THE HISTORY OF PERSECUTION!--And Its Present Last Days! DO 2474 9/88
1. It certainly is a part of the Devil's own deceit, how the Devil is getting Christians to cooperate with his absolutely anti-Christ organisations who are fighting real Christians!--Anti-Christ organisations such as Israel, the Jews [EDITED: "e.g., Jewish Federation Council's Commission on Cults and Missionaries"], the big modernistic denominations & anti-cult organisations! He's getting the Christians themselves, the formal Christians, to cooperate with these anti-Christ groups to fight & destroy the real Christians in a drive to divide & conquer all Christians.
2. How diabolically clever!--To get Christians themselves to fight against other Christians. Once he uses the Christians to get rid of the little so-called cults, then of course he will turn on the big Christian groups, but they don't realise that now. (Maria: I guess he'll eliminate the smaller Christian denominations first & then the big denominations last.) Yes. So those Christians, by forging bonds & persecution for others, are doing it for themselves eventually.
3. The Mormons are considered a cult by many, but see, these big cults that are so big & so powerful now, like the Mormons, the Seventh-day Adventists & the Jehovah's Witnesses, they're not attacking them yet. The Evangelical Fundamentalists, those who are our biggest enemies, are probably going to get it soon also. The Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses & SDAs could possibly even be the very next, because they've long been considered cults by the major Fundamentalist Evangelicals, the biggest of which is the Southern Baptists who claim about six million members. You notice that the Methodists are the ones that are the main churches active in trying to attack the cults, & they are the largest Protestant denomination, with about ten million members worldwide. And of course the Catholics have been attacking us for a long time.
4. But the Fundamentalist Evangelical groups seem to be the most ardent enemies attacking us & forming organisations against us. It's amazing how they don't see what it's leading up to! You can see it already by the attacks on the TV preachers & the attack by that modernistic church-oriented young [EDITED: "Chinese-American"] operating out of that church basement in New York, forming so-called "Fundamentalists Anonymous."--In other words, its parallel is "Alcoholics Anonymous," an organisation that tries to get you off alcohol. "Fundamentalists Anonymous" is the backsliders trying to get you out of the Fundamentalists. I'm sure that that's sponsored by AC people. [DELETED]
5. The Mormons could possibly be sympathetic towards the cults, their sympathies could be worked on by reminding them that they too were a persecuted sect just a hundred years or more ago, were lied about & persecuted, & that now that they have grown big & powerful, they shouldn't forget their past. They should be sympathising with smaller sects that are being persecuted now, & warned that once these AC forces have conquered the small cults, they will start on the bigger cults!
6. They're only attacking the small cults now. At the same time they're also attacking what you might call a small cult of TV preachers & their congregations. (Maria: But the funny thing is, a lot of them belong to the smaller denominations.) That's true, but they're the ones that are getting attacked next. They're out for the real Christians first. But in a way I would consider & class the Mormons, SDAs & Jehovah's Witnesses the next smaller group, & they're still considered cults by many, & still persecuted by some. They should definitely be sympathetic, & even warned that they will probably be next, & if they don't do something now, they're going to be sorry!
7. It's a war, & the Enemy is on the attack!--Against small cults first, because they can be maligned more easily because of a lot of the crazy things some of them do, & which all of them are accused of, & because of people's ignorance.--People don't really know them, & they're small, so they're whipping up the prejudice against them first, because they know they can get public sympathy more easily that way. Then they'll begin on the larger cults, against which the Fundamentalist Evangelical denominations are very bitter, such as what we could call the big three cults: The Mormons, SDAs & Jehovah's Witnesses.--All of whom, by the way, began about the same period, back in the 1800s, the last century. The Mormons first, SDAs next, & then finally the Jehovah's Witnesses about the turn of the century. The Mormons began the middle of the last century, the 1800s, & the SDAs about the same time, beginning with the Adventists, a root of the SDAs.
8. So I believe that once they figure they've really got the World turned against the little cults & the drive is well on its way of oppressing & suppressing them so that their work is, if not totally crushed, driven totally underground, then they'll go to work on the big three, what do you bet? They've gone to work already on the TV preachers, because I think they feel they endanger the anti-Christ movement, because they have so many viewers, hearers & converts & a lot of influence, etc. And let's face it, those TV preachers are not the major Fundamentalist denominations such as the Southern Baptists & the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church. Those are the two most Evangelical of the large denominations, & of course they're not attacking them yet.
9. But most of the TV preachers represent, you might say, smaller, more radical Evangelical denominations which have a very high profile, & against which they can stir up a lot of sentiment, as they have done by the scandals which have arisen about them. And these scandals became terrific tools in their hands to attack them, so they're attacking them while the iron is hot & the scandals are hot.
10. The scandals about the cults have been pretty hot for about 20 years, since we began. They've had a lot of unfavourable publicity, real bad publicity, smears, mostly lies, so that they are easily able to stir up sentiment against the cults. Under cults we could classify people like us & the Moonies & the Hare Krishnas & now quite a few others. These are the most outstanding & high-profiled & publicised & smeared & now persecuted. It's been easiest to stir up everybody against the cults, both the church & the World, because of the fantastic lies they tell about them, outright lies, which they don't hesitate to tell, as well as the scandalous stories of backsliders who go through the DDDBs. (See ML #759.) Because of their backsliding, & to excuse & justify themselves, & then finally in order to get back in the System, they've got to betray us, deny us, supposedly expose us & all the rest.
11. So anyhow, the severe persecution of Christians has begun--such as you could say is the beginning of the Tribulation--starting with the persecution of the smaller cults by Christians themselves. Imagine!--The Devil has gotten the help of the Christians themselves! Even Fundamental Evangelical Christians, even good Christians who are supposed to be really saved, even Pentecostals who are supposed to be filled with the Spirit, are bitter enemies who are fighting us!
MOONIES & HARE KRISHNA!
12. (Maria: The Moonies & the Hare Krishnas obviously aren't real Christians.) I wouldn't really say that about the Moonies, I don't know. They've probably got a lot of falseness & in a sense, I'm sure they're a false cult, but at least the Moonies do carry the name Christian & profess to believe in Christ. (Maria: They do?) Yes, they claim to be Christians, believers in Christ.
13. Of course, Hare Krishna doesn't, that's Indian Hinduism! I'm talking about the Moonies. Moon is supposed to be a Christian. He started out as an Evangelical Christian, only he got the idea, sort of like Avak did, that he was going to lead the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, the Messianic Kingdom, & that--at least from what his enemies & the church people say--he claims to be some sort of a Messiah. And some of his critics have gone as far as to say he claims to be Jesus. Well, you know how they lie about us, so I wouldn't believe it unless I heard it from himself or his own literature, because his enemies lie. The only people we hear those things from are his enemies, his enemies are the ones that publicise it.
14. So I'm not fighting the Moonies by any means. In fact, we sympathise with them & I think at least we share the fellowship of persecution. But the Hare Krishnas are definitely of the Devil, it's Indian Hinduism, Satanic! But the Moonies, I just don't know. As long as they claim to be Christians & believe in Jesus & proclaim the name of Christ, I'm not going to fight them or criticise them. I just don't know. They seem to be having considerable success. I think getting young people into his organisation is at least better than leaving them in the System!
THE AC's FIRST TARGETS: THE CULTS & TV PREACHERS!
15. But what I am saying is this: I can see the handwriting on the wall, that the AC forces, which is the anti-Christ forces led by the [EDITED: "ACs"], of course, & their media, are attacking those who have the least resistance & protection, & against whom they can most easily stir up negative public sentiment, because people don't really know them, so they'll believe any kind of lies they tell about them. They're attacking them first because they'll be the easiest to persuade governments & systems to suppress & drive them underground, so they have a hard time operating or getting converts or even existing. They're also attacking the TV preachers because they also are pretty well known & different & have had several big scandals which they're using to attack & discredit them.
16. The cults have been first on their attack list! The TV preachers with their scandals have now been next. They've almost wrecked their ministries & their income is so far down now they can hardly afford their shows any more. They've solicited the help of all other Christians, particularly the Fundamentalists & Evangelicals to attack the cults, and the TV preachers! You know why?--Because all of the denominational, Evangelical Fundamentalists that I know of, like those I knew in my former church experience, were extremely jealous, first of the radio preachers, & then later of TV preachers, because they figured they siphoned off their members & siphoned off their money! So the Evangelical churches are happy to fight the TV preachers, unless they happen to be one of their own. And you notice when those fellows have been scandalised, how quickly they are willing to just kick'm out!
17. As long as they were making money for their denomination, such as Swaggart was, & contributing millions of Dollars a year to the Assemblies of God, they enjoyed having him as one of their leaders. At first they were jealous of his TV show, & no doubt they insisted on being on it. All of those church leaders were having open forums & debates, which led to that show's decline, & horrible contention right before the viewing unbelievers, & then finally the scandal broke. Those "guest" preachers ruined the program, it was much better with just Swaggart & his beautiful touching singing & powerful preaching.
18. So the program was already being undermined by the jealous clerics of his own denomination, & when they finally got the scandal on him, then they were, in a sense, more than happy to be able to discredit him. But they had a tough choice in trying to decide whether to keep him in the denomination so they'd keep getting those millions of his contributions or kick him out. So they went through kind of a weak little slap-on-the-wrist type of thing in rebuking him & yet trying to keep him. As a result he didn't take it & he defied them & as I last heard, he's virtually pulled out of the denomination & is now on his own, which he can afford to be because he was an asset to them, they're not an asset to him, certainly not any more.
19. What I'm trying to show you is how the AC forces are attacking the weakest first, the ones they can most easily put down & sway public opinion against & government laws against & all that sort of thing. They began with the cults, really, that's the first real massive frontal attack against any group of Christians that has happened in almost centuries, at least since the first early stages of some of the major denominations when they were also cults.
PERSECUTION HISTORY!
20. I can go back through the history of it, first of all the Early Christians were persecuted by the Jews, then by the Romans. Then the small Roman Church grew rich & powerful & became the persecutors of the real Christians. Each time the Devil attacks the weakest & the poorest, who are also usually the ones who are the most Christian!
21. The Protestants started out as small sects, cults & bands of persecuted Christians. They were persecuted by first the Catholics, & then once they became big, rich & powerful & too influential in government to persecute, & stopped being real ardent Christians & stopped doing the job & were compromising & accepted by the System, then the System stopped persecuting them & they started persecuting the smaller sects, such as even the Salvation Army, but now they're accepted by the System. The Salvation Army pulled out of the Methodists, & the Methodists pulled out of the Church of England, & the Church of England pulled out of the Catholic Church. (See "Dropouts" I & "IV, ML#s 34 & 42.) John Bunyan & a lot of others pulled out & were radical rebels who even left Europe, like the Puritans & the Huguenots who went to America to escape persecution.
22. It's been a long history of persecution of Christians! There were large groups of Christians, sects, which were persecuted in Europe, England, Scotland, France, etc., oodles of them, early Protestants to give it a general classification, persecuted both by the Roman Church & even by each other, just like they're doing now, until they finally got big & strong enough & compromising enough, that they are no longer persecuted, they've become the major Protestant denominations.
23. Then began the Pentecostals, the first charismatic movements back around the turn of the last century, the early 1900s. Actually they appeared long before that sporadically in isolated instances, but the main big Pentecostal movement began with the famous outpouring at the Azusa Street Mission in 1909, which eventually grew into the Assemblies of God, plus several other competitors, "Pentecostal Holiness" & some like that.
24. Then when they became big & powerful & settled into formal denominations, God had another revival, & that was the "Latter Rain" of the '40s, & as they grew they siphoned off a lot of churches from both the Assemblies of God & the Church of the Open Bible, a large Pentecostal denomination, & the Four Square Gospel Churches. They got churches from all those big Pentecostal denominations, so the denominations began to fight them.
25. This same process has gone on for centuries. God always has to raise up a new group each time to pour His Spirit out on because the old one grows big, powerful, cold, dead, solidified, compromising & accepted by the Devil's System. So He raises up some new little groups, & they get persecuted by the older groups, the bigger more powerful groups.
26. But this time, it looks to me like it is more AC-led, media-led, the actual forces of the Antichrist himself now engineering this final persecution of Christians!--Beginning with the weakest & least able to defend themselves, against whom the ACs are most easily able to lie & prejudice & persuade governments to persecute & suppress, beginning with the so-called "cults" as they're now called, & next, the TV preachers & their followers. I believe that probably next on the list, because they too are fairly small sects compared to the major denominations, will be the older cults or sects, which are still under the anathema of the vast majority of Christians & churches, etc., such as the Mormons, SDAs, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
27. What I'm trying to show you is how this whole affair has evolved, the persecution of the smaller sects & cults from the very beginning of time, from the Jews & the Early Christians on down to the Protestants & then the small rebel groups who pulled out of the major Protestant denominations. It's been an ongoing thing which has continued all through history.
AFTER THE SMALL CULTS, THEY'LL GO FOR THE BIG ONES!
28. However, its present form, which I consider its final form, is led by the very forces of the Devil himself, the anti-Christ forces [DELETED], their AC media, & is organised worldwide, undoubtedly by the Antichrist himself who is in existence somewhere leading & directing all of this! In this latest flood that the Devil is putting out to try to devour true Christians, he's pushing a general drive against all cults, because he knows if he can get the people & the System to persecute & suppress them all, with them he will get the true ones like us, & that's what he's trying to do! And he's attacking the weakest, the smallest, such as us & the other cults, as they call them, & the TV preachers & their followings, all of whom it's easy to stir up prejudice, lies, persecution & suppression against.
29. But next, watch him work his way up to the bigger so-called cults, which most Protestants are against & have been fighting for a hundred years or more, such as the Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. They'll be the next easiest to stir up other churches against & to get the cooperation of Christians against them, of the big denominations. It will be easy to get their cooperation to try to suppress & stir up antagonism against them.
30. He'll get the churches to help him suppress these great sects, these former cults. They start out calling them "cults," & then they work up to "sects," & finally they become denominations. But the other bigger Protestant denominations still don't like'm, so they'll cooperate. If the AC forces think they have finished us off, they will then get around to the bigger cults or sects, such as those that the vast majority of the church people already hate. I'm sure they're working on trying to get something on them. They've already used certain laws in the United States against the Jehovah's Witnesses, because they've refused to have blood transfusions & refused to salute the flag & in some cases refused to send their kids to school, & they've been thrown in jail & persecuted.--And I'm sure that kind of persecution will increase, the volume will grow.
31. Then once they've got them pretty well wiped out & suppressed by the Christians themselves, by the church people themselves, they'll have managed to eliminate this opposition, which is actually in some ways the most dangerous opposition that they face, because there are more true Christians, more ardent Christians, more active Christians, more zealous Christians in the cults & the sects. The witnessing Christians with the fastest-growing denominations in the United States & the World are those in the so-called sects because they go out & ardently seek to win converts & distribute vast amounts of literature, etc. So the ACs want to get them first. They're the most effective cults & sects, let's put it that way, so they'll try to get them first, & that's what they're now doing with the TV preachers & their followings.
AFTER THE BIG CULTS, IT'LL BE THE FUNDAMENTALISTS THEN!
32. The next thing they will do then once they've got them, they'll go after the Fundamentalist Evangelicals, the smaller denominations.--Big, but much smaller than the largest & most powerful denominations. The biggest Protestant denomination in the World is the Methodists, & except for a few small groups, they are almost entirely modernistic, unbelieving, atheistic & are already cooperating with the anti-Christ forces & have been for years!--Atheist, Communist, evolutionary forces. They are already sold-out to the Devil, so he's got them already, no problem. So he will use them, because they will happily cooperate with anything that will crush the smaller denominations.
33. They'll attack the independent Evangelical Fundamentalists first, smaller independent groups. When they've got them suppressed or wiped out, then they'll go after the bigger Fundamental Evangelical groups such as even the Southern Baptists & Evangelical Lutherans, Missouri Synod, etc., all who have big official radio & TV shows reaching vast millions of people. So no doubt they will go after them next, after they've put down all these other little outfits, starting with the smallest groups such as us, & working their way on up. They've been after us for 20 years, now they're getting around to some of the rest of them.
34. Then they'll get around to some of the bigger Fundamentalist Evangelical denominations, powerful, big denominations. But by that time they'll have things so under control, including all the other so-called Christians, which include all the Modernistic denominations. When I say modernistic, I mean they don't believe the Bible, they don't really believe Jesus is the Messiah or Christ, they don't believe in life after death, they don't even believe in salvation.--And that includes the bigger Methodist denominations, the bigger Presbyterian denominations, the big modernistic Lutheran denominations, the United Churches, United Methodists, United Churches of Christ & all those big huge unbelieving denominations whom they already have! They don't have to go after them, they're already working in them & controlling them & using them. They can even, for awhile, make them their official religion, cooperate with them, including the Orthodox Jews, etc.
35. They will allow these big outfits to continue because they're already diabolical & devilish & unbelieving & already anti-Christ! They will allow them to continue as a formal, official religion that's allowed, until the Antichrist feels that he has sufficient power to finally oppose & try to eliminate them too, & creates his own new religion, & tries to make everybody worship him, & that's the final stage!
36. As far as I'm concerned, it's already in its first & early stages right now, & really gaining momentum!--Against us & the other cults, so to speak, the cult of the TV preachers. As you notice, the bigger denominations are already sponsoring people who are fighting the Evangelicals, Fundamentalists. The big unbelieving modernistic denominations are sponsoring people like that [EDITED: "Chinese-American"] in New York who is pushing "Fundamentalists Anonymous," openly fighting the Fundamentalists. (Maria: And like Barz' wife's church, it was a Baptist church that sponsored her to fight us.) Oh, the big churches are very happy right now to fight the cults!
37. I'm saying that this is the initial stage, the initial blast, the initial attack, right now, & has already been going on for some years against us & what you might call the other small cults. And now they're turning to the bigger, more popular groups such as the TV preachers & their churches, with anything they can get on them, & they themselves very foolishly furnish the ammunition with their own scandals. So they've already pretty well discredited TV evangelism. Now they're turning against the Fundamentalist Evangelicals of any kind or ilk wherever they can find them, the smaller ones of course, the more independent ones, but they'll work their way up. God knows how fast it'll go!
38. They'll go from the more or less independent TV churches--now they're attacking Swaggart who represented a big denomination--they'll go from there & find fault with the official denominational broadcasts of some of the other bigger Evangelical Fundamentalist denominations! They'll try to get into them some way, through money investigations or personal scandals or whatever. They'll find whatever they can that they figure they can use on the public to turn them against those outfits & eventually against even larger Fundamentalist groups, of which this "Fundamentalists Anonymous" is the beginning. That's the first attack I've seen on Fundamentalists in general--that [EDITED: "Chinese-American"] who's using the basement of a Methodist Church for his headquarters.
39. So it's begun! It's really "Persecution Anonymous," but not so anonymous, because a lot of them are proud to be named amongst our enemies, & against even the bigger groups. Well, that's the way it's developed & evolved since the early days of history, but to me this has all the earmarks & signs of the beginning of the Last Days of tribulation & persecution, because we know we are the last, & it's really moving fast!
40. As the larger groups of Christians are enlisted by the anti-Christ forces to attack us & other small groups, then the Lord will let them reap what they've sowed, & let the ACs turn on them, & they're going to start suffering & be sorry for what they did to us! The Lord has a way of repaying, & they're going to reap what they've sowed, & what they're sowing now! And I presume most of us will live to see it, because things are moving pretty fast!
THE YEARS OF DAD'S LIFE, & HIS WEARINESS WITH RECENT PERSECUTION!
41. A lot of people, because of things we've said before & interpretations we've made before, are expecting me to die on my next birthday. But I recently made the statement, "Well, what if 'by reason of great strength' I manage to live beyond that & the Lord gives me extra years like He did King Hezekiah when he prayed? What if I live to be 80?"
42. I just said that as a rhetorical question, as a hypothetical question, but because I said that, now some of our own people are saying that I have said that I'm going to live to be 80! They have misinterpreted that & are now claiming I'm going to live to be 80! I did not say I was going to live to be 80! I said I might live to be 80, I could live to be 80. If I pray, the Lord might gladly give me ten more years if it is good for me & good for the Family & if there are ten more years! But I did not say I was going to live to be 80, but all of a sudden everybody's latching on to that: "Oh, Dad's going to live to be 80!" Well, I'm glad they're encouraged, but I don't want them to be too encouraged, because I don't think things can last ten more years!
43. One hope I do have is that I can manage to live long enough to go up with you all in the Rapture! But who knows? The Lord may want to spare me from those horrible last days, because I've been through a lot of horrible days already, & going through the agonies of these recent persecutions & family tragedies & all, the way the Enemy's now attacking our children, I don't know how much more of this I can stand! It's really dwelling on the negative. Constantly going through all these reports & having to write letters about these tragedies & how to protect ourselves, etc., is really so negative & so down that it sometimes really gets me down & depressed & discouraged & sick of it all! If there wasn't so much good news, this bad news would really get me down! But having to work on it so much, I really get weary of it. I'd like to get off to something that's much more positive & think on good things instead of all these bad things! I hope I'm done with all of this!
44. I have said my say about this child-stealing business & their modern attacks, etc., I don't think I should have to worry with it any more now, or any more of these things like that. We've had our say about it, we've declared our position, we've sent out the warnings & I would like a little relief now from some of these horrible reports. I'm gleaning through them & glancing through them to see if there's anything we've missed, anything we still need to say, but otherwise I am pretty well fed up with dwelling fulltime on some of these problems instead of getting back to work on the things that are good & of good report.--Phil.4:8.
45. (Maria: May I ask you one more question? You've suggested the Family gets some lawyers, that it's almost mandatory to find a lawyer in every country to help in some of these legal battles when they arise. Don't you think it's almost equally as important to find people who are able to more or less get around the law in different ways.) We've been doing that for years. (Maria: But we haven't really used or cultivated those kind of friends or contacts.) We have always advocated that you try to reach people of influence, powerful friends who can help you in time of need. I didn't say go out & retain a lawyer immediately, unless you've already got a problem that needs one, but of course you should make friends & keep them in mind in case you ever need'm.
46. I think I've dwelt enough on that subject of persecution, I'm sick & tired of persecution! I'm sure we'll get more of it, but I don't want to spend all my time talking about persecution! OK? We can call this, "The History of Persecution & Its Present Last Days!" PTL!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family