THE BIRDS & THE SEEDS!            DFO 316A        10/74

         1. BY NOW YOU HAVE READ "INDIGENOUS" (NO.315C), SO YOU KNOW WHAT WE'RE ABOUT TO TRY TO DO--AGAIN! Praise the Lord! It's sort of like our fourth or FIFTH DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE for the kids around the World, each of which some of you said might not work & could even cause us to fall apart! You were afraid that in the resultant explosion we might be blown to BITS instead of simply EXPANDING & growing STRONGER & more WIDESPREAD!
         2. BUT INSTEAD, EACH NEW EXPLOSION HAS SET THE KIDS FREER to operate directly under the Lord according to their own faith for their local situation which they understood much better than we! Each new earth-shaking blast, which actually frightened some of you, instead opened up new wellsprings of power below that we never even knew existed before! Each has caused the water of His Word to flow more freely than ever before! Each has helped tiny new rivulets turn into mighty torrents that have opened up whole new channels & swollen to irrepressible & mighty rivers of the Words of God in totally new fields!
         3. EACH NEW BLAST OF THE POWER OF GOD & HIS WORDS HAVE BROKEN THE CHAINS THAT BOUND THEM, shattered the locks of their prison doors, destroyed the walls that surrounded them & set them free to flood the Earth with their doctrine! Instead of weakening our own structure, each new liberation has helped destroy the Enemy's opposition & attempts to contain us & detain us from the work God wants us to do!
         4. IN THESE LETTERS WE DEALT MOSTLY WITH INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, the setting free of those who had the faith to go it ALONE, hit the road, invade a new area or country or whole new world to sow new seed in new places which would grow in new, more receptive & fertile soil into a whole new plant, in a DIFFERENT field! Some took this to mean that we were abandoning the Colony method entirely, but what we were really doing was trying to break up some of the old bottles & blobs into a WIDER coverage of much SMALLER & INDIVIDUALISTIC Homes, more INDEPENDENT & INDIGENOUS & ministering to MORE PEOPLE in MORE PLACES than ever before!
         5. A FEW CARRIED THIS TO THE EXTREME & THOUGHT WE WEREN'T TO HAVE COLONIES ANY MORE, & some are still preaching against any kind of Colonies at all, which is not at all what we intended nor what has resulted. We were trying to break up the big blobs so bogged down with numbers they could hardly move, & scatter them in smaller units & more effective little families all over the World!
         6. THAT THIS METHOD OF COLONISATION HAS WORKED IS EVIDENT THROUGH THE WORLDWIDE RESULTS of the present: THOUSANDS of new disciples in HUNDREDS of new Homes in SCORES of new countries on EVERY Continent speaking DOZENS of languages & publishing MILLIONS of Letters to BILLIONS worldwide!
         7. BUT SOME OF YOU ARE LIKE THE MAN IN THE BIBLE WHO WANTED TO BUILD BIGGER BARNS to hold more grain instead of scattering it abroad to the hungry & starving multitudes!--Luk.12:18.
         8. Or you're like the flowers in our garden who want to remain big & bright & showy instead of fading, losing their petals & going to seed which is being scattered by the birds to grow NEW flowers in OTHER places, the FRUIT of the bloom & its original purpose in the first place! The blooms must die that others may live! That is their fruit & method of multiplication, their true intent & purpose in existing at all, in order that they might produce seed or fruit which will perpetuate the entire plant to reproduce more plants, more seed, more fruit!
         9. THE BIRDS, LIKE THE CHILDREN OF GOD, HAVE BEEN PLUCKING AWAY THE SHOWY PETALS TO GET AT THE SEEDS with which they fly away, scattering them abroad in their droppings so that even a new island & the desolate places are soon covered with new verdure, new flowers, new plants, new trees & new fruit with new seed from the same! The old are constantly dying so the new & the young must be continually reproduced & constantly growing to have a living new World day by day! "For except a SEED fall into the ground & DIE, it abideth ALONE. But if it DIE it bringeth forth much FRUIT!"--Jn.12:24.
         10. THE BLOSSOMS MUST FADE, WITHER & DIE THAT THEIR SEEDS MIGHT FALL & BE SCATTERED or blow or be carried & planted on new ground to die there to themselves that a new plant might be born, springing forth from the death of the old & multiplying its members manyfold! This is God's principle of life & growth & strength & reproduction & multiplication throughout all nature:
         11. THE OLD MUST GIVE WAY TO THE NEW & the parents must suffer pain, separation & even death for their young that all things might be recreated, reproduced & repopulate the Earth day after day! Even the Earth itself must die one day that it may give birth to a NEW World! So ALL things must come to an end sometime except that which is ETERNAL! ALL things must die sooner or later that OTHERS may live!
         12. BIRDS MUST BUILD NESTS FOR AWHILE THAT THEY MAY LAY THEIR EGGS & BREED THEIR YOUNG. But soon the new little fledglings themselves must be pushed out of the nest to fly on their own, fend for themselves to build new nests to breed more birds to fly away & build more nests to breed more birds etc., ad infinitum! Each time the nest must be deserted & the fledglings scattered abroad to build birds' nests ELSEWHERE!
         13. BUT SOME OF YOU AS YOU MULTIPLY DON'T WANT TO LEAVE THE NEST--you simply want to build a BIGGER nest in which you can concentrate MORE baby birds to have ONE big baby BIRD CHOIR all in one place all singing gloriously TOGETHER for the entertainment of those NEARBY while the REST of the World is DYING to hear your music!
         14. OR SOME OF YOU ARE LIKE THE CARTOON I ONCE SAW OF THIS HUGE OVERGROWN BIG BABY FLEDGLING spread out & occupying the whole nest to himself & refusing to leave it, saying, "But I don't WANT to leave the nest!--I wanna stay & be a PROBLEM child!"--And that's what YOU really become when you won't GO into ALL the World!
         15. SO BOTH GOD & WE HAVE WRITTEN LETTER AFTER LETTER BEGGING YOU TO DISPERSE throughout all the World instead of bunching up in BIG BLOBS which are nothing but headaches, overgrown nests, bursting barns & towers of babbling confusion! Must God Himself scatter you?
         16. MANY TIMES THROUGHOUT HISTORY GOD HAS HAD TO SCATTER HIS OWN PEOPLE WHEN THEY REFUSED TO GO after warning after warning by His Own prophets! Since the beginning of time this, too, has been God's way: If you refuse to leave the nest, the nest is blown away! If you refuse to share the contents of the barn, the barn is torn down! If your blossom refuses to die to scatter its seed, it is plucked apart by the birds & carried far away, like it or not!--DIVIDE & CONQUER!--Or the WORLD will divide & conquer YOU! That's the way God works: If YOU won't do it, the DEVIL WILL!
         17. IF YOU HAVE A BIG BLOB OR A CONGLOMERATE MESS ALL IN ONE PLACE, PLEASE BREAK IT UP NOW before God has to let the DEVIL do it FOR you! If you've become too big as a Headquarters for your city, District or even the World, then break it up NOW before YOU are broken up by some God-ordained CATASTROPHE, CONFUSION, PERSECUTION, POVERTY or PAIN--such as losing your building or property or rights to live or distribute there, or your publishing rights, or even your city or your country, your literature banned & yourselves banished in order for God to get you to MOVE some place ELSE!
         18. BETTER A LITTLE HOME WITH A LITTLE LITNESSING THAN NONE AT ALL! When will you ever learn? God uses the WEAK things to confound the mighty, the FOOLISH things to bring to naught the wisdom of the wise & the things that are NOT, or seemingly NOTHING, to bring to naught the things that are, or THINK they are! For it is the BASE things & the things which are DESPISED of the World which God hath chosen, like YOU & ME & our TINY HOMES!--1Cor.1:27-28. If your Home's getting BIG enough to BRAG about, look out!--PRIDE cometh before a FALL, & you're DOOMED!
         19. SO WHY NOT DO IT NOW BEFORE THE DEVIL HAS TO DO IT FOR YOU! Most big Homes are big bases for big jobs which could be broken down into SMALLER jobs, departmentalised or specialised in different ministries in different places. As I have often said, GOOD leaders are those who never do anything they can get someone ELSE to do FOR them!--Only do the things which you ALONE can do & which must be done by YOU ONLY!
         20. SHOVE PART OF YOUR LOAD DOWN THE LADDER on someone else who's coming UP before it gets too heavy & breaks with BOTH of you! SPREAD OUT the load on more shoulders so that NO one will collapse under too much weight!
         21. SOME OF YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN FROM WHENCE YE CAME & HOW TO DO LITTLE JOBS WITH LITTLE PEOPLE & STAY SMALL YOURSELVES with a SIMPLE little operation that almost ANYBODY can handle. Instead, you have become such a monstrous, complicated, intricate & highly sophisticated machine that hardly ANYBODY knows how to operate it, & if it breaks down NOBODY knows how to fix it or what it needs!
         22. TRIM IT DOWN! SPREAD IT OUT! KEEP IT SMALL & SIMPLE!--And then almost ANYBODY can run it, even the SMALL & SIMPLE-MINDED! Even the biggest newspapers in the World are distributed by the millions by small little simple-minded newsboys on street corners or bicycles! "Despise not the day of SMALL things!"--Zech.4:10.--Amen?
         23. NEWSBOYS DON'T WRITE, COMPOSE OR PRINT PAPERS--THEY LET THE SYSTEM DO IT FOR'M!--And yet the largest papers in the World could not exist without THEM & the lowly POSTMAN hoofing his beat! No matter how big your BRAIN, it takes your FEET to get you there & your HANDS to do the job! MANAGEMENT & MACHINERY are NOTHING without LABOURERS! Though the HARVEST truly is PLENTEOUS, the LABOURERS are always too FEW!
         24. IF THERE'S UNEMPLOYMENT, IT'S NEVER BECAUSE THERE'S NOT ENOUGH WORK or jobs to be done, & it's not even the labourers' fault if management doesn't supply the seed or send them into the fields & show them how to sow it, tend it & harvest it & live off the land! DEPRESSIONS are caused by the RICH, not the POOR! Is your Home big & rich & robbing the poor of their needs & so selfish you're robbing the World of labourers?
         25. IT'S NEWSBOYS WHO NEED TO BE NUMEROUS--NOT MANAGEMENT WITH OVERGROWN STAFFS & OUTGROWN HOUSING! A SMALL EFFICIENT staff can help SIMPLIFY & SPEED production of good originals for ALL to reproduce. But if it's going to get BOGGED DOWN in a BIG BLOB of other LESS essential jobs, other departments & EXCESS personnel getting in each other's way & requiring TOO MUCH HOUSING & causing TOO MANY PROBLEMS, living in TOO MUCH LUXURY & costing TOO MUCH EXPENSE, I'd rather see you ALL go back to the streets as the original good NEWSBOYS you USED to be!
         26. WATCH OUT FOR BIG BLOB BOGEY MEN!--THE WHOLE WORLD'S BOGGED DOWN WITH'M! A BIG BLOB job can be CORN on the COB for the FEW instead of MILLIONS in the CANS for the BILLIONS! If your complicated MACHINERY can't get the seed corn OFF the cob & into the cans for every kitchen in this starving World, then for God's sake let's do it by HAND if we have to, like JESUS did & WE used to do!--At least we could keep thousands of LITTLE people busy doing thousands of LITTLE jobs while the BIG shots are still trying to figure out their big-shot MACHINERY!
         27. WE'VE ALREADY EXPLAINED IN "INDIGENOUS" HOW YOU LITTLE FOLKS IN THE FIELD CAN HANDLE MOST OF THE PICK & SHOVEL WORK & carry your own baskets under your own steam, printing & distributing your own lit locally with your own local address as many are already doing. But you should ALSO be answering your own local MAIL, following up your OWN friends & reaping your own RESULTS!
         28. ONLY PLEASE SEND US A LITTLE IN RETURN SO WE CAN KEEP SENDING YOU THE SEED CORN--or CORNY SEED, whichever you prefer to call it!--But whatever you think of it, the hungry millions are eatin' it up!--Amen?--And it's GROWIN' like MAD!--Hallelujah!
         29. EVERY LITTLE LOCAL HOME THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, OR AT LEAST ITS DISTRICT OR REGIONAL OFFICE, WILL HANDLE ALL LOCAL MAIL LOCALLY as soon as possible, so the International Office's outside mailing ministry with the public can be gradually phased out as you local yokels take over your own local loads.
         30. REMEMBER THE "BIRDS & THE SEEDS" & "Despise not the day of SMALL things!"--The WORD we got from the LORD for you!--Amen? Scatter'm NOW!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family