THE APPEAL OF THE WORLD ON OUR TEENS!--A Lesson-filled History of Dad's Youth! DO 2462   7/88

         1. THEY CALL THESE GUYS "COOL" THAT ARE RATHER SOPHISTICATED & HAVE HAD A LOT OF WORLDLY EXPERIENCE, BUT I CALL'M NOT-SO-HOT! All it took with me was a good taste of public school to make me absolutely HATE it! I HATED the kind of people that were there & hated the whole thing except the educational part. (Maria: I don't know if ALL of our kids have hated it, they don't act like it.) I don't think they have been IN public school! (Maria: Surprisingly enough, a lot of our teens have been in public school, & that's one reason why they're so Worldly. Whether they hated it or not, or whether they liked it, the fact remains that many of them were very adversely AFFECTED by it.)
         2. I NEVER LIKED ANY OF THE WORLDLY KIDS THAT I MET IN PUBLIC SCHOOL! I never had any friends. They were all abominable, abhorrent, as far as I was concerned, they were all horrible, terrible kids! A few of the girls acted a little bit nice but I never really got very well acquainted with them. The nice ones didn't mix with the boys much. (Maria: I didn't have very many friends at school either, maybe just one special friend.)
         3. I NEVER HAD ONE SINGLE FRIEND IN SCHOOL THAT I CAN EVER REMEMBER AT ANY GRADE LEVEL! I was a real LONER! I just was not ONE of them! They hated me & I hated them & I wasn't a bit like them. They were nearly all little DEVILS, especially the boys. I never had much to do with the girls.

THIS WORLD'S FOOLISHNESS--DISGUSTING!

         4. I JUST NEVER GRAVITATED TO WORLDLY "COOL" PEOPLE LIKE THAT. They disgusted me. As far as I was concerned they were silly & ridiculous, & even worse, they were interested in stuff that DISGUSTED me.
         5. I NEVER FOUND ANY THAT I FELT ANY KIND OF INTIMATE FELLOWSHIP WITH OR ANY THAT I LOOKED UP TO OR ADMIRED OR WANTED TO BE LIKE OR WANTED TO BE WITH. I just didn't find any people like that. I was SPIRITUAL, I was a real CHRISTIAN & loved the LORD, & I'm sure the Lord protected me & kept me from even getting interested in people like that. I just never found anybody who was, in a sense, on my level & interested in the same things I was interested in. Nobody read the kind of books I read, they read all kinds of silly ridiculous novels & magazines & junk & funny papers & they were even getting into System comic books then, & I just thought comic books were absolutely scum, & they were! They weren't serious. I guess I was on an adult level. In fact, I had higher & more serious interests than a lot of adults!
         6. WHAT GOD'S PROBABLY GOING TO HAVE TO DO TO THIS GENERATION OF EVEN OUR OWN KIDS IN ORDER TO STRAIGHTEN THEM OUT & get them to sober up & settle down is put them through some real SUFFERING! That's what it's going to take, some real serious genuine suffering, persecution or privation or whatever. That's one thing that kept ME sober, we were POOR, REALLY poor, & I simply couldn't AFFORD any ridiculous stuff! I managed to do well to wangle 25 cents a week allowance & to pick up a little here & there from what I earned myself. I went out & WORKED HARD selling magazines & perfume & all kinds of stuff just to earn a little money myself, & I won some prizes too because I was good at it, I worked hard at it.
         7. (MARIA: BUT OUR KIDS WHO HAVE BEEN REAL POOR SEEM TO BE EVEN MORE ATTRACTED TO THE MATERIALISM OF THE SYSTEM & the things that the System has, because they haven't had it.) It's funny, there wasn't ANYTHING that I saw those Worldly kids with that appealed to me. Some of them even had cars & everything when I was in Junior High, & in Senior High nearly ALL of them had cars. I was very very serious minded & I really knew & loved the LORD.
         8. SO I CAN'T UNDERSTAND OUR KIDS BEING ATTRACTED TO FOOLISHNESS LIKE THAT! Our children are reared to be really conscious of what's serious & important, & I can't imagine them being appealed to by foolish shallow kids, just plain WORLDLY kids, when they were reared to be serious & sober about things. I'm disappointed to hear that. I'm really disappointed to hear that they're attracted & appealed to by that kind of silly foolish shallow Worldly kids.

MORE ON DAD'S TEEN INTERESTS!

         9. I WAS VERY SERIOUS-MINDED, VERY SPIRITUALLY-MINDED & INTERESTED IN REALLY DEEP SERIOUS THINGS, history & science. I just didn't fit! Nobody liked me (except TEACHERS) & I didn't like them either! The only thing I liked was science & reading & history, & I was excellent in math, the top of my class in geometry. I took all those things soberly and seriously and really STUDIED, and made top grades.
         10. I WAS LIKE SOMEBODY FROM ANOTHER WORLD! I was like an ALIEN, & they all knew it, & they TREATED me like it! Those Worldly people either DISGUSTED me or just plain made me ANGRY, they were so despicable & so sickening & silly & foolish & shallow! They were like little children compared to me.
         11. IT'S LIKE I WAS BORN OLD, I MEAN IT! I think I was really more like an adult. In fact, I was even MORE serious than most of the adults! The Lord was really watching over me, I'm sure, & really keeping my mind pure & my thoughts idealistic. That's why I think I could never get mixed up with girls in those days. I really was ATTRACTED to them & WANTED them, needed sex, but I had such high IDEALS I would never have gotten involved with a girl that I wasn't going to MARRY!
         12. (MARIA: BUT YOU WEREN'T SO GIRL-CRAZY THAT YOU COULDN'T THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE BUT GIRLS ALL THE TIME, WERE YOU?--Like some of our kids are now.) Oh goodness no! Honey, I was involved, I was completely absorbed in my STUDIES & in READING & in wanting to know about the World, I mean History, the SERIOUS World.
         13. (PRAYS:) WELL, LORD, YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT IT. We tried to do the best we could with them to teach them to know & love YOU & follow You, & know that only ONE thing in life is important, & that's to WITNESS & win SOULS & serve THEE! And if we didn't do a good job of it & they haven't learned it, if that's not their main goal in life, then we're sorry, but at least we tried. So I don't know if we can take the blame or not if they don't turn out as good as we hoped. We thought they were better, Lord, but maybe we were expecting too much. All I can say is we've done what we COULD. If they don't APPRECIATE it & they don't FOLLOW it, they're of the age of decision, & that's THEIR funeral. In Jesus' name.
         14. I'M SORRY, I GUESS I NEVER HAD VERY MUCH SYMPATHY FOR BACKSLIDERS. My feeling has always been LOVE it or LEAVE it! So if they don't LOVE it, they might as well LEAVE it as far as I'm concerned. (Maria: Well, I wouldn't be too hard on them yet until we really give them a CHANCE. Most of them are displaying some very good qualities, like wanting to fellowship & be with their parents & Shepherds more than just fooling around all the time with the kids who try to be "cool." There are a few little faults & weaknesses that some of them have, but I think that they'll pull out of it & they'll come through. According to the Word, "When they are older they won't depart from it.") Amen, but that doesn't mean they won't depart when they're YOUNG.

IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF THE WORLD!

         15. WELL, I MUST SAY I WAS IN MY MIDDLE & LATE 40'S BEFORE I REALLY WENT OUT SORT OF INVESTIGATING THE WORLD & SAMPLING THE WORLD A LITTLE BIT to see what it was all about--when I was on the road for television. It was my first chance to ever explore the World at all & see what it was like.--Movies, nightclubs, women. And personally, it all still pretty much disgusted me & I knew I didn't belong. I never ever felt like I was a PART of it at all, I always felt like I was on the OUTSIDE looking in, & what I saw was pretty SICKENING. (Maria: According to the commandment to "Be not conformed to this World!", & "Be not yoked with unbelievers."--Rom.12:2, 2Cor.6:14-17)
         16. I WAS REALLY JUST MORE OR LESS EXPLORING & SAMPLING TO SEE WHAT IT WAS LIKE. And as far as it ever actually APPEALING to me as being a PART of it, I KNEW where I belonged, & I NEVER cared to be a PART of it at all!--Not at all! I always felt like a STRANGER, always knew I was a stranger just looking in on it from the outside. I was just more or less exploring it to see what it was like. Maybe that's what some of our teens are doing. Maybe they're just curious.
         17. I GOT TO TRY ENOUGH JOBS IN THE SYSTEM THAT I KNEW THAT WASN'T WHERE IT'S AT. As far as work & System jobs were concerned, I knew I didn't belong in it. But its PEOPLE never appealed to me either, never! So I just can't understand why they would appeal to our kids. (Maria: Well, maybe it's just momentarily, initially, just to see what it is, where it's NOT.)
         18. PTL! TYJ! TYL! HELP OUR KIDS, LORD! Help them to know what's RIGHT, Lord. Now it's up to THEM to make their OWN decisions to DO what's right. They KNOW what's right, we've TAUGHT them, but at their age we can't MAKE'M. They've gotta CHOOSE it themselves. They might do a little experimenting or dabbling, investigating out of curiosity, but I think they'll come home in the long run. (Maria: And see where it's NOT at.) They'll know who's right.
         19. MAYBE SOME OF OUR TEENS ARE SIMPLY CURIOUS TO FIND OUT ABOUT OTHER KIDS, & WHAT MAKES THEM TICK. Maybe they've actually got sympathy for the sinner. Jesus went down amongst the publicans & the harlots & the drunks & the sinners. The Scribes & Pharisees didn't like it either, that He was hobnobbing with the worst elements, but it was because He LOVED them & wanted to SAVE them & HELP them, not because He wanted to be LIKE them. They appealed to Him because they NEEDED Him & He wanted to SAVE them, so maybe that's why some of our kids are attracted to others with those kinds of problems. Let's hope so.

DAD'S RELATIONSHIPS WITH GIRLS AS A TEEN!

         20. WHEN I WAS A TEEN, I thought about girls & I looked at them. (Maria: But you didn't have your mind on them ALL the time, right?) I had my mind on my WORK, my studies & serious thoughts about the future & what I was going to be, what I was going to do.
         21. OF COURSE, WHEN I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO BE IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL, I KNEW I HAD TO BE IN THE LORD'S WORK because I was very serious about the Lord at that time, & thought, of course, I was going to be a preacher or a pastor.
         22. BY THE TIME I WAS 18, I WAS IN FULLTIME WORK DRIVING MY MOTHER & LEADING THE SINGING & TEACHING CHILDREN'S GROUPS & lecturing on my slides & stuff like that. I was in fulltime service for the Lord & all we needed was a pianist, which we figured we could roll into one with a wife! So it was all cut out, that's what I expected to be & that's what finally happened.
         23. BUT WHEN I WAS A YOUNG TEEN, I WAS MOSTLY ABSORBED IN MY STUDIES & in reading books, learning, educating myself, really wanting to know. I had a great thirst for knowledge, & I read & read, I just read all the time! I didn't have any time to fiddle around even worrying about girls or hardly thinking about them. There weren't any girls that had anything to do with me anyhow, & I didn't care much about them, they were all a bunch of silly little nitwits as far as I was concerned!
         24. (MARIA: WELL MAYBE IF YOU'D HAD SPIRITUAL GIRLS AROUND YOU...) Yes, I might have been interested! (Maria: It would have been a lot more distracting!) Especially sleeping in the same School with them, living as closely & intimately as the Family does, I'm sure I would have been a good deal more interested in girls! They're quite interest-absorbing! (Maria: Our girls are really sweet.) Oh, I think I would've been crazy about OUR girls, in fact I AM!
         25. I THINK THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD FOR YOUNG TEEN BOYS IS TO HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO & keep them so BUSY they don't have so much TIME to be fiddling around about girls! Maybe they need a READING COURSE of books that they've got to finish. (Maria: We have MO LETTERS, but the System books just haven't proven to be worthwhile.) All right, we've got plenty of our own books, we've got oodles of MO Letters. Why don't we put them on a reading schedule to read them all!
         26. AS A TEEN I WAS SERIOUS-MINDED. I just wanted to get out in the Lord's WORK, I wanted to be a MISSIONARY, I wanted to be an EVANGELIST, I wanted to do something for the LORD & win SOULS!
         27. AS FAR AS I WAS CONCERNED, THERE WAS NO PLACE ELSE FOR ME EXCEPT IN THE LORD'S WORK, & whoever I finally chose had to be very spiritual & a pianist for my singing & my job & my Mother.
         28. THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS WITH ME, I WAS JUST MORE INTERESTED IN MORE SERIOUS THINGS, & WAS SOBER & OLD BEFORE MY TIME. I'm sure the Lord kept me that way, much more interested in serious things, studies, books, reading, reading the newspaper etc. (Maria: Well, even I was much more spiritual when I was that age than I think most of our Family teens are. I don't know why.) Well, when you're reared in a preacher's home like you were, you're inclined to be pretty spiritual. You're involved in all of their WORK & you feel the BURDEN of their responsibilities & you want to HELP them, & I'm sure that's one reason why.

WHY CONFORM TO THE WICKED WORLD?

         29. BUT WHAT I CAN'T UNDERSTAND IS, THAT'S THE WAY OUR KIDS IN THE FAMILY ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN REARED, IN A WAY. So for them to suddenly fly off & be appealed to by the World & other Worldly kids, I expected them to be sort of disgusted with all that, really. I am disappointed if our Family teens are not disgusted when they see how Worldly kids are. (Maria: How shallow & sort of foolish they are.) I can't understand at ALL why our teens would be attracted to other teens who are so Worldly! (Maria: Maybe because they think the girls like that kind of boy.)
         30. HONEY, MY FRIEND LAMONT WAS ABOUT AS HANDSOME AS YOU CAN GET, & HAD GIRLS CHASING AFTER HIM ALL THE TIME, & as far as I was concerned, that didn't make me like Lamont any more, in fact it actually made me more DISGUSTED! I sort of envied the fact that the girls liked him, but it didn't make me want to be LIKE Lamont in the least way!--Because Lamont was foolish, shallow, not really serious about his studies, not really concerned about the Lord's Work, NOTHING! As a teen, that side of Lamont never appealed to me a bit! It just disgusted me!

DAD'S SAMPLE AS A TEEN!

         31. I THINK THE CLOSEST I CAME TO A SITUATION AT ALL LIKE OUR SCHOOLS WHERE I WAS SURROUNDED WITH GOOD TEENS, CHRISTIAN TEENS, was when I became the Youth Director of our Church in Miami at the Church of the Open Door, & we had about a dozen teenagers. Of course, the girls were all crazy about me but I really kept my distance from all of them except Dolores, because I think my Mother & her Mother encouraged that. (Maria: How old were you then?) 18 & 19, she was 14 & 15. I was about 5 years older than she was.
         32. BUT I WAS VERY SOBER & SERIOUS-MINDED AT THAT TIME ABOUT LEADING THOSE YOUNG PEOPLE & talking about the Lord & getting them to sober up & be serious about the Lord & His Work, & to help support this missionary we had, Kovak, a handsome young Russian fellow amongst the Russians of Alaska that Peter Dyneka had dug up. So we pledged $5 a month to support him, & that was a lot of money then.
         33. I WAS REAL SERIOUS THEN & I GOT BAPTISED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT AT THAT TIME. That's when I was in that car wreck. I was praying, "Lord, I wish there was something I could do to sober these kids up & make them more serious!"--& we completely turned over! We were all banged up but nobody was really seriously hurt, which was a miracle! But boy, it sure sobered them up in a hurry & at the next Young People's Meeting they really were sober & serious & listened!
         34. BUT I WAS ALWAYS SO FAR ABOVE & BEYOND THOSE WORLDLY CHRISTIAN TEENS! I was never ever in a situation where I was on their level, not even in school. That's just the facts! And apparently that's the way the Lord wanted it to be & kept me, so I never got involved. I was their LEADER, superior, even though I was more or less their own age. I guess the Lord just did it to keep me from getting too involved.
         35. I CAN'T REMEMBER ANY BOY THAT I WANTED TO BE LIKE OR WANTED TO FOLLOW, EVER, NEVER! Lamont usually disgusted me & none of the Worldly kids attracted me, nobody!
         36. (MARIA: ALTHOUGH WE WOULD LIKE THEM TO, I GUESS WE CAN'T REALLY EXPECT OUR TEENS TO BE EXACTLY LIKE YOU, but I think they should as much as possible work toward your standard of dedication & love for the Lord & desire to do His Work.) And I guess you can't really expect me to understand them or why our Family kids would be appealed to by Worldly people, because I was never appealed to by that. The only people who inspired me were famous men, GREAT men. My own Mother & Father were my greatest inspiration, as well as my Grandfather. I greatly admired them & really knew they were great people & great Christians, & I really loved & admired them. They're the only ones I really wanted to be like.
         37. I GUESS YOU WERE PRETTY MUCH THE SAME WAY, reared in a Christian home, by Christian parents. (Maria: I was pretty spiritual, but I didn't feel things as strongly as you did. I wasn't an exceptional child, as you were. I just didn't care for those Worldly kids that much & didn't feel much in common with them, but I don't remember feeling it to that extreme. I just didn't belong so much with them & didn't fit in so much with them. I was pretty isolated too.--Just because I was a preacher's daughter & a Christian.)
         38. I GUESS I'M NOT GOING TO BE ANY HELP IN THIS SITUATION WITH OUR TEENS BEING APPEALED TO BY THE WRONG KIND OF KIDS OR COMPANY. I just can't understand our young people even liking or liking to even talk to people like that. (Maria: Well, we hope that, as time goes on, they'll mature spiritually. But our kids in general, the teens in our Schools, seem to be a GOOD bunch & are really doing well.)

TO BACKSLIDE OR STAY TRUE--THE CHOICE IS UP TO YOU!

         39. WELL, ALL I CAN SAY IS THAT AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS OF TRAINING & BEING TAUGHT THE NURTURE & ADMONITION OF THE LORD & trained up in the way they SHOULD go, I will certainly be very greatly disappointed to find out that many of our kids are being appealed to by anything else or anybody else that's not according to our Family standard & ideals. (Maria: Well, they might backslide a little, but like "train up a child in the way he shall go" says, I think eventually they'll see the error of their ways & realise that's NOT what they should do & that's not in the plan. The Enemy really fights our kids.)
         40. THERE'S ONLY ONE TIME I EVER REALLY BACKSLID OUT OF THE LORD'S WORK, & that's when I let them take me into the Army.--Only one time. And the Lord even worked that out for good in the long run. But I really landed in HELL, & I KNEW it was Hell & I knew it wasn't where I belonged! I knew the only thing to do was to try to get OUT of there, & I did, thank the Lord, with the Lord's help! And I was never tempted to go back to the World again or its work, jobs or anything.
         41. I STARTED TO GET A JOB ONE SUMMER BETWEEN TEACHING YEARS WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS AN UNEMPLOYMENT COUNSELLOR, & I got the job pretty easily, right away, but I never spent a day at work because the Lord told me so distinctly to leave, gave me that Scripture, "Forsake all, give what thou hast to the poor & come follow Me!"--Mk.10:21. I was scared to death to go to that job & I had to phone them & tell them I was sorry I couldn't make it. I hated to disappoint them, but it would have been WORSE to disappoint the LORD!
         42. WELL, IF OUR TEENS DON'T FOLLOW THE LORD & THE WORD, OF COURSE, I'LL BE DISAPPOINTED. (Maria: I think in the long run everything will work out & they will.) If they get appealed to by anything less, I will certainly be disappointed in them. (Maria: Of course, the Enemy really really fights them. Probably the Enemy fights our kids in the FAMILY even more than he fought US because time's so short & they're going to be the real leaders of the Endtime, the army of the End. They probably fight even worse battles. So there are a lot of temptations along the way, but I think they'll come out all right in the end.)
         43. WELL, I HAVE SAID THAT THE FINAL ACID TEST OF OUR WHOLE SYSTEM & FAMILY IS IF WE CAN KEEP OUR TEENAGERS, because that's where nearly all others have failed. And if we don't, if it doesn't work, about all I can say is at least we did well getting this far! (Maria: We haven't lost very many yet.) So far we're keeping them, TTL!
         44. HOW ABOUT YOU?--Are you going to stay FAITHFUL & TRUE to the LORD & His WORK, the "HIGH calling of God in Christ Jesus"?--"Be thou FAITHFUL unto DEATH, & I will give thee a CROWN of LIFE!"--Phil.3:14; Rev.2:10.--Amen? GBY!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family