—The Advantages of Small Colonies!

—MOMarch 1971No.318—GP

A Revised and Edited Excerpt from "GYPSIES", Written in U.S.A., March 29, 1971

Copyrighted March, 1971 by The Children of God, P.O. Box 31‚ London WC2X, England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan‚ Puerto Rico 00936

1. I AM STILL AS MUCH CONVINCED AS EVER THAT THE SMALLER COLONIES ARE THE IDEAL. I am just as much opposed as ever to large churches‚ oversized congregations and their cumbersome, burdensome machinery and their impersonal conglomerate fellowship where leadership loses that personal touch, intimate fellowship, and close attention to the individual. No pastor can be a good shepherd to so many sheep! He cannot give each the individual attention that is necessary.

2. THIS IS ONE REASON MOST CHRISTIANS LIKE BIG CHURCHES; THEY CAN HIDE IN THE CROWD and avoid the close scrutiny of them and their lives by the pastor's not all-seeing eye. They can live as they please, do their own thing, and still call themselves a church member on Sunday, although the Pastor doesn't even know who they are much less anything about their individual lives. Not even the Assistant Pastor Home-Caller Visitation System can do the job. There are just too many people, too many calls to make, and it's too confusing and impossible to get around to everyone.

3. SO LIKE A DOCTOR, CALLS ARE NOT MADE TO KEEP THE PEOPLE HEALTHY, BUT INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION IS ONLY GIVEN IN THE MOST DIRE EMERGENCIES WHEN SOMEONE IS VERY SICK. Even the Sunday School Teacher Visitation Plan does not cover everyone and is mostly concerned with the mere attendance of the children. No Pastor‚ even with a small group of Assistant Pastors, can do a consistently good job of giving personalised, individual attention to so many thousand, or seven hundreds, in one congregation in one place‚ no matter how well organised they are. Some are bound to escape the watchful eye of the shepherd and go astray.

4. EVEN JESUS DIDN'T ATTEMPT IT! He preached to the multitudes and He fed and healed them and ministered to them, but when it came to actually pastoring them, teaching them, feeding them, and giving them the individual care and watchfulness of their growth that's necessary, even He couldn't properly care for more than 12! I'm convinced that a congregation of 12 is the ideal, God's ideal. I don't know how He taught the 70, but if you'll divide 70 by 12 you'll find that each of the 12 Apostles could very well have taught a little handful of half a dozen each, which is perhaps all that weaker undershepherds in training are properly able to supervise. They're not even ready for a load of 12 because they're still being taught themselves by the Master Shepherd.

5. EVEN IN MODERN EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY WE ARE TAUGHT THAT THE IDEAL SCHOOL CLASS SIZE IS ABOUT A DOZEN, and never more than two dozen at the most. Even the teachers, whose business is Education, have discovered this through years of experience, and we should be able to take a tip from their common sense. This is also one of the secrets of the famous Montessori Method!—And how I ever taught a roomful of 50 junior highs in two grades for three years was a miracle of God. No one man can do his best, or even a real good job, of such a ridiculous situation.

6. OUR ENORMOUS UNION HIGH SCHOOLS AND MAMMOTH UNIVERSITIES HAVE BECOME HEARTLESS MACHINES, producing unguided little monsters which are going to destroy them—the Frankenstein that made them—and the churches are the same. The ideal school system was that of the early settlers and pioneers in which the local pastor used the simple little church–house which tripled as a town hall‚ church, and school, with full 100 percent usefulness all week long, as his schoolroom, housing only a dozen or two students in several different grades, with the older students being taught to help, teach, and care for the younger, as assistant teachers even in so small an operation.

7. THERE WAS MORE INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION—MUCH MORE, FAR MORE, IN THE SMALL PIONEER SCHOOLS AND CHURCHES THAN IN THE SCHOOLS OR CHURCHES OF TODAY!—And this little one-room school system produced America's greatest statesmen, leaders, and heroes of those by–gone days which are no more, along with no more great statesmen, leaders, or heroes‚ either. You just can't produce that kind of product with the massive machinery, mass production and rapid, hasty, impersonal, assembly-line type of an operation of our present educational and religious systems! It's impossible! We are producing more students and fewer teachers (1971)—more babes and fewer leaders, and the end result is going to be catastrophic, chaotic, and great confusion!

8 THE POOR COMMON PEOPLE HAVE LOST TOUCH—THAT PERSONAL INDIVIDUAL TOUCH AND INTEREST—WITH THEIR PASTORS, TEACHERS, AND POLITICIANS‚ EVEN THE CHILDREN WITH THEIR PARENTS‚ because the selfish parents have abdicated their responsibility as individuals and turned their pitiful little living sacrifices over to the greedy clutches of the mammoth god Moloch to be cast into is gaping, massive, fiery maw to their eternal destruction—to come out in identical molds of dead, lifeless, mindless, leaden, robots!

9. MAY GOD PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING TO US! I can write you and your leaders from afar and give you overall counsel and advice and occasional individual instruction as your Supervisor or Bishop, but I cannot give you the individual personal attention that you each need. This must be the job of your local pastor and individual overseer, and I am convinced it can still be best done in only a small Colony of a dozen or two in a separate place away from the rest where your pastor can keep an eye on you!

10. A LARGER, CENTRALIZED, AND MORE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED SINGLE HEADQUARTERS OPERATION MAY BE NECESSARY, AT LEAST FOR THE TIME BEING (1971), for the purpose of overall administration, distribution of such productions as printing, photography, and the processing of mail, the training of teachers, and the manufacture of teachers' tools, such as tapes‚ filmstrips, lesson booklets, etc.

11. IT SEEMS THAT MOST KINGDOMS NEED SOME CENTRALIZED LEADERSHIP, SUPERVISION, AND UNIFYING ADMINISTRATION to keep them together and in fellowship and of one mind, one heart, and all speaking the same thing, as well as coordinating the operation and effective, manoeuvering of their forces in correlation with each other—all members of the same body working together in perfect coordination although in many different places and of very different kinds and types of operations, or members. This seems usually the necessary case!

12. HOWEVER, NOW I'M GOING TO SAY SOMETHING THAT'S GOING TO SHOCK YOU, and which seems is entirely contrary to this. The most highly organized kingdoms this world has ever known, with the strongest and most centralized and dictatorial forms of government and leadership, with the widest expanse of territorial coverage, such as the various Empires this world has known‚ although they have lasted for long, sometimes hundreds of years, have every one eventually crumbled and fallen or been destroyed by others! Why? Was it poor leadership, poor organization, poor unification, poor loyalty, poor instruction, poor control? What was it?

13. I AM SUSPECTING THAT PERHAPS EVEN THEIR GIGANTIC SIZE, GREAT STRENGTH AND DICTATORIAL CONTROL WAS A PART OF THEIR WEAKNESS, which brought on such impersonalisation, such remote control, that they lost the personal touch completely, lost the loyalty of their lowliest subjects, lost communication and identification with the grass roots, got out of touch with the masses, and no longer had their fingers on the intimate pulse of each individual and his basic morale.

14. SUCH A CHAIN-OF-COMMAND SYSTEM IS NO STRONGER THAN ITS WEAKEST LINK, and even now, small independent guerilla bands of individual warriors operating almost totally on their own far from central control with only remote coordination are proving able to outmaneuver, outflank‚ and outdo the largest of conventional armies of the most powerful nations on earth.

15. IT'S A LONG‚ DIFFICULT AND HAZARDOUS PROCESS, BUT THE TINIEST GUERILLA BANDS of these little loyal followers, unbelievably out-numbered and out-armored, have been able to hold at bay the huge conventional armies of the great powers with all their top–heavy brass and elaborate sophisticated equipment of the world's most powerful nations in one little country alone for nearly 30 years! (Viet Nam—1971) This is an amazing accomplishment of decentralisation and diversification! How can this be so?

16. EMPIRES HAVE COME AND GONE, BUT THE LITTLE PEOPLE HAVE LIVED ON‚ and the poor ye have always with you, as Jesus said. Maybe their very weakness is their strength! What glory is there in attacking and conquering a tiny little handful of the weak‚ the poor and the meek! Rulers have come and gone‚ but the meek still inherit the earth. They live on the land, close to it, enjoy it, and benefit from the fruits thereof, the healthful atmosphere, the non-pollution, the vigorous exercise, the wholesome foods, and the simple uncomplicated life, with no psychological neuroses and nervous breakdowns, little or no drug problems, very few medical needs, and very little dependency on the System. Each little farmer and his family or his tiny village or tribe grows its own food, makes nearly all of its own needs and equipment and lives its own life almost totally independent from the rest of the world.

17. LARGER GOVERNMENTS ARE ALMOST A NUISANCE TO THEM, from which they derive few benefits but must pay useless taxes to support. These governments prey upon them, upon their own people‚ oppress them, overburden them and use them for their own selfish ends, and their manpower to wage larger wars in which the common people have little or no interest. God warned of this when Israel live peacefully in a tiny little independent theocracy ruled by God alone through His simple prophets‚ when the people finally demanded a king to become big and powerful like other nations. You can read about it in 1Samuel 8, etc., as well as throughout history!

18. NUMBERS, POWER, AND WEALTH HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WORSHIPPED BY MAN, but as long as God's people were small, somewhat scattered, only loosely associated, and with a minimum of rule from above through His Prophets, and obedient to God's Rules, they lived in peace with few wars, close to the land, engaged in the production of only the necessities of life, with more intimate fellowship and personal attention from their leaders.

19. THE POOR HAD NOTHING ANYBODY ELSE WANTED, SO THEIR VERY WEAKNESS WAS THEIR PROTECTION under God, as there was no great glory in conquering them! They were the poor nobodies, the have-nots, and nobody paid much attention to them but God. From the historical viewpoint of the historians of the great powers of the earth, God's Children were just little insignificant bands of guerilla savages living in the remote mountain hideaways of an almost unknown wilderness, and nobody much bothered them except for an occasional retaliation by the powerful nearby System for Israel's raids on the Establishment; so the Jews‚ and the Gypsies, and the common poor of the whole world have long outlived all of their would-be conquerors and the mighty empires of governments that have come and gone. The poor ye have always! It pays to stay poor! Amen?

20. WHERE WAS THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH? What was its so-called Headquarters, and how much control did it have over its individual members or units? Very little‚ except for the Lord by His Spirit. Our Headquarters is in Heaven! Our ruler is God! Our King is Jesus! And our communication system is His Spirit!

21. GOD HIMSELF PERMITTED THE LARGE, OVER-SIZED, TOO TOP-HEAVY AND LETHARGIC FAILING-TO-EVANGELISE-THE–WORLD JERUSALEM HEADQUARTERS COLONY TO BE SMITTEN by the sword in order to decentralise‚ diversify, and scatter them throughout the whole world, and these tiny little individual and almost invisible bands of poor little Christians, living largely out of sight and underground, meeting clandestinely, and witnessing individually were able to do what the big Colony had failed to accomplish.

22. THEY WERE NOT BOUND TOGETHER BY A DICTATORIAL, HIERARCHICAL, CENTRALISED GOVERNMENT, frozen together with formalities, but they were only united by His Spirit, governed by His Word, and melted together in love, with an absolute minimum of supervision by the Apostles. Their unity was in the Spirit and in Love and in Doctrine, not in highly technical organization. Their coordination and co-operation were God–made‚ not man-made, and it was a supernatural thing, strictly miraculous, and not manufactured by man's fleshly wisdom! Hallelujah! Thank You, Jesus! Praise the Lord!

23. WHILE IN THIS POOR, WEAK, SCATTERED, AND DISORGANISED CONDITION THEY LITERALLY EXPLODED with a population explosion through their individual witnessing which filled the whole world with their doctrine, and their converts swept the whole earth in a tidal wave of love, simplicity, poverty, and loyalty that threatened the very Roman Establishment itself and eventually over-threw it!

24. THEN A SAD AND SIGNIFICANT AND DISASTROUS CHANGE TOOK PLACE! Christianity became accepted, recognised, popular, powerful, wealthy, and dictatorial, and became Rome itself—the very System it had dropped out of and the Establishment it was to be separate from—and the Roman Empire was revived in the new so-called Holy Roman Empire of the Roman Catholic Church, whose dominions, power‚ wealth, and expansion far outreached the former boundaries of Rome and outlived the decadent Empire!

25. THE CHURCH HAD BECOME THE EMPIRE and continued to persecute and attempt to destroy the true little bands of genuine Christians who lived on in spite of it, even in the Catacombs beneath the city itself and in far-off lands free from the long arm of Rome! For a thousand years of the Dark Ages the true Church had to go underground while the whorish System of Babylon reigned supreme!

26. BUT ALL OF THAT TIME‚ TINY BANDS OF TRUE CHRISTIANS, UNITED ONLY IN LOVE, THE SPIRIT AND THE WORD, MANAGED TO SURVIVE by the Grace of God throughout the world despite every attempt to stamp then out, every effort to burn their Bibles and destroy their numbers through torture, intimidation and martyrdom. They had no central leadership but the ever–present prophets of God; no formal organization but the unity of the Spirit; no common bond but His Love; and no doctrine but His Word. And yet they, like the Jews and the Gypsies and the common poor, have survived until this day despite every effort to crush them, liquidate them, and completely exterminate them!

27. EVEN WHEN FREED FROM THIS OPPRESSION THROUGH THE REFORMATION, WHEN THEY AGAIN BECAME ACCEPTED, RECOGNISED‚ RICH AND POWERFUL, THEY AGAIN REVERTED TO THE SAME whorish collaboration with the Beast under a new guise, know as Protestantism; and the new System was little better than the first, because it had lost the power of God, the communication of the Spirit, and the sacrificial, forsake-all love of one another! ("Blessed are your eyes, for they behold that which the prophets have dreamed of!"—Prophecy and revelation with tongues and weeping.) You don't realise what you're watching, but I can feel it by the Spirit of God! It's an absolute Revolution—a Revolution, and things will never be the same again!—This is the secret—this is the Truth of God! Hallelujah! All glory be to God! Thank you‚ Jesus!

28. BUT STILL THE TRUE CHURCH HAS SURVIVED UNDER ONE AFTER ANOTHER OF HIS TRUE PROPHETS UNTIL THIS VERY DAY when you are part of this present Manifestation of another powerful moving of His Spirit to save this last generation to "save yourselves from the untoward generation" of your fathers! Hallelujah! Thank God!

29. LET US NOT OURSELVES FALL PREY TO THESE FORMER ERRORS. Let us remain pure from these corruptions. God help us to stay poor and weak and despised and scattered and united only by His Love, His Spirit, and His Word!—For when we are weak‚ then are we strong, and His strength is made perfect in our weakness, for His Grace is sufficient for thee! As long as we perpetuate the seemingly impossible conditions of Colony scatteration, decentralisation, diversification, and indigenuity in small individual, virtually independent groups or Colonies‚ held together only by His Love, His Spirit and His Word, there is hope for our survival‚ no matter how the enemy attacks.

30. IF THERE IS NO TRULY CONTROLLING HEAD BUT God, THEY CANNOT KILL IT! If there is no visible organization, they cannot destroy it. If there are only tiny scattered Colonies, they will never find them all—and some of us will survive no matter what happens, even the Antichrist government until Jesus comes! God help us to stay this way, like the Jews, the Gypsies, and the Early Christians, and we'll outlive them all! PTL!

31. AS THE SCRIPTURE SAYS, THERE'S A TIME FOR EVERYTHING and my father's motto was, "There's a place for everything‚ and everything should be in its place!" There was a time for the Early Church to have its thousands all in one place at Jerusalem to attract the attention of the whole world and to start off the Church with a bang—one big huge splash!

32. DURING JESUS' 3 1/2 YEARS OF PUBLIC MINISTRY, THE NUMBER OF TRUE DISCIPLES OR GENUINE FOLLOWERS WAS FEW—about 12 to 70‚ to be exact. The thousands to whom He had preached, healed, and fed were seldom to be counted on for loyalty or faithfulness or genuine discipleship, and public fancy is fickle at best. One day they're worshipping you and the next demanding your crucifixion!

33. THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE COULDN'T CARE LESS; they're not even interested, or only of passing interest, and are predominantly indifferent, except when you attract their attention momentarily, as Jesus did. And the crowds at His Crucifixion were symbolic of these various reactions: The smallest group were His friends; another small group but probably larger were his enemies; but the vast majority were only the casually curious—the largely indifferent, the passing throng to whom it meant little or nothing.

34. THIS IS STILL TRUE TODAY. The true followers, the true disciples willing to forsake all, truly follow His teachings and truly obey His Words will always be the infinitesimal minority, for narrow is the way and straight is the gate that leadeth unto life Eternal and few there be that find it; but broad is the gate and wide is the way that leadeth unto destruction and many there be that go in thereat!

35. THE VAST MAJORITY ARE ALWAYS WRONG IN THE WORLD AT LARGE! In the world's politics, majority rule means rule by the wicked majority‚ because their majority are always wrong—and they can usually be swayed by a very wicked minority of enemies as the religious leaders did when they persuaded the crowd Jesus had fed and healed that He should be crucified. They'll do it to us someday‚ too, and already have, in a measure upon occasion.

36. BUT FOR OURSELVES, IT'S QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY; purity, not popularity; autonomy not numbers; power, not population; and leaders, not just sheep; disciples, not just church members; soldiers‚ not just civilians; —but don't forget that both are necessary. Don't be like most of us when we were soldiers during WW II and scorn all those who are not in uniform. The army could not operate without the help of the civilian population. Each depends upon the other, and cannot do without each other. So "use' em!"

37. DURING THOSE EARLY DAYS OF THE EARLY CHURCH THEY NEEDED NUMBERS TO GET STARTED, A BIG PUSH TO GET 'EM ROLLING, sensational publicity to make them popular, and a wave of fame to noise them abroad, as we have now. Their original Colony was immense, like some of ours have been, to make them known‚ strong, encouraged, basically trained and off to a headstart, 'way out in front of the opposition before scattering for survival.

38. SO NOW YOU KNOW WHY WE MUST BREAK UP INTO SMALLER COLONIES, AND MORE WIDELY SCATTERED EVENTUALLY, if not now! (1971) Some of you jumped the gun recently and did it a little too soon‚ without sufficient preparation, training and planning, or consulting the general staff on the overall war! Because at the moment we need one or two large Colonies to impress the System with our size and appearance, (1971) which is all that counts with them‚ and that's the way they judge things. Man looketh on the outward appearance, and we have to make it look good to become all things to all men, in order that we might win some.

39. ALSO, THE ORIGINAL CHRISTIANS PROBABLY WOULD HAVE ALL BEEN WIPED OUT IMMEDIATELY AFTER JESUS' DEATH IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN SO NUMEROUS and looked so big and powerful so they were practically telling the city what to do. This was to impress the System to leave them alone, "for fear of the multitude," until they could get organised, taught, strengthened, grown up, and ready for the bigger battles ahead, from babes to big brothers, from raw recruits to seasoned soldiers. Then when they were ready for full scale war, God scattered them throughout the world to salt the whole earth and enlighten all mankind. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! This is the beginning! Praise God!

40. WE, THE LAST CHURCH, ARE NOW RIDING OUR WAVE OF PUBLICITY AND POPULARITY (1971), TO GIVE US TIME TO GROW IN STRENGTH AND NUMBERS and increase our quality, organise our methods, produce our weapons, train our soldiers, and get them battle-ready for the main war ahead when we will be scattered in smaller groups throughout the whole world like the Early Church, tough little hard-core quality units.

41. THEY CALLED THEM CHURCHES BUT WE CALL THEM COLONIES to get away from the evil connotation of the word "church" as it is used today as well as to define our method of operation which is actually the same as theirs, (the Early Church) the "ecclesia", "the called-out ones", the "separated people", which we certainly are in the same sense that they were and hated by the System as were they! They call us "dropouts" in our generation, and they don't like us either, even as then!

42. BUT IF WE (IN 1971) DON'T HAVE AT LEAST ONE OR TWO LARGE COLONIES, AND WE START DISPERSING TOO SOON, OR BREAKING UP‚ AS THE SYSTEM CALLS IT, THEY'LL SAY WE'VE FAILED like all the other communes, and that you see it just doesn't work, as they've always claimed. So we still need to maintain one or two. There's not much time left! Amen? Right now (1971) L.A. has been in the limelight, and should keep at least enough there to impress the System, finish that harvest, and be ready to pick up the pieces and run when the Crash comes. But prepare and send small teams now to provide places in the wilderness to run to when the time comes! Amen?

43. TSC IS NOW (1971) SERVING AS OUR MAJOR HEADQUARTERS operation for production, processing, and distribution of supplies and weaponry for a large part of the army and these many new little Colonies, as well as training personnel to man these outposts. Every army needs some home base, and the Early Church used Jerusalem, then Antioch, then Ephesus‚ then Rome, then Germany, then England, and finally America, moving ever-westward, with and toward the major world population.

44. WE, THE LAST CHURCH, ARE NOW MOVING IN REVERSE, SPREADING EASTWARD (1971): First L.A., then Texas, now the East, and soon London, God willing—and God only knows where we'll go from there if we have time, so get ready! The move is on! We too, are spreading toward the world's major populations. And who knows? We may not only have to evangelise Europe, but also Africa, the Mid-East, Russia, India, and even China, if God opens the door—even under the Anti-Christ in Great Tribulation!

45. RIGHT NOW (1971) WE'RE LEARNING HOW, and who, and with what, and where—and soon we'll know when, praise the Lord! Hallelujah! So get with it!

"DISPERSION"—MONovember, 1971NO.318—GP—(Excerpts from "Specifics"LTA—No.127 & "Details"LTA—No.129.)

46. NOW THERE'S A TIME FOR GUERILLA ACTION‚ as we've said before, particularly when persecution and the superior forces of the Enemy drive you more or less underground—but there's also a time to establish a Colony and its babes and teach and train and make them strong when it's possible to do so! As Mao says‚ there's a time to "conquer the vagabond outlook and draw active and militant workers into the army" instead of just roving rebels who like to travel!

47. YOUR COLONY SHOULD TRY TO STAY PUT AS LONG AS THE LORD IS BLESSING, publishing the Message, bearing fruit, and establishing the believers and providing your needs and protecting you from too much persecution! You can do this better when you're not having to move too much! A rolling stone gathers no moss, because when you're busy travelling, you haven't much time to study, teach and train, and establish! We didn't really start growing very much until stopped travelling so much! It's hard for mothers to travel with babies, even most creatures that God has made have to have a little nest, lair, or burrow once in a while in which to safely rear their young until they're strong enough to be thrust out into the world on their own.

48. THIS IS THE WHOLE IDEA OF COLONISATION, INSTEAD OF TOTAL INDIVIDUAL SCATTERATION—to give the young babes the time and place to grow strong, and their leaders an opportunity to learn responsibility before they're ready to go pioneer a new Colony somewhere else, or until God lets you know through heavy and hindering persecution that it's time for you all to move and perhaps divide into two or three small Colonies instead of one big overgrown one!

49. AS MANY TIMES AS I HAVE TOLD YOU THAT THE SMALL COLONY IS THE IDEAL—about one or two dozen in one house in one city, some of you are still writing me after you've got about seventy to ninety in your Colony wondering if you should divide it and reduce its size by sending some of them somewhere else! Yes, of course! You shouldn't even have to ask us! As soon as you have enough in your little Colony so that you can spare enough personnel from the operation of the local Colony to organise a new team to go out and start a new Colony in a new city, you should by all means do so! That's the whole idea! Our whole method of growth and expansion!

50. THIS SHOULD BE BY THE TIME YOUR COLONY REACHES ABOUT TWO DOZEN IN NUMBER, or more! You should then begin to figure how you can divide it into two Colonies, each with capable leadership and all gifts and ministries and talents and skills represented as much as possible in each, and then send one of the groups off to a new location in a new city! This is almost exactly what is happening with our most rapidly expanding fields abroad‚ which is one of the major reasons for their rapid growth and expansion to other fields!

51. WHEREAS‚ THE HOME COLONIES SEEM TO TEND TO GET BOGGED DOWN WITH NUMBERS instead of dividing as they should and establishing new Colonies! I'll grant you that there seem to be times when a larger Mother Colony seems to be necessary‚ particularly for the care of children in a school, or a major office or printing operation, or a large nursery for spiritual babes, when you are short of leaders and teachers and the Lord provides adequate facilities for same where you can economise on leadership by having larger classes and meetings.

52. BUT I AM STILL FIRMLY CONVINCED THAT THE SMALL INDEPENDENT COLONIES ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE AND THE HARDEST TO STOP! We've had some big ones that collapsed or got slowed to a standstill just by their own size and weight! I've even had certain leaders tell me they couldn't even operate their Colony without at least 200 people‚ to which I replied: "You wouldn't need 200 people if you didn't have 200 people there!"—And that Colony is no more!

53. WHEREAS, SOME OF OUR SMALLEST COLONIES HAVE LASTED THE LONGEST, ACCOMPLISHED MORE effective leadership and babe training on a smaller scale, have received less persecution and more provision and protection and some of the greatest blessings of God! We are just crazy enough to believe God's Word, that if we constantly divide and go into all the world, God will cause us to constantly survive and grow in all the world! So if your Colony is over two dozen, why don't you organise it into two Colonies‚ ask your leaders where there's an open door or another place one of them can go, or ask God for one, and half of you take off for greener pastures and new harvest fields where God will bless you for your pioneering‚ vision, faith, courage and initiative! Praise God!

54. RAPID GROWTH BY BUNCHING UP IN A FEW HUGE COLONIES HERE AT HOME SHOULD NOT BE OUR AIM! Our aim should be smaller Colonies scattered throughout every important area of our own country and the world carrying the message everywhere and gaining disciples in all the world

and reaping the entire harvest, rather than just a few little corners of a few small fields. Jesus said, "Lift up your eyes" and see the whole harvest, for which real labourers are needed, hard workers, who will be willing to go anywhere and do anything to bring it in! Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest shall send forth labourers into the harvest. We have got to Go wherever the harvest is!—NOW!

55. OTHERWISE, WE'RE GETTING JUST LIKE THE CHURCHES, BUNCHING UP IN BIG GROUPS of spiritual babies, unable to take care of themselves and having to be nursed along continuously in large Colonies by the few available leaders, so that we will never reach all the fields. At this rate we will just get bogged down, like the churches‚ quibbling over petty internal affairs, more concerned about ourselves than the rest of the world, bickering and fighting amongst ourselves‚ the Enemy attacking on the inside and weakening us against the attacks of outside enemies until we have completely lost the vision and God's plan, and worst of all, the world!

56. IF WE CONTINUE TO FOLLOW THIS GREGARIOUS TREND, we will become like the man in the Army who got so busy fixing other guy's watches, he forgot he was supposed to be fighting a war! When we said Colonisation and not Scatteration we did not mean for you to bunch up in just a few big Colonies and let the rest of the world go to Hell, and we also did not mean that everybody should scatter completely, individually‚ and alone, on his own!

57. BUT WHAT GOD DID MEAN WAS LIKE THE EARLY CHURCH, WE SHOULD SCATTER OUT THROUGH ALL THE WORLD IN SMALLER COLONIES, like the Early Churches‚ into every land and nation, and make disciples of all nations in all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature! This is why I am convinced we must do a better job of training more leaders so we can scatter into more and smaller Colonies throughout the world as soon as possible!

58. SO YOU CAN SEE BY THIS FIGURE OF OVER 1‚ 600 DISCIPLES IN ONLY 43 COLONIES (1971), we already have even an average of more than double the size that each colony should be! And the actual case is that a number of our Colonies are even much‚ much larger than that! And some of them are actually monstrous!—A headache to operate, a nightmare to control, and a desperation to feed!

59. WHEN YOUR COLONY GETS TO THE POINT THAT IT TAKES ALL YOUR TIME just to try to take care of them physically and you don't even have enough time to train them spiritually, and they can't even get out and witness very much, your Colony's too big. But a small Colony has few needs, requires little housing, less food and food preparation, less transportation, less maintenance, and has lots more time to teach, study, train, experience, publish, litness, witness‚ and win souls!

60. YOU ALSO FIND THAT, WITH FEWER PEOPLE, YOU'LL HAVE FEWER AND LESS SERIOUS PERSONNEL PROBLEMS because everybody is kept busy in some responsibility‚ and you can keep an eye on every one of them, and everyone is learning to be a leader by experience, on-the-job training! But as I've said again and again, you cannot possibly keep track of everybody in a large Colony, some are bound to be shirking and goofing off and getting into trouble‚ for idleness is the Devil's workshop!

61. ONE OF OUR MAJOR LEADERS has had to spend so much time lately trying to settle the problems and spiritual and personnel difficulties and trying to help keep all their little babes in hand of one these monstrous Colonies, that he's even had to neglect other Colonies that need his help. We read the reports, and it's almost always the biggest Colonies that are having the most troubles and the most problems. Whereas the smaller Colonies know they have to trust the Lord because nobody else pays any attention to them to the point of neglect, so they get along fine! Hallelujah! God blesses 'em!

62. THESE LITTLE PIONEER COLONIES ARE THE SHINING EXAMPLES OF FAITH, miracles, provision, protection, amazing development of leadership, and marvellous accomplishments for their size! Some of them win as many new disciples‚ or more, than the big ones, because the big ones are too busy to witness and too big to hold any more disciples! And some of these small ones have sometimes received as much publicity as the huge ones, with much less effort and expense!

63. BUT IT'S KIND OF LIKE THE WEATHER: EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT IT, BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING about it, and maybe it's because, like the weather, you can't! Our recent sudden evacuation of four major Colonies forced us to find some place to put them immediately, because hundreds of people were involved, so we quickly had to get some big places to hold them, and thank God He provided them!—And they were right back in the same old Big–Colony rut as before!

64. THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE DIDN'T SPLIT SOON ENOUGH!—We didn't prepare, train, equip, organise, instruct those little teams that I was talking about a year ago soon enough! If we'd done like I said then, we could have sent them off in easy stages as the doors opened‚ or even out camping‚ at least by Summertime‚ and by this time they would have been scattered everywhere, and I know God would have provided Winter quarters for each of them, because He never fails if we obey!

65. NOW THOSE HUGE COLONIES THAT I ASKED TO DO THIS ARE EVEN LARGER and only located in different places, with more babes and less leadership, and the possibility of splitting them up becomes even more difficult. We're less prepared to do it now than we were then. We're worse off than before! The big Colonies are carrying us backward instead of forward and making it even more difficult for us to progress and do the job God called us to do! This is a hell of a mess!

66. WE'VE BECOME AS BAD OFF AS THE BIG CHURCHES that built big buildings and then can't move when the world moves on and leaves them behind because they're tied down with that huge abomination! They either have to try to sell it to build a new one somewhere else, or abandon it, because who wants to buy a church that even the builders couldn't make succeed! Who wants to buy a business that has proved a flat failure! What else is a church building good for!

67. SO YOU BIG COLONIES HAD BETTER WATCH OUT YOU DON'T WIND UP IN THE SAME SITUATION! Even though you're building your big building out of living stones—the true people of God—you may still find yourself stuck with a huge mess of babes and not enough leaders, a living nightmare, and almost impossible to move or break up into smaller Colonies because of the lack of leadership and the immaturity of your disciples. You got started on the wrong foot and now you're stuck with it! You figure you're already short of leaders, so you can't send any teams out, and your babes are not trained enough to go anyhow, so you try to sit there until you can train some leaders out of them, but you're so crowded and so big you really can't and it becomes a vicious cycle, and worse!

68. YOU MAY THINK I SOUND VERY DISCOURAGING, but I'm trying to paint the picture as black as I possibly can, maybe even worse than it really is yet, because we're headed for disaster at this rate, and I'm trying to let you know how bad it can get if we don't do something about it now!—If we don't obey God, get out of the nest, lift up our eyes unto the harvest, and go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, we'll wind up just like the churches and old king Saul‚ so desperately busy trying to figure out some way to survive that we go crazy and completely forget or find it impossible to accomplish the job we're here for!

69. I'VE BEEN PRAYING DESPERATELY ABOUT THIS‚ and now that I've told you how bad it is, maybe you'll appreciate what I think is the solution. Do you remember last year when I told you the Lord gave me the Scripture about organising these small teams, with the warning "Pray that your flight be not in Winter"! But here it is Winter and we still haven't flown! We still haven't divided up into small Colonies, we still have some of these big monsters on our hands, and still don't know what to do with them, or where to go‚ or how to do it!

70. THE LORD GAVE US A WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY, with many open doors, at the beginning of the Summer, but we said we still didn't have the leadership or the personnel to take advantage of it! Now the Summer's over and we're worse off than we were then: We have even fewer open doors and even less leadership in proportion to our numbers. You didn't obey when I told you to, we didn't obey when God told us to‚ so now we're even further behind!

71. OH, BUT YOU SAY, LOOK AT ALL OUR NICE NEW LITTLE COLONIES and even newer and bigger big ones and all our new Colonies overseas and our greatly increased numbers! Isn't that a sign of the blessing of the Lord? Let me tell you it's a sign of the mercy of the Lord in spite of our disobedience, and only because of the obedience of a few! Otherwise we'd probably still be bunched up in only two or three absolutely colossal Colonies by now, because nobody wants to leave home!

72. AND NOW YOU SAY—YOU STILL SAY, AND EVEN MORE SO: WE'VE GOT TOO FEW LEADERS, TOO MANY BABES, AND NOT ENOUGH OPEN DOORS! It reminds me of my denominational leader who once told us we'd have to stop producing so many Bible College graduates because the mission field was not able to absorb them all, only we've given it a new twist and say we can't do the job until we produce more. Either way, I have become convinced that in either case it boils right down to nothing more or less than just this: lack of faith!—And obedience and self-sacrifice!

73. SINCE WHEN ARE WE SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL ALL THE CONDITIONS ARE JUST RIGHT before we have enough faith to obey! Since when do we think we have to wait until our leaders have years of training and our babes months and months of coddling before we can send them out! Since when do we have to have just the right kind of an open door, just the right kind of a house or building in just the right section or city with all the best provisioning conditions‚ plenty of money and the best weather‚ before we can leave!

74. I AM BECOMING CONVINCED THAT IT'S MERELY A LACK OF PURE FAITH AND OBEDIENCE that we're not breaking up these big Colonies, or at least trimming them down by sending out more teams to needier areas around the world! And God is now trying to warn us with recent bad publicity and persecution, that it we don't obey pretty soon, He's going to smite the shepherds, and the sheep will be compelled to scatter with even less preparation, provision, protection and leadership!

75. DO WE HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL GOD FORCES US OUT, until He strikes us with calamity‚ and really severe persecution, before we're willing to leave the nest and strike out by faith, even like Abraham, and as we personally have done many times, not knowing wither we went? I'll tell you right now, I've done it many times, and God's never failed me‚ or you, or us! We did it on the road together, for a while, but maybe you've forgotten that, or maybe you don't want to have to live like that again! Well, we can if we have to, and we'd better, if it's God's Will!

76. TO OBEY IS BETTER THAN SACRIFICE, and to hearken than the fat of rams! Don't tell me we have performed the commandments of the Lord! What meaneth then this lowing of the oxen and this bleating of the sheep in mine ears? We haven't obeyed the Lord! You haven't even done what I told you to do! You're still bunched up in big Colonies and sending few teams out! God help us!

77. BUT NOW LET ME GIVE YOU THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE PICTURE! Hallelujah! Let's look at those who have obeyed, and what they have and are accomplishing! Look what happened when we sent a team of only 29 to California! They were soon two hundred and twenty-nine! They only trouble was they had such a nice big place to use for so many, they had a hard time leaving it! But you'll notice also that when TSC and L.A. didn't split up into small teams and start moving out, God eventually moved them out by force, trying to compel us to obey, or encourage us to obey!

78. BUT THE LITTLE TEAMS THAT WERE SENT OUT, GOD BLESS THEM, HE DID WONDERS WITH! First Kentucky, then Cincy‚ Santa Barbara, San Diego, San Francisco, Ohio Farm, Detroit, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Austin‚ Merkle, Houston, etc. and etc. Need we name them all? Thank God we did partially obey!—And look at the tremendous results! Every team that has been sent out has prospered, been cared for, multiplied and been fruitful, protected and blessed by the Lord, and won many new disciples in spite of many trials and tribulations, obstacles, hindrances and persecution! PTL!

79. MANY OF THESE NEW TEAMS HAD VERY YOUNG LEADERSHIP, AND PLENTY OF BABES, even some inexperienced leadership that had never run a Colony before—but they soon learned, for God was with them, blessing them for their faith and obedience! They sought His Kingdom first and all these other things were added unto them: houses, lands‚ provisions, protection, good publicity, and much good fruit! Hallelujah! What more could we ask than this, and why not now?

80. BUT YOU SAY‚ WE HAVEN'T GOT ENOUGH LEADERS LEFT, and our babes are too young and too many! Well, let's look at what's happening in Europe! We sent out the first tiny team of only six to nothing but a room in a rooming house in the huge city of London! In less than four months, they were on TV, radio and newspapers all over the place, had a Colony of 90 in London alone with a number of great places to live, all free, plenty of cars, two huge double-decker Prophet buses and oodles of provisioning, and best of all, lots of strong young new disciples and leaders!

81. NOT ONE OF THAT FIRST SIX HAD EVER RUN A COLONY BY THEMSELVES BEFORE, much less ever pioneered a Colony by themselves, much less with only six people, much less with only one room and few funds! But they had faith, self–sacrifice, vision, courage‚ and initiative, and they obeyed! And London exploded with its first pioneer Colony of the Jesus Revolution!—And the whole world heard about it! And now they're even getting too big!—Without even one band! Think of that!—(1971).

82. NOT ONLY THAT, MIND YOU, IN LESS THAN FOUR MONTHS‚ THEY HAVE ALSO PIONEERED THREE OTHER BRAND NEW COLONIES IN THREE OTHER COUNTRIES IN EUROPE that themselves are already bursting at the seams!—With very little help from us (They didn't even use the funds we sent, the Lord supplied so abundantly!), and not nearly as much personnel as they requested! So what did they do?—In a Colony where an older brother is only three weeks old and many of the leaders have never been leaders before, and where most of them didn't even speak the languages of those other countries!—Did they sit on their thumbs and say‚ no?—Did they say, we can't spare the personnel, we haven't got the leaders, our brothers are too young, we can't afford the funds, we lack transportation?

83. NO! THEY SAID YES! WE'LL GO! WE HAVE THE FAITH! WE'LL OBEY GOD! And God will supply! And He did! Hallelujah! He never failed! Even though it meant that they had to start out sleeping on the streets and in the parks, hostels and haunted houses with the rats running 'round and eating catch as catch can, and no place to teach their disciples but the parks and the public square, and not even a knowledge of the language! They just sang and played and loved and witnessed and believed their way through! They just obeyed and went and God did the rest!

84. TO DO IT, THEY HAD TO TAKE YOUNG LEADERS WHO'D NEVER HAD MUCH RESPONSIBILITY BEFORE, AND USE YOUNG BABES WHO THEMSELVES HAD JUST BECOME DISCIPLES to turn right around and start teaching the newer ones, and "older brothers" of only three weeks, to carry heavy responsibilities of caring for the new ones! To do it‚ they just used whatever they had—even without a place to lay their heads‚ or a fold for their sheep! They just kept on obeying, and God kept blessing!

85. NOW THERE ARE FOUR OR FIVE BRAND NEW COLONIES IN EUROPE AS A RESULT OF THEIR FAITH AND OBEDIENCE! And these new Colonies are already full of many new disciples of many nationalities, speaking many languages and loving Jesus just like you! So what's your excuse, big Colonies? Selah!

86. WE ARE STILL ANALYSING AND ADVISING YOU ON OUR WEEKLY STATISTICS and what we can learn from them. We have already dealt with the proportionate relationship between the number of Colonies and the total number of their members and have already told you that we have too few Colonies for the number of members we have, and need to break up some of these large Colonies into smaller ones for the sake of both obedience to the Commandment to go into all the world, as well as our own security!

87. IF PERSECUTION FORCES US UNDERGROUND, THE SMALLER THE COLONY, THE EASIER it is to hide and the less attention it draws from the Enemy, and the less adverse fire from the news media. When publicity is not favourable, it's sometimes better to have no publicity at all in order to survive. And you'll notice our largest Colonies are the ones now getting the most adverse publicity. The bigger you are and the more news you make, the more afraid they are of you, and the more apt they are to react violently against you, when there are literally hundreds of you concentrated in a single area!—Another of the disadvantages of being a large Colony!

88. BUT WHO'S GOING TO BE AFRAID OF A DOZEN OR TWO of you; although some of our dozens have even made quite a bit of news, it has usually been very sympathetic and favourable, as the system seems to tend to encourage and have compassion on the tiny group, whereas its attitude stiffens toward the large ones! The larger you are and the more publicity you get, the greater threat you become to their society and way of life, and the more they are apt to try to get rid of you! And they can get rid of you if the want to, usually by clamping down on your housing!

89. HOUSING IS THE MOST DICTATORIAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA TODAY. In most cities today you cannot even repair your house without a permit. In fact, you cannot even move into it without a use permit, and any alterations of any kind require a building permit, and the city regulations can dictate exactly how many people can occupy the building‚ exactly what your plumbing and wiring have to be, how many toilets you must have for the number of people you have, how many square feet of floor space per person, how many fire escapes, doors, windows, and even parking!

90. IF THE SYSTEM WANTS TO START CLAMPING DOWN ON YOU BECAUSE YOU'VE BECOME A NUISANCE to them, because you've stirred up too much antagonism amongst the parents who are jumping on the backs and climbing down the throats of the officials, so that they simply want to get you out of their hair‚ you're disturbing their peace, and all of a sudden you have become a serious threat to public health and safety, guilty of disorderly conduct, etc, etc.—Ha!

91. THE PARENTS CANNOT PROVE ANY OF THEIR MORE SERIOUS CRIMINAL CHARGES against you, such as hypnosis, drugs, involuntary servitude, or incarceration, kidnapping, or intent to defraud, etc., unless they actually suborn witnesses and get them to actually lie on the witness stand in order to frame you, which they may do if all else fails them and they can get no reaction from public officials against you in any other way. Try not to let it go that far if you can!

92. BUT USUALLY THEY WILL JUST STIR UP THE OFFICIALS ENOUGH AGAINST YOU so that to them you have become a public nuisance and undesirable visitors to their community! So they use the simplest and easiest and most dictatorial weapon at their command: the housing, building, zoning, health and safety and fire regulations, etc. There's hardly a building they can't condemn if they want to. They can clamp down on the restrictions and the inspection so tight that they can make it impossible to meet their requirements or economically ridiculous and extravagant!

93. OR THEY CAN PUT THE PRESSURE ON YOUR POOR LANDLORD so that they make his life miserable unless he himself asks you to leave. They even condemned and made him tear down our house in Miami‚ and the few ministers who were cooperating with us were also threatened with reprisals against their own church buildings under these dictatorial, local building codes! In America today, the government really owns your property and tells you exactly what to do with it, but makes you foot the bills!

94. THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST AND MOST DECEITFUL FORMS OF DICTATORSHIP, and is not even as fair as Socialism, where the government owns everything but at least also pays the bills! it's similar to their treatment of labourers, whom they also enslave but the employer can fire at will with no further responsibility‚ leaving them destitute and starving. Even a slave had more security! It's the cleverest form of dictatorship: They tell you you're free when you're really a slave without even a slave's security! The slave owner (employer) only owns you and takes care of you when he wants to‚ but he can cast you aside at will, and the burden of your security becomes the responsibility of the Government so—called Social Security!

95. SO WE ARE ALREADY LIVING UNDER THE WORST FORM OF PSEUDOSOCIALISTIC‚ FASCIST TYPE OF DICTATORSHIP, the very cleverest of all! As Tom Anderson, the publisher of a small Farm Journal fighting for the rights of the small farmer, once said (and the Federal Government finally put him in prison for it), The American System is the cleverest and most deceitful form of Socialistic dictatorship: They make you think you're free when you aren't and they make you think you own your property when you don't! As the famous caustic columnists, Arthur Brisbane and Westbrook Pegler, used to indicate before they passed away in disillusionment, The U.S. Federal Government became a dictatorship when it assumed dictatorial powers over your bodies through the draft laws, over your incomes through the income taxes, and over your properties through the local property laws! In fact, America has become the leader of the Fascist world of today through its own internal policies and its external support of over sixty military dictatorships out of about ninety Governments that it supports throughout the world! We are already the Nitlerian American dictatorship!

96. SO YOU HAVEN'T MUCH CHANCE HERE IN TRYING TO FIGHT CITY HALL! They can oust you if they want to‚ and if you refuse to oust, they can use even more stringent methods‚ or they can simply stand back and ignore or even protect the parents who commit crimes against you, such as kidnapping. We've had this happen! I even once had all the evidence in my hand necessary to press criminal charges against a school board that was violating the law, and the Prosecuting Attorney's Office simply refused to accept it, or let me file charges! The System protects its own!

97. SO AGAIN I SAY, YOU CAN'T FIGHT CITY HALL, unless you want to die like John the Baptist, Jesus, and Stephen did, or go to prison like Peter and John and Paul and all the other disciples! But I would advise you, as Jesus did‚ to try to stay alive and free as long as possible and "When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another‚" so you can continue to reach as many cities as possible before Jesus comes! Praise the Lord?

98. SO THE SMALLER COLONY AGAIN ATTRACTS LESS ATTENTION, OPPOSITION, AND PERSECUTION from the System, as a rule, can operate much more underground, inconspicuously, quietly, and without drawing too much notice, fear or fire. And then, when things do get hot, the smaller Colony has less invested and fewer possessions and people to move at a moment's notice, and they can go almost anywhere, as almost any of our other Colonies could take them in for a day or two until they could be en route to another location, or their members spread around and absorbed by other smaller Colonies until another location opens or they have faith to launch out and obey "GO!"

99. BUT WHAT'S A BIG COLONY GOING TO DO IN THE EVENT OF A SUDDEN AND FORCED EVACUATION? Well we've just been through this, so we ought to learn something from it, and it was only the miraculous mercy of God that we survived! How are you going to move hundreds of people suddenly all at once, including all your goods—and where are you going to go? Well, we found out! Some of them spent three nights in a park, sleeping on the ground! Others were dumped unceremoniously into the already crowded quarters of other nearby Colonies, and we didn't have sufficient transportation to even transfer them to the more commodious accommodations which the Lord so mercifully and forgivingly supplied in the emergency!—And we're still trying to dispose of their goods!

100. AND NOW THEY'RE ALL BUNCHED UP AGAIN IN SOME EVEN BIGGER COLONIES! So what is the matter with us, and when are we ever going to learn, and what can we do about it to eliminate the present problem and prevent its recurrence in the future! The only answer again is God's Commandment: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature!" "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations!" The message of His Command is clear! There is no denying it, or excusing ourselves! We must simply have the faith to obey, even if it means going out and knowing not whither we're going‚ and we have to camp out just like we did when we started until God opens another door, which He may not open until we have the faith to obey‚ no matter what!

Lead on, O King Eternal,

The Day of March has come!

Henceforth in fields of Battle,

Thy tents shall be our home!

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in tents all the days of their lives! Why not us?

101. CONSIDER THE RECHABITES, OR GYPSIES! Through their Father, the Lord commanded them "Neither shall ye build house nor sow seed nor plant vineyard nor have any: but all your days ye shall dwell in tents: that ye may live many days in the land where ye be strangers!" And "We have dwelt in tents and have obeyed" and "when Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon came up into the land we said, come, and let us go...and so we dwell!" Read the whole chapter: It will thrill you! Because of their willingness to dwell in tents when everybody else was living in houses‚ they were able to quickly escape when the trouble came, and survived! In fact, the Lord holds them up here as a shining example to His People and promises them, because of their sacrificial obedience, they would continue to survive‚ and in spite of everything: "Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand before Me forever!" Hallelujah! What an example for us in a Jeremiah time!—Jer.35.

102. WE HAVE DONE IT BEFORE, AND WE CAN DO IT AGAIN IF WE HAVE TO, TO OBEY GOD'S COMMANDMENTS and to survive to serve Him! We did it under even worse conditions than we could do it today! There were about a hundred of us then all in one group when we first started, and for a while we had no place to call home but public parks and campgrounds, not even an address where we could get our mail, or a telephone through which we could keep in touch with each other!

103. TODAY, WE ARE FAR BETTER OFF THAN THAT! IF WE HAD TO, WE COULD ALL BREAK UP INTO SMALL GROUPS, HIT THE ROAD, CAMP OUT, AND STILL KEEP IN TOUCH with each other through any number of our present bases, mailboxes and telephones! Our greatest handicap is that we've lost the pilgrim spirit, haven't kept up our campers, tents and camping equipment, and have settled down to the ease and luxury of more stationary and conventional housing in large, expensive Colonies!

104. IN FACT, WE HAVE SPENT MORE TIME BECOMING STATIONARY AND COMFORTABLE and more money repairing and maintaining, renting and equipping and furnishing stationary housing and paying huge utility bills to the neglect of our mobile equipment which has fallen into a sad state of disrepair, and in fact, has become a veritable junkyard! So that when we did need them‚ they were not ready and we were nearly immobile and barely, narrowly escaped!

105. WHEREAS, IF YOU HAD FOLLOWED MY ADVICE LAST YEAR YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN WELL PREPARED, well trained, well instructed‚ well organized, and well equipped for such moves as we have had to make suddenly in recent days. In fact, if you had done as I suggested, you would have already had many small teams on the road, and the remaining Colonies would have remained small and easy to move. But instead, we got the Big Colony spirit, a false sense of security, and forgot we were supposed to be Pilgrims and strangers here! Therefore, since we lost the Pilgrim spirit and enjoyed settling down now having desired this country, contrary to Hebrews 11:16, I believe God is ashamed of us! We've forgotten what we joined the Army for!—To go into all the world and preach!

106. THEREFORE, I AM GREATLY CONCERNED THAT GOD IS NOW PERMITTING THE ENEMY TO ARISE AND ATTACK US MORE VIOLENTLY AND WITH MORE PERSECUTION THAN EVER BEFORE, particularly, you will note, in the areas of these largest Colonies, to try to wake us up that we are again missing the pattern which God gave us in the beginning‚ and to warn us to obey while there is still time before we are forced to by even greater calamities!—As in Acts 8‚ so that God can scatter us abroad so we'll obey His Commandments and go everywhere preaching the Word!

107. I AND MY OWN LITTLE FAMILY BEGAN THIS WAY, first, in a little 14-foot trailer, then larger ones as we grew, and I believe my own flesh and blood children can testify that they have lived in these modern tents, campers, and trailers of today most of their lives. And I believe we can truthfully say‚ that as long as we kept moving, or at least prepared to move, God blessed us the most. And although sometimes it seemed necessary to settle down for a while for a little rest and recuperation‚ for the patching of our tents and the feeding of our flock and the strengthening of our lambs‚ we soon had to move on again—always and without exception, Praise the Lord!

108. SO WILL WE BE EVER LEARNING AND NEVER COMING TO A KNOWLEDGE‚ or will we keep those tents, trailers, campers, trucks and buses ready, so we can move at a moment's notice, or start moving teams out now, having the faith to obey the Lord and go into all the world! If we had spent the time and money on camping equipment we've spent on housing, we would be ready!—But we're not! May God have mercy on us and give us a little more time to get ready and get out on the move and obey! Amen?

(Remember: The above was written in U.S.A., 1971!)

109. P.S. AND TO YOU OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC WE WOULD LIKE TO ADD that we wish to encourage you to do the same to survive today's falling empires!—As the Bedouins, Gypsies, Jews, the poor and we, the Children of God, founders and leaders of the Jesus Revolution‚ have survived the rise and fall of empires and the superpowers of this world, so can you!

110. GO BACK TO THE LAND, the soil from whence man came and where the poor farmers will again survive the clashes of empires as the Chinese and poor Third World peoples will survive the coming great war for oil which will destroy the cities of the West!

111. GO BACK TO YOUR FARMS and villages and small tribal life on the land before the cities fall!—Or get yourself a tent or camper and head for the hills!—Or join our Colonies throughout the world! Jesus loves you!

112. TO PROVE THIS HAS WORKED‚ WE ARE NOW THOUSANDS living in hundred of Colonies in scores of countries on every continent around the Globe!—Why not you?

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family