the missionaries!" And they didn't qualify "missionaries" as being missionaries of cults, but just missionaries in general, as being some of their major enemies!
34. Lord help me to sum this up quickly so we can get down to the meat of the matter, but we need to recognise & know who is really behind all of this! In fact, they consider us second only to the Moonies & Scientology ! Well, it looks like we have good friends!
36. That's why they're so scared of us!—Little old us!—Little nobody us who are a mere handful compared to the billions on Earth‚ & all those major denominations who are far more powerful than we are‚ which they have already corrupted, of course. They've signed "peace treaties" or accords with them & the various "interfaith coalitions" which were formed & organised by the ACs to make peace with the Protestants to make them promise to get together. They were even developing those organisations during the Depression & afterwards. As usual, their major tactic is to deceive & lie, & they have deceived some of the major modernistic, unbelieving denominations.
37. The ACs have crept in wherever they possibly could, & now some churches are not only accepting Sodomites as members, but even as ministers! (See WND 393, page 6 & 11.) And the latest thing I read is that they're consecrating weddings of Sodomites! How much worse can you get! To what lengths the ACs are willing to go to corrupt society & corrupt the churches & corrupt the Gentiles in order to get their way, when they themselves—at least the Orthodox ones—refuse to accept such things!
38. Because they control the media, the ACs can always get their point & their position across to the public & mold public opinion & prejudice public opinion against their enemies—vilify them & crucify them!
44. [T]hat article in the Jewish Chronicle [says] they've turned over the leadership of this battle against the so-called cults & the missionaries to this new agency, "The Task Force on Missionaries & Cults," operated by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
Sodomites—They're Anything but Gay!
46. Talk about demonstrations, there's nothing new about demonstrations, especially the vile & the evil & the Devil's people being satanically rowdy & even violent in demonstrations, such as the Sodomites have been lately. In case anybody reading this doesn't understand what a Sodomite is, their common name today‚ of course, is "Gays," which is a nickname, & "homosexuals" is the scientific technical name. "Men with men working that which is unseemly," as Paul says in Romans, "for which they'll receive their reward" in physical judgements, as they are.—Rom.1:27. How horrible, how despicable, how sickening, that these people now have the nerve to come out in the open & demonstrate, men kissing men in the nude, in the open, in demonstrations, & clamouring for "justice for the Gays!"
47. They're anything but gay! They've absolutely contorted & twisted & perverted the term "gay." To be gay originally meant to be sort of deliriously happy, & they are anything but happy. Anyone who knows anything about them knows that they are constantly in a horrible fuss with each other, irritable & very unhappy. But you don't see many articles like that any more. Those are articles you used to read years ago‚ but now you wouldn't dare say anything against the Gays or the Homos ! They're getting it to where you can't even speak the truth about some of these people or you're accused of publishing "hate literature" against these "poor pitiful minorities"!
Attacks Against the Televangelists!
50. [T]hat Jewish Chronicle was the first paper we've seen that has come out pretty openly [to explain the anti-cult movement is] doing & plotting to do‚ that they're openly against the cults & against missionaries! They've of course already proven that they are against the cults. They've worked their way up from the cults. The cults were first to go as far as they were concerned‚ because they already had a lot of sympathy against the cults from the general public & various Christian denominations.
51. Then because the vast majority of the people were also not in sympathy with the televangelists & suspected many of them of being religious racketeers & money grubbers—which probably some of them are, I don't know—they knew they would get a lot of sympathy on that drive too‚ so next they turned & started attacking more popular personages such as the televangelists.
52. They saw their war against the cults was going very well & the vast majority of people sympathised with them against the cults. Of course, the people don't know who they're sympathising with, figuring they're just sympathising with the rest of the general public, not realising that the AC media & AC conniving & conspiracy is constantly persuading the public to think their way. The media is obviously against religion & they have tried to get something on all the big television evangelists. There are only a few that they haven't been able to get anything on so far, & one of those is Billy Graham. Billy Graham has managed to keep a clean house‚ & also he has kept the denominations behind him. He will not even go into a city to evangelise unless he gets all of the churches to cooperate in one of his crusades.
53. I don't think they've been able to get anything on Pat Robertson yet, although he more or less made a fool of himself by trying to run for president. That gave them plenty of ammunition to scoff & ridicule him & make him out to be a religious fool, but they've not been able to get any kind of stink or real scandal on him. Apparently he's kept his finances so straight—& so has Billy Graham—that they haven't been able to attack him on that score. They have complied with the System, & to get the benefits of the System they have had to compromise with them.
54. But the ACs are attacking a lot of others, especially Pentecostal evangelists. These are the attacks we know they've been making‚ & they're working their way up. They're trying to attack the most vulnerable first‚ & all of this I think I've said before, but I'm outlining it again to make it very clear. A lot of things have happened where the Enemy has won some of these battles, temporarily at least, through the connivance of those behind the scenes.
Our History—Using the Laws Against Us!
55. I have dwelt on this subject of persecution for years, so you should know enough about it. We could go back over Bible History & that certainly bears it out, & World History bears it out, but how about our own history? What kinds of persecution have we suffered?
56. From the very beginning at the Light Club in Huntington Beach we suffered persecution. And what did they use?—They tried to pull laws on us. I'll never forget the time the fire chief walked into the Light Club while we were having an afternoon Bible session, teaching Bible Prophecy to a handful of leading hippies that had become disciples & were turning that town upside-down! He walked right into the middle of Bible class where I was teaching & preaching & said‚ "You notice that sign?" I stopped & I said, "Yes, we've seen that they've put up a sign saying, 'This Room Cannot Be Occupied by More than 75 People.'" He said, "I just want to warn you that you can't have such big crowds in here at night, it's against the law!" I said, "Thank you, we've heard it & we've seen it." I tried to be courteous. I said, "We appreciate your concern"—ho ho—"but now do you mind if I carry on with this religious service that we're having here? You know, it's also contrary to California law to interrupt a religious service!" And he looked shocked, he hadn't expected any kind of opposition!—And he stumbled out.
57. That's a very strongly enforced law in California. Remember when that leader of a mutinous road team, Jim Ballister (who later backslid), led a big demonstration right into the biggest Methodist church in San Francisco at the end of 1969, of all the stupid things, crashing & breaking pottery & interrupting the service? I think he had about 50 people with him.—Going right up in the pulpit & displacing the preacher, who was practically stunned, he didn't know what was going on! Well, when a preacher doesn't know what to do, you can always bet the "watchdogs of the faith"—the board members & chairman of the board—always know what to do. And they had by this time phoned the cops, who came & hustled them all off to jail & kept Jim Ballister in jail for six months, along with someone else, I think it was Joel or maybe Happy (Joab).
58. But what did they use against us there in Huntington Beach? (Peter: The laws.) The laws about the number of people allowed in a room, the fire laws. Then on our church sit-ins the police began following & harassing us, & if any vehicle had a broken tail light or a windshield wiper that wasn't working, they'd stop'm over the tiniest little things & give'm a ticket.—Anything just to harass us & delay us & stop the caravan.
59. We always met first at the Club & had prayer, asking the Lord to show us where to go next. One reporter insisted that he be told in advance & given a scoop. He said‚ "I'd like to know where you're going so that I'll be able to be there & give you publicity." I said‚ "I'm sorry, but we never know where we're going until the Lord tells us in prayer at the Club when we gather together before we go at the briefing session."—And that was true! Besides, if we'd told everyone in advance‚ everybody would have ganged up against us & the cops would have been there waiting for us. As it was, they parked around the Club & waited until we left.
60. We hadn't actually broken any law, we were simply a religious body having a religious service—prayer, holding hands, getting messages in tongues—& there was nothing they could do until we had broken a law. So they would follow us & harass our hippies' old jalopies, & we had lots of them then! They weren't in good shape & they'd stop them & inspect them, even if they couldn't find anything wrong. Then they'd arrive at the church with us to make sure we didn't cause any disturbance. It's funny‚ it was seldom ever the preacher who called the cops‚ it was always these "watchdogs of the faith," these board members.
61. So they harassed us there at the Club. One young fellow of ours was witnessing to two young teenage girls out in front of the Club & the cops came along & said‚ "If you don't stop that, we're going to arrest you for molesting a minor." The police even came & visited me at the house.
62. They were plainclothesmen, very polite. They asked if they could come in, & they sat down in our livingroom & said, "We'd like to just warn you that some of your people have been playing hooky from school to attend your classes, & some of them are underage & you could be charged as contributing to the delinquency of minors. We knew, of course‚ you'd want to be sure that you are not breaking any laws & that none of these kids are playing hooky from school. From now on the truant officers are going to be checking the people coming to your classes to make sure they're not minors & not truant." So again, they were quoting the law to us.
63. Some of the worst harassment we got was because of California laws against any type of distribution of any literature whatsoever on campuses or school grounds. All of this, of course, sounded good to the people who passed those laws to begin with, because at the time the law was made it was mostly subversives passing out Communist literature & dealing in drugs even on the school grounds. But you see, once they get'm to pass such laws, they know they can turn around & use them against the Gospel & against Christians who are trying to witness‚ & so they did. And we had more people arrested for that than anything else.
64. Jeremiah, who was only 14 then, had been one of their worst cases of delinquents. He'd been kicked out of every school, to where they wouldn't even let him in any school. But then he got saved & he started coming back to school, insisted on signing up again, saying that he was all right, he would behave himself now, he was sorry, & they allowed him to come back. But then he began passing out Warning Tracts & preaching on the school grounds at lunchtime. Anybody who'd listen, he'd stand there & fire away! So they took him into the principal's office & lectured him & told him that if he did any more of that they were going to throw him out again.
65. He said, "That's funny. Some of you very teachers were the ones who used to see me peddling drugs on the school grounds & never even interfered with me at all. But the minute I started peddling the Gospel, why is it all of a sudden you're against me? You weren't against drugs, but you're against me preaching Jesus!"—Which shows you, of course, that the Devil knows that the Gospel, to his crowd, is much more dangerous than drugs. That's why they're so worried about us, because our Gospel, our effect, our exposés & all the rest are more threatening to them than drugs or crime or anything!
66. Why aren't they going on the attack more against drugs & crime & delinquency in the schools? Well, the schools are a Satan-made hotbed festering with all the Devil's doctrines & the very things that are causing crime & drugs & all the rest! American schools are now full of evolution & all sorts of anti-God teaching. The laws have kicked the Bible out of the public schools, & with it God & prayer. Public schools, by the way, were originally promoted by Horace Mann who's now considered the hero of public education. You've probably heard him praised in school as the great author of public schools in the U.S.
67. They got the governments to pass laws to require compulsory education, where you have to go to school or you're breaking the law. And if your parents allowed you to stay away from school, they were breaking the law. I can remember many cases where parents were put in jail because they had deliberately kept their kids home from school because the atmosphere was so horrible & violent & drug-ridden & perverted, a cesspool of iniquity, every public school! And it's much worse today!—Despite the frosting over & the cover-up & the attempted glossing over of the whole educational system as being something good & beneficial that makes good citizens out of people. It's now being exposed for the failure it is, a system that has encouraged ignorance, delinquency, drugs & violence, until the whole situation is totally out of control!
68. So their System has finally borne the evil fruit that Satan designed it for! But it's too late now. The citizenship of the older generation & conservatives are waking up too late. The same thing has happened with abortion.
69. We could go into all kinds of different subjects which show how the Devil has gotten laws passed against things that were supposedly evil, & then defined them as also applying to certain things that the legislators never intended. So we were thrown in jail for preaching the Gospel, or even just passing out Gospel literature on school grounds. The anti-Christ teachers—usually some of the leading teachers & professors—would discover what we were doing & call the cops.—Even though it was outside of school time, after school, & Ho & his little group were just sitting there on the lawn discussing the Future, etc. One very anti-Christ professor came & bawled him out & said, "Get off the property or I'm going to call the police! You're agitating & promoting rebellion!" or this or that or whatever. And they called the cops, who came & arrested them & took'm to jail!—For witnessing Jesus!
70. Dear Aaron & his bunch got thrown in jail for very unwisely witnessing at not a high school, but at a grade school‚ of all things! Aaron wanted to reach the children so he went to a grade school, & here were these hippies kneeling on the pavement with their hands on these children praying for them to receive Jesus! You know how freaked out people were about hippies anyhow‚ so you can imagine what they thought about having these "dirty, filthy, drug-ridden hippies laying their dirty hands on my little child out there & forcing him to accept their religion!" Well‚ the cops soon came!
71. The cops wanted to let them go & said, "You can go if you'll just get off the grounds & go, but if you stay we're going to have to arrest you." Well, you know Aaron! Can you imagine him ever backing up or backing down? He stood his ground & a lot of the others stood up with him. A few smart ones who had been in jail & knew what it was like took off, some of the older ones. But a few of Aaron's fanatical young disciples stuck with him & just stood their ground. And the cops just came along slowly & did it as slowly as they possibly could‚ giving everyone another chance to leave, handcuffing them one by one, & took them off to jail, until we had 14 in the Costa Mesa jail! That was headline news every day in the local papers, & when it came to court.
72. The newspapers loved us! We were creating a sensation‚ a spectacular controversy! They took pictures & they really favoured us, sided with us. They used to put the score of the court proceedings of that day in the paper: "Christians 3‚ Romans nothing," etc. That's how they'd interpret the decisions of the court. One of them talked about the lions when the Romans finally gobbled up a few of us & put'm in jail for awhile. Well, even some teachers who didn't agree with what the court was doing came & paid the bail for some of them. They'd set the bail at only a mere $100 each‚ but $1,400 is a lot. I always told my kids, "If you ever get thrown in jail, we've no money to get you out, you'll just have to serve your time & that's it."
73. When the judge saw that we were not going to bail'm out—I think only three of them were bailed out by a few generous people—& most of them were going to be left on their hands to house & feed in the local jail, I think he just finally decided, kind of like Pilate‚ to wash his hands of the whole affair & just throw the whole thing out of court with a warning not to do it any more.
Laws Against Literature Distribution!
74. So persecution is nothing new for us, we have suffered it, with them using laws against us. It got to be common in fact, because almost every municipality or local government has a law against distribution of literature without a permit.—Largely inspired because of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons & Seventh-day Adventists, who are the most zealously witnessing denominations that I know of besides us. They'd stand on the street corners displaying their literature & asking for gifts or expecting donations or selling their magazines or going door-to-door. So most municipalities finally passed laws against door-to-door distribution or any kind of distribution. And the little technicality they hinged it on, so it wouldn't look like it was anti-religious, was that you couldn't do it without registration, without a permit. "We're not forbidding them to practice their religion, we're just asking them to register." But usually when they asked to register, the municipalities wouldn't give them a permit, or they charged so much the distributors couldn't afford a permit.
75. The Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists & Christian Scientists, of all people, fought these things clear to the Supreme Court! I used to have a big thick book on all the cases fought over religious freedom in America—how little religious freedom there was! Some even used to tell us, "We don't care what the Supreme Court says, we've got our local laws!" We showed them in the book where the Supreme Court had decided you can't restrict preaching the Gospel, you can't restrict the distribution of Gospel literature either on the street or door-to-door. And we had the authorities tell us, "We don't give a damn what kind of laws they've got in Washington or what the Supreme Court said, we've got our own laws here & you either obey them or you're going to land in jail!"
Practicing Medicine without a License!
76. So there have been laws that have originally been made for one purpose or another that have been used against the Gospel! The main trouble the Christian Scientists had was being accused of practicing medicine without a license because they pray for the sick. Many healing evangelists have had that law used against them too. Thank God the Christian Scientists—who were rich‚ wealthy, intelligent people—had lawyers who fought it clear to the Supreme Court & got it thrown out, because they were not practicing medicine‚ they use no medicine, & therefore they need no license, they were merely praying for the sick. All of those laws were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court‚ thank God, but they still continue to be used.
77. The healing evangelist Jack Coe came to Miami & they used that law on him‚ that he was practicing medicine without a license. It went into a big court case & healing evangelists from all over the country came, & I was there too. We had our little school there at that time. Everybody that was anybody in the healing world came, because it was a test case. They showed pictures in the paper of Jack Coe in jail peering through the bars, & he loved it! He loved the controversy & the publicity!
78. It turned out that his enemies had hired this stripper to say that he had practiced medicine on her little crippled boy without a license‚ & claimed that the boy was no better & much worse & blah blah. She was the chief witness. But eventually, of course, the judge saw the foolishness of it all, that it was a spite case by the local ACs.—Who by this time ruled Miami, & they didn't like this famous Gospel healer coming there pitching his colossal tent & getting these tremendous crowds, etc. So the judge threw it out.
79. Lord bless & help me to finish this. I'm giving you a lot of background material to show you that there's nothing new about it‚ they've been using laws against us & against Christians & against God's people for generations, & usually somewhere behind it are the ACs fighting Christianity!
Opposition in Europe!
80. So in our early days, we were given so much trouble in the U.S.A., that we finally decided it was time to begin moving some of our people elsewhere. Besides, Europe was a great new open field & it was the Lord's time for us to pioneer there, & we went & prospered & won thousands, & hundreds joined & we were just going great!—In spite of the fact that great opposition was also raised against us there. Lord Soaper‚ a sceptic, Pharisee & church Systemite, personally attacked Faithy on a TV show as soon as they arrived in Britain. He was trying to humiliate her & put her down, but instead of that, she took over & she won for the Family & Jesus, & even the newspapers recognised it. So he was made a fool of, because the Lord gave her tremendous power & wisdom!—Luk.21:15. (See BOR2‚ pgs.77-78.)
Our Stand on the Jews!
84. (Maria: Would you like to clarify what our stand really is ?) One of the things this article in the Jewish Chronicle brought out is that they're getting worried because such a large percentage of the membership of the cults is Jewish, 42 times the percentage of the Jewish population in the country! In other words, smart Jewish children are choosing Jesus. That was another thing they used against us—they said that we were subverting their children, stealing their children, kidnapping their children. Even though their "children" were grown teenagers, as long as they were under 18, they could prosecute & say that we were subverting the teenagers.
85. Although the police who visited our house in Huntington Beach said, "Of course, in some of these cases where the girls are already 17 & can leave home as soon as they're 18, we don't usually try to do anything about it. The parents report missing kids to us every day, but if the kids are 17, we don't go after them, because before we find them they'll be 18 & then it's legal for them to leave their parents." So they just didn't worry about those who were almost 18.
86. I'm about as Jewish as you can get! My father & my grandfather were Jewish; & on my mother's side, which is the side that counts with the Jews, her father was as Jewish as he could be.
87. We're not anti-Jewish.
88. If you look around the Family, most of our leaders are just about as Jewish as they can be! It looks like we've got oodles of Jews in our membership, including top leaders who are formerly Jewish or of Jewish parentage, & some of them even look like it & know it!
Child Abuse Laws Cooked Up to Get at the Christians!
90. So what is it they have used against us the most? (Peter: The laws.) Already existing laws, or laws that they managed to get passed—sometimes deliberately just to get us. I think this whole child abuse thing has been cooked up, fomented & aggravated by the Devil just to get at us & other Christians! They have done their best & their damnedest to use laws against us‚ laws that were originally intended for good purposes‚ to protect children. They know they get the sympathy of the people for children, & of course lots of children are abused, & lots of children do have abusive parents who've treated them cruelly, & there are horrible examples of it turning up every day. So they figured this would be one of the easiest ways to try to get us, by saying that we were abusing our children‚ neglecting them, rearing them under adverse circumstances, depriving them, giving them improper nourishment, housing & all that sort of thing.
91. This began to be used years ago, only then they called it "child neglect," & many children were taken away from their parents, especially the poor. I'm sure the Devil was building up to where he could get these laws passed about child abuse, knowing that not only could they use it on true cases of genuine child abuse, for which they could get the sympathy of the public, but eventually to get at us & other Christians!
92. (Maria: They've changed their tack slightly from child neglect, & now most children who are "neglected" are just poor & deprived & they just need to give their families government assistance.) Yes‚ there are so many neglected children they couldn't keep up with them. Besides, they want to get at people like us, & other Christians. (Maria: So now they've changed their emphasis‚ & in addition to physical abuse such as spankings, cruel treatment, lack of medical attention, etc., they've added sexual‚ educational & psychological abuse. They haven't been able to find us guilty of anything, so they're cooking up some new "psychological" charges.) And of course there are all kinds of psychologists they hire. (Maria: And the public just accepts it & thinks that they know what they're talking about.)
93. The psychologists & psychiatrists are a generation of demons in themselves, as Scientology has argued from the beginning! I'll never forget a rally the Soul Clinic had in Los Angeles‚ because in the same building in an auditorium upstairs, the Scientologists were having a rally, & we had a chance to talk with some of them. We learned then that one of their major enemies were the psychologists & the psychiatrists, whom they were exposing for all of their chicanery & deceit & lies. And of course they made bitter enemies of psychiatry, & they're still fighting them to this day. But of course psychiatry has the approval of the System, & the educational System & the colleges & the degrees & now even medicine, etc. For a long time the psychiatrists & doctors were in opposition & they were considered opponents & competitors, but finally I guess the doctors saw they couldn't lick'm so they joined'm.
Forced to [Leave]!
94. You say, "So what about all this, Dad? We know all these things‚ we've known about them for years!" They attacked us in Huntington Beach on witnessing, contributing to the delinquency of minors, "molesting" minors, illegal distribution of literature. They even found a couple of our Warning Tracts on the sidewalk where the people who we'd given them to had discarded them & they tried to charge us with littering! The cops told our people, "If we see any more of these on the sidewalk, we're going to take you to court & put you in jail for littering!" So the boys were very sure from then on that they didn't find any on the sidewalks. If people threw them down, they'd rush over & pick'm up!
95. So they just used everything they could think of! They finally called Rachel & her sister, Carmel, & their parents into the District Attorney's office & told them they were planning to attack us, & that their next target was going to be me personally! They were going to arrest me on all kinds of false charges, so we decided it was time to go. [I]n those days, anybody sticking up for the hippies was a prime target of the System & the hippies had no friends, so I didn't stand a chance! The System would have figured out some way to get me. They just wanted to get us stopped. Well, the Lord says, "When they persecute you in one city, flee to another" (Mat.10:23), & we obeyed & left.—And we took most of our folks with us.
96. We took our caravan of hippies & all kinds of jalopies & whatnot & fled to Tucson, Arizona, where Brother Ware had opened his church to us. He had thrown out all the benches & put down rugs & pillows & had wall-to-wall hippies! And we did great there until the Catholics got out a petition with 9,000 signatures against us, claiming that we were illegally witnessing on the campuses & causing disturbances. Poor Brother Ware‚ we didn't want him to have to suffer for it after having been so hospitable to us, & besides‚ we felt it was the Lord's time to go‚ so we bade him farewell & departed.
97. Finally we [went] to Europe, where they used a lot of the same tactics. Then we eventually went on into virtually all the World, & wherever we went, as soon as it was heard we were there, our enemies were on our trail distributing their hate literature to propagandise against us, & taking their hate literature to the press, persuading them to smear us, trying to turn the public against us first. This has always been their tactic from the days of the scribes & Pharisees, to try to catch us in something. They were hoping Jesus would say something that would incriminate Him so they could prosecute Him by law, & they finally got their chance. They said that He was against Caesar & He prohibited them from serving Caesar.—Luk.23:2.
98. So the public usually are first persuaded by our enemies. The dumb public believe whatever they read in the papers or hear & see on television, because usually our enemies strike the first blow. We don't create any news just "going about everywhere doing good & healing all those that are oppressed of the Devil."—Acts 10:38. That doesn't make one line of news in any newspaper or one scene on any television show! But when they can dig up all this so-called dirty stuff & accuse you of all kinds of sexual activities, well‚ just because it's sexual at all & also religious, ah, that's the worst! So they've used that against us. And now it's the child abuse allegation & they've gone on & on with anything they could find, & our enemies have followed us wherever we've been. Wherever we've been successful & ignored more or less by the authorities & allowed to proceed in our good work, they've come in to stir up trouble, because the Devil knows we're gaining ground!
99. They're not just out to get the little local Homes. They think they're nothing & nobody & one little local Home is not doing that much damage. They've seldom ever caused our local Homes all that much trouble‚ until recently. But by getting the local Homes they figured they'd get the leadership & enough bad publicity & propaganda to smear the whole Family citywide, nationwide, worldwide, on whatever they proved about one local Home or one local city. "Ah, see? This is the way they all are."—Whatever they thought they were going to prove about it. Well‚ they've been defeated in every case as far as I know so far‚ thank the Lord! They didn't prove anything, the judges threw out the charges, so they couldn't use it for their propaganda. They nevertheless used lies anyhow.
100. In one of the first cases against us, Big Joy's parents, this rich family, were friends of the Attorney General of New York State. They didn't have one iota of evidence, they were unable to find any wrongdoing. If they could have, they would have nailed us. They couldn't find anything because nothing existed. But they managed to persuade him to get out a statement—pure lies & propaganda of all the things that we were suspected of & supposedly guilty of. That hit the news & it didn't take long for it to get worldwide coverage‚ & has been in embassy & police files for years now—one of the earliest real smear victories that they managed to get. "After all, the Attorney General of the State of New York, that great state of that great country, surely he would have known the truth about these people, & surely he was telling the truth about all their badness!" (See "Fret Not," ML #317B.)
101. So that was one of the biggest propaganda strokes that our enemies made in the early days, & they published that everywhere. That's what began to really turn things against us in the U.S. along with a couple of big negative telecasts, & we saw that our time was virtually up there, there wasn't much more we could do. They were going to get us one way or the other. So we decided there were more fertile fields abroad, the hippies on the road were hungering for us, so we went. Mama & I pioneered Europe ourselves! We went around & reconnoitered & surveyed the situation & found it was Europe's time. So we reaped a vast harvest in Europe, & then when Europe started to give us a lot of trouble, we fled to other places.
102. So you know this & I'm just reviewing history to remind you. What is it they have used? (Peter: Laws.) Laws on all these various things, everything from witnessing to violating traffic laws or trespassing, everything they could think of from the very beginning. And finally they've come around to using child abuse laws against us, but it's not working & we're proving that they're lying & we're winning cases, thank the Lord!
What Next?
103. So, what next? If they can first of all attack locally where they can find the Family, & defeat them there with smear publicity, prohibitions, all kinds of things, to try to close'm up & drive'm out, they do it. But now we're entering into the national scene in several countries, & it's actually becoming an international case, because we have found that our enemies of various nations & various cases are cooperating together to fight us. It's being publicised internationally, worldwide, & they cannot afford to have us keep on winning cases aimed at whatever the supposed offense is. The trumped-up child abuse charges are failing. Previously we avoided many cases just by disappearing. In this case we're not disappearing, we're coming out in court publicly with lawyers, defending ourselves & winning in some cases.—But it's not all over yet!
104. They're trying to destroy God's Work! So the Devil will use every means at his disposal—primarily the laws, the courts & the System. As I said, many of these laws were originally passed for good purposes by people not intending to do damage to religions or Christians, but the Devil takes them & twists the laws & uses them against the very people & causes they were designed to protect!
105. But they're not going to stop with child abuse & all the custody cases in which they're being defeated & being disproved. They're going to go on to more & bigger things! They're going to put a big push on trying to get us on brainwashing & mind-control charges; on psychological & emotional damage to our children; on charges of not giving our children proper schooling & allowing them to reach their potential; on overcrowding; trying to charge us with fraud regarding our provisioning; & of course they're always interested in going after & following the finances & finding out "who's getting the money?"
106. Thank God we have decentralised, dispersed, scattered abroad & literally put the money back in good use where it was needed amongst the little people & the little leaders & even the local Homes, so that nearly all the money has gone back where it came from. We only use the small percentage that is necessary to support ourselves & our publishing ministry, which is vital to our whole work!
107. They're the ones who've got the money, brother! The ACs are running the World, they own it, & they'd be happy to pay millions to get us! They've even had contracts on my life, time & again, for thousands of Dollars, & the only reason I haven't been assassinated is because they couldn't find me! And thank God we're still safe & secure & protected & in His hands! TYJ!
108. As far as I'm concerned, we're only guilty of the publication of the Truth, the saving of souls & doing the Lord's Work! But of course that is why the Devil is after us, that's what he wants to stop, & he'll go to any lengths to stop it!
109. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that this will be one phase of our martyrdoms, people who are commanded by law to reveal certain things, but they know that that will hurt the Work‚ our people & us, so they will refuse to do so, & have to be ready & willing to go to jail for it!—Martyrdom! That's what I'd call a martyr—someone who suffers in order to protect others! That's what Jesus did. He suffered to save us, & He's indicated that we will have to suffer to save others. "He who lays down his life for his friends, no greater love hath any man than this," & the time will come when we will have to begin laying down our lives for our friends & the Work! (John 15:13.)
Closing Prayer
110. We realise that the way the World's going it's not far from the End & we don't have much longer to work. But bless us & keep us, Lord‚ & help us not to be frightened or afraid or scared‚ but to have the faith that You're going to give us the answers & the solutions & solve the problems, & help us to avoid problems as much as possible. The righteous, having heeded Thy warning & seen the trouble, are going to try to avoid it. (Pro.22:3.)
111. So do bless & keep us now, in Jesus' name‚ & do protect us. Continue to protect as You have so wonderfully, miraculously & marvellously done already. TYL! And do continue to protect our health. Thank You for how You've made me well & strong in spite of minor afflictions, in spite of even severe afflictions, Lord. You've helped me survive & to continue the battle, thanks to the Family's prayers! Help us to continue to carry on what we need to do.
112. Bless Peter, Lord, & help him with his tremendous load & burden of responsibility he has in managing so much of Thy business, & Mama, these who have carried such a great & heavy responsibility! And thank You for caring for me too‚ Lord. I'm the least of all & in some ways I have the easiest job, because I just depend on You & I just receive it from You & give it to them. I'm just Your mouthpiece‚ Your delivery boy, Lord. I've delivered the Message & it's up to them to act on it & to carry out the solutions, in Jesus' name. TYL! TYJ! PYL! Hallelujah!
113. Thank You for how wonderfully You've protected us & cared for us, in spite of everything! Thank You for situating us so conveniently. When I awoke this morning I could see Thy beautiful Creation & Thy creatures‚ the birds soaring & circling, & Thy sun shining, Lord. TYJ! You've given us such wonderful peace & rest & comfort & confidence, Lord, & marvellous protection! TYL!—So we can continue to do Thy Work & lead Thy Flock. TYJ!
114. God bless & keep you all!—In Jesus' name, amen.—We can't lose!—Because, "If God be for us, who can be against us!"—Rom.8:31. Hallelujah! Thank You Jesus! God bless you! We love you!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family