MEMORY WORK MADE SIMPLE!--By Maria 4/86--Maria Letter #45                 DO 2195

         1. WHEN OUR SMALL CHILDREN ARE LEARNING VERSES & WE WANT TO SIMPLIFY THE VERSE, WE USUALLY CUT IT DOWN IN LENGTH. When we do this we're virtually editing the Scriptures & we have to be very prayerful to retain the correct meaning. I think that generally it's better to use either the first part of the verse or the last part of the verse, whichever is the most important part, instead of condensing the entire verse by leaving a word out here & a phrase out there. Because when the children get older & want to learn the entire verse, if they've learned the first part of the verse they can easily add on the last part, or if they've learned the last part they can easily add on the first part. It's just like learning an additional verse.
         2. IF, HOWEVER, WHEN THEY'RE SMALL CHILDREN, YOU CUT DOWN A LONG VERSE BY LEAVING OUT A HUNK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE VERSE, & another word or two here & there, when they're older & want to learn the entire verse, it's going to be difficult & much more confusing to have to relearn the verse by adding words in here & there.
         3. IN VERSES WITH LISTS OF WORDS LIKE "LOVE, JOY, PEACE, LONGSUFFERING, GENTLENESS, GOODNESS, FAITH, MEEKNESS, TEMPERANCE", if you leave some of those out, you're not only making it more difficult to learn the entire series later, but you're leaving an important part of the verse out, some of the fruits of the Spirit. If you only give part of them, the thought is incomplete. If you're going to give the fruits of the Spirit, you should give all the fruits of the Spirit mentioned there. It's a part of a whole and it's incomplete if you don't give it all. (Gal.5:22,23) And if they quote it in their witnessing perhaps the part the person needs most to hear may be left out. So it's important to include the whole series, not just for the purpose of not confusing the children when they grow up by necessitating the insertion of words, but also in order to retain the complete meaning.
         4. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF WE'RE HAVING TO SHORTEN A VERSE FOR THE PURPOSE OF SIMPLIFYING IT FOR CHILDREN OR EVEN FOR EASIER MEMORISING BY ADULTS, I'm all for deleting words that aren't necessary to the verse or substituting an easier word that can be better understood. For example, we can delete "For all have sinned", "But the wages of sin is death". Because "for" or "but" or whatever the introductory word is, often refers to the verse before it. And if you're not memorizing the verse before it, it's not necessary, in fact, it doesn't even make sense without the preceding verse.
         5. YOU CAN ALSO SUBSTITUTE A SIMPLER WORD FOR A MORE DIFFICULT ONE THAT MEANS THE SAME THING. Instead of "Whosoever believeth on Me", you can very well use our more common word today, "Whoever believes on Me". You could also change "upon" to "on". In other cases you can feel free to use a more common word or a more correct one according to our current usage, like changing "He that forsaketh not all that he hath", to "He who forsakes not all that he has". In the King James version they usually use "that" for people, but according to the grammar that most of us have been taught, it should be "who". So you would not discredit anyone for saying "He who forsakes".
         6. SO IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU QUOTE ALL THESE WORDS EXACTLY ACCURATE ACCORDING TO THE KING JAMES VERSION, IF THEY MEAN THE SAME THING!--We long ago changed "Charity suffereth long & is kind" to "Love suffers long" because we understand its real meaning better if we use the word "love". We shouldn't really criticise too harshly other translations for changing words if they mean the same as the original, because we do the same thing, in order to make it easier for the children & our many adults whose native language is not English.
         7. AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE'RE DOING HERE IN THIS CHILDREN'S EDITION OF THE MEMORY BOOK (SEE FSM 37). These are difficult verses with difficult wording, & I don't see why we always have to stick to the exact words in the verses. When you're quoting in witnessing, if you don't remember the verses exactly, you just paraphrase them, right?--And they mean the same & they're just as good. Sometimes when you're praying you really want to get the exact words of the promise to lay before the Lord. But if you can't, you can still pray & claim the promise even if you don't have the exact words & it's just as good to the Lord, because He knows what you're trying to say.
         8. SO I DON'T THINK WE HAVE TO BE TOO MUCH OF A STICKLER FOR HAVING THE EXACT WORDS ALL THE TIME, just so we get the gist of it & the general point of it. It's good if we can clarify some of these or simplify them. If it helps to learn them by cutting them down or clarifying the word or even leaving out a word, if they'll learn them that way but they wouldn't learn them the other way, it's much better that they learn something than that they don't learn anything!
         9. DON'T WORRY IF YOU DON'T REMEMBER IF IT'S "UPON" OR "ON"! If you're going to spend a lot of time memorising verses getting them just right & have the attitude that you haven't learned the verse until you can quote every word exactly right without one mistake, then you're going to spend lots more time than you need to!
         10. SO WE DON'T HAVE TO GO ENTIRELY BY THIS OLD-TIMEY LANGUAGE! Where practical & easy we can do it, because we don't want to completely change it, & like Dad says, it's a beautiful language & it's well put. But if the children can't say, "A true witness delivereth souls" they can just say, "A true witness delivers souls"; if we change all the "eth's" to "s's"--who cares?--If it makes more sense to them & they get it better!
         11. THERE ARE LOTS & LOTS OF WORDS IN THESE VERSES WHICH YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY. (Sara: I remember that was real hard for me in Sunday School to understand what the verse meant just because it had a "thou" or an "eth" in there.)--Yes, because to the children "thou" is a different word. They can't automatically translate it to the common "you" like the adults can who understand it's just an older form of the same.
         12. ANOTHER THING, WHERE YOU HAVE A SERIES THAT SAYS, "LOVE THE LORD THY GOD WITH ALL THY HEART, & WITH ALL THY SOUL, & WITH ALL THY MIND", who is going to mind if you leave out some of the "ands" & "withs"! The "buts" are important though, so you just have to know when words are important & when they're not. But if you're an adult & you're familiar with English, you can usually tell if it's important or not.
         13. "BE YE TRANSFORMED"--you can omit "ye", just say "be transformed". You don't have to say "Be ye kind", just say "be kind". Not only is it simpler & shorter for children, but even for the adults!
         14. IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE LEARNING A LOT OF VERSES, IF WE MAKE SOME OF THESE SIMPLIFICATIONS YOU WON'T HAVE TO SPEND SO MUCH TIME GOING OVER & OVER THEM, because the time that it takes us to memorise is mostly spent in getting all these prepositions or adverbs right, it's usually not the main big words. You're trying to get all the "thee's" and "thou's" and all those little words in there correctly, and that takes a lot of time!
         15. HERE'S A CASE WHERE TO PUT IN A WORD HELPS: In John 15:16 it says, "That whatever ye shall ask of the Father in My name He may give it you", & we would more naturally & comfortably say, "give it to you". So that's an example where I put in a word, but in most verses you would take out a word or substitute a word for clarification & simplification.
         16. WHY DO WE HAVE TO ALWAYS QUOTE IT EXACTLY WORD-FOR-WORD? Well, for one reason we want to learn it as correctly as we can, so when we do forget a word here & there & have to virtually paraphrase it, we don't give the wrong meaning! You need to learn the basic words, the essential words, so you can remember the basic meaning of it.--So you don't go off paraphrasing something in your own words that maybe doesn't even mean the same as the original! So basically you should learn it well, but if you miss a little word here or there or substitute one that means the same, then there's nothing wrong with that.
         17. MOSTLY WE DO NOT QUOTE THESE VERSES TO EACH OTHER. You're not usually going around the house quoting verses to everybody, they can get their own verses & look up their own. But where we do use the verses is mostly for witnessing to outsiders, & they're not going to know whether we quote one word or two words wrong or not! If we get the essential meaning of it, that's all that's necessary. What good is it going to do them if they don't understand what you're talking about? So in some ways it's even better to try to paraphrase it for them in words they can understand, just like you would for a little child instead of expecting them to understand the Biblical language.
         18. NOW, TELL ME WHY WE HAVE TO LEARN REFERENCES! What about using references with the public, with outsiders? Usually during your witnessing you quote verses to them, right?--Unless they're Catacombers or somebody that's really getting close to the Family that you're going to teach classes to, & then we usually have lists of verses that we can look up in our Bible & show them when they come & we want to sit down & give them a class. For Bible classes like this we usually do not have all the references memorised, instead we have a written-out list to use.
         19. BUT WHEN YOU'RE ON THE STREETS OR IN A CLUB OR AN OFFICE OR A TAXI OR RESTAURANT OR WHEREVER & trying to incorporate a witness into the conversation, it's not always practical or appropriate to pull out your Bible & show them every verse you quote & say, "Look, it's right here!" You expect that if they're receptive enough to listen to you, that they're going to have the confidence in you that if you say you're quoting the Bible then you really are & that they're not going to have you open the Bible & show them.
         20. SO YOU USUALLY DON'T NEED TO USE THE REFERENCES WITH OUTSIDERS SO MUCH, except perhaps in Salvation, which is the main step, & a very important step for people & the thing that the Enemy fights them on the most. So, as Dad has said, it's good to show them the verses right there in the Bible & let them read it for themselves.--And even when they're receiving the Holy Spirit, because it's such a big step & they really need to know that "This is the Word of God & it's right here" & they need to look at it & concentrate on it if possible. "This is what God's Word says! It's not me at all, it's right here!" Those Salvation & Holy Spirit verses are few enough that we can all learn the references easily. But how many of the 453 verses in our Memory Book do we have to learn the references to?--References that are not in any kind of logical order.
         21. I WOULD RATHER PEOPLE WOULD LEARN THE VERSES & FORGET THE REFERENCES THAN TO SPEND COUNTLESS HOURS TRYING TO MEMORISE THE REFERENCES! In fact, in the long run, they probably take more time trying to memorise the reference than they even do the verse! The reference is an isolated entity, you often can't relate it to anything. In memory work they always tell you the best way to memorise is to relate one thing to another. You've got to have some association between things to memorise them well. The words of the actual verses are associated in a logical sequence, & everything makes sense. So that's why an entire verse is probably a lot easier to retain, in spite of its many words, than the reference is.
         22. I DON'T SAY IT'S EASIER TO MEMORISE, I SAY IT'S EASIER TO REMEMBER, because of course you can memorise the reference more quickly than you can the verse. But in overall memory, really remembering it, you're probably going to have to spend more time on the reference. Six months from now you probably are going to remember the verse, but not the reference. Therefore you would have to spend a lot more time on the reference if you're going to be able to remember it at the end of six months.
         23. OF COURSE YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU KNOW WHERE THE VERSE IS. You feel like, "Well now I could go right to it if I need it."--And if you need it & you haven't learned the reference, that's frustrating. But how often are you going to really need it? In our Family we always have some people around who have memorised the reference, so we can ask them!--Or you can look it up in a Concordance or somewhere. But how much do you have to look it up if you're on the field & you're witnessing? Even in the future, if we no longer have our Bibles, what good are the references going to be? You won't be able to look them up anyway!
         24. SO FOR NEW DISCIPLES THAT ARE COMING UP NOW & having to learn these verses & references, & even the ones who have learned them before but are probably having to almost start from scratch again on the references to learn them all over again, it just seems to me that it's a pretty big waste of time for what you actually get out of it.
         25. I JUST THINK IT'S MORE IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW THE VERSE! What good is the reference going to do? If you quote someone a verse, they don't really care whether you have the reference or not!
         26. SO I WOULD SAY THAT IF HAVING TO LEARN THE REFERENCES IS GOING TO DISCOURAGE YOU FROM LEARNING THE VERSES, THEN IT'S BETTER TO FORGET THE REFERENCES, unless maybe you want to remember the Book that it's in or even the chapter.
         27. THINK OF THE NEW DISCIPLES HAVING TO LEARN ALL THESE THINGS, ALL THESE REFERENCES & ALL THESE VERSES IN BIBLICAL LANGUAGE.--We who've been in the Family & who've been Christians for years, it's much easier. Even if we haven't memorised these verses before, we've heard them over & over, so that when we go to actually really memorise them, we've got that remembrance of phrases & words & it comes a lot easier.
         28. BUT TO THESE POOR NEW DISCIPLES THAT HAVE NEVER EVEN HAD ANY BIBLE, THIS KING JAMES IS DIFFICULT LANGUAGE! They're difficult verses & they're lengthy, & it must look like a monumental job to them to even start memorising!
         29. SO WE HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE NEW DISCIPLES THAT ARE JUST NOW COMING INTO THE FAMILY & not be self-righteous with the attitude, "It's easy to learn the verses & we still remember them from a long time ago & even the references." Now maybe it is easy for some of the people that have been in the Family for a long time, but these poor new disciples coming in, not only do they have all these verses & references to learn but they've got years worth of Letters to read too & they've got so much to absorb! Learning & retaining these verses is very important for them, not only in their outreach & in their witnessing, but for their own edification. So to require them to also learn these references is going to look like a monumental job to them!
         30. SOMEBODY SAID, "I'M MEMORISING! I'M SPENDING AN HOUR OR TWO ON MY MEMORY WORK EVERY DAY!" I said, "Great! But how do you have time for all the other things you need to do, like reading the old Letters & studying the new Letters?" We do not have time to spend an hour or two on Memory every day, plus read our new Letters & review our old Letters & carry out all our outreach duties on top of that! I said to these people who were so self-righteously saying, "I'm spending all this time on my memory," "Well, when are you reading the Letters you really need to help you in your spiritual life?
         31. "IT'S GREAT TO MEMORISE, BUT IS THAT REALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING?"--Because there are quite a few other things that are important, & some of these people who are such memory experts have all kinds of big spiritual problems. I said to one of them, "I don't think memorising your Memory Book is helping you with your problems! You ought to forget the Memory work & get to reading some of these old Letters & the new Letters & the things that are going to help you solve your problems!" You just can't do everything, & the people that are memorising up a storm shouldn't be so self-righteous, because they're probably neglecting things that are even more important!
         32. I THINK WE OUGHT TO MEMORISE & I THINK IT'S VERY IMPORTANT, I think it's great to memorise, but I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for people, including myself!
         33. DAD REMEMBERS ABOUT A COUPLE DOZEN REFERENCES AT THE MOST! But what does he need references for?--And he doesn't even remember very many of the verses word-for-word, he paraphrases them. But I don't see that that's hurt him in the least! I don't remember very many more myself!
         34. (SARA: THAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT, BECAUSE LOOK AT POOR MARY DEAR OR THE BABIES BEING BORN RIGHT NOW, they probably only have a few years to go until Jesus comes back, & look how much Word they're going to have to absorb.) And yet we spend so much time trying to drill the references into them! (Sara: Oh, I've really done that with the kids, I've really drilled them & spent so much time each day on it!)
         35. IN A WAY IT'S HARD FOR ME TO BREAK AWAY FROM OUR OLD ESTABLISHED POLICY OF REQUIRING EVERYONE TO LEARN REFERENCES, IT'S EVEN DIFFICULT FOR ME TO SUGGEST IT! Basically I am a perfectionist & basically I want to do everything correctly & accurately & perfectly, & I know that that's the ideal way & I know I should do it that way & I know I'd rather do it that way. So I fight suggesting this really, but I know this is the most practical way & the best way & the way that we're going to learn more verses faster! (AMEN! GBY!--D.)