THE CRASH CONTINUES! 27/10/87 DO 2381
--What Will You Do?
1. TYL! Have Thy way in Jesus' name! Thy Will be done, Lord! Give us wisdom, Lord, Thy divine anointing, Lord, for guidance & what measures to take as we prepare now for what seems to be the beginning of the big Crash, Lord, & will very likely bring the Antichrist forces into power, who are probably engineering it for that purpose, Lord, so they can seize power! TYJ! PYL!
2. You said, "Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh!"--Luke 21:28. So we're not to hang our heads in sadness or fear, but to lift up our heads & to be thankful that You're coming & Your Salvation is that much closer! We're not to worry about it, we're not to fear, we're just to rejoice, Lord, for our redemption draweth nigh! TYJ! Thank You for how You have kept us through all this, & past crises, Lord!
3. The Crash is continuing! Did you hear the morning news? Hong Kong thought they were going to save themselves by staying closed until yesterday, but all it did was cause them to have the biggest drop of any Stock Market in history, anywhere!--34% in one day! Hong Kong had dropped 23% before on the previous Black Monday as they call it. I don't know what they're going to call the other days of the week, & now this past Monday! They're going to have to call it Black Week or Black Weeks, because they're all still dropping! Hong Kong, because it had been closed up & didn't give people a chance to sell any more, had a huge drop!
4. All markets worldwide again dropped very significantly! Not just the points, but the percentage! London had a big drop again & Tokyo, the largest market in the World, had another 8% drop! New York dropped 157 points, but they didn't say what percent that is. But anyway, it's quite a drop!
5. So that's wiped out all the gains that they were so enthusiastically advertising in yesterday's news from last week's news, all the peace prophets & the encouragers & the public petters, trying to assure everybody everything's all right! Baker, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, came out with a statement on today's news that the economy is too sound, it can't possibly lead to a recession, "We have too many safeguards, & things are not like they were in '29 at all, everything's on a sounder basis now & this cannot affect the economy like it did then, blah blah!"
6. Well, he can say that, & some people might believe it, but the banks are in a very shaky condition already, & most people are going to be real shaky about their funds in the banks! The smart ones, especially the ones who remember the last Depression--& many of them are now the big rich ones, or at least the older ones--if they have any money left they're finding safer places to put it. In some cities, like Hong Kong, the banks play the market. In others, like Tokyo, they only handle the money as a brokerage, & they let their customers play the market, so it doesn't affect the banks. Of course, it will all eventually affect the banks!
7. They can give all those peace prophecies, but the public is not so dumb! They know they're just trying to save their own skins by trying to stop the slide by making all these glowing promises & prophecies of how things cannot get as bad as they were then because everything's better now, blah blah! "Everything is better now!" If bigger is better, then everything is better! If a bigger Crash is better, then it's better, because it's sure bigger!
8. And the little guy down at the bottom who didn't even have anything on the Stock Market, he's not so dumb either! He's read about '29 & he's read about the Depression & he's not going to take any chances, he's already too deep in debt, so he's going to defer buying a new house, a car, furniture or whatever, & that just brings bad to worse! Because as the buying power switches off, then the businesses go down because they're not selling as much. And then the manufacturing goes down because the stores aren't buying as much from them.
9. It's just a vicious spiral that keeps going down, one thing pushes the other, it's like a series of dominoes! So all these reassurances that "Things will not be bad, things will not get worse, we've got more protection this time, we have more safeguards, brakes, guarantees, blah blah blah," it's just not so!
THE U.S. ECONOMIC CRISIS!
10. A lot of the economists have formerly predicted doom, but they're not doing it now. They're all trying to be peace prophets, not prophets of doom, but of peace & safety. "When they shall cry, 'Peace & safety,' then comes sudden destruction!"--1Thess.5:3. That doesn't necessarily mean just war. They've just had a destruction of the Stock Market, & that can lead to destruction of the economy! The thing is, the economy was just over-inflated, it was just a big balloon ready to burst, & now it's got to get back down to where it belongs.
11. When you have guys on the assembly lines in Detroit making $13 an hour, & in the next richest nation in the World--now the richest--the same kind of guys in Tokyo only making $6.50 an hour, & the same kind of guys in places like Seoul & Taiwan making less than $1.70 an hour, then the U.S.A. has been living too high on the hog for too long!--There's too much disparity! On the one hand they have the very very rich, & on the other hand, the very very poor. Even in many Eastern countries that are well-off, they're poor in comparison to the way the Americans live!--Even in Japan, the newly-rich nation. As someone has said, it took England 100 years to get that rich, the U.S. 50 years, Japan five years!
12. Japan is the richest nation in the World today! It's got the six largest, richest banks in the World, richer than any bank in the U.S.! It has more countries owing it more money than any other nation on Earth! It's the biggest creditor on Earth, whereas the U.S.A. is the biggest debtor nation, it owes more money than any other nation on Earth! The U.S. now owes about three trillion Dollars to its major creditors, banks & people!--Yet the people have been told, as dear Pat Robertson was saying, "The safest investment is U.S. Treasury Bonds because the government is sound," blah blah! Well, wait & see!
13. The government is already bankrupt! It'll never be able to pay that three trillion! They look around & hunt around & argue & argue in the Congress trying to trim even 20 million here or there off of their current deficit! That's not talking about the main big body of debt, the three trillion Dollar debt they already owe! They're trying to cut down on what they're going to owe again this year! They're trying to cut down on how much they're spending this year above their income, debt which will be added to that three trillion Dollars!
14. It's a crisis situation, & they've been at it too long! It was '32 when Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power, & that's 55 years ago! They've been spending beyond their means ever since! The last guy who even balanced the yearly budget was Eisenhower! Nobody did it before him, but that was one of his election planks, that he was going to balance the budget, & he got in & he did! He just cut off the big spending that the Democrats always love to do. The Democrats have been the biggest spenders ever since Roosevelt, but now the Republicans have gotten the same bad habit!
15. So they're all doing it, they're all living on borrowed time, borrowed money, & they think that it just can't come to an end! The trouble is, the reason they say it can't come to an end is because they figure it just doesn't dare come to an end or everything will collapse worldwide--governments, banks, everything! And that's probably where it's headed now!
THE SLIDE CONTINUES!
16. So all the markets have had another big slide again this week, the slide is continuing! In other words, they're all still headed down! They make a few little brief recoveries here & there because somebody thinks, "Well, now maybe it's hit bottom, I want to buy these stocks while they're cheap!--They're bound to go up!"--But it goes down again! Pretty soon more & more people will begin to believe that this is it, & they'll all sell & sell, until finally the stocks on the New York Stock Market will hardly be worth anything, they won't be able to sell'm!
17. Black Monday, October 1929, was preceded by Black Friday the week before. The stocks had been losing pretty badly for 2 or 3 days already, so by the time Monday came, everybody was ready to sell out, & that was the huge Crash! But then in the following week, the stocks lost about 76%, so they kept on crashing!
18. So I've been waiting to hear the news. I thought, well, if there's going to be any recouping & any recovery at all, the weekend has come & gone now, & people have had a chance to cool off. Maybe they'll believe all these peace prophets & they'll decide that things aren't so bad after all. I said this Monday will tell the tale, & it did, they're still going down, big declines!
19. It looks like this is the start of what's really it, what we've been predicting for a long time! The Stock Market is the barometer, it's the early temperature reading of the sick patient, which is the World, not just the U.S.! And when they are convinced that it's going down, that it's not going to make a very rapid recovery, the economy will go next!
20. They're gamblers! They think they see a chance to make a "killing," as they call it! "Look, these stocks have never been this cheap before! I was paying twice this much just last week for these stocks, now I can buy them for half as much! I'm going to buy while they're low, & they're bound to go up again!" So the market will make a slight jump.
21. It's like what I've told you about gold, only the Stock Market does just the opposite: Gold goes down one step, up two steps, down a step, up two steps, whereas the Stock Market goes down two steps, up one step, down two steps, up one step! The only things that are going up right now are Yen & gold. The Yen has started up again because the Dollar has started to decline again. People lose faith in the Stock Market, then they lose faith in the Dollar, & then they begin to lose faith in the banks!
22. The Savings & Loan Associations are nearly all bankrupt, they're all in trouble! They were supposed to be the soundest type of investment with everything backed up by mortgages on property. That's why they paid the lowest rates of interest, 3 & 4%. The people who invested in them didn't like being gamblers, they wanted to bet on something solid that was a sure winner that paid solidly, whose dividends didn't go up & down & fluctuate like the banks do.
23. But all of a sudden the rate of interest their money is earning in the Savings & Loan Associations isn't even enough to keep up with inflation! Even low inflation, even the 3 or 4% inflation, 5%, 6% in the United States wipes out whatever money their interest was earning in the Savings & Loan Associations. So the people are withdrawing from them & putting their money into banks where the earnings are higher. They were putting them into stocks, but now they're fleeing the stocks.
24. They were going into bonds the first week, now they're seeing the bonds are not doing so good either! The government deliberately cut down the interest rates to keep them from going into the banks, but they'll still be going into the banks for awhile. Then as soon as they find out that the banks are not sound, the ones that are smart will pull out of them too!
25. They said the big money boys cleared out of the Stock Market six months ago when it reached its peak! They know! And though its highest peak was reached just two months ago, absolutely the highest, the big money boys didn't wait to take that chance. Some of the big economists & money managers, brokerages who know who those guys are, said, "Most of those big investors pulled their money out of the Stock Market from four to six months ago, knowing that it couldn't go much higher, & if it fell it would really fall!" So they usually know when to move & how to operate.
26. Thank God, we have the Lord's wisdom, & we know what to do too! We got out of Dollars. We could have gotten out sooner, but thank the Lord, we got out in time to save about 50%! The Dollar has actually declined over 56% since its peak about 3 years ago. We got out, thank the Lord, & it has gone down close to 50% since then! That was about 2 or 3 years ago. So by getting out of the Dollar & going to the Yen, as they say, a penny saved is a penny earned, & a penny not lost is also a penny earned! So we not only didn't lose 50%, we gained 50%, thank the Lord! And gold is going back up again too.
THE DEVIL'S DECEITS!--THE MR. MACHOWSKI STORY!
27. Right after last week's Black Monday, there was a sudden shift upwards in the Stock Market, & gold fell from $480 an ounce to $462. A lot of people said, "Uh oh, the Stock Market's going to go back up again, I'm going to dump my gold & buy my shares back again!"--How the Devil fools people, deliberately! These little ups in the Market now are going to be the Devil's own deceits to encourage people to get back in & lose some more!
28. --Just like Mr. Machowski & that demon he had, Tom! He kept winning all the races & he was getting rich making money! Until the last time, Tom told him to bet everything he had, bet his shirt on the next race! Tom saw that Mr. Machowski was getting a little leery of betting so much, he'd had such a winning streak he was afraid he was going to lose.
29. So Tom persuaded him to bet everything he had! He said, "This is the last time, the last horse, then you can get out of the running, you will have made your mint!"--And Machowski lost it all, everything he had! And he was just furious! He went home & drew the blinds & asked Tom to come, & Tom was just cackling & laughing like everything!--Like it was a big joke, that he'd pulled a real fast one on him! And that was Machowski's awakening point.
30. The Lord let it happen to awaken Machowski to the fact that Tom was not the good angel that he thought he was, he was not a good spirit, he was an evil spirit! Give the Devil enough rope & he will hang himself! Tom just couldn't resist the temptation, when he saw he was losing his grip on Machowski, to just wipe him out! Well, as a result he wiped himself out, TTL! He went too far, & Machowski woke up to the fact that he was a bad spirit, & at that time God providentially let him hear a radio preacher's broadcast on which he heard the Gospel & got saved, in his destitution. He & his wife had lost everything, & in his desperation he sought the Lord & started going to Moody Church in Chicago.
31. Tom would even come & sit beside him in Moody Church & whisper in his ear & make fun of the preacher & try to say, "Oh, that's a mistake or that's contrary! Don't listen to all that stuff, don't believe that junk!" By that time Machowski was wise to him, but he didn't know how to get rid of him. But finally the Lord led the preacher to preach on getting rid of demons & to "try the spirits," etc., so Machowski decided he was going to go home that day & try that & see if he could get rid of Tom.--And he did!
32. He went home & got his Bible & read that Scripture to Tom, along with his wife. They got together in prayer & read that to Tom & accused him to his face of being an evil spirit! He asked Tom that question: "Do you believe that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh?"--1Jn.4:1-3. Tom hem-hawed around & wouldn't answer directly. So Machowski knew then, that was the final proof to him that Tom was an evil spirit! So he was determined to get rid of him & he sought the Lord & kept rebuking him!
33. Now Machowski had joined the Christian Businessmen, & began preaching the Gospel on the street corners of Chicago. One day he was really on fire & really inspired, & while he was preaching, Tom tried to bother him, so he rebuked him in the Name of Jesus, & all of a sudden he saw a drunk in the crowd fall down writhing in a fit! (Maria: He actually rebuked him out loud in front of the crowd?) Yes, & all of a sudden this old drunk fell down having a fit, & he just knew that Tom was gone!--Into this drunk instead, & he was never bothered by him again!
34. The Devil loves to deceive people! See, he led Machowski on & on to bet more on the horses because he was winning all the time. So finally he persuaded him to bet everything he had, & the horse lost, and poor Machowski lost his shirt, he lost everything, and Tom just laughed!--And that's what's gonna happen to all these poor suckers and gamblers who keep betting on the Stock Market!--It's already happening to'm!
PRICES AFTER THE CRASH!
35. During the Depression the average daily wage was a Dollar a day. Of course, it could buy ten times as much then as it does now! You could live on a Dollar a day. In fact, you could buy a lot more for a Dollar during the Depression than you could even before the Depression. A Dollar was not very much, but the prices slumped so badly in the Depression that it could buy even more than before. Prices went down so much that a Dollar was suddenly worth much more, which meant you could buy things cheaper so you could live on less.
36. Hopefully, that's going to be the same effect now. If it's a free market where supply & demand rules the market, that's the effect it is bound to have. Because as the people cannot afford to buy as much any more, the sellers have to keep scaling down their prices to what people can afford. That's what happened before. The wages went down, the people couldn't afford to pay high prices, so the sellers had to just keep putting the prices down. It was hard on them, but at least they could stay in business.
37. My former father-in-law, T.B. Miller, was head of a big construction firm that developed a whole subdivision in Louisville, Kentucky. When the Depression got so bad that people couldn't keep up their payments on all these hundreds of homes that they had bought on time payments in this huge subdivision, my father-in-law did a smart thing. Some construction companies said, "Aha, here's our chance to make a big killing, we'll repossess all our homes!" But then all of a sudden they found that they had all the houses, they'd kicked out all the families, so had no money!
38. Instead of doing that, T.B. Miller had his people go around & say, "Well, how much can you pay? We'll scale your payments down to what you can afford in your present conditions!" So they kept a little cash coming in so they could still manage to survive, & they survived pretty well. They had a palatial home there right on the golf course, & they made ends meet by scaling things down to what people could afford.
MOTHER, R.G. WESTON AND THE TABERNACLE!
39. I've told you the story of how my Mother had foolishly gone ahead & borrowed that $10,000 from R.G. Weston to finish the Tabernacle in Miami. He said, "I want you to finish it quickly so that when Raymond Richey comes & the head of the Alliance comes, they'll see a nice pretty finished building!" She said, "I haven't borrowed a penny on this building before & I don't want to borrow any now!" But he just insisted that she take it! He said, "I won't charge you any interest & I'll probably never even ask you for it again!" But that was before the Crash!
40. He had been a millionaire, & he was really hard hit by the Crash. He was a lumberman, & the building business took a nosedive, so of course the lumber business took a nosedive, so he was scouting around for any little bit of cash he could get! When things were going great & booming in Miami, Mother had insisted on paying him back, "All right, you let us pay at least $350 a month & that'll be a thousand Dollars every three months, $4000 a year, & we'll pay it off in a couple of years." So he agreed.
41. Then the Crash came, & it began in Miami in '27. The boom broke in Miami, the land boom, & the [EDITED: "financiers"] were pulling in their money & pulling in their loans & confiscating properties like mad! Those who wanted the property grabbed the properties, they had the mortgages & they foreclosed.
42. But a lot of smart [EDITED: "financiers"] whose business was built on cash, who didn't just want property, they went around like T.B. Miller did & said, "We know you can't afford to pay these big payments any more, what can you afford to pay?" So they kept their liquidity. They kept some money coming in so they didn't absolutely fold, didn't wind up broke with a bunch of empty properties on their hands like some guys did--property poor!
43. The Tabernacle lost its crowd when the Boom burst because a lot of people left Miami & went back to where they'd originally come from. People who had lots of money & had been gambling on the local real estate market wound up standing in the soup line in their nice business suits right there at the Tabernacle, just trying to get a bowl of free soup! Times were tough! So the Tabernacle official board wrote Weston & asked if he could please cut those monthly payments in half, that they just couldn't afford to keep up those payments any more.
44. But by this time Weston had gotten greedy. Mother had taught him to preach & he had become an evangelist, & he had his eye on that lovely clime in Miami when he was living in retirement with heart trouble before he got healed at the Tabernacle. So he was a preacher now who wanted to go back to Miami, & he decided he wanted the Tabernacle.
45. So he wrote back & said, "You made a vow, you promised to pay $350 a month, now you must keep it before God!"--Very self-righteous language! So my father wrote a letter to him. By this time Weston was president of the National Board of the Christian Missionary Alliance.--Money really gets you up there fast! In just a few years he'd gone from being nobody, nothing, just a retired rich man with one foot in the grave, to becoming the president of the Christian Missionary Alliance! And now he wanted to return to Miami & pastor the Alliance Tabernacle!
46. My Mother begged my Dad not to write this hot letter, but my Dad went ahead & wrote it! He was about my temperament. And he really ripped that National Board up & down, up one side & down the other, particularly Weston, for their attitude!--How could they treat Christians this way! He told them, "Even the [EDITED: "financiers"] of Miami are more soft-hearted than you, & are cutting down payments! Yet you Christians won't even cut down payments to Christians, your own people, your own members!"
47. The reply they got from Weston was a legal foreclosure notice! He didn't even reply to the letter or anything, they just got a notice from the court that they were foreclosing! Then they never heard anything more from them until they got a telegram saying, "Be out of the Tabernacle before next Sunday when we are going to take over & R.G. Weston will be there to preach!" Just like that!
48. So even the Christians were more hardhearted than the [EDITED: "worldly financiers"]! I would say that as much as the [EDITED: "ACs"] hate us, I don't think they've done as much damage to us & hated us as much & gone around actually fighting against us as much as some of these so-called Christians! So anyhow, those are some long stories, but I'm giving you some ideas of what happened around that time.
49. So we moved out! We only had about a week's notice. We had furniture, furnishings, offices, all kinds of things that had to be moved. Mother got permission from the nearby Junior High School right across the street in the next block to hold next Sunday's services in their auditorium. And she still had a pretty good crowd. The crowd had now dwindled down to a few hundred due to the Crash & the Boom burst & so many people leaving Miami. They used to call it the Boom, the Burst & the Blow! The Tabernacle had been wrecked by the Hurricane, but she rebuilt it, & finished rebuilding it with Weston's money, sad to say.
50. I think Mother's ministry in Miami was really finished then. If it hadn't been for her radio ministry, which was booming, I don't think she'd have been able to survive. But a lot of shut-ins & disabled people who couldn't go to church began listening to her program & she got a lot of income pouring in from Radioland. So that helped her make it. Her congregation had already dwindled down to a few hundred in the Tabernacle, & when they moved to this other building, the first Sunday or two they came along.
51. But a lot of them were denominational people, so as soon as they saw the Tabernacle was going to continue under a stable denomination--they were advertising that they were continuing & all this--& Mom was leaving it, a lot of them slowly drifted back to the Tabernacle. They had built the building & they loved the old place & blah blah, & the school auditorium was just a temporary thing, so the crowds dwindled.
52. She then got this two-story building downtown, right across from the courthouse, an old garage. She fixed it up downstairs for a chapel, & the upstairs had rooms & offices. That went along pretty good for quite awhile, it held a couple of hundred people, but then the roof blew off in the next hurricane & they had to move to another school auditorium out in Buena Vista. About that time was when they had Winrod & some of those guys come down who were exposing the [EDITED: "AC"] Conspiracy, & that just about finished her up in Miami! The [EDITED: "ACs"] were in control then & got on her case!
53. I came down one Sunday morning, I'll never forget it, to go to Sunday School, & here were these [EDITED: "people"] out front parading back & forth, pickets with big signs [EDITED: "protesting against her church"]. [DELETED] They were yelling & screaming, making a horrible fuss! They are horrible when they get like that! And they had persuaded the city to padlock the door, wouldn't let us use the auditorium any more!
54. So Mother just dismissed the service then & said, "We'll have to find someplace else to meet tonight!" Maybe they got that store building by that time. Somebody got them a store building out in Little River, way out from the center of town. By this time the crowd had dwindled down to only about 50!
55. Mother was through! When she lost the Tabernacle she should have read the handwriting on the wall, that the Lord wanted her to get back out in Evangelistic Work! She was still popular & famous enough then, she could have still gotten big meetings on the road. But when she dwindled down to almost nothing in Miami, people were almost ashamed to invite her, when she only had a little handful of about 50 people meeting in a little storeroom!
56. Well, that's a way of telling you what the Depression did to us then. Now we'd better stop & think about what the Depression might do to us now! I didn't mean to tell you that whole story, but that's just a little personal sample of how fast things went down.
THE FINAL SOLUTION: WAR!
57. I think it was '35 when we lost the Tabernacle, & things just kept going down from there. The Depression got worse & worse until FDR bettered things a little. Then he managed to declare war after the December 7th bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. I think it was the next day, he went before Congress & persuaded Congress to declare war. He'd been waiting for it, working for it all the time.
58. But there were a lot of "America Firsters" in the U.S. who said, "America First!--We're not going to go to Europe's rescue again! We went to their rescue once before, & we're not going to do it again & lose millions of our boys & millions of Dollars, etc.!--We're not going to do it again!" They were fighting against going into the war.--Right during Roosevelt's big push to get into the war!
59. The German Bunds, all the German clubs across the country, of course, were against it. So what FDR couldn't do to end the Depression with his big socialised programs & spending all that money & getting so many millions in debt, he did with WW2!--By lavish spending on so-called defense industries & aircraft plants & billions of Dollars spent to get into the war! This was a typical cycle of War-Boom-Bust! First they'd been through the WW1 boom, then the Bust, the Great Depression, then it took WW2 to get'm out of it! That'll probably be the way the whole thing ends up this time as well!
60. This time the Antichrist is going to be the FDR! FDR almost as good as changed the entire economic system of the U.S. to a deficit country & a spendthrift country, printing worthless money! They made all these radical changes in American policy & government & the economy to help to pull them out of the Depression. And what he couldn't do with that, he did by resorting to war!--And I wouldn't be a bit surprised that that'll be the same scenario again!
61. First the AC will show his genius by pulling them out of the Depression by his new economy & his new credit system & all of that. And finally, if that doesn't do it all the way, he'll say, "Well, we've got to kill all the people who are fighting this administration, wipe'm out! The thing that's really keeping this whole program from succeeding is our opponents, our enemies, these religious countries like the U.S.A., etc., so we'll just have to wipe them out!"--And then comes the war!
62. I can almost promise you that's the scenario it's going to follow! How fast, I don't know. In the last Depression, the Depression really hit bottom when Roosevelt was elected in '32. Europe got into the war, September 30th, 1939. So from the Stock Market Crash in '29 to the war was ten years. Then it was in the 12th year, '41, that the U.S. got into the war.
THINGS MOVE MUCH FASTER NOW!
63. Everything is moving a lot faster today! This was a double drop of the Stock Market! The Stock Market not only dropped more in volume & points in the Dow Jones, but the percentage was double the drop of '29! So the Stock Market dropped faster actually percentage-wise in one day than '29. Everything moves faster today, & this could all happen so fast!
64. From '29 to '32 President Hoover kept talking like the politicians are talking now, right until he got fired! For three years, from October '29 to November '32, the election that put FDR in, Hoover kept talking like that! He kept saying, "It wasn't the government's fault, we're doing everything we can," for three whole years as things got worse & worse, until things finally hit absolute bottom! From the '29 Crash to the bottom in '32 was about three years.
65. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes half that time, a year-&-a-half, maybe only a year, this time to hit bottom! People are better informed, people know the history more, they're going to be more scared. If they've got any sense at all they're going to start worrying about the banks & pulling their money out!--And once the banks fail, businesses fail, manufacturers fail, industries fail & unemployment skyrockets! It could be worldwide & worse than ever, & I expect it to be!--And it could be faster than ever!
66. Communication is faster! That's one reason this big drop was so fast. They had computers selling stocks in split-second transactions, computers which were programmed to sell if the stocks reached a certain level, & to keep selling if they kept going down! So these computers were trading huge blocks of huge investors' stocks, mutual funds & all kinds of things like that, retirement funds & so on, were selling billions of Dollars worth! Just think, this drop wiped out half-a-trillion Dollars! It wiped out over 500 billion Dollars worth of the New York stocks!
67. Now don't tell me even the dumbest common man on the street isn't going to see that something's happening! He's heard of the Great Depression. Even the kids have heard of the Great Depression & that it was the Stock Market Crash that brought it on! Everybody's going to start getting tighter with their money, holding on, & this then makes things even worse. Because the more they cut down their spending & buying, the more the others have to cut down their selling & their producing & all the rest!
68. It took only three years then, but with today's transportation, communication & information, things go much faster!--The people know better, they know what happened last time, they know which way it's going to go, & they're going to try to get out faster this time & save themselves faster!--And the faster they do it, the faster it will go, & the faster will come the total collapse! It's a vicious cycle!
69. First the wages drop.--The producers tell their employees, "Well, we can't afford to pay you so much any more! Look at the prices! We can't even sell our stuff without lowering the prices, so we've got to lower your wages!" That's the beginning! In fact, they've already started doing that in some of the airlines & some of the big industries that have been having trouble! Several aircraft companies have already reduced wages & laid off thousands of employees! What are they going to do now if in the past two or three years they've already been doing this? Things have now gotten much worse!
70. That's why it's the stupidest thing the way the Stock Market kept climbing higher & higher when things have gotten worse & worse! It's only the gambling spirit of the Stock Market that's kept making the stocks shoot up when everything else has been going down! Everything else has literally been going down! Reagan getting up there like Hoover & saying, "Things are getting better & better in every way, blah blah!" it's a lot of baloney!
71. People are wiser now than they were then, they're smarter now, better informed about history! They've had one great Crash & great Depression, & if they're smart, they'll figure that this is going to follow the same pattern! So everybody cuts down, everybody accepts lower wages. Pretty soon they begin to have to accept cuts in wages, getting fired, then they go to get their unemployment allotment for as many weeks as they can, until it runs out!
72. So things could go a lot faster! This is prognostication! I am assuming from past experience & the warnings the Lord has given us that things are really going to crash & really go down!
73. Nowadays the World is so interlocked, financially, politically, every way, that anything that happens in the New York Stock Exchange immediately affects all the Stock Markets worldwide! The last time, it started in the dear old U.S.A. with the big Crash of '29, & then it just steam-rolled all the way around the World, & the whole World went down! It was a worldwide economic Crash! It was a worldwide Depression! There weren't any areas that were flourishing or prospering, everybody went down, rich & poor!
WHY THE CRASH?
74. If God is God & just at all, He's probably going to make it crash worse this time, especially in preparation for the Antichrist! Because obviously it's His Will for the Antichrist to arise, otherwise He wouldn't let him! It says, "When He that now letteth (prevents, holds back) shall be taken out of the way, then shall that Wicked be revealed!"--2Thess.2:7. That's when the AC is fully revealed.
75. Why does God do it?--To punish the people for their sins! They've worshipped Mammon, they've worshipped money, they've worshipped luxury, they've worshipped things, they've worshipped the Stock Market, their own arm that they thought had saved them, & they've chucked God out of everything!--Including the U.S. schools & whatnot, so God's going to let them collapse, fall flat on their faces!
76. All these Peace Prophets, such as Pat Robertson, now running for President, he's going to see something that's going to make him thank God if he doesn't make it! Who wants to be President during the worst Depression the World's ever known? That's one thing you can say for old LBJ, President Johnson, he got out, he said he wouldn't run. He said, "I don't want to be the first President of the U.S.A. to lose a war!"--The Vietnam War.--So he got out & left Nixon holding the bag! And Nixon even got in worse trouble --for less things than Reagan has done!
77. This Iran-Scam thing was far worse than a little burglary to get some political secrets like Nixon did, but Watergate lost him the White House! Some guys have already moved for Reagan's impeachment, but nobody would listen. Well, he's an actor & he's talked himself out of things, but this is one thing he's not going to talk himself out of! He's going to be President, obviously, when the U.S. is going through the biggest Crash it's ever had! And of course they're going to blame it on the Republicans, because they're the Party in power at the time of the Crash, just like they blamed it on the Republicans last time. They blamed Hoover & the Republicans for bringing on the Great Depression. They warned them, "If you put in the Democrats, they're the War Party & they'll get us into a war!"--And they did!
78. Almost every single war the U.S. has had was started by the Democrats! And nearly every one of the big economic problems, it wasn't the Republicans who brought it on, they just suffered the consequences of the lavish spending of former Democratic administrations! It wasn't Reagan alone who brought on deficit spending & the three-trillion-Dollar debt hanging over their heads, it was also brought on by former administrations, beginning with FDR!
THE ONE-YEAR WIND-DOWN!
79. So, how fast is it going to go?--How soon could we hit bottom? I'd say it's possible maybe even next year, things could move so fast!
80. It remains to be seen just how much this is going to affect our income, but of course it's bound to affect it. Although our people are not involved in System jobs & industry, etc., the people who give to them & buy our products, etc., they're going to cut down, & that's going to cut down our Family income, & that's going to cut down our WS income. It's just bound to, they just can't help it! So we need to start getting our people adjusted to lower incomes.
81. We should cut off absolutely everything that is not really necessary or urgent now! I don't want to cut down any necessary budgets if we can help it, because expenses are still high. Let's wait until the World situation shows & convinces our people that I'm right, that that's the way it's going, & they can see that they cannot support us as well, therefore we have to cut down on Units & budgets.
82. I believe that this time this is it! Last time on our wind-down we found out how little we could get along on, & still produce even more with less. But the Crash didn't happen then. Instead the Lord gave us a last big boom! We started talking about the wind-down over three years ago & we did it. We kept winding down & winding down, & it took about a year to wind down. All right, we did it, we proved we could do it then.
83. But the Lord blessed us & our income went up instead, so we then got a little more lavish & a little more free-spending, & thank the Lord we did a lot of things we couldn't do under the wind-down. We wound up! Therefore we published a whole lot of books we wouldn't have published under the wind-down, we gave out a whole lot of gifts we wouldn't have given under the wind-down, & really, in these last 3 years of what was supposed to have been a wind-down, we've spent more, given more, distributed more & shared more than in any three previous years we've ever known! Because the Lord was so good to us!--And you!
84. But now, with the Crash, I would be surprised if it takes as long to hit bottom as it did last time, from '29 to '32, three years! I believe it's going to go a lot faster! And if we're smart, I think maybe we ought to operate just like any good business or industry that sees what's coming. Let's jump the gun, let's beat'm to the draw, so to speak! Let's not plan on having three years till we hit the bottom! Let's not even plan on having two years to the bottom! Let's start a one-year wind-down right now! I will be very surprised if we manage to keep anything like our previous income for the past three years.
85. These past three years have been our boom! But God prepared us in mind & heart for the Crash, & we've already had a trial run. We had a fire drill to show what we can do, & we did it, PTL! Now here it is. Let's do it again! I believe with all my heart we're now going to have to do it! That was a trial. We thought maybe that was it, because I didn't see how it could last this long. Now here it is! Look at it! Read it! See it! This is it! I don't see how it can be anything else! It's been predicted for a long time!
THE BAROMETER READING: BIG STORM A-COMIN'!
86. It's not only going to hit in the Stock Market! That's always the indicator, that's the barometer. What does a barometer tell you? (Peter: The weather, the pressure.) When the barometer falls, that isn't the storm yet, it tells you the storm is coming. The Stock Market is the barometer of business & the economy, & all the barometers around the World are on their way down & hitting unknown lows, hitting catastrophic lows! You've heard people testifying, one guy says it's murder, another says it's a catastrophe, and one said it's the end of the World! Could be!--Their World, as the guy in "Roll Over" said!
87. The barometer's going down, so the storm is coming! A barometer indicates a fall in air pressure which attracts the storm winds into the low pressure area, which makes a storm. It's falling so fast I don't think the storm is going to be too far away! You say, "Oh, Dad, you're always the calamity-howler, the Prophet of Doom! You're always screaming at us like this in these meetings, trying to scare us to death!" Well, as the guy said, "I'd rather scare you into Heaven than love you into Hell!" I'd rather preach doom too soon than to preach it too late! And I'd rather be prepared too soon than too late!
88. The economy of the World is much shakier today than it was then! Under Hoover they had no huge debt hanging over their heads, they were still balancing the budget! There wasn't a three-trillion-Dollar debt! There wasn't a third of the World so poor that they borrowed so much money from the rich World that they couldn't pay it back! The World is much worse off & in much more serious condition today than it's ever been in before!--Despite all these liars I've been hearing saying, "We're better off today than we were then!" They're much worse off today!
89. The banks are in much worse condition! The banks are writing down a lot of these debts owed them by Third World countries as assets! They'll be doing well if they get ten cents back on each of their Dollars! What are these Third World countries going to do? What are they going to do about those debts?--They're going to abrogate them, they're going to default, they're going to refuse to pay! They can't pay, they have to refuse to pay!
90. The prognosticators who know, the banking economists, bankers & businessmen have said if those Third World countries get together & refuse to pay, that's it! The system collapses! If they can't pay, the system collapses, the entire banking system, & that means the economy, & the whole thing goes down!--Chaos!
91. So what do we do about it?--We go into an immediate, God willing, no more than a one-year wind-down, & we cut off all the fat right now that we can, whatever we can cut off without notice! I don't like to cut people down without notice, but we wound-down last time 10% a month so they could learn to tighten their belts & learn to economise & learn that they just aren't going to have as much money to spend any more!
92. Lord Jesus, help us Lord, in Jesus' name! Lead & guide us! We need to start immediately on a one-year wind-down, & hope that that will be sufficient! If things crash even faster & our income dramatically drops even faster, then we'll have to do something even more dramatic ourselves! I believe in living within our income, absolutely! And that includes holding sufficient reserves for absolutely essential Units, sufficient for them to be able to survive in case it gets to the point where we have little or no income!--And I don't think that's going to happen until the Antichrist becomes strong enough to really take control.
WHAT IF?!
93. I've been talking to the children at night at prayer time, talking about this & that. They said, "Well Grandpa, it can't be that long because you've got to die on your birthday in '89 to be 70, & the Lord therefore has got to come on your birthday so we can all go Home to Heaven together instead of you just dying!" I said, "Children, that was my wishful interpretation, that was my hopeful thinking, & I have extended that possibility to the Family as the most optimistic possible forecast that we might make some of these indicators fit into! But it does not have to happen that way, it ain't necessarily so!"
94. I have understood those prophecies, indicators, interpretations, to generally mean something like that, but those are our interpretations! God has never said to me specifically, "Dave, I'm going to take you Home in the Rapture on February the 18th, 1989!" Neither has He ever said, "I'm going to take you Home through death on February 18, 1989!" So don't get too optimistic about how short this coming period's going to be! We just might get surprised!
95. I could die in '89, but it doesn't seem to me that that period allows for enough time for events to wind up! Who knows?--Only God knows! This doesn't mean that I'm a false prophet, it doesn't mean that God hasn't kept His promise, it doesn't mean anything except that maybe we just didn't interpret things right if it doesn't happen that way! But enough is happening to prove that, generally speaking, our time schedule of God's prophecies is correct, & especially stuff you can read right out of the Book, that God's already said specifically. We know that these major events are bound to happen soon, & are on the way right now!
96. I suggested, as I recall, that those prophecies about the Antichrist & him setting up the Image of the Beast in the holy place could possibly be spiritually interpreted.--This is going back really to what my Father believed. He said, "There is no more Jewish Temple, there is no holy place! How could he set it up there like a lot of Bible interpretators have said?" Of course, he was accustomed to spiritualising a lot of things. But he said, "The holiest place on this Earth today is your heart! Your heart is the holy of holies, the holy place!"
97. He even said in those days, "They already worship the Image of the Beast in their hearts! The Antichrist forces of the World have already set up the Image of the System & the worship of materialism & things & money & all the rest!" What is the Image of the Beast? What is the Beast?--To him it was the whole Antichrist System already present in the World. This is just to tell you another interpretation. But who knows, maybe he was right, & maybe we were wrong in our interpretation.
98. Maybe Dad was right!--Not this Dad, but my Dad! He was saying that the Antichrist System is already in the World, that the whole World is virtually Antichrist! Even the Christians have become anti-Christ in the way they act & allow their government of the greatest Christian nation on Earth to kick God out! He said, "They've already set up the worship of the Beast in their hearts!"--And that was before the days of television! Now we've got something that we can be even more specific about that has materialised, that we can actually see!--Where the worship of the TV Beast goes on in every home already!
99. What if that's what it means? You say, "But we don't have a Mark of the Beast yet!" We don't? Well, maybe not to the full extent yet. We don't have it on our foreheads or in our hands yet, but in that Chapter, Revelation 13, it does not say how long it was from the setting up of the Image to the Mark of the Beast!
100. But I believe the AC is a man, I can't believe it's as broad a spiritual thing as the System. But it's certainly the Antichrist's System today & he's taking it over, that's obvious! I believe it's a man, & that he's already taken over most of the World through his anti-Christs[DELETED]!
101. It doesn't say how long it will be from the time he sets up the Image of the Beast to the time he institutes the Mark of the Beast. Maybe they're working on it right now! They're definitely working on it! They've got the whole logistics of the system ready to go! They've already got all their packages marked to be read by their little scanners, they've already got all the potential & the equipment to do it, all they have to do is institute it, put it into effect, & I think that will come no doubt with the revelation of the Man himself!
102. All it would take would be for this Crash to get so bad that the World has absolutely gone to pot, & somebody has to save it, & he appears as the saviour! And he says, "I will save you!--If you do this, & if you do that, & if you will institute this type of measure & this type of economy & this type of a Mark, identification number" or whatever they want to call it! Of course, they're not going to call it the "Mark of the Beast," it's going to be your identification card or chip in your hand or in your forehead!
103. The System is already prepared for it & is preparing for it & expecting to do it! They've already got a system that they can put one of these little chips in the bottom of your car & know where your car is at all times! So I don't doubt that they'll be able to trace you & know where you are all the time & somehow control you once you accept the Mark!--Definitely control your buying & selling, that's specific.--Rev.13:17.
104. It's so easy to put into effect, it could happen almost overnight!--"Do you want to get out of this big mess, you want to get out of this horrible Crash, you want to save our economy, save our very lives, you want to eat?--You've got to take this Mark!" What if?
105. You might say, spiritually speaking, that the Image of the Beast is already set up in the holy of holies of the hearts of men! God doesn't call the old Jewish Temple the Temple. Jesus & the Apostles called your body the Temple!--1Cor.3:16; 6:19. And if you already worship the Image of the Antichrist System in your heart, & you'd rather make money than serve God, you'd rather watch television than read the Word, then you've already got the Image of the Beast in your holy of holies right now!--You're already worshipping him!
106. What if there is a longer period than we expected, if the Mark of the Beast is not immediately declared, but they wait until the System gets in such bad shape that he can persuade the people to do it, "This is the only thing that can save you! You've got to do this to save the System!"
107. What if this Crash goes so fast, it hits bottom by this time next year? What if? I'm not saying it will, but it could!--It could! It took three years last time, but everything moves much faster now with computers, communications & everything, & I think it will move faster than it ever moved before! It could hit bottom even in the early part of next year, as far as it dare go before somebody saves it!
108. But let's play it safe & be temperate & moderate & conservative, let's say it will take a year--we hope--& won't hit bottom till then. Then let's say it might take a few more months for the Man to make his appearance & convince the people that they've got to institute this Mark system or there's no salvation, no way to get out of it. This is the Fall of '87, we've got next year, '88, it might only take a few more months to have him reveal himself & say, "I am your saviour, & this is the only way I can save you!" Who knows? It may be a lot closer than you think!
109. "So Dad, what can we do about it?" All right, I'm saying we need to go into the one-year wind-down beginning right now, & we need to immediately cut off all unnecessary expenses. We'd better start cutting down on all the big generous gifts we've been giving.
110. We need to institute this one-year wind-down plan immediately! It is also going to have to be a one-year phase-out plan for any Units that are not absolutely necessary to the survival of the Worldwide Work!
SYSTEM SURVIVAL!
111. When the Antichrist System takes over completely, almost everybody's going to have to get a job, more or less. How are our people going to survive outside the System? How are they going to survive if they can't go out on the streets with the Posters & Tapes or even house-to-house or office-to-office or whatever? What if it's forbidden?
112. In some countries it's already forbidden! And you can bet your boots as soon as the Antichrist System takes over fully, it will be forbidden, as it is in Russia! They can't go on the streets selling Posters & Tapes & house-to-house, office-to-office. They can't get their income working that way. How do they get it?
113. Well, right now, you people outside Russia are sending it in to help support them! But what if the whole World--& the whole World is going to be more or less that way--what if it's going to all go that way, then what? (Peter: It would be nice to have a job.) So you'd better have some kind of skill!
114. I've looked at these dance videos recently & I've thought, well thank God, if we didn't do anything else, we've taught these girls a trade, a skill, a talent! They're beautiful, & that's something the World will always want & they'll always have no matter what! They'll always need beautiful women! And if they like beautiful women, they will have need of beautiful dancers! I believe they've got a trade that they can earn their living with if they had to. They can do better than any strippers I ever saw! Compared to our girls' dancing, the strippers' stuff is junk, it's mud, it's ugh! Yuck, as the kids say! Our girls are more beautiful & can dance better, more beautifully & more sexily than any of those coarse bumps & grinds of the ugly Worldly stripper!
115. Some of you may be glad you know computerisation! Our typists may be glad they're typists, artists that they're artists, musicians that they're musicians & the maintenance crews that they're good builders & repairmen! Any government can always use all those skills.
116. We've been pretty independent because the World has been free & we have received our income freely through the post, through the mail. We still have a pretty good system, but when things get that tight, brother, then our people will be thankful they've got jobs & a skill or a talent that can be used by the System! So don't knock it!
117. Just because you may have to abide by stricter System rules & a tighter schedule, you may be very thankful that you can earn enough money to survive on, if you can manage to be there on time & stick to the schedule & stick to the rules! It's almost like what I said about keeping the traditions & conforming a little bit to the society, becoming one.--If we have to work for support, but at the same time are able to witness as well, why not?
118. Just because our people have to be somewhere on time & dress accordingly & keep a normal work schedule, is no reason for saying, "We're not going to work for those people & be tied down & bound & have to keep a System schedule like that!" They may be very happy at some jobs, particularly if it gives them the opportunity to entertain, speak with, minister & witness to others! I think the time may be right for some of our people in some countries & circumstances to get ready for it, in case we have to withdraw their support, which could be very likely if things get bad enough!
119. Many of God's people in the Bible worked or served in the System, from Moses to David to Daniel, etc.! Jesus was a carpenter until He was 30! Paul made tents! Lydia made purple cloth! Most of the Disciples were fishermen!--And when times got tough, they fell back on these trades! What are you gonna do? GBAKY witnessing & winning souls whatever you do!--Amen?
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family