THE SCHOOL VISION! DO 2430 11/87
--God's Answer to Our "Child Crisis"!--"Feed My Sheep!"
1. Amen, Lord, You said "Ye shall have that mind in you which is also in Christ Jesus."--Phil.2:5. So give us Thy wisdom, Lord, in Jesus' name. You've never failed to do it, Lord, in whatever we've tackled. You've not failed in one of all Your good promises, TYJ!
2. If the Lord provided the properties & places, I wouldn't be a bit surprised that schools for our children would become pretty popular with the Family. In the school where I taught, because there weren't very many rooms available, & some of the classes weren't very big--I had the biggest class in the whole school--we had to combine two grades in one classroom, 7th & 8th grades both. I had about 25 kids in each grade, or 50 kids all together.
3. Twelve students per class is supposed to be the ideal. According to California regulations, 25 is supposed to be the limit. Of course, we were a private school, we didn't have to conform to all the regulations. 50 was just like one teacher having to teach two full grades, which it was, & it was a job. The Lord was getting me ready to run this outfit! If I could live through that, I guess I could live through anything!
4. If you were one of our parents & you realised what a poor teacher you were yourself, & you didn't have time to teach your kids like you should, & there was a Family boarding school available, what would you do? If I'm not mistaken, such a school could become a very popular place, & parents would want to send their kids, unless their kids are really active & witnessing & busking & they need them. But I'm sure a lot of them would love to get them in such a school, at least for awhile, if they could spare'm for a year or so until they felt it had done them some good.
MINIMUM AGE FOR BOARDING SCHOOL STUDENTS
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5. At such boarding schools, I don't think we should normally accept kids younger than six or seven, we're not talking about running nurseries. I think kids should normally be with their folks--or at least near their folks--until they're at least Techi's age. She's 8, but she could have gone off to school at 7 & been old enough & mature enough. It would have been hard on her, maybe she wouldn't have liked to go in some ways, but in other ways maybe so. It's an adventure for kids & they like to get away & be with other children!
6. 13, 14 & 15 is an age when kids are really coming of age, maturing, especially in our Family. ... Out in Texas where we lived, they even had the old System of 8 years of grade school, four years of High School, & that was it. But you should have seen their 8th grade graduations!--Caps & gowns & everything, because a lot of them didn't expect their kids to go on to High School, they went right to work on the ranch, or they got married, started to be farmers' wives, as soon as they graduated from the 8th grade. So when my kids graduated from this little country school there in Stephenville, Texas, it was a big celebration! A very small percentage would go on to High School.
7. They had a big graduation, caps & gowns, the whole works. Some of you may have seen that picture of Faithy in a cap & gown. (See BOR 1, pg. 178.) It looked like she was graduating from college! Well, she was smart enough, she didn't need to know anything more for the business she was going into, the Lord's Work. She knew all she needed to know for that. I remember Aaron's teacher at the time that he graduated, he said, "You know, your son has really got the mind of a lawyer! You must send him to law school! He ought to become a lawyer!" I said, "He's already a lawyer of the greatest Law there is!"--And I waved my Bible at him & I said, "This Law!" PTL!
8. In our school in Los Angeles we followed the curriculum of the public schools, the state curriculum, & used the same textbooks, everything, except we didn't teach biology the way they did, & we applied things any way we wanted to. That way it was easy for kids to come from public schools into our school. They were taking the same courses & the same books & everything if they transferred. We did that purposely for that reason, it made it easy on the kids. But when it came to evolution & all that baloney, we just pooh-poohed the whole works & did something else!
9. One reason we have so few older teens & so many more younger children, is because in the days when those teens were born there were very many fewer of us! We started having those older children in the early days when there were just a few of us, that's why we don't have as many teens. So I would presume that we would have the least number of students in the upper grades.
10. Worldwide we've got 1400 children under two years old. Then we've got almost another 1900 that are two to five years old. Two to five means including two and up to but not including five. That's over 3,000 children under five years old. So you've actually got about 3,300 children who are under five years old worldwide. Maybe the percentages would help:
11. We've got 12% under two years old, & 15.6% two, three, & four year olds, up to but not including five.--We had a baby boom apparently! That makes 27.6% under five! And 27.4% are five years to twelve. So thank God over one half of our children are under school age right now. We're having a baby boom right now! We're having an average of 60 new babies every month, two a day, & we're growing all the time, largely by way of the birth canal. The Family statistics are growing, including disciples, thank the Lord! So that totals 55%.--Over half of our total TRF population is children, and over half of our children are under five.
12. We could start taking them at our boarding schools at 7 years, although I wouldn't like to take them away from their parents. If they want to run a nursery school for the School staff & parents & all, that's a different story, but to take them away from their parents, hundreds of miles away or something like that, it would be pretty hard on the kids, & I think it would be pretty hard on the parents.
13. I think there are going to be a lot of those parents who are going to want to send them whether they'd like to go or not, & of course it's still in our Family, that's a whole lot different than going to a System boarding school! We've got good sweet Christian teachers, loving teachers who'd mother them & father them. Even though the parting could be pretty hard, they do it in Britain all the time, send them away to those schools at 7 years of age!
14. Well, the point is, we don't normally want to take them in as boarders under 7. I think they should be at least 7 years old, if the parents insist on sending them, or really need to for the work's sake. But I don't think we'll have very many who will want them to go, or the kids who'd be willing to go at such a young age, but I think we'll have a few as young as 7 years of age.
OUR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION: A DESPERATE NEED
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15. The education of our children is already getting to be a monumental thing, a desperate need. [DELETED]
16. [DELETED] I guess the parents were just busy, witnessing & distributing & doing what the Lord called us to do, even if they couldn't teach their own kids.
17. So I think a lot of parents, although they'd miss them, would really feel relieved that their kids were at least going to get a thorough education in the subjects that we consider important.--Not a broad public school type of education, but a really serious Family education in the 3 R's, plus Bible.
THE SOUL CLINIC COURSE!
18. I am still sold on the old Soul Clinic course, because they designed it to make instant missionaries. Fred started off with only three months training, & they had six basic courses, & later we added one or two more we considered essential to make good witnesses. That's the major emphasis & the major need. We weren't even interested in a broad general education, & we didn't have to teach reading & writing & arithmetic, they were supposed to have already learned that. Our goal was to make good witnesses & missionaries out of them.
19. Our number one course, of course, was witnessing & how to witness, what to do & not to do, what to say or not to say. Maybe I should have put Memory Work first, because you couldn't very well witness unless you've had some Memory Work! Maybe even before that I would have put Bible Knowledge. Some of them who came to our schools had never cracked a Bible in their life, they'd just gotten saved. But now they wanted to witness. They knew virtually nothing about the Bible except John 3:16 & a few verses they got saved on.
20. Bible Knowledge was simply a general Bible synopsis--that's what they call it in Bible College where they like to use big words--a bird's eye view of the whole Bible as an entity & what it's composed of, which Books are the historical Books, poetic, prophetic Books & all of that. In that course you also learn a lot about Bible lands & the geography of the Bible, the chronology of the Bible & dating these periods in general areas. I taught Bible Chronology in 500-year periods, so they learned what happened about every 500 years. It's amazing how just about every 500 years in Bible History something major happened. Those round numbers made it easy for them to get ahold of & remember. Otherwise they don't know which way the beads go on the string.
21. A general grasp of the Bible, both Old & New Testament, & its chronology & geography, etc., is important. After all, if they're going to be a witness for the Lord & they're going to be talking to people about the Bible, if they hit somebody that knows more about it than they do--a lot of these old backslidden Christians--they could really be made fools of!--Like the little newsboy who told Billy Sunday: "How are you going to tell me the way to Heaven when you don't even know the way to the Post Office?" So Bible Knowledge was a pretty important course.
22. Then we had the Gospel of John, which basically covered Salvation & the Teachings of Christ. The Book of Acts--that was the Church in Action! We didn't call it the History of the Church, not even the History of the Early Church, we called it the Blueprint for the Church!--This is the way the Church is supposed to be! It's not how the Church used to be, but Acts is the way the Church is supposed to be all the time, now! And that was quite a shocker! I'd been to several Bible schools before I went to the Soul Clinic & had always been taught the same old kind of courses, everything was historical: "Well, that was wonderful in those days, all the Saints back there." They never brought it down to our level at all! Of course, the doorknob was way too high so you didn't even try to reach for it!
23. So we thought that was pretty important to bring Acts right down to today. Acts is the way you're supposed to act now, that's what you're supposed to do now! So that was one of my favourite courses, one that I taught. I taught three courses, Bible Knowledge, Book of Acts & Bible Prophecy.--You've had plenty of that! I don't know whether you ever got the Book of Acts or the Gospel of John. (Fam: Acts 1-10.) You got that, well, that's good.
24. Well, I've mentioned a lot of that throughout all these years, but it's good to have a real organised course, a set curriculum where you really cover the subject thoroughly verse-by-verse, the way we used to cover both John & Acts. We usually got up to the 13th or 14th Chapter of Acts.--And we weren't just looking back at history, "Wasn't that wonderful," but we taught it as, "This is how you ought to do it now! This is what we should be doing now!" It's pitiful how the Bible schools teach that stuff, it's all like looking at a glorious picture of the past.
25. God bless Fred, he was really inspired! He was kind of like Saul in some ways, but he got me started & I'm still sold on this curriculum that we taught, it did the trick! Just within two or three years there he turned out over 300 missionaries for Japan alone, which was pretty good. It's taken us 12 years to get a lot more missionaries than that there, & I don't think that's too bad a record. Of course, some of it was forcibly, they had to evacuate someplace else & needed somewhere to go. I hope they're managing to survive. That sure is the acid test, to think that all those people could go from an English-speaking country like the Philippines to an all-Japanese-speaking country & manage to survive at all, even economically, God bless them!
PRAYER FOR OUR BRAVE PIONEERS & MISSIONARIES!
26. I marvel at the mercy of God & the fortitude of some of our people, what they can take & what they can stand! I have just wept sometimes about what many of our poor people have had to go through, being so suddenly transferred. I've read in Asiaweek, etc., about the culture shock & the trauma that System families go through when they're suddenly transferred from one country to another. They've even got emergency nightlines for people to phone, expatriates that are working who just can't take it any more, everything's so changed & so different, they just can hardly even take it! And they break down & just go to pieces & have to be sent home. I think our folks have just done absolutely supernaturally miraculously! God bless them! TTL! PYJ! TYL!
27. Bless them, Lord, in Jesus' name! Right now encourage them, Lord! (Tongues) "So I have shown mercy to them through thy Father, & I have given them the anointing that I have given unto their Father David, that they may do the task that I have called them unto!" Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL! It's the Lord, it's just the Lord.
28. God bless them, Lord, wherever they are right now! Give them strength, courage & faith, Lord, so they can tackle anything & survive & climb over the obstacles, Lord, & bore through them! Take care of them, protect them & provide for them, Lord, in every way, in Jesus' name. Give them the strength! Help them to adjust to the different climates. Give them whatever they need.
29. Keep their eyes on Thee, not watching the waves, but truly with their eyes & their hearts set on Thee & Thy Word, that You cannot fail, Lord! You never will fail, You never have failed us, Lord. TYL! The more we've tackled, the more You've helped us to tackle. TYJ! PYL! Nothing's impossible for the Lord. Thank God our folks seem to have the faith that that's true, they do their part & He does His. TYL! He says, "You do the going & I'll do the keeping! You just obey & I'll do the rest!" So He does, & they do, PTL!
MORE ON THE SCHOOL VISION!
30. Now back to the school vision: If the parents are close enough to come pay even a monthly visit, do you think those kids could survive?--Or if the kids themselves could go home once in awhile to see their parents just to satisfy that little nostalgia? I know what usually happens is the kid's homesick, & he gets home & then he wants to go right back again! Just one weekend home & that's it, they're so thankful that they don't have to stay there, regardless of how much they love their folks! They often feel more satisfied & active & like they're accomplishing something by being in the school or in the training. So we'll probably even have quite a few in those lower age groups.
31. At 12 years of age we do a bar mitzvah, & now we've changed the name of it to ordination. We feel that our children should be mature enough at 12 years of age that they are a young adult, like in the Jewish culture. In the old days they even considered that they were old enough to get married, girls too, because they mature sexually at that year, & if not then, at least by 13 or 14. ...
32. If the Lord were to tarry--which I doubt, but it could be that our old prophetic chronology would survive--certainly we are going to see the revelation of the Antichrist.--Unless we're going to spiritualise all of that like I've suggested, that the Image is already up & being worshipped, & the trademarks are already on the products & will soon be on the bodies.--That could kind of speed up the timetable.
33. If we include the signing of the Covenant, we've got seven more years. But if we don't include that & we say the revelation begins with the setting up of the Image, etc., we've still got at least 3-1/2 years. Of course, I would still say the Covenant is the easiest thing to have been wrought in secret, & might already be in force for all we know. You could say, "Well, we've got seven years, at least, the Covenant hasn't been signed yet!" But I'd say, judging by the way things are going right now with the Crash & all, the Covenant's probably already been signed with the Jews in a back room somewhere, with the powers that be & the ones that really know. Look at the things that are happening now!--Just read the WND & the GN!
34. If we had the time, I think not only would the Family become enormous, but some of our children, the way we have kids, would become tremendous!--In fact, they already are!--And just educating our own children for the Lord's Work has become one of our major ministries. We're not just educating them for the sake of education. We simply want to give them enough education so they'll be able to face without fear any worldling, & have sufficient knowledge not to be ashamed of their ignorance, & to at least have a better comprehension of the World than most of the Systemites have now.
35. As I've often said, they certainly need to know how to read & write & figure, & then have a general grasp of World History. I think we've given them a pretty good grasp of World History just from Bible History & Prophecy, etc. We've already gotten to the point where the education of our children for the Lord's service is becoming a serious emergency!
MORE ON THE SOUL CLINIC COURSE
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36. I started to tell you about the Soul Clinic Course, I gave you five subjects, Bible Prophecy was sixth. We added Prophecy as a special course because we thought it was important. We also added the Spiritual Life, things such as Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Faith, Healing & greater emphasis on all of those things, in other words, the power that a witness needs.--How to get the power & the kind of power you need & how to be a spiritual witness & all the various phases of the spiritual life of a missionary or a witness. Those were our seven courses.
37. I taught Bible Knowledge, Book of Acts & Bible Prophecy three times a week, two hours each time. Actually, we had the students do Memory Work on their own time, so we only had a Memory Work class once a week, & that was a test on the assigned verses. It was a very well-organised course, & we covered each subject very thoroughly in only three months time, which was pretty well packed, we really had to push.
38. After the 3-month training course we turned the students right around & had the top students teaching the new babes. The first three months was called the Babes Course, the second three months was called the Leadership Training Course, & when they graduated from the Leadership Training Course they would learn to take the responsibility of teaching & helping to guide the schools, etc. They turned around & taught the Babes what they themselves had just learned while it was still fresh, & they did real well. That's how we developed leadership.
39. After Leadership Training we had what we called Field Training. Fred's original course was only three months, just a Babe's Basic Course, but then he soon found out that some of them needed a little bit more experience, first of all practicing on others who came to school there, teaching them the Basic Course. Then after six months of the Basic Training & Leadership Training, being leaders, he'd send them into the field to see how well they did living by faith for the next three months--witnessing, living by faith, "deputating", as they called it, which is an old church word.
40. Fred got most of his ideas from the Alliance.--Only they did it over periods of years! You went to Bible College for four years first & then took two years of seminary before you even started getting out of school! Then you had to pastor for so many years to prove you could be a preacher & a pastor for about three years before they'd consider you for the mission field!--No wonder I was overage by the time I wanted to be a missionary, & by that time they said I had too many children! Besides, they said, "We heard you haven't been too strong or in good health & we don't want to take a chance on you."
41. But Fred just boiled that all down, put it in a press & smashed the whole concept down to a capsule: Three months Basic Training, three months Leadership, three months Field Training, during which they went into churches & held meetings to try to raise money, or just house-to-house or wherever they could find friends & supporters to get them to sign a pledge, "When I finally get to the field, how much do you pledge to support me? How much a month would you be willing to give to my support, would you pledge so much a month & sign this pledge card?"--And they did it & it worked, & he got out hundreds of missionaries all over the World that way with just that brief nine months training.
42. He squashed the entire equivalent of about eight to nine years training into one year, from about nine years to nine months.--And he started off with only three months! After his very first class graduated from three months of Basic Training he started to send them to the field. But he soon found out that they really weren't quite ready & quite a few of them flunked out after they'd spent a lot of money on sending them there & supporting them & everything, they just didn't make it. Japan was his first field, Hong Kong was next.
43. In Hong Kong he specialised in rooftop schools on top of those big apartment houses for refugees from China, he had an agreement with the Hong Kong government to supply those schools with teachers. By that time he was doing a little more finished job of educating his people & they were at least able to go there as teachers to teach all of these various basic subjects to young children. And of course they could witness to them too so it worked out very well. All the Hong Kong government required was some basic education & support. They let'm teach, but he paid'm, gave them their support.
44. So it's a basic type of Christian education in the most abbreviated, compressed form possible, to get them into action as quickly as possible. I'm talking now about the Soul Clinic course, not just about our training of our young children to read & write, etc. That would be the aim, of course, that's always our aim, our ultimate aim is to get them out in the field as fruitful missionaries.
45. (Prays for one of the boys' headache:) We know the Enemy is fighting, Lord. There are big things to come. There's a tremendous potential in all of this & You have something in store for us that we don't even conceive of as yet how big it could be! But whatever it is, Lord, even if it's only a handful, it's still worth it. Give him the strength, Lord. "Ye shall have that mind in you which is also in Christ Jesus," & that mind shouldn't have a headache. Amen? Just claim it, Son. GBY! I'm sorry.
DAD'S 7th & 8th GRADE CLASS!
46. Besides the students, there's another important aspect to running a school, you have got to have a staff. I was doing pretty well to handle 50 students, & that was a very unusual unique situation. They had five teachers quit before me who just couldn't take it. I'll never forget Mrs. Outhouse, who had been a missionary in Chile for several years, a mature married woman with children of her own. She'd come back on furlough, & as a means of survival, to make a living, she'd accepted this position to try to teach these two grades.
47. When I walked in to take over the class she said, "Thank God!", & she banged her book on the table with a thud! She said, "I'm going back where children are civilised!"--To Chile! She said they were well-behaved, quiet, attentive & appreciative of the teachers & their education there. Whereas they were wild savages in Los Angeles, a lot of whom were juvenile delinquents. Their parents couldn't get them in any place else, so they paid us money to take'm!--Paid us as much as they possibly could & gave big donations to the church just begging us to take them in because they wouldn't even take them in any other school in Los Angeles, they were such naughty rascals!--Christian children of Christians!--Even preachers' kids & whatnot! Horrible! Some of them were really rough!
48. And I had the worst grades of all! 7th & 8th grades are notorious in educational circles as the hardest, most difficult to discipline grades of any in all the 12 years, because they've just suddenly gotten full-grown & feel like they know more than their parents or the teachers & they want to be independent. They're a handful! But the Lord helped me to survive, I guess it was part of my training for the hippies!
IT'S JAPAN'S HOUR!
49. I have the feeling that Japan is perhaps the greatest harvest of any field on Earth before the Lord comes, & the most important one! (Tongues) "Hear ye the Words of thy father & what I say unto thee, that this is the hour, the time has come!" Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL!--For that field, is what He means, this is their time. TYL! God has His time, He has His hours, & this is the time, this is Japan's hour!
50. We've had harvests in different fields all over the World, & although we still have a few stragglers left & we have a little work going on, some fields have had their day. They've had their greatest reaping, they've had their great invasion & pioneering, when they really hit their heyday. Now it's almost as though the first wave swept through, then the next wave, & now they're doing well to carry on. They're still doing well, but nothing particularly phenomenal as far as any great revival, as they used to say in churches, a great unusual reaping going on. But sometimes here or there there are scattered little corners of gleaning, TTL!
51. But every field seems to have its day. In the East, Korea once had what they called a great revival under the Presbyterians many years ago. After that was over, then the judgements of God swept in on the remnant, & you can see where Korea is at now! China had a great revival, hundreds of missionaries reaped China once upon a time, way back there in the days of my Grandfather & Grandmother. She learned Cantonese & went to China with my Grandfather & they spent a great deal of their time in China helping Chinese missionaries & all. China had a great reaping & harvest time! But then see what happened? The Lord allowed them to come in to separate the tares from the wheat & the sheep from the goats & eventually the Communists took over & only the strongest could survive. Even at that they say there are now at least 5 million practicing Christians in China in spite of the Communists, & increasing.
52. Russia had what the churches called a great revival, a great harvest time. They had a tremendous harvest time even after the Communists took over back when I was a teenager in the days of Peter Dyneka, where the Baptists were packing the churches, where they all stood up & were packed in with people standing outside by the hundreds trying to hear through the windows, getting saved by the hundreds & thousands all across Russia! It was a tremendous revival of the Spirit of God, marvellous! Then of course the Lord allows the persecution to come & the purification, the purging & testing & trials to see who's really strong & who's going to really stand. Thank God, they're finding that there are still people carrying on there. (See "The Great Revivals!", No.1648.) But each generation has to be reached & it looks like God is moving there again in many areas.
53. I really believe from what the Lord has given us. ... TYJ! PYL! Hallelujah! (Tongues) Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL! "Hear the Words of David!" Thank the Lord for His confirmations, it's Japan's hour!--Probably its first & last hour, probably the World's last hour! Japan is now the greatest, richest, most remarkable nation on the face of the Earth! Stock Markets in London & the U.S. are still going down, whereas the Stock Markets in the East have been recovering. The Land of the Rising Sun! Even in spite of phenomenal falls they have been recovering better than the Western stock Markets!
54. It's kind of like an indication that God is giving them a little more time, that perhaps the recession & depression will not be as severe in the East as it's going to be in the West. The West is so decadent, it's so corrupt, it's so absolutely far-gone, it is more due for the judgements of God. They've had every opportunity, including us! But let's face it, the people in the East, a lot of them have never really had much of a chance.
55. God loves the Japanese! They're wonderful people, good people, hard-working people, industrious! God has blessed them! I once was asking the Lord, "Why did You let them lose the war, they're such wonderful people?" I've said before that it's too bad they lost the war or they might have been able to civilise the United States! (See No.2095.) The Lord said, "I have humbled them that I might make them great!" And they, I believe, really are the greatest nation on the face of the Earth today!
56. Many of them have already had their major peak!--But as the Lord said a few moments ago, it's just Japan's Hour!--Maybe their first as well as their last chance for a great harvest! This is it! Hallelujah! And our Family is there to do the job & to reap whatever He wants to give them! TYL! Thank the Lord for His confirmations! It helps to get a shot in the Spirit every now & then, but we need to get on with these practical things!
MILLENNIAL TRAINING!
57. Remember, we are not training just for now till the Lord comes, what little time we have left here, we're training for the Future! There's not a bit of this training that is ever going to be lost. If the Millennium is that close, it's all the more reason to get these kids trained in a hurry, because they're going to have huge responsibilities then! That's when it's going to be unlimited! I mean it! I'm not kidding! You don't think I just dreamed up all these things about the Millennium & Heaven, do you? I have dreamed about some of them, & they're right there in the Bible as well!
58. When planning the classrooms & facilities for a school, it's better to over-capacitate rather than to underestimate! Like my old mess sergeant in the Army, they used to have a farmer send a truck & take away barrels & barrels of food to his hogs. When they questioned the sergeant about why so much food was wasted, why there was so much leftovers from the meals, he said, "What do you want, a riot? What do you think would happen if we didn't have enough for the men to eat just one day?" He said, "That would be the end of me!"
59. The Lord must be going to really do something big with that School there in Japan, & I expect the Devil is going to fight it every inch of the way! Of course the time always eventually comes that there's bad publicity & persecution, even to the point of running us out of the country. But the Lord has never allowed that to happen on any field until we have saturated that field & done just about all we could possibly do, at least enough to satisfy the Lord, that they've had their chance.
GOD'S SUPPLY!
60. I'm not dependent on any rich people or any special area of giving except the Lord. If the whole Family would fail to send in their monthly tithe, I would expect God to drop it out of the sky or something! He's never failed! In fact, when we were winding down, He was winding up! And when we thought our income was going to start tapering off, instead of that it kept increasing!--Because God knew what He wanted to do, it's His business, He knew He wanted to get out all these other books & pubs before things got too tight.
61. We've already had the Crash, & we're now going to start having the Recession, as they call it, another Depression.--Only it will probably be worse than ever, I don't see how it can get any better from here on, except by some miracle of God. Of course, He could do it again if He wants to. The more money we give away, the more money He gives us. We've learned that little lesson, that we can never give it away too fast!--You can't out-give God!
CLASS SIZE & ROOM SIZE
62. In a classroom, 25 is really the limit that any teacher can handle well. They say 12 is ideal. This was the talk in California when I was there, & it was a scandal in the newspapers how many kids they were packing into some of the classrooms, expecting some of those teachers to teach.--Not to speak of my particular school which was outside of the System, & I had 50! It was very difficult.
63. I didn't dare put my desk at one end where I could easily see them all at once, because then the back of the class would be too far away to crack down, so I put my desk right in the middle.--And it's a good thing I had 180-degree vision! Sometimes they thought I had eyes in the back of my head. Well, I just had eyes in the side of my head because I could see what was going on at both ends of the room, & they didn't get away with very much.
64. I know in the Army, in great big Army tents, 20 x 20, they put only six men to a tent. So if a classroom has 25 students in it, perhaps their living quarters could be half that, or around a dozen in each. That personal time spent with the students is much more personal in a bedroom scene where you've got to supervise them in their off time, their study time, sleep time, Bible story time & whatnot, & I don't see how you could do a real good job with more than 12 per room. I'd say 12 is almost double what would be ideal, & that should be the absolute limit for a Room Counsellor, or Cottage Counsellor--as they call them in Summer camps--to handle.
65. After teaching school for three years to 50 kids, I'd say if I'd had more individual time to spend like a Room Counsellor has, to deal with their problems & stories & excuses & study time & whatnot, to make sure they do their studying, I'd say 12 would just be about all you could handle. And really, I don't see how you could have more than six in a room & have it really under control & quiet enough. I don't see how you could have more than about six in a room--a bedroom.
HAVE WE REACHED OUR SATURATION POINT?
66. Fred used to say, "Some women don't mind having babies as long as they don't have to take care of them." He used to say, "In your soul-winning, don't have so many babies that you just have to go off & leave them lying in the street & not take care of them!" Well now we've got the babies, we've got the children, are we going to take care of them? He said, "By the time you've got enough souls won & babies that you need to feed & take care of them, it's then time to spend more of your time on feeding & caring for the children you've already got without having any more!"
67. So why should we neglect our children & their training, the most potential disciples we can possibly have, just to go out & get more disciples that we don't even have time to take care of? Even any business knows there's a certain saturation point as to how much you can accomplish with so many people. This might be a little shocking to some of us, but we have had so many children now, they've almost become our biggest job!
68. And to properly take care of them & train them--the best & most potential disciples we could possibly have--is a very important job & ministry! They're born in the Family, reared in the Family & know the situation & our teaching & our doctrine & everything else more than anybody! They should be an improvement on the stock, if we take the time to teach & train them & send them out! They could, in time, win a lot more souls & train a lot more workers than if we just kept on winning disciples!
69. That's what the Lord apparently thought about me. I wanted to go to the mission field, & if I'd have gotten away with it, what would have happened?--At most we'd have been six little missionaries out there in the boonies some place trying to win the Hottentots. But no, He had other ideas for me: "You stay home & I'll show you what I want you to do! Out of your family, instead of six small missionaries, I'm going to bring 12,000 missionaries," & God knows how many more!
70. So which is more important, us going out & winning more souls?--Well, we'll always win more souls. Getting more disciples? If you win souls, you're bound to get some more disciples who'll want to join you. But what's the saturation point on how many we could feed & care for in a natural family of a couple, a pair? How many children does God give them? How many does He think one couple can take care of? Well, about the biggest I ever heard of was one coloured woman down in Miami who had 20-some children! That was a pretty big job! I'd say that family had reached the saturation point, they had about all they could take care of, all they could feed & clothe & house & educate & whatnot!
71. The Family, with as many children as we have, is almost reaching the saturation point! It's getting to the point where we have so many children of our own that one of our biggest jobs, if not the biggest job that we have now, is to take care of our children, the ones we already have! Why neglect our own children to go out & try to win more of the children of the World who will take years to really get to the point where they can be much good, when we've already got wonderful children who are already sold & Family & indoctrinated & trained & everything! Maybe we need to go to work on our own kids & start making them something that's really going to do more than a whole bunch of new raw untrained disciples off the streets!
72. You say, "Oh Dad, you sound like the church people, wanting to boil everything down to a building now & just taking care of your own congregation!" Well, it's a fact that there's hardly any pastor that can really do a good job on a congregation that's too big. Apparently Jesus thought that the best size congregation to really make good disciples out of & really teach & train & prepare to be real leaders was only 12, that one man could only really train a dozen. And we've got dozens & dozens & dozens! And if that's so, then I'd say at least one-tenth of our entire population needs to be training our children. If we've got 6,000 children, then we need 600 teachers.
73. What shall we call this, "The School Vision!"? I don't like the word "education" that much, it has a bad smell.--Or "Feed My Sheep!" That's the last commandment, "Feed My sheep!"--Jn.21:15-17. They're certainly sheep, they're our sheep, our little lambs, & we need to feed them, strengthen them & train them!
74. This whole school concept has now become an urgent emergency necessity for our own children! We have so many children, we have now got to take better care of them & give them better training! In one of our Units, for example, they've got ten kids of all different ages, & it takes about half that many people to take care of them almost full time!--Taking care of them, feeding them, teaching them. It takes half that many fulltime teachers & childcare workers to take care of twice that many students. It takes a lot to take care of children! It takes a lot of time & hard work & real genuine feeding of the sheep spiritually, classes & teaching & courses, etc. It takes a lot!
75. Now we've got'm, we've got the children! What are we going to do with them? Are we really going to teach & train & feed them, or are we just going to turn them out in the streets & say, "Here, come on out to pasture & feed yourselves while I sell Tapes & Posters to earn a living!--And you help me also, that's the main thing, to try to get out as many Tapes & Posters as we can!" Is that our job? Well, preaching the Word, of course, is our job, giving the Gospel to the whole World is our job. But feeding His sheep is also our job, & if we're getting so many sheep that we're not doing a good job of it, we're not feeding them like we should, then we've got to slow down & take better care of our own sheep!
76. If we're getting more babies born into the Kingdom by birth canal or otherwise than we can take care of, then we've got too many babies!--Or we need more caretakers, we need to do more taking care! Like the old song: "Who'll take care of the caretaker's daughter while the caretaker's busy taking care!" Well, you can see what that guy had in mind! But that's about the point we've gotten to: Who'll take care of the caretaker's daughter, the children, while the caretakers are busy taking care!--Of other people's children, souls, etc.
77. I think we're going to have to think about slowing down a bit on constantly going for numbers, increasing in size, population blah blah! I've never advocated that & it hasn't worried me a bit when our population declined, decreased or whatever. If anything worried me, it was when it increased! "How are we going to take care of all these people, how are we going to feed them properly, how are we going to train them?"
78. Our baby population is booming! Are we doing a good job of training them? Are we feeding them? Are we taking care of them like we should? "Who'll take care of the caretaker's children while the caretaker's busy taking care?"--Of other people's children! I think we need to give a little more time & attention to our own.--We owe it to them! They deserve it!
79. It looks to me like in many places we've just about got all we can handle right now. And as somebody suggested, if we put all the kids in Family schools, & put all the parents to work taking care of them, we'd have a big job to do! And we'd be preparing them to win the next batch of souls by the time the Millennium begins!
80. Is that losing faith? Losing heart? Losing vision? "Dad, where's your inspiration to get out there & win souls & get more millions to the billions & all that sort of thing?" Well, if we've got more now than we can take care of, then we're biting off more than we can chew! Maybe we need to have a little more faith & foresight & vision for the future of training leaders who are going to be able to lead the Millennium!--Instead of raking in more raw material all the time & not being able to turn out the finished products!
81. What good does it do to stockpile if you haven't got the capability of turning out the finished products? Any company that just keeps on stockpiling raw material & doesn't get to work fabricating the finished products is going to go broke! You've got to keep the process going, you've got to keep the company in business, you've got to keep turning out finished products to the public.]
82. We have reached a crisis! We have reached, you might say, a child crisis, where we have almost bitten off more than we can chew! We have produced more than we can take care of[DELETED]! We have produced a bumper crop of babies & children, wonderful children, real Family children, & we keep ourselves & our kids themselves so busy trying to produce more children & more disciples & reach more people & win more souls, we can't even properly take care of our own!
83. Here's a man who seldom even gets to see his family, he's so busy taking care of the whole World! Well, that's a pretty important job. But at least he does see to it that his family is getting educated & in the Family & getting what they need, & their needs are supplied. But he's so busy taking care of the World, he hasn't got much time even to take care of his own. (Maria: That goes for most of our top leaders, most of them are separated from their families!)
84. What are we going to say?--"He saved others, himself he couldn't save?"--Mat.27:42. He saved others, his own he couldn't save. He saved others, his own he couldn't provide for & care for & train & feed & make future leaders of who are going to have to run this World!
85. Are we going to be shortsighted & say, "We've got to get out more Tapes, we've got to get out more Posters, we've got to reach more souls & win more souls, more disciples!"--Meanwhile we neglect our own children, meanwhile we neglect the best disciples we've got, our own, that we trained from the beginning!
86. Maybe we have reached the saturation point where we've produced enough of our own children that they need to require more of our own time now, & we should not spend so much time on the neighbours' children & strangers' children & strangers themselves, some of whom will never be good for anything! There just isn't time. That's what the Millennium is for! Maybe we need to start having a little more farsightedness & a more comprehensive vision of what the future holds & get busy training our own leaders to prepare for the future of what they're going to be able to do in the Millennium!
87. To me, that's a reality, that's a set matter! We've got a thousand years ahead to finish redeeming the whole World! Where are the leaders for it?--The churches? Church people? They're going to have to be taken care of like babies themselves! They're so immature, how can they take care of anybody else? We'll have to have educational facilities for them, to re-educate & re-train them. They're not going to be able to do the job. Where are the leaders? Where are the workers? Where are the labourers? Where are the labour leaders? Are we just going to indiscriminately simply over-populate the Family to the point that it can't take care of itself or its own children or feed itself or train its own leaders or anything? I'm not advocating birth control, I'm advocating controlling those that we've already given birth to!
THE FUTURE IS IN OUR HANDS
!
88. We have reached a real child crisis! (Tongues) TYJ! "Hear ye the Words of thy Father! Hear ye that which I have given unto David, for the Future is in the hands of you & your Father!" Hallelujah! TYJ! PTL! Boy, that's a statement! The Future is in our hands! But we're so concerned with the present & trying to get enough to pay the rent & feed the Home & give our tithe & have good stats & make out a good TRF that looks good & shows we're really doing the job, & our kids are wandering around wondering what to do! What are they going to do? Is that all their future is from now on, just being peddlers? Is that the only future that they have to look forward to, just being street peddlers for the rest of their lives, selling Tapes? Distributing Posters? That's all good, but what of the Future?
89. What are our children thinking now? "What am I going to do? What am I going to be? Am I just going to be a street peddler like my Dad? Am I just going to be a beggar on the streets like my Mother?--Or have You got something better for me to do, Lord?" I really believe the Lord has something better for us all to do! Not that there's anything mean or too low or bad about that, but He has a greater job for us to do now & in the Future than merely peddling lit & Posters & Tapes on the streets! (See Nos. 2405 & 2406, Vol.18.)
90. Our children are going to rule the World! They are going to run cities & counties & provinces & governments & countries! What are we doing with them now to prepare them for that? What are we doing? (Weeps) I don't think we're giving them enough time & attention! I don't think we're paying enough attention to their training & their education to prepare them to rule this World in only a few years from now! Some of them will still be teenagers when the Lord has to turn the World over to them to run it!
91. You say, "That's impossible, Dad, how can we rule the World with so few of us & so few of our children?" Well, with the help of God & His Angels & a few other real genuine Christians & labourers, at least we can supervise World leaders & the System's leaders & tell them what to do & how to do it! Let me tell you, if they'd put me in charge of some of these governments I'd get them straightened out in a hurry!--Especially with supernatural powers & angelic help & the help of you guys! Our people could run some of these countries & have'm in better shape than the way they're running them now! Our people have had the training, they know the Lord, they have the Spirit, they know the Word, you know God could do it, with a handful! But all we've got is a handful!
92. "What is that in thy hand?" (See No.315.) How about those children?--Are we giving them enough time & doing enough to train them to prepare them to rule the World? Are we doing our children justice? Are we doing them right by what we're doing & the way we're doing it? Or could this be the time in which God is giving us an opportunity to give them some training that will give them proper preparation to go out there & do a bigger job than we have ever done & could hardly even dream of doing!--Carrying the Word to the billions!--Not just on paper, not just on tape, not just even on the air, but I mean saturating the World! That's going to be our last job.
93. We've saturated country after country after country. The Millennium is going to give us a thousand years, the Lord is going to give us a chance to saturate the World till they've all had their chance! God is a just God, & whatever He does to them after that, if they don't receive it, He's righteous to give them their just desserts, whatever it is! But it's going to take our kids to do it!--And you!--But we've got to start now!
"
FEED MY SHEEP!"--NOW
!
94. You say, "But Dad, how can we do it? We've got to earn a living! We've got to hit the streets & the homes & the offices & we've got to peddle in order to make a living! We've got to keep busy writing prayer letters & getting out pubs to try to inspire our friends & families back home to support us. We're so busy earning a living, we just haven't got time to take care of our kids & give them what we could, what we know, what they need to know!"--It's pitiful! (See Nos. 2405 & 2406.)
95. We've reached a child crisis! Maybe that's a good name for this, "The Child Crisis!" Have we reached the saturation point where we have had so many children that now we're going to have to turn to them & give them more attention & more time & more training? "Feed My Sheep!" My God, if He has any sheep, it's our children, those born in His Family! It looks to me like that's one of our greatest lacks, one of our greatest needs!
96. How many of you sitting right here would love to see your children in such a school? I know I would. Wouldn't you feel relieved that at last they're being properly taken care of? Tonight, some of us don't know where our kids are, what they're doing. We just hope they're in the right place doing the right thing & that the people who are taking care of them are good people & are shepherding & feeding them right. But what about making sure of it? Well, you've made as sure as you can, but you & I are so busy taking care of the World, we saved others, but ourselves & our own we couldn't save. I hate that to be said of us.
97. That was the taunting accusation that the Scribes & the Pharisees said of Jesus while He hung on the cross, "Ha! He saved others, Himself He could not save!"--Mat.27:42. The fact was that by offering Himself He was saving all, He was saving the World, but of course they couldn't see that. It looked rather short-sighted to them. It looked rather ridiculous that here He was supposed to be the Messiah, & He was soon going to be a dead man & not accomplishing what He was supposed to accomplish.--That's what they thought. And they were thankful that they had killed Him & put a stop to what they considered His "evil influence" & all that. But He was sacrificing Himself that we might live! God the Father & His Son & the Holy Spirit as well were sacrificing. She sacrificed Her Son, God sacrificed His Son, in a sense, the Parents sacrificed Their Son, Their Child, that we might live, His children might live.
98. Are we ready to sacrifice ourselves, we the parents, that our children might live? I believe every one of you are!--To do it for the Lord & the Lord's Work's sake & the sake of the Future, to train leaders for the Kingdom of God on Earth, to be able to run this World! We need leadership training for our own children. Are we ready to do it?
99. "How can we leave the field, Dad, & so many of us leave our missions & our Homes & our cities? It's going to take so many of us to run these schools! How are we going to do it?" Well, God will show us how, that's not the main point right now. The question is, are we willing to do it?--Can we do it? How are we going to do it? How are we going to support it?--And we can let God worry about that! We just obey, do what He gives us the vision to do, follow the Lord! Let's go ahead & do it, & if it's God's Will, He'll supply the places & the means & the method & the personnel!
100. You say, "What about security, Dad? Well, God only knows how long school situations with so many people heaped up in one spot can last, but I think we could probably accomplish enough in that period of time that it would be worthwhile, even if we're scattered again afterward. At least we will have a little idea of what we've got & what we can do & what we can accomplish. I just feel like the kids need it now, we owe it to them! Don't you think they expect it of us to try to prepare them for the future? I do, & I think we've done all we can possibly do the way we're doing it right now. But could we do a better job?--By taking some folks from the field--not too many, but enough to take care of our children & give them the proper education, the proper preparation for future leadership in the most important period in this whole World's history!
101. Have you got the vision? (Family: I got the verse, "He that careth not for his own is worse than an infidel."--1Tim.5:8. And that our own are more important than any of the Devil's children.)--Absolutely! PTL! I got that verse in another way, once, as you may recall. The Devil used it on me: "You've got to go to work & get this job in order to take care of your children!" And the Lord said, "Listen, you do what I told you to do, & if I don't take care of you & help you to do it, I'm worse than an infidel!", God said of Himself.
102. "If I fail to take care of My Own, I am worse than an infidel. You just go ahead & obey Me & don't worry about being taken care of, I'll take care of you!", & He has ever since, He's never failed, TYL! If this is the job God wants us to do, is He going to take care of us or not? Is He going to take care of us & our children? I believe He is!
103. Have you got the vision? We've just scratched the surface with the Teen Camps! We've begun to take care of our children, at last, because we saw the need, the desperate need of trying to capture our teens & rescue them & keep them. That has been the acid test of every great religious movement, whether they could keep their teenagers. Those who failed to keep their teenagers committed denominational genocide! The denomination died with them & they lost them, & the denomination died with their parents. When they were dead, the denomination was dead! If we don't keep our teenagers, our children, who's going to carry on?
104. We're now having a second & a third generation, & each one should be an improvement on the stock!--But are they? Or are they going to be? That depends on us & our faith & our determination. True, the Lord said, "Go ye into all the World & preach the Gospel to every creature!"--Mk.16:15. Okay, let's put it this way, we've just about done that, we've just almost fulfilled that! We've distributed millions of pieces of literature to billions of people! "Okay, Lord, we did it, now what do we do?" "Okay, now go to work on your children, teach & train them & feed them so they can do it for the next World!"--A whole World yet to come, a whole new generation!
105. Did you know that that job has to be done in every single generation?--Because when one generation dies a new generation springs up, & it's got to be done all over again. So this generation is about to die, this generation is about to pass away, who's going to take care of the next generation? We are, & our children are, & we'll need every single one of them! PTL!
106. The Lord is trying to show us how important our children are & how important their education is! Are we just going down the street littering the street with babies while we litter the World with literature, leaving the babies behind neglected? I often think of that story about the little boy who was sitting on the curb looking kind of dirty & underfed, all alone & uncared-for, & the old lady stopped & said, "Son, where's your mother? Where do you live?" He said, "Well, she's gone to a meeting for the Society of the Underprivileged & Neglected Children!" Have we gone to a meeting of the Society for the Underprivileged & Neglected Children, to try to help the children of others while we're neglecting our own?
107. Why would the Lord have us right now taking our time to zero in on these reports & this special situation in a special field unless there's something about to happen there that is very important & going to explode!--In the World's last field, in today's most important country, with no doubt the World's last chance!
108. I really have the feeling that it's the final field, the final harvest, the final hour! (Tongues) "Oh, that thou couldst see the scene that I see!" Lord help us to see the vision! Lord help us to see the vision of the Future, of the farsightedness of the Kingdom, of Thy Kingdom on Earth!--Shore to shore, sea to sea, of billions whom our children will reach along with us, Lord, to save them all, as many as we can! Not these whom we've already reached, not this generation of this World that has already had its chance, except for a few, but the generation of the Future, generations of the Future of Thy Kingdom on Earth, Lord! Help us to prepare our children now for the terrific job they are going to have to do in the Future! TYJ! PTL!
PRAYER FOR OUR CHILDREN AND THEIR CARE
!
109. Forgive us, Lord, for neglecting our children! Forgive us for being so busy with a little here & there till the man is gone!--1Kng.20:40. Lord, it may not be too late, it may not be that we have been busy with a little here & there until our children are gone (Weeps) & been neglected & have not been fed as they should have been, & not been trained, Lord, have not been saved for Thy service! Lord Jesus, help us!
110. Thank You for the wonderful children You've given us! Thank You Lord for the marvellous children You've given, beautiful children, good children, really saved & dedicated Spirit-filled children, Lord, wise children, wiser far beyond their years, wiser far beyond their peers, wiser far beyond the Worldly adults. Capable! Inspired, Lord!--Who could reach, can reach & will reach the World, Lord, if we do the job right now to take care of them, to train them, to teach them, feed them, strengthen them & give them the attention that they deserve!
111. Lord, we've done it, we've done what You told us to do, we've gone into all the World & preached the Gospel to nearly every creature, billions! We've apparently reached a lot of people many times, Lord. We've had a witness of nearly 60 billion already. We must have reached a lot of people many more times than once, because there are only five billion people in the World, Lord. Why should we preach the message to so many, so many times, when there are some, Lord, who have never heard & will never hear, probably until the next generation & the Millennium. That's what we need to prepare for, Lord, to prepare leaders, labour leaders, witnessing leaders, country leaders, city leaders, government leaders to rule Thy Kingdom in the Future! Help us to make them the kind of leaders You want them to be, Lord, to prepare them for the biggest job we'll ever have to do, that they will ever have to do!
112. Forgive us for neglecting our children, Lord! Forgive us, Lord, for not really caring for them enough! We care for them, we love them, Lord, we try to do our best for them, but have we done enough, Lord? We don't feel we have. We feel like there's gotta be more, there must be more, this couldn't be all of it, because we know we have not done well enough, we know that they need us more, they need us now more than ever to help teach & train them & make them what You want them to be.
113. Help us, Lord, not to fail! Help us, Lord, to obey! Help us not to fail our own children in that while we were saving others we couldn't save our own! Lord forgive us & help us in Jesus' name, to save our own children & to do for them what they need to have done, for You, Lord, for Thy children! Jesus forgive us & help us to redeem the time & yet be able to save our children for Thy Work, Lord.
114. We all have children, Lord, our whole Family has thousands of them, & we don't want to neglect them, we don't want to fail them! Make them what You want them to be! Mold these little lives with Thy hands that they may be vessels fit for the Master's use, Lord, from Thy hand, through us, Thy tools in Thy hands, in Jesus' name! PTL! Hallelujah! TYJ! Amen, amen, amen! PTL! TYL!
THE LORD'S VISION FOR OUR CHILDREN
!
115. Well, that got to be a lot bigger message than I had intended to give you! The Lord's got a lot bigger vision than our little shortsightedness! He's got a lot more in store for us than we even had begun to think about! "What is that in thy hand?" Here they are! We want disciples, we want leaders, we've got'm! Let's mold'm & make'm into what the Lord wants them to be to do the job!
116. The Lord's beginning to open it up & show us more & more of what He really wants to do! Isn't that amazing? When I sat down here to talk to you I was talking about a little two-bit proposed building that these reports suggest, enough to house a few students & to try to take care of a few urgent emergencies & to take the pressure off of some people & to help some other people. Well, that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what the Lord wants to do! This could turn out to be the biggest thing we ever did!--Not as far as buildings, who cares about buildings, but for our children! And we've got'm! They're ours, our sheep, His sheep, what are we going to do with them, what are we going to do for them? Are we going to feed them, take care of them, show them we love them, give them the attention that they deserve & need & would appreciate, & will prove that we really love them? PTL! Amen?
117. You say, "What do you mean, Dad, are we going to stop evangelising the World now so we can take care of our kids?" You've got it backwards! We're going to take care of our kids so we can evangelise the World! Praise God? PTL! Enough said? My, I wasn't expecting that! Ha! I was inspired! TYL! All you have to do is give the Lord a chance, just open your mouth & He'll fill it!
118. (Fam: When we were praying I got that the children in Heaven are rejoicing!) Amen, Hallelujah! TYL! Well, our children are going to be rejoicing too, I'll tell you, if we give them a little more time & attention & do for them what they need done. PTL! The Lord is good to us, amen? "Without a vision the people perish" (Pro.29:18), the Lord has to give us the vision for what He wants done, we don't know much. PTL! GHU to take care of our children!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family