DO 20815/85

1. DON'T EVER GET SO SETTLED YOU LET THE ROOTS GROW DOWN & you think you're going to be there forever! The longest I was ever in one place was when I was a little boy in school.—Not high school, because by the time I got to high school I was driving my Mother & only in school half the time & all over the country! But I stayed a long time in one place when I was in grade school‚ or what'd be called grade school most places, from about the first & second grades up through 7th & 8th grades. Those were the days in Miami when we had a house we owned & Mother had the Tabernacle & we were pretty well settled down. But you can see what happened! As they used to say‚ "First came the boom, then the burst, then the blow!"

2. THE BOOM IN MIAMI BURST TWO YEARS BEFORE THE NATIONAL CRASH, THE GREAT STOCK MARKET CRASH THAT STARTED THE DEPRESSION OVER THE WHOLE COUNTRY. It had begun a long time before, there was every sign of it, things happening exactly like they're happening today! I have never seen anything so similar! I have never seen anything parallel so exactly, only much worse, much stronger signs, much more outstanding signs!—And there are only a few honest-to–goodness true prophets who are willing to tell the truth‚ that it's already begun, it's here!—Very few.

3. MOST OF THEM ARE PEACE PROPHETS, FALSE PROPHETS, prophesying, "Oh no, everything's going to continue as it was, everything's going to be fine‚ everything's all right, don't worry!"—Because they don't want to scare the people. They know that the minute the people know the truth, that is going to even help precipitate the Crash. Because what causes a Crash? You say, "Oh, it's economic conditions, it's maybe even military conditions or political conditions." Is that what causes a Crash? (Fam: No.) What is it? (Fam: People lose faith. They panic.) People lose faith & then they panic! They suddenly lose faith in their system, their government, their money, the economy, the political situation‚ the military situation, anything can trigger it!

4. I HAVE BEEN READING IN THE PAPER LATELY THAT BECAUSE OF THE IMPENDING ATMOSPHERE, THE PEOPLE ARE BEGINNING TO GO BACK & ANALYSE THE DEPRESSION & THE LAST CRASH, trying to figure out just what exactly triggered it, what started it, how did it happen that suddenly overnight the Stock Market crashed! It went from the highest it had ever been—just like the past few months & like the dollar is the highest it's ever been—& suddenly overnight, over one weekend actually, the people completely lost faith! Everybody was trying to sell their stocks on Monday until the Stock Market went down almost to zero! You could have bought stocks that formerly sold for hundreds of dollars for a few pennies on Monday!—One day! When the people finally woke up‚ the news spread like wildfire & everybody was trying to sell out & get rid of their stocks before they went down to nothing. Because when everybody's trying to sell‚ in order to sell you've got to keep putting the price down cheaper & cheaper.

5. —LIKE I'VE OFTEN TOLD PEOPLE WHEN THEY WERE FORSAKING ALL & THEY'VE SAID, "WELL‚ I CAN'T SELL MY HOUSE, I CAN'T SELL MY CAR, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!" I said, "Don't lie to me like that, don't kid me!" I told a guy that at the Soul Clinic one day‚ a visiting wealthy businessman who was eating dinner with us, one of these guys that acted like "almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." (Acts 26:28) He was saying, "I can't! I can't! I can't sell my house, I'm too deep in debt! I can't sell my furniture, I owe too much money on it! Everything's in payments! I can't sell my car, I owe too much money!" I said to him, "Don't you kid me, there is nothing you can't sell if the price is low enough!" The trouble with him was he was trying to sell & make some money out of it. I said, "Just sell enough with the price low enough it could cover all your debts." He said, "But then I wouldn't have anything left!" I said, "You don't need anything left! Jesus said to the man, 'Go, sell all that thou hast & give to the poor & come follow Me & thou shalt have riches in Heaven!'" (Mat.19:21)

6. HE WAS AN OLDER MAN, A MIDDLE–AGED MAN, IN HIS UPPER 40'S OR ABOUT 50‚ & HE HAD EVERYTHING THAT AMERICANS HAVE. Of course, everything's on credit & they owe everything, but he had it all. They live on borrowed money & borrowed time! They have mortgaged not only their house, their car & their furniture, but their future is loaded with payments for the next 40 years! So he thought he couldn't forsake all. He said, "But I can't forsake all! I can't sell my house, I can't sell anything!" I said, "You can sell anything if the price is right!" He said, "Well, if I'd do that I would just barely have enough to pay my debts & my bills." I said, "That's fine, thank God for that, forsake all! Sell all that thou hast & give to the poor!"

7. I DID THAT ONCE, & THE POOR WAS US! I sold everything I had except my car & trailer, which we were going to hit the road with to obey the Lord when He told us to "go out knowing not whither we went!" We had no idea even which direction to go. We were in California & I knew we couldn't go West be-cause that was the ocean, & we couldn't go North because it was wintertime & we were cold-blooded. In those days I figured we couldn't go South because we couldn't speak Spanish, it was Mexico. Sometimes you just arrive at a conclusion by eliminating the alternatives & impossibilities, so there was only one way to go & that was East! Well, it turned out it was the right direction & God blessed us.

8. WHEN I GOT THROUGH SELLING THE HOUSE‚ FURNITURE & EVERYTHING I COULD, I HAD EXACTLY $30 LEFT, & WE STRUCK OUT with a wife & four children in that old battered taxi & that 19-foot old black trailer!—And we had seven flats before we got to Texas, blow–outs, because we were too heavily loaded & tried to take too much with us. But after just a Summer & a Fall of travel, we arrived in Miami, Florida, with $300 in our pocket! You think the Lord can't bless? We sold all that we had & gave the $30 to the poor, that was us. That's all we had. I figured by that time we were poor enough to give the $30 to us, & we left on that $30. We just trusted the Lord & lived by faith on the way. The $30 soon ran out with gasoline & food. We didn't have to pay for lodging, thank the Lord, we'd usually park by the railroad or in some dump or anywhere‚ but we did have to buy food‚ even if we cooked it ourselves, & we had to buy gasoline. And God just poured it on!—Just poured it on!

9. MAMA EVE WAS ALWAYS WANTING TO GO TO CHURCHES, YOU KNOW‚ BUT I WAS SICK OF CHURCHES ALREADY. I wanted to go to places that hadn't heard the Gospel or where people didn't usually go to church. So I held meetings outside the post office, in schools, in a trailer park. I told you about the time we were in a trailer park & down to our last money, so we asked the trailer park manager if we could show some pictures, some movies. That was always a good come–on. He said, "Oh yes, I think the folks would enjoy them!" So I started off with all these movies, I had some films on great calamities & historical things, Wonders of God's Creation, travel & all that sort of thing. I showed about three reels of movies for about the first half-an-hour or so, ten minutes a reel in those days, then I started showing slides. They moved too, back & forth, back & forth!

10. SO THAT MORNING IN THE TRAILER PARK AS WE WERE LEAVING, THE NEWSBOY CAME UP & SHOOK HANDS WITH ME & I FELT A BILL IN MY HAND. I thought, "Well, God bless him, the poor newsboy, he just delivers papers‚ it's probably a dollar bill." My faith stretched that maybe it might have been a five, but I wasn't sure. And you don't look a gift horse in the mouth, when somebody hands you a bill you don't look & see how much it is right away. You try to kind of play it down & really show your appreciation no matter what it is & thank him. So I prayed for him & without even looking at the bill I stuck it in my pocket. He said, "You know, that's the best thing I've ever seen! These kids here never go to Sunday School‚ they never go to church, their parents are a bunch of rotters living out here." Only the poor lived in trailer parks in those days, just poor bums & drunks & whatnot, & the kids were little hellions‚ rapscallions. So it was really a tough place.

11. BUT I SHOWED MY PICTURES, & AT THE END I SHOWED ALL ABOUT JESUS, THESE BEAUTIFUL SLIDES OF CHRIST, THAT HE WAS THE ANSWER TO THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS. We sang & asked them if they wanted to receive Jesus, to raise their hands, & nearly everybody put up their hands! The sinners are more responsive than the church people! After all, everybody in church is supposed to have already received Jesus, so who was there to preach the Gospel to there? They've heard it a thousand times! I got sick and fed up preaching to people who were full‚ I wanted to preach to the hungry, the poor and the needy, the empty-hearted! So we did, and God blessed it!

12. SO WE WERE LEAVING THE TRAILER PARK & I SAID, "WELL, WE'VE GOT ENOUGH GAS TO GET TO THE NEXT PLACE, BUT WE'VE GOT TO STOP & GET SOME GROCERIES." We didn't even have any milk for Faithy, who was only two years old. I said‚ "We've got to get some food for the kids so if we get stuck someplace we'll at least have something to eat."—Because you never knew when you were going to have a blow-out by the side of the road or something & you had to have food! So I got out of the car with Eve & we started to cross the highway, a big six–lane highway, they were rare in those days, that highway between Phoenix & Tempe. We got out & it was hard crossing the highway, there was so much traffic going both ways. But they weren't freeways & in those days they didn't have so many jaywalking laws, etc. I got caught for that once & got fined $5 on the spot by a policeman‚ the rascal!

13. SO WE GOT OUT IN THE MIDDLE WITH THE CARS WHIZZING BOTH WAYS & I DECIDED‚ "WELL, I'D BETTER TAKE OUT THE BILL & LOOK AT IT, IT MIGHT EVEN BE A FIVE!" I took it out & I could hardly believe my eyes, it was a fifty dollar bill! I jumped straight up in the air shouting "Hallelujah" & I'll bet those drivers thought I was mad! Well, I was crazy, crazy for the Lord & for His mercy & His goodness! So we went on over to the supermarket & bought everything we needed & had plenty for gas & the Lord just took care of us all the way!

14. WE FORSOOK EVERYTHING, LEFT EVERYTHING, SOLD EVERYTHING & GAVE THE LAST $30 TO THE POOR—US—& STARTED OUT NOT KNOWING WHITHER WE WENT, what we were going to do, just trusting the Lord & living by faith, serving the Lord & witnessing wherever we went, & God never failed, He supplied abundantly! We never lacked for anything! We never lacked for gasoline, we never lacked for food, we never lacked for a place to park, even if it was by the railroad track or in a dump! I pulled into a vacant lot in the dark one night and didn't even know hardly where I was! We didn't like to be in too lonely spots and it was next door to an old bar, but in the morning it turned out we were sitting right in the middle of a trash dump!

15. BUT THAT NIGHT MOTHER EVE & FAITHY WENT OVER TO THE BAR—GRANDMA WAS WITH US THEN TOO—& FAITHY DRESSED ALL UP LIKE A LITTLE GYPSY! She was smaller than Techi here, about 2 or 3 years old, & Eve took her over there. All these old drunk cowboys were sitting up along the bar on bar stools having a high time, & they came in there & I think she took one or two other children with her & they sang. Then they pulled out what they used to call the tin cup. You don't know what a tin cup is! It was about the size of our coffee mugs with a handle‚ & they went up & down.—And the cowboys got the point! She stuck some little tracts in a tin cup like she was just going along distributing tracts, & each cowboy took one, of course, but he'd also drop in a dollar or a five or some money.

16. ARE YOU AFRAID TO BEG?—Then you shouldn't be in this business, because God's people are a bunch of beggars! "Ask & ye shall receive! Seek & ye shall find! Knock & it shall be opened unto you!" If you don't beg you'll never get anywhere, praise God? I've told our people to give lots of times. I spend most of my time in Letters telling them other things they need to know, but they also need to know how to give. If I hadn't done that, they wouldn't be supporting as well as they are now.

17. SO IT CAN HAPPEN ANY TIME WHEN IT'S ALL SUDDENLY GONE & YOU'RE OUT ON YOUR OWN!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family