KEYWORDS: year, lord, maria, peter, time

Our Old Year Praise Meeting

David Berg

—NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1984!DO 188331/12/84

—Stats of Our Greatest Year Ever!

1. (TECHI: THANK YOU JESUS FOR THIS GOOD TIME WE GET TO HAVE TOGETHER! Please make it fruitful & help us kids not to slouch, Lord, or go to sleep while Grandpa's talking. In Jesus' name, amen!

2. THIS IS OUR OLD YEAR MEETING‚ TOMORROW'S OUR NEW YEAR'S MEETING! But I would like to hear from each of you just one short sentence of something you're thankful for. And because I know everybody's going to say they're thankful for me & Maria, etc., I'm going to rule that out. This is a Praise Meeting today & I want you to give praise to the Lord for what you are the most thankful for this past year. What was your greatest victory this past year? And don't everybody say the same thing, "I'm most thankful for the Family, I'm most thankful for the Lord." All these things‚ of course, we're all thankful for, we have this all in common, but something particularly significant to you personally. What special event or what special thing or what special work or something that you were involved in were you the most thankful for?—A crisis experience in your life, something that you remember above all other things from this past year. I want to hear it & I want it on the record! So think about that for a minute. Take just a few moments of silent prayer & ask the Lord, "Now what happened this past year that I am really the most thankful for?"

3. YOU COULD THANK THE LORD FOR THOUSANDS OF THINGS, but choose some particularly outstanding experience or happening, something in your life this past year that was particularly significant & peculiar to this past year, not something that you thank the Lord for every year. What particular, unique, peculiar, unusual experience are you especially thankful for which occurred during this past year of 1984 that you want to give the Lord special thanks for in this old Year Meeting?

4. OUR NEW YEAR'S EVE MEETINGS HAVE TURNED OUT IN TWO WAYS: TRYING TO THANK THE LORD FOR THE PAST YEAR & TELLING ALL ABOUT OUR PLANS FOR THE NEW YEAR. This usually stretched it out & made it entirely too long‚ four or five hours long, & the whole report too long & everything. So we decided this New Year's Eve we're not going to keep you & the poor kids up all night until they're nearly sick like we did last New Year's Eve & some other times too, so we're going to split it, praise the Lord? We're going to have a nice morning meeting on the last day of the Old Year called the Old Year Praise Meeting, & I want to hear just nearly all praise for the past year! Tomorrow you can start praying for the New Year‚ but let's just thank God for the past year this morning, shall we?—Thank Him for all the good things that have happened this past year‚ all the things we're thankful for.

5. I WANT EACH OF YOU TO JUST GIVE ABOUT A ONE-SENTENCE PRAISE, PLEASE, NO MORE! You could go on & take the whole meeting thanking God for all the things that you're thankful for, but I want you to think of the one thing you are the most thankful for in your particular ministry, in your unique personal experience. What are you personally most thankful for this past year? What would you like to praise the Lord for the most? What would you like to tell the world?—Well, not the world, but our Family around the world, that you're thankful for. Now I've been talking & you've been thinking & praying about it, so I think maybe by this time you should have thought of something. Something should have come to you almost immediately!—Something unique & different that has to do peculiarly, uniquely & personally with you particularly & your ministry, individually. Now think of that.

6. LET'S TRY TO STAY AWAY FROM, "OH, I'M MOST THANKFUL FOR THE LORD, I'M MOST THANKFUL FOR THE FAMILY. I'M MOST THANKFUL FOR DAD, I'm most thankful for Salvation, I'm most thankful for all the souls we're winning & all the Gospel we're preaching!" Well‚ we're all thankful for that. It's nothing unusual. It may be unusual in the churches, but it's nothing unusual for us! But I want you to thank Him & put it on the record, on the tape recorder, for what you personally‚ particularly are thankful for in your own personal, particular, unique experience, life or ministry for this past year of 1984. PTL?

7. TOMORROW WE'LL HAVE THE NEW YEAR'S MEETING & EACH ONE OF YOU CAN MAYBE HAVE A LITTLE PRAYER OR SCRIPTURE FOR THE NEW YEAR. So be thinking about that, okay? Don't wait till the last minute like some of us did on our year-end reports! I assumed that we knew that we always give a year-end report.—Of course, I sort of jumped the gun on you & we're having it this morning instead of tonight! But I hope you're all ready with your reports of your particular departments & your ministries & you can tell us what you accomplished this past year. Amen? That's something else for you to think about while you're not listening to everybody else's report!—Ha! I know! Well, I dropped the bomb suddenly & of course you're unprepared.

8. WHY ARE WE UNPREPARED? WHY HAVEN'T YOU BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT? (Children: We have!) Wow, look at these reports, would you? All the children have got their reports ready & written down, how about that? God bless'm! How many other reports have we got all ready & written down? Wave your reports! Somebody back there is waving his Bible!—Oh, Diary‚ I'm sorry! What's that blank piece of paper I see back there? I know you accomplished something so you shouldn't have a blank piece of paper, not even you, Mary Dear! So I hope you've all got something to report & feel that you've accomplished something this past year.

9. LET'S LEAVE THE PRAYERS FOR TOMORROW MORNING WHEN WE HAVE OUR NEW YEAR'S MEETING, SAME STATION, LORD WILLING. We're going to split it up so we don't have such a long meeting like we had last time. And Lord willing, if you all don't take up too much time tomorrow morning with your plans for the future, I hope to give you those Scriptures that I promised you about the Endtime & the A-ACs! Does anybody remember who the A-ACs are? (Children: The Anti-Antichrists!) That's right! Can you say that, Mary Dear? Can you say Anti? Maybe you can say anti, anti-Antichrist. AAC! She was whispering it.

10. SHE'S DOING PRETTY GOOD TO DO ANYTHING PUBLICLY IN A MEETING LIKE THIS, BUT OUR KIDS ARE PRACTICED PUBLIC PERSONALITIES, THANK GOD! They are our best witness worldwide, the marvelous‚ wonderful testimony in our children just like the Lord promised years ago, that they would become our greatest proof of the pudding & our greatest witnesses & one of the best ways of opening doors & getting a foot in the door—two feet & maybe two children or more to open those doors & they have touched hearts to help us & to help us preach the Gospel. PTL?

11. SO TOMORROW MORNING WILL BE SORT OF MY MORNING DEALING WITH THE FUTURE, MY SPECIALITY, & I'm planning to give you more Scriptures on the very end of the Endtime, that transition period between the Tribulation & the Millennium, who's going to go through it & who isn't, who's going to go where & when‚ etc., to try to get that all clarified in your heads, but this time straight from the Scriptures! So I want you all to be sure & bring your Bibles tomorrow morning & mark your Bibles. And of course in these meetings, thank the Lord, you can be very thankful that you don't have to take notes!—Why? Where's that tape recorder? Hold'r up & show'm! There's your note–taker right there! We tape all these meetings to save you the trouble of having to take notes & you'll eventually read it in some of our GN articles, & certainly in one of the next available GNs, this World Report of Praise, Praise Report for the Old Year, the past year. PTL? So you don't have to worry about taking notes.

12. BUT I DO THINK WHEN I GIVE YOU THOSE SCRIPTURES TOMORROW IN THE BIBLE, although you'll eventually get them in a GN article, I suggest for your own study & your own benefit that it's not going to be too hard that as I am reading them or giving them to you, Lord willing, that you just mark them there. But remember that most Bible paper is very thin & you can't underline much without coming though on the other side of the page, I tried that for awhile & I found out I was messing up my page & I couldn't tell which page was being underlined, that one or the one on the back! So I suggest you do your marking in the margins, marginal markings, then you don't mess up the Scripture & the verses. Just draw a kind of bracket around different verses, etc., maybe circle the number of the chapter at the top of the page & things like that so that you don't mess up the text. You can read the text if you have it located & marked.

13. SO BRING YOUR BIBLES, & DON'T FORGET TO BRING SOME KIND OF A PEN OR PENCIL, preferably something that doesn't seep through the page too readily, because you don't even want to mess up your margins. You can't tell which chapter you're even marking if it's already marked on the other side of the page too. You can use a good ball-point pen that isn't too heavy, or sometimes even one of these very fine-point felt tips. If you make your mark quick enough & fast enough‚ it won't soak though, You've probably noticed a few times in these WND newspaper articles—God bless'm, they do a good careful job of copying & reproducing—but every now & then you may see some lines & wonder why I marked'm. Well, I didn't! I was marking the article on the other side of the page &it just came through! Usually they're pretty faint & most of the time you don't see them because I try to stroke very rapidly—& maybe that's why they're so messy & crooked—but so that it doesn't have time to seep through. But if you go real slow it's going to soak through!

14. THAT'S JUST A LITTLE WORD OF WARNING TO THE WISE TO BE PREPARED FOR TOMORROW MORNING WITH YOUR BIBLES & with some type of pen or coloured pencil or whatever you like best. there are also highlighters, & of course the yellow highlighter is the best for bringing out black print. But I've also found out if you're too slow with them they'll soak right through on the back of the page. Bible paper is very thin & you have to be careful with it. You should be accustomed to marking your Bible by this time, & by this time you certainly should have found a pen that doesn't leak through. So bring that & your Bible to class tomorrow morning to our New Year's Meeting! PTL?

15. DON'T YOU LIKE IT BETTER WHEN YOU COME HERE FRESH IN THE MORNING & HAVE A GOOD MEETING?—THEN YOU CAN HAVE FUN ALL THE REST OF THE DAY & NOT WORRY ABOUT IT! That's why I always did my homework as soon as I got home, so I didn't have to worry about it the whole weekend.—Whereas most kids would wait till Sunday night. I knew I couldn't wait till Sunday night because I had to go to church, & I couldn't wait till Sunday morning either, I was in church nearly all day! We frequently had morning Sunday School, morning meeting, afternoon meeting at three o'clock that lasted two or three hours‚ & night meeting too. There was no chance of doing homework on Sunday, so if I didn't get it done either Friday afternoon or Saturday, I was sunk!—Either that or I had to stay up all night Sunday night, which once in awhile I did, sad to say.

16. JUST THINK IF YOU HAD TO WORRY ABOUT THIS MEETING ALL DAY TODAY! NOW YOU ONLY HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT FOR A FEW MINUTES, & ONCE IT'S OVER, NOONTIME & HALLELUJAH! Go out to play! Forget it all the rest of the day! Amen? Isn't that wonderful? And now you don't have to worry about tomorrow's meeting because Lord willing I'm going to take that. That's why I'm giving you so much time this morning. Well, I had to give you a wee word of introduction to explain all these things, & Lord willing, we hope to get this meeting over as quickly as possible.

17. DEAR PETER WORKED HARD ALL DAY YESTERDAY TO PREPARE JUST THIS 2-1/2 PAGE REPORT‚ & LORD WILLING‚ THAT'S ALL YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR THIS MORNING. We ought to be able to get done with that in about an hour. Sure! Why not? That's all you need. I don't know whether you will appreciate all these facts & figures, they may just go in one ear & out the other‚ but at least you'll have it in a GN article eventually & you can see it & remember it better. But listen anyhow. Just because you're going to get it in a GN later, please don't lean back & go to sleep, because these people have worked real hard on these reports & Peter nearly killed himself trying to get it all together yesterday, because I didn't remember to remind him till yesterday morning that New Year's Eve we always have reports!

18. BUT I DECIDED TO HAVE IT ON OLD YEAR'S MORNING INSTEAD, SO THAT SORT OF CAUGHT HIM A LITTLE BY SURPRISE! He thought he had two days to work on it, & instead of that he only had one day. But he did it, God bless him! I presume he'll have to collapse the rest of the day, but anyway, he's got the rest of the day to collapse, so thank the Lord for that! You don't have to worry about having another meeting tonight, we can just have dinner & dancing & lots of fun thanking the Lord for the past year, amen? PTL? Instead of staying up all night dissipating & getting drunk & deteriorating & champagne at night & real pain in the morning, you can go to bed nice & early & wake up refreshed for my meeting tomorrow morning! Some people had a hard time dragging out of bed this morning, so please try to get to bed a little earlier tonight.

19. I THINK WE'VE ALL KIND OF TAKEN A WEEK OFF IN A WAY, & I THINK THAT'S GOOD. A lot of us have been sort of sleeping in most mornings. I know I did once or twice, which is very unusual for me. I didn't do it on purpose, but I did sleep in. (Maria: He slept in until 7:30!) Oh, the other morning I slept till 8 o'clock! And the kids have even been sleeping in till 9 o'clock! We've been letting them stay up kind of late since this is a special week between Christmas & New Year's special holiday season. They're supposed to be holy days, that's where the word holiday comes from! Imagine! Most of the world sure doesn't treat'm like holy days, do they ? They have a Christmas Mass on Christmas Eve & then live like Hell all the rest of the week, & they wind up with a big bang on New Year's Eve & wake up with one Hell of a headache on the first day of the New Year! What a Hell of a way to start the New Year, feeling like Hell & having acted like a Hell! But of course they're the children of Hell, so why not?

20. MAYBE WE'LL FIND THIS NEW IDEA OF SPLITTING THE MEETING SO AMENABLE & GOOD THAT WE'LL DO IT THIS WAY EVERY YEAR & FROM NOW ON—IF WE HAVE ANY MORE—&I THINK MAYBE WE'LL HAVE A FEW MORE, LORD WILLING! We'll talk about that tomorrow. And don't forget that, bring your Bible & a good pen for that lesson tomorrow morning, Lord willing. I hope to really finally get down to those Scriptures so you can see'm & read'm for yourself, & hopefully maybe I'll be able to read'm to you & help you understand'm as we read, because some of them are very mysterious & a little difficult to understand. Some of those prophets & the Lord spoke in such riddles that unless you know the Bible pretty well or the Lord has revealed it to you by His Spirit, they're very difficult to understand. But some of it is very easy to understand‚ so don't worry about that.—And what you can't understand we'll try to help you understand.

21. I'VE ASKED THE LORD TO HELP US ALL UNDERSTAND & CLARIFY SOME OF THESE POINTS WHICH HAVE BEEN MYSTIFYING TO THE FAMILY & EVEN SOME OF OUR BEST TEACHERS SOMETIMES, INCLUDING ME, & THE LORD HAS BEEN CONTINUALLY REVEALING MORE & MORE ALL THE TIME! "What do you mean, Dad? You didn't know it all to begin with?"—No! I don't know it all yet! There are a lot of mysterious passages in the Bible I still don't understand, a lot of things that God does which I still don't understand. But praise God, there's an old song: "For we shall know each other better by & by!" And we'll know all these things better by & by too, PTL? We'll know each other as we are known. Think of that! Wouldn't you like to know each other the way God knows you? I don't know, I'm not so sure!—Ha! I didn't get too many "amens" on that!

22. BUT WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO KNOW SOME OF THESE MYSTERIES OF THE SPIRIT & PAST HISTORY & some of those things better when you get to see the Lord & His Prophets & the people Up There who already know & you learn about all these questions you had that you never really got answered? By that time, of course‚ at least by the time we get There for the Marriage Supper‚ you'll begin to learn some answers & maybe they'll explain to you then just what's happening down below & how it's going to wind up in the Wrath & the Battle of Armageddon, who's going to make it & who isn't. Some of these days that we tried to interpret & guesstimate & figure out, those time periods, etc., & exactly what they mean, I'm sure when we get to the Marriage Supper we're going to know & the Lord's going to probably tell us then just how long that period is going to last, how long we've got to stay Up There & have fun & enjoy it & really have a wonderful time, & then how soon we've got to prepare for the Battle of Armageddon! PTL?

23. WE'VE GOT LOTS TO LEARN & WE DON'T KNOW IT ALL YET! I DON'T KNOW IT ALL, YOU DON'T KNOW IT ALL & MAYBE EVEN A LOT OF GOD'S PROPHETS DON'T KNOW IT ALL! He said there are some things even the angels of Heaven don't know because God reserved that time to know for Himself. And He said certainly no man knoweth the day nor the hour. (Mat.24:36) Well, they didn't know then, but according to the information He's given us, He's given us a lot of days & a lot of hours!—Well, at least days, certainly months & years. Well‚ now I won't have to give an introduction to my talk tomorrow morning. I gave it on your time this morning!—Ha! So that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow morning. Lord willing, it we last that long.

24. SO PRAISE THE LORD‚ I WANT TO START OFF WITH YOUR PRAISE FIRST, JUST A SENTENCE, A FEW WORDS FROM EACH OF YOU. Please don't preach us any sermons. Don't praise a good sermon, or as we used to say‚ preach a good prayer‚ let's just have a word. How many of you have already thought of the thing that you are the most thankful for that happened to you personally this past year in your particular case & ministry? Then are you ready for your praises? We'll let you children read your reports later, but right now I want you to just bow your heads & think about the Lord & thank Him personally.—Not me, not somebody else, but thank Him personally for whatever you are the most thankful for that happened this past year, something unusual, peculiar to you, unique in your experience.

25. ALL RIGHT! PTL! LET'S START OVER HERE WITH TECHI & WE'LL GO FROM THE YOUNGEST TO THE OLDEST. Techi already opened the meeting with prayer‚ so praise the Lord! You tell'm Techi! Don't read your report, just close your eyes & think about the Lord & say it in about one sentence, whatever you're thankful for. (Techi: That Grandpa is feeling better.) Amen! PTL! TYJ! That is probably the thing that I personally am the most thankful for, that though I was very sick, I'm still here, & I think I told you that Christmas Eve, so I don't have to say it again. (Maria: That probably is what is top of the list for all of us‚ but since that's ruled out for the rest of us, we want you to know that that's the thing we're all the most thankful for.) Thank you, Honey‚ Isn't that sweet? But that's ruled out for the rest of you as your personal praise for this Old Year. We'll allow Techi to give that one for hers because she has a very special relationship with Grandpa. She was sent here for Grandpa as his little guardian angel to cheer him up & make him happy, so no wonder she's very thankful. But I want you to especially thank Him for the things that just have to do with you personally. PTL! Are you ready for your praises? All right! Go to it! TYJ! Now don't just tell us‚ but speak to the Lord directly & say, "Thank You Lord for so-&-so." Okay?

26. (DAVIDA: THANK YOU LORD SO MUCH FOR THIS GOOD PAST YEAR THAT WE HAD WITH ALL THE THINGS THAT WE'VE DONE, GOOD & BAD, TO TEACH US LESSONS, LORD. Thank you so much for them. And thank you that we got a nice house to live in & that we got it before somebody else got it. Thank you so much, Lord, for it. And thank you so much for the new Kidz BOF & the Bible Books & all that You've given us. Please bless us & help us to take good care of it, In Jesus' name.) Amen. PTL!

27. BUT FOLKS, I SAID JUST ONE THING! I don't want to hear your thanks about anything else! You could thank Him for a thousand things‚ but I just want you to thank Him for one thing or we're never going to get through with this Praise Meeting! Just say one thing you're thankful for, tell the Lord, "Thank You Jesus for..."—what?—the thing you're the most thankful for.

28. (DAVID: THANK YOU LORD FOR ALL THAT YOU HAVE TAUGHT US & FOR ALL THE WORD THAT WE HAVE LEARNED THIS YEAR & NOT HAVING ANY VERY BAD SICKNESSES.) Amen! TYJ! PTL! Amen! You're thankful for thousands of things, & of course you're always thankful, as I said‚ most of all for the things we're all most thankful for. But thank Him for the one thing that you can remember particularly that was a special help to you this past year.

29. (HOPE: AMEN JESUS, THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS YEAR FOR THE PUSH ON THE ENDTIME & FUTURE LIT, & also personal wise for the extra openness & honesty, not only in the Staff here, but that the whole Family's been able to benefit from, in Jesus' name.) Amen. Try to boil it down to one thing please, Beloved. If you say more than one thing you're going to take somebody else's thunder! Boy, this is the toughest thing I think I ever asked this Family to do, to just say one thing! I know that would be a tough thing for me‚ but I did it: I'm thankful I'm still here! PTL!

30. (JOHN: WELL, THIS MAY SEEM REAL GENERAL BUT‚ LORD, I'M PERSONALLY THANKFUL FOR DAD'S RECENT HEALING FROM HIS SICKNESS because it affected me personally when I got to move in closer to him & take care of him & see how sick he was. So I'm very thankful for how you miraculously healed him, In Jesus' name.) PTL! John's thankful I was sick so he could live closer to me! Well, it's the truth! He got to take more personal care of me. (Maria: We know what John means!)

31. (PETER: THANK YOU JESUS SO MUCH FOR THE BLESSING OF BEING ABLE TO GET MORE INVOLVED WITH MARIA'S WORK THIS YEAR & the pubs & for all the lessons & things that it taught me, Lord, In Jesus' name.) Amen! TYL! Well‚ that's really something to be thankful for, if you can get closer to Maria, considering how busy she is. But her business involves his business, so that's great!

32. (ALF: AMEN, JESUS! I'M REALLY THANKFUL, JESUS, SO MUCH FOR THE CHILDREN & how much they've grown & that I've been able to be with them another whole year, Jesus.) Amen! Thank God for the children! PTL!

33. (SARA: THANK YOU SO MUCH, JESUS‚ FOR THE WONDERFUL MANY NEW CHILDCARE PUBS that you have brought to pass this year through Maria's close guidance, & the fact that they'll be out soon for all our children around the world!) Amen. Thank you Jesus for Childcare Pubs!

34. (DORA: THANK YOU LORD FOR THE REAL SPECIAL PERSONAL LESSONS IN MY LIFE, LORD, to put you first & to grow closer to You‚ Jesus, In Jesus' name.) Amen! Thank the Lord for personal lessons. PTL! (Dora with Mary Dear: Thank You Jesus for keeping me safe. Amen.) Amen! Thank you Jesus for safekeeping!

35. AMEN, THANK YOU LORD FOR ALL THESE THANKS & FOR EACH ONE OF THESE WHO HAVE GIVEN THANKS THAT MADE ALL OF THIS POSSIBLE & THE WORK THAT WE ALL HAVE TO DO! Now help each one to be encouraged & inspired & strengthened & thrilled with the general‚ overall worldwide reports that they're about to hear of our tremendous accomplishments for this past year, the greatest year yet! Each year‚ Lord, we say again it's the greatest year we've ever had, & it truly is by actual statistics & by numbers & by accomplishments, all of these things. TYL! PTL! Amen! TYJ!

36. AMEN! IS EVERYBODY HAPPY THAT THIS IS THE LAST DAY OF THE OLD YEAR? IT'S KIND OF A FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT JUST TO GET TO THE LAST LINE IN YOUR DIARY‚ AMEN? I'm getting all excited because every year I revamp my Diary & I readjust my method of statskeeping, etc., so I'm all thrilled & I've already got my Diary all ready for tomorrow, have you? Of course, you guys keep those big Diaries with all those pages & pages, etc. I keep each day of my Diary in just those monthly summaries, just one line for each day! I don't suggest you do that though, because you probably don't write microscopically like I do & maybe you don't use as many abbreviations. But my Diary is so small & so codified & microscopic & abbreviated that usually by the next day I can't even read it myself!—At least I can read the numbers & I'm able to keep stats, if nothing else. But it takes very little room, & as a result I don't have to carry along a great big thick Diary & write a while lot of stuff that I'm probably never ever going to read & nobody else is! You had a chance to read my old Diaries from back younger & maybe that was a help, maybe it was a bore & a chore‚ but I don't know who's going to read your Diary for this year or next, because I doubt if there's going to be very much time left to publicise it!

37. YOU'RE GOING TO BE SO BUSY WITH WHAT YOU'RE DOING EVERY DAY & WORKING TOWARD THE NEXT DAY THAT WE'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE TOO MUCH TIME IN THESE VERY END DAYS TO GO BACK & REHASH THE PAST! I've even told you there's hardly even any time any more to go into deep‚ technical Bible studies & all that kind of stuff. I've even advised people nowadays that they hardly even have time to read the Old Testament any more, so stick to the New Testament. About the only parts of the Old Testament I still go into for references is Bible Prophecy! I don't have time to go into all those old stories & their great moral lessons & … the Jews' personal history & blah blah! That's what I was talking about when I said that you just haven't got time to read that kind of Bible any more! (See ML #1598.)

38. BUT YOU SHOULD READ SOMETHING, PSALMS & PROVERBS ARE GOOD DEVOTIONAL BOOKS‚ & MAYBE WHEN YOU'RE STUDYING BIBLE PROPHECY, THE PROPHETS, & BY ALL MEANS READ THE SERMONS & LESSONS & WORDS OF JESUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT! I got to where after reading the New Testament a few times I didn't even bother to read anything any more except the Words of Jesus. I had a red-letter New Testament & I'd just read the Word of Jesus all the way through! I never forgot a great preacher in the Hollywood Presbyterian Church who got up & for his entire Sunday morning service he simply quoted all the Words of Jesus in the entire Book of John!—And John quotes more of the Words of Jesus than any other Gospel, whole chapter after chapter like His Farewell Sermons In the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th Chapters. That was his whole sermon, just the Words of Jesus. So we don't really have too much more time to go into too much old Bible Study. We don't have time to rehash the past, so we're going to just give it about an hour or so right now of what we accomplished this past year. I wanted to hear what you were thankful for & I want to tell you what I'm thankful for, okay?

39. THESE ARE YOUR STATS, THE WORLD STATS OF THE FAMILY! This is what you've accomplished, not just me. Then I'm going to give the rest of it over to Maria & Peter. I asked Peter, since he handles business & administration, to give us all the stats that involve him & that he's particularly involved with, & Maria to give all her pet stats on publications‚ etc., as she's mostly in pubs, & of course I'm also mostly in pubs. But I'd like to read the Family stats, praise the Lord, & I give dear Peter credit for writing them! (Dad reads: )

40. "GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD & PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY CREATURE! THAT IS THE COMMISSION THE LORD HAS GIVEN US & WHICH WE, THE FAMILY, ARE FULFILLING EVERY DAY!"—And every one of us!—Not just one little missionary per church or per five churches or something. Amen? I'd better not get onto that again! "Whether it's Outreach Home or WS Unit, we're doing the job!" Isn't that the greatest compliment God can pay any one of us when we come to see Him?: "Well done‚ thou good & faithful servant, you did the job!" Well, we're doing the job & I expect to hear that it was well done! Praise God? See‚ I can get a sermon out of every word & every phrase just like these preachers do out of the Bible, so I'd better press on! "This is proven by the accomplishments of this past year." Amen? Well‚ you're going to hear it from me & them. "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them!" What better proof can you have?—By our fruits!

41. "IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS THE FAMILY HAS WITNESSED TO 6.5 BILLION PEOPLE!" You say, "What do you mean, Dad? I thought there were only 5 billion people in the world!" Well, that shows some of them have heard it more than twice, I mean more than once!—Even more than twice! In some countries they've heard it dozens of times! But that means witness per person, & 6-1/2 billion times we have witnessed to people! However, don't be too proud of ourselves, there are some people who still haven't heard it. So why should anybody hear it twice when some people have never heard it once? Amen?

42. THAT WAS THE MOTTO OF OSWALD J. SMITH‚ THE MAN WHO HAD THAT ONE CHURCH THAT HAD 500 MISSIONARIES‚ THE TORONTO PEOPLE'S TABERNACLE, THE FELLOW THAT THE MISSIONARY BOARD TURNED DOWN. The Christian Missionary Alliance turned him down like they turned me down! Well‚ hallelujah! He then decided he was going to establish a church that would do nothing but send out missionaries! His church had thousands of members, three or four or five thousand members, but they sent out over 500 missionaries to foreign fields!

43. WELL, PRAISE GOD, I DECIDED I WAS GOING TO DO BETTER THAN THAT, I WAS GOING TO HAVE A CHURCH WHERE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM WAS A MISSIONARY!—Women, men, children, everybody! Good idea? So now we've got a church of usually between 10 & 15,000 people & they're all missionaries!—Well, virtually all of'm. If they're not missionaries, they're supporting missionaries. And if they weren't really supporting them heavily they wouldn't even be members. Praise God? So our total membership means they are either out on the field or they're supporting missionaries heavily. So I'd say that's being a missionary too! If you can't talk or you can't witness or you don't know how to do some of those things or how to survive on the field, but if you're supporting those who do, you're a missionary! Praise God? So God bless all the folks who are still back home in the home fields but are giving every penny they can to support you & me & all the missionaries, which is most of us out in the field! PTL?

44. "SO THIS HAS BEEN DONE THROUGH PERSONAL WITNESSING, LITNESSING, FFing, RADIO‚ TV & NEWSPAPERS, & WE'VE DISTRIBUTED A TOTAL OF 185 MILLION PAGES OF LITERATURE TO THE PUBLIC THIS PAST YEAR!" 185 million pages, think of that! That's over half-a-million pages a day! Now in case it's hard for you to comprehend over half-a-million pages a day, I went a little bit further than Peter's stats here & I figured out that each 24 hours a day our Family is passing out over 20‚000 pages of Gospel literature every hour! Do you know what that is?—Over 400 pages a minute! Over 400 pages of Gospel literature every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of the whole year! Nearly 500 pages of Gospel literature every minute! You can boil that down to seconds if you want to but I don't have time. That's pretty fast! That's really some litnessing! We also printed 168 million pages. or 460 thousand pages a day! Thank of that‚ that's almost half-a-million pages every day—printing!

45. AND HERE'S THE PAYOFF: THROUGH OUR WITNESS—THIS PAST YEAR ALONE—626,761 SOULS WERE SAVED, RECEIVED JESUS! That's almost two-thirds of a million! And that's 1700 souls a day, 70 souls an hour, about 1-1/3 souls a minute! Somewhere in the World, somebody's getting saved just about every minute because our Family is witnessing! Isn't that wonderful? Thank God! Hallelujah! They've got one-a-day vitamins, we've got one-a–minute souls! Praise God! That's better! And 326,000 received the Baptism, about 895 a day, nearly a thousand a day!

46. OUR FFers WITNESSED TO 104,889! I know you're not going to remember these big numbers, but I'll bet you'll remember those little ones I just gave you. And they loved 37,000‚ about 103 a day! Over four an hour! That's an awful lot of you-know-what!—103 a day! And they won 12,259. That is 33 souls a day won by our FFers alone. Isn't that wonderful? That's over one an hour! That's certainly a payoff for an hour's work—a soul! Over a soul every hour, probably for every hour's work or more. Praise God! Amen? TYL!

47. AND WE'VE HAD 1385 NEW DISCIPLES, 685 THROUGH THE BIRTH CANAL! Where's that canal, folks? Do you children know where the birth canal is? What country is that in? (Davida: In the tummy!) In the tummy! Well, a little bit lower than the tummy. It's where it really counts! God bless all our girls & all these births! That's an average of about 2 babies a day just in physical reproduction alone! Isn't that wonderful? That's 1700 souls won a day, & at the same time that they've been working hard winning those 1700 souls every day, they've been having two babies every day. That's a lot of work! Praise God! 680 disciples joined through personal witnessing & so on.

48. OKAY, THAT'S MY REPORT! I THINK I DID IT IN ONLY TEN MINUTES! Of course, my wee word of introduction lasted about an hour, but I had to explain because this is a whole new thing, a whole new ballgame here, having an Old Year Meeting & a New Year Meeting separately! And now‚ if I can shut up‚ I'll give it over to our worthy leaders, our businessman & our great publisher over here, the greatest woman publisher in the whole world & the greatest businessman in the whole world! I know he's the greatest businessman because he's in the greatest business that's doing the most for the Lord of any other business or any other church or any other group I know in the whole world! PTL? And if by the time they get done we don't have time for all your individual reports, God willing‚ we'll countinue'm. We might have to have a few more meetings, I don't know. Maybe they can read off the rest of this paper as fast as I read my paragraph. They've still got two pages to go. So Lord willing I'm going to take a back seat now. God bless you!

49. AND THANK THE LORD! WE ARE DOING WHAT I SET OUT TO DO & WHAT THE LORD WANTED ME TO DO, & THAT'S TO PREACH THE GOSPEL, TO TELL THE WORLD ABOUT JESUS' LOVE & WIN SOULS! And as a result of your work along that line, there are going to be millions of people in Heaven that wouldn't have been there otherwise! Praise God?—Millions of people that you led to the Lord & won to the Lord! Well, the Lord might have given them another chance in the Millennium, something like that‚ but they're already going to be in the Heavenly City where the others are forbidden to go because you won'm to the Lord! You, the Family, every one of you has had a part in this wonderful soul-winning, soul-saving, Heaven-sent‚ Heaven-bent work! Amen? GBY all! Thanks a lot! I'm just going to sit back & enjoy now hearing all the good news!

50. (MARIA: SOME OF THESE FIGURES DON'T EXACTLY JIVE WITH ONE OR TWO OF THE FIGURES YOU GAVE ABOUT HOW MANY PAGES-PER–DAY WERE PRINTED.) Because Dad was talking about GP & you're talking about Family.) Yes, there's a big difference between what we print for the public & what we print for the Family. Maria has been mostly involved in what we print for the Family, so that's what stats she's giving you now. (Maria: These are the total pages printed by Sprint international, & the ones Dad gave were by everybody in the whole World locally, not including WS Pubs.)—Right‚ what the whole Family prints for the general public. Now she's going to tell you about what we print for you! PTL!

51. (MARIA: "1984 WAS ONE OF OUR GREATEST MILESTONE YEARS IN PUBLICATIONS! WE PRINTED MORE INDIVIDUAL TITLES‚ HAD MORE MAILINGS, PRINTED MORE TOTAL COPIES, & PRINTED MORE OF VIRTUALLY EVERY TYPE OF PUBLICATION THAN ANY OTHER YEAR." Hallelujah! TYL! The biggest year yet! (Maria: "This year we printed 179 titles as compared to 112 last year." That's 57 more this year!—And here I thought we were going slower! I think it's all mostly due to Dad's 53 GNs & 50 WNDs! He's really been cranking'm out!) Don't give me all the credit for either one of them because a lot of people participate in each one of them. (Maria: Amen, but you really got behind them & pushed them through!)—All of you, lots of you, especially you secretaries that type all these long-winded dissertations! Dear James Penn now reads half the newspapers & marks them & sometimes I even let him underline the items that I pick out. I don't have time to underline'm so I've taught him how to underline & what to underline. So I'm going to give James most of the credit nowadays for the WNDs, our great Editor of the World News Digest!—God bless him!—And the people that work on it & lay it out & all the rest!

52. (MARIA: AND I'D LIKE TO GIVE CREDIT TO THE MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY THAT SEND IN MANY GOOD ARTICLES THAT WE USE IN THE WND.) Amen, & in the GN too. (Maria: There are some people who are still reading newspapers who should continue to read the newspaper because they get different newspapers than we do & they know what they're doing, a few key people that can still continue to read the newspapers.) Right! They send us articles we haven't repeated. (Maria: But we don't advise the Family in general to continue reading magazines & newspapers because they get most of what they need in the WND.) They don't have time! If they've got time to read the newspaper, we'll give them something else to do! (Maria: But we want to encourage the people who have been sending in articles to continue to do so because they're very good.) Amen!

53. (MARIA: 60 MAILINGS WERE SENT OUT THIS YEAR AS COMPARED TO 45 LAST YEAR. MORE THAN ONE A WEEK. THIS MEANS THAT EVERY SIX DAYS THE HOMES RECEIVED A MAILING!) And if you didn't get yours it's because you didn't get your TRF in on time! Excuse me for the commercial plug! (Maria: Each mailing was the equivalent of 217 pages.—217 pages every six days!) They don't even require them to read that many pages a day at Harvard! So you're much more educated & intelligent than the Harvard grads—if you survive! (Maria: In order to keep up-to-date you need to read 36 pages per day!) Well‚ that proves you're going to have to save some for the Millennium or the Tribulation!—Ha! Somebody must be saving up a lot of pages! (Maria: The total number of pages printed was over 30 million, which means that the Sprint Team printed 82‚ 192 pages per day!) PTL! That's not the number of different pages, but all the pages put together. That's a lot of pages!

54. (MARIA: THOSE 30 MILLION PAGES INCLUDED 53 GNS, 50 WNDS & 36 FNS!) How about that? The WNDs & the GNs average out almost exactly one-a–week no matter how we produce them. Sometimes we have two or three & sometimes we have five or six a month, but the whole average is almost exactly one-a-week! We told you we were trying for a weekly—now we've got two weeklies! (Maria: And we had 36 FNsabout 3 a month, which is pretty good!) Yes, God bless those editors & all the people who contribute to the Family News! (Maria: We had 9 Kidz Mags, 10 LINs & we had 14 books—Which are book-sized pubs & took us almost as long as the other books.) That's more than one book a month!

55. WE PUBLISH TWO WEEKLIES EVERY WEEK‚ PLUS THE FN IS ALMOST A WEEKLY, SO THAT'S ABOUT THREE WEEKLIES, PLUS ONE BOOK A MONTH! I don't know any other organization that does that! GBY! You're doing a great job!—Every one of you! (Maria: And do you know what? In the system it takes them years sometimes to do one book! They rewrite & rework it‚ & some of the system masterpieces of literature have taken years & years & years to finish! But look at the masterpieces we have!—Every one of ours is a masterpiece! And we continue to work on five, six, seven & eight book simultaneously & they're all masterpieces, much greater masterpieces than anything the System has ever? produced!)

56. BECAUSE OUR MOTTO IS, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THE MOTTO OF PONTIUS PILATE: "WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN, I HAVE WRITTEN!"—AND THAT'S IT! We do as little correcting as possible! Now you'll all want to look it up & see how come Pontius Pilate said that! (Jn.19:22) Well, he wrote on the top of the cross: "This is Jesus the King of the Jews!" And the Jews came & complained about it, they didn't want Him called the King of the Jews, they'd just gotten through killing Him! Well, Pilate must have been inspired because he said‚ "What I have written, I have written!" So I don't change it, but a few people do, & they're usually good little corrections. But we don't rewrite & we don't do a lot of changing. Good night‚ I remember one book that we asked Deborah to do on childcare, it took her about six years! By the time we published it she was already almost out of the Family! Think of all the babies born in those days & mothers that never got the benefit of it! So what I have written, I have written! PTL? If you don't like it, read something else!

57. (MARIA: I'D LIKE TO CLARIFY THAT ON THE CHILDREN'S PUBS‚ HOWEVER, ALTHOUGH WE DON'T EXACTLY REWRITE THEM, WE HAVE DONE A LOT OF CLARIFYING & SOMETIMES TRANSLATING OF TEXT & ART INTO CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE TO MAKE IT MORE SIMPLE FOR THEM.) But our corrections are minimal compared to the way the system does it. We correct a little word or punctuation here or there. I went all through the Kidz MOP & the Kidz BOF & now the Grandpa Stories, & about all I had to do was add a coma here or there or an exclamation mark or a little underline, & I added or changed very few words. They were just beautiful! I think I only had about one or two art corrections.

58. THE LORD INSPIRES! He gives us the right thing & our folks the right things to begin with so we don't have to do much rewriting & correcting & rewriting! Praise God! What we have written & is inspired of the Lord, we have written! Hallelujah! TYL! I'm talking about the stuff that she's written, you've written & our artists have drawn & our editors have condensed & compiled. It's a lot of writing to have so few—not mistakes—but mostly just little improvements, a little polish!

59. (MARIA: SO OF THE 14 BOOKS, THREE WERE FAMILY SPECIALS, TKS 2&3, MOPS 1&2, THE BASIC MOP, TWO EDITIONS OF THE BOF, ACTIVITY BOOKS 1 & 2‚ THE ML INDEX & GROWING IN LOVE #1. And some of these were real milestone pubs, like the BOF, which was something that clarified everyone's thinking on the Endtime, which they hadn't had in all the years that we've been in the Family.) And wait'll you see the Endtime Newspaper!: "Endtime News!" is the big headline I picked out. We got it all in four pages, the whole Bible Prophecy Message in 36 pictures! It's yet to come. Oh, I'm jumpin' the gun, I'm sorry, but I'm so thrilled about things! The WNDEX is almost out too, but they'll read you that tomorrow morning. Don't give us any of those projects today.

60. (MARIA: SOME OF THESE HAVE REALLY BEEN MILESTONES THAT HAVE CAUSED QUITE BIG REVOLUTIONS IN THE FAMILY: AS WELL AS THE BOF, THE MOP, FSMs & MANY OF THE GNs, OF COURSE.) The Truth Revolution! Praise God! (Maria: And besides all of the printed publications‚ the Homes also received one micro mailing of four tapes, & we made the WS Slideshows available to them via the NROs. The NROs have also received the first two DTD tape masters, which means most of the Family have also received them now, "New Worlds to Conquer" & "Heaven's Magic"!)

61. YOU CAN GIVE MARIA AND OUR MUSICAL STAFF ALL THE CREDIT FOR THAT, BECAUSE THEY'VE DONE IT ALL. (Maria: The original material came from the Lord via His Prophet, otherwise we wouldn't have had anything!) Well, give the Lord all the credit, but she did the work, & they did the work. I had too much other work to do. (Maria: But all the material we had to work with came from the Lord via you!) Well, that was no work! You're the one that did the work on it, & they're the ones that did the work on composing the songs & playing & singing the music & making the tapes. They did all the work. (Maria: But none of it would have been possible without you!) See, this is a big debate we always have! (Maria: We never get it resolved so we might as well go on!)

62. WELL, NONE OF IT WOULD HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT YOU!—AND IT'S ALL THE LORD! But as I say, mine's the easiest job, you guys do all the work. All I do is just sit & talk. PTL!—And the Lord even gives me what to say, so that's no work, that's just fun! (Maria: I won't argue, I'm learning not to argue!) Oh! How about that! Ha, ha, ha! (Maria: It's my big lesson for this year!) Is that your resolution for the New Year? (Maria: Yes, that's my resolution. I just argued enough so you folks know the truth, & then I stopped right away!—Ha!) Well‚ Honey, don't stop arguing, because if I'm wrong, tell me!—Or if I can improve it, tell me!—Or if I need to correct it, tell me!

63. (MARIA: THE HOMES GOT THE TAPE POSTER TOO, SO THAT'S ANOTHER ONE, & ALL OF THESE PUBLICATIONS WERE MADE POSSIBLE BY OUR PRECIOUS PUBLICATIONS & SPRINT STAFFS.) Amen, all the secretaries & all the rest!—And all you guys that fed'm & swept the floor & cleaned the toilets & maintained the house & all the rest! We couldn't have done it without any one of you.—And the kids who cheered us up & encouraged us & inspired us! (Maria: Amen‚ & proofread the pubs for us!) Right! They're our best children's proofreaders! PTL! Amen!

64. (MARIA: THESE CREATION TEAMS INCLUDE THE USUAL CREATIONS TEAMS PLUS MWMI/MCV, FAMILY CARE, THE DAILY MIGHT TEAM & THE CONCORDANCE TEAM. These staffs consist of 237 people, 135 adults & almost as many children‚ 102 children, so they're having to run schools & childcare centers & everything else at the same time that they're doing their work.) This is just talking about Creation or Pubs Staffs. I'm going to leave it to Peter to read the total of all World Service personnel. There are 1200 of us involved in the total World Service personnel around the World!

65. (MARIA: OUR PUBS TEAMS TYPED, TRANSCRIBED, PROOFREAD, EDITED & LAYED–OUT THE EQUIVALENT OF 135‚520 PAGES OR 371 PAGES-PER-DAY!) They work!—If you want to know what they're doing! (Maria: They've also come up with many new photo procedures, art procedures & computer techniques which have helped to speed up their work very greatly this year.)

66. (MARIA: THEY ALSO PHOTOCOPIED ALMOST 300‚000 COPIES OF VARIOUS MATERIAL WHICH REPLACES MUCH OF THE PHOTOWORK THAT THEY HAD TO DO. And the Art Department produced over 4,500 drawings while the Photo Department did over 48‚000 separate photo operations!) Wow!—And a lot of them complicated colour! Our photomen have marvellously learned how to do beautiful colour, isn't that wonderful?—As well as our artists painting those beautiful colours to begin with & drawing the gorgeous pictures too. You haven't seen everything yet! Wait till you see it! That's very good, Sweetheart! God bless you! (Applause!) Hallelujah! TYL!

67. (PETER: CAN I ADD JUST TWO THINGS ON THE PUBS? MORDY SAYS THAT THERE ARE 19 TITLES NOW AT THE PRINTERS, 11 OF WHICH HAVE BEEN PRINTED & ARE IN BINDING.) See, these are not even on the list Maria gave you, these won't be coming out till next year.

68. SON, SINCE THE WHOLE REPORT WILL BE IN THE FINAL PRINTED REPORT, YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP OVER A FEW LITTLE DETAILS & JUST HIT THE HIGH SPOTS! If you've got time to read the whole thing, read it all, & if I don't say too much in-between, maybe you'll make it!—Ha! We're hoping to get done here in time for your usual lunch hour. Can we fix lunch when we're done? We don't want anybody to miss this meeting. We don't fast very much, so maybe you can fast that long. So now you can go fast! (Peter: I'll read a fast, fast report!) We'll let you bring up the rear, that's the most dangerous job! When you're an army in retreat on the field, bringing up the rear is the most dangerous job because that' s where the enemy is attacking. The Army Engineers suffered high casualties as a result. So we're going to let you bring up the rear now.—We're not retreating, though! PYL!

69. (PETER: WORLD SERVICES: "BY ONE MAN'S OBEDIENCE MANY WERE MADE RIGHTEOUS!" What better verse could portray the effect of Dad's obedience? Not only is each of us serving the Lord because Dad heeded the Lord's Call, but also billions have heard the Gospel & millions have been saved for the same reason. The Lord has given Dad His Word for today & it has been published by the hundreds of millions throughout the World! "Great was the company of them that published it!" And the Company that is publishing the words for today is the Family, & they are able to receive the words due to Dad's obedience & due to the labours of those working within World Services. World Services not only publishes the Word, but also performs many other services to help make the Family's ministries possible. Within World Services, like Dad said, there are 1214 people, which consist of 631 adults & 583 children, lots of children, thank You Lord!) Hallelujah!—World Service personnel that are working in various departments of World Services, or missionaries supported by World Services.

70. (PETER: THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS IN WORLD SERVICES & ONE OF THEM IS ADMINISTRATION‚ WHICH CONSISTS OF THE FINANCE & STATS OFFICES, 3 CROs, 14 NROs & THE M&M SECRETARIES—19 OFFICE OPERATIONS.) We'd probably figure out there were 20, & for the average big denomination, even for this size operation to have only 20 offices, that's really trimming it down! We've got the lowest overhead as far as administration expense—that means organizational expense such as offices, etc.—of any group I ever heard of! Many of them average 50% or more. I heard from one radio man once that the reason he didn't help some of these Cancer drives & blah blah drives, he said, "When I found out that the group or organisation pockets most of the money & very little of it actually gets out into helping the people who need it, I quit! It's just a moneymaker for these big associations & drives & blah blah!" With most of them‚ he said, over 50% goes to what they call administration & organization & offices & collection & all that kind of stuff, programs & advertising. Tell'm what percent goes to that with us.

71. (PETER: THE ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES ARE ONLY 7.77% OF OUR TOTAL EXPENSES.) How about that?—7% of our total expenses! That includes not just this one, but about 20 different administrative offices & all their personnel & their children & their support & everything! All the Administration put together is only 7% of the total expenses of our group. That's the lowest I ever heard of! TYL! The churches use 95% on administration—their churches‚ in other words, offices & all of that—& only 5% goes to getting the job done!—Missions!—Ours is almost exactly the reverse‚ praise God!

72. (PETER: THOSE OFFICES RECEIVED OVER 48,000 PIECES OF MAIL & SENT OUT OVER 58,000 PIECES, AS WELL AS PROCESSED ABOUT 15,000 TRFs. They worked over 60,000 hours just on paperwork, & that doesn't include everything else they did, which is 164 hours a day‚ all our offices together‚ just processing TRFs & answering mail. Financially, 1984 was one of our best years as the Homes Worldwide gave not only their tithe, but also sacrificed even more for the Lord's work. Because of their faithful giving, WS was able to supply them with all the Pubs, Administration & Missions aid. Virtually all of the funds were turned back to the Family in Pubs or services. Our Creations & printing expenses were a total of 36%, Administration was 7.7%, & Missions to the mission field was about 57%. You can see on this chart that most of it is Mission. And actually when you consider that the missionaries get all the publications, then actually 93% goes to Missions!)—Right!

73. THAT'S JUST COUNTING WHAT GOES THROUGH WORLD SERVICES TO THE MISSIONARIES, not counting all the money that goes from the Family in direct gifts & their support from outside givers & all the rest. So when you consider how much the total Family income is for their whole support of nearly all missionaries, this is pennies that has to go to the Administration!—And it all goes out in expenses. We don't have any big savings accounts anywhere‚ we just spend it as fast as it comes in.

74. (PETER: IN THE MUSIC MINISTRY‚ THE MUSIC STUDIOS AROUND THE WORLD CONTINUED TO MAKE TAPES FOR THE RADIO MINISTRY FOR A GOOD PART OF 1984. They supplied the IHCs worldwide with radio shows, 120 of which were recorded in five languages.) We were broadcasting for awhile in 10 languages, but some of them we cut out because they could have just as well had it in English. But we're still broadcasting in five foreign languages‚ particularly some of the most difficult & less evangelised. Tell'm what they are. (Peter: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese & Thai. And I guess it's six languages because I didn't count English!) Yes! How about English? That's one of most difficult languages of all! I don't know hardly anybody that speaks it except the upper class English! Ha!

75. (PETER: THEY SENT OUT OVER 500 MASTER TAPES TO THE IHCS, TRANSLATED OVER 200 SONGS & RECORDED OVER 500 SONGS. Then besides supplying the IHCs with master tapes, the MWM/MCV Home spent most of the year working on the new DTD tapes & on artwork, as they've become a combined music & artist Creations Unit.) They've done a tremendous job too! And I think that art may reach more than even their music reached, especially the children!

76. THAT'S TECHI'S DEPARTMENT. SHE'S ONE OF THE CHIEF PROOFREADERS OF CHILDREN'S ART, IN FACT OF ALL OF OUR CHILDREN'S LIT! All of them read the children's art & they pass in their corrections. They keep running over to Maria, "Oh Mama, look, here they made a mistake! Oh Mama, you ought to change this face, it doesn't look right!" They're our best proofreaders for children's art & literature, amen? Who could be better proofreaders than the children themselves? If they don't understand it, nobody's going to understand it! So this is our Children's Proofreading & Art Critic Department right here! (Maria: And the same in the other Creations Units too that are working on the pubs‚ they have teams of children's proofers there too.) Amen, every one of them! All those children are doing it, praise God!

77. JUST THINK, MARIA, WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T HAD DAVID! We weren't even thinking about children in those days & we had no children's lit, nothing!—No childcare material, no nothing, until we had our two children, our first one in particular. Davidito was the beginning of a childcare, Child Literature Revolution, Mothercare too! PTL!

78. (PETER: THE MWM TEAM DID THE 7 DTD TAPES THIS YEAR, WHICH CONSISTED OF 126 SONGS, MOST OF WHICH HAD TO BE EITHER REWRITTEN‚ REVAMPED, RE-RECORDED OR AT LEAST ADDED ON TO.)—And Maria was the one who headed the revision team! (Peter: Yes. If it wasn't for Maria's push on that‚ those DTD tapes wouldn't have gotten out.) Right, because I was too busy. (Peter: Maria really gets a lot of credit for that.) She gets all the credit!—She & you & the rest of the folks involved, not me! (Maria: You know where our talented & inspired music & lyrics writers got all the ideas for the songs?—From the MO Letters!) Honey! Here we go again!—Ha! (Peter: But if Maria wouldn't have spent hundreds of hours on it, the project wouldn't have gotten out.) That's right! No matter how much raw material the Lord supplied, it would have never gotten out if Maria hadn't cooked it!—Maria & the musicians & the artists, etc. (Peter: The same goes with a lot of the pubs, the MDP & a few others.) Amen! Absolutely! I told you I have the easiest job of all. I do the least work possible! (Maria: Well, we happen to know otherwise.) Well, you'd better tell me about it‚ because I don't know! I'm glad to hear I'm working, thank you! Go ahead, excuse us‚ Peter. This isn't heckling, we're merely supplementing! (Peter: Exactly! Anyway, MWM really did a lot of work, a monumental job, God bless them!

79. (ON THE RADIO MINISTRY THERE WERE A NUMBER OF CHANGES—DAD REVAMPED MANY OF THE METHODS & MODES OF OPERATION WHICH CAUSED A TRIMMING DOWN AS WELL AS A GREAT REAPING! We dropped 58% of the stations, which was 762.) Hallelujah! Unfruitful stations. (Peter: That's right, they were all unfruitful. And also during this year we stopped supplying tapes to any station that had been on the air for more than six months & told them to re–use the tapes that they had on hand if they wanted to continue.) We stopped supplying them with new tapes. We said, "Just repeat what you've got, you've got enough already!" (Peter: In spite of that‚ we still were able to send out 22,000 tapes to the stations this year.) That's just to the 50%, the half of the stations we kept!

80. (PETER: ALSO THIS YEAR THE MEANINGFUL MEETINGS WERE INITIATED & THEY HELD 3,388 MEETINGS, WHICH RESULTED IN OVER 19,000 SOULS WON! Before all this happened, the total souls for all the MWM time was only about a thousand or 1200, in all the years before. So in just one year there was 19,000! We had 1,929 Reaping Teams & they visited almost 11,000 Club Members.) Nearly 2,000 Reaping Teams, give us a few round numbers so we can remember it. (Peter: And they won almost 400 active live-out disciples like catacombers, & over 200 fulltime disciples.) PTL! This was a year of reaping, amen? We really reaped a lot of what we had sowed this year! (Peter: So even though we dropped over 50% of the stations & stopped sending tapes to some stations‚ we still won all those souls & still had almost 50,000 responses from listeners.) I'd be interested in comparing the Reaping Stats of this past year with those of 1983 & the year before that. The two previous years were very few, almost nil! We've done most of our reaping this past year, thank the Lord!

81. (PETER: ONE OTHER NEW MINISTRY IS THE COMPUTERS THIS YEAR, & THERE ARE 57 COMPUTERS IN THE FAMILY!) Hallelujah!—that is in World Services alone! We don't know how many computers there are in the Family. We are computerised! We are right up front! Modernised! (Peter: And God bless the boys who really worked on doing the programs, because they've made things like the MCP & the WNDEX & the Concordance possible!) Amen! They were inspired!—Geniuses! We've got guys who are helping the governors of countries with their computers, believe it or not!—Helping to install'm program'm & teaching'm how to use'm! Heads of countries, think of that!—Including Our country! You know what country that is, don't you?—The Kingdom of God! Hallelujah! TYJ!

82. (PETER: IN OUR FOREIGN LITERATURE DEPARTMENT, BESIDES ENGLISH, WE PUBLISH IN 18 LANGUAGES, & IN ALL OF THOSE UNITS, THE LIMS & THE LIT-PICS‚ THERE ARE 215 PEOPLE.) One of these days we need to get our total total of the whole time! But the Letters are now in 50 different languages—pubbed in 50 different languages! (Peter: they translated 1100 Letters, 400 Condos & 250 TKs, they printed over 18 million pages.—Just what went to the Family from those particular Units. That's just a little over half of what World Services does in English to everybody, then they did it half again in the foreign languages.) Do you want to know where all those millions of pages went? That's those pages you haven't read yet, the ones you're saving for the Tribulation!

83. (PETER: THERE ARE 11 RECEPTION CENTERS & COMBOS & THEY HAD A TOTAL OF 11,000 GUESTS WHO STAYED FOR 26,000 NIGHTS & ATE 80,000 MEALS!) Wow! That's an average of 30 guests daily who stayed for 71 nights & ate an average of 220 meals per day!

84. (PETER: OUR INTERNATIONAL VIDEO MINISTRY CIRCULATED FROM THE MAJOR CENTERS, THE IVLs, TO THE NATIONAL LIBRARIES, 1600 VIDEO TAPES! There are now 250 Homes with video equipment (one out of four) & 2‚800 WS Videos on the circuit. That doesn't count all the ones that they happen to dupe themselves.

85. (UNDER MISSIONS‚ AS WE SAID, ALMOST 56% OF THE INCOME GOES TO MISSIONS, & that supports many individual Missionaries, Reaping gifts, Tape Ministry gifts, Literature gifts, Combo gifts‚ Baby Bonuses, Lit-Pic gifts, NRO gifts, Local Language MWM gifts, IHC gifts, everything to the field.) And if you add all the literature which we publish for the Family, all of that goes to the missionaries also. So as a result, 93% of everything received goes to the missionaries! And I would say that the 7% which goes to support Units like this & Creations, etc., that you're just as much missionaries as the rest of them. So that's 100% for missionaries! We're 100% for Missions, amen?—100% involved in soul–winning, all of us! TTL! (Peter: And of all the Mission Units, there's 917 people—462 adults & 455 children.) Nearly a thousand missionaries supported by World Services! (Peter: Actually the 1200 people that are in WS is roughly 10% of the Family that are therefore supported by the 10% tithe, which not only cover the living expenses of these 1200 people, but also pays for all of the Pubs they receive!

86. (BESIDES ALL THE ABOVE-MENTIONED ACCOMPLISHMENTS THERE WERE NUMEROUS VICTORIES & MAJOR EVENTS THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE FAMILY. Most of these major accomplishments occurred because of the instructions & revelations the Lord gave Dad which were passed on to the Family through the Letters. So here's what they were: The Move Eastward inspired by "Eastward Ho", "Latins Go East", & "Love'm & Leave'm." The RRR, the Radio Reaping Revolution & the witnessing at Universities & stopping the Mass Media witnessing were caused by the Letters on those subjects, which caused a Disciple-Winning Revolution‚ more disciples won this year than in lots of years!—Plus that meant the need for numerous Babes' Ranches which also opened this year. So New Disciples was a victory & a real accomplishment as well as Babes' Ranches. Another real victory was "God's Gifts," the spiritual revolution on Dad's birthday.

87. ("THE STORY OF OUR CHILDREN" GNs WERE A REAL VICTORY THAT HELPED OUR PARENTS IN THE UPBRINGING OF THEIR CHILDREN, & the "Delinquent Parents" Letter really caused a Discipline Revolution in the Family. Another one was the visit of a number of people to Dad's House which resulted in the reactions in FSMs 8, 9 and 10‚ which caused a dramatic change in the personal lives of almost everyone in the Family.) Amen, as well as a Leadership Revolution! (Peter: Also, the first Maria GN, which caused everybody to know & love our shepherdess even more & helped us all to be more open & honest. The new Tape Ministry. The Russian & East Bloc Pioneer Work, our first Russian disciples & the Chinese Pioneer Work.) PTL! Hallelujah!

88. WE'VE GOTTEN GLOWING LETTERS OF HOW THEY'RE CARRYING ON IN RUSSIA & THE EAST BLOC! It's just a real, what the church would have called a Revival! Well, they were plumb dead, not just revived. It's a Salvation Revolution that is just sweeping those countries, it's marvelous what they're doing! Young leadership is being raised up raw & carrying on even though some of the other folks that pioneered the work can't even get back in any more. When they asked the authorities why they couldn't go back in, they said‚ "You know why!" So some of them are wise to what some of us have been doing, but that forces the young local leadership into positions of responsibility & they have to carry on.—Indigenous churches, praise the Lord?—Nationalised! It's a genuine nationalisation Jesus Revolution! TTL!

89. (PETER: FAITHY & MAGDALENE'S VISIT & ALL THEIR WRITINGS WAS A REAL VICTORY, & THEN THEIR GOING TO JAPAN AS THE KING'S AMBASSADORS HAS REALLY CAUSED A REVOLUTION IN THE JAPANESE WORK! Also we tightened the TRFs for better security & many Homes are now comboing much more than ever before. Our average people per Home has really gone up this year.) Amen, especially on the Mission Field where it really helps! (Peter: There's been a real push in FFing the top, inspired by "Esther, Queen of the FFers." We had the evacuation of [one major country], that was a major event, & Deb's Book was a major event.) By the way‚ we're getting out a little tract, "Deb's Dirty Book," which you'll be able to get reprints of to send to your parents or anybody else that has probably read it or is going to read it. We found we had to have something to send out to counteract it, not just the GNs that we sent to our own folks & Family, but something to be given out to the general public who are reading that dirty thing!

90. (PETER: NEXT, THE BURMA PIONEERING‚ & SOME MAJOR MILESTONES WERE THE BOF & THE MOPS‚ BOTH OF WHICH HAVE REALLY CHANGED THE FAMILY.) Amen, TYL! I give Maria & Peter & you guys all the credit for the MOPs, because they're the ones that did it, not me! All I did was read it. (Maria: We got it from your material.) (Peter: And you said it in the first place!) Honey, the Lord said it. (Maria: Well, He had to have a mouthpiece!) Well, it's easy to be a mouthpiece. It's just like being a video recorder or a TV or something. How much credit do you give the television for the programs you see on it? Do you clap your hands for the television set or the video recorder?

91. (PETER: WE HAD NEW GN‚ WND, FN & LIN FORMATS THIS YEAR & THERE WAS THE CHILDREN'S PUBS PUSH‚ most of which you'll hear about later, but we've been working on it. And the Slide Ministry was this year & also the Posters! So those were the Major Events!) PTL! TYL! How about that? That's it! See how fast we got done? GBY! It didn't take all that much time. I know you're not going to remember all those great big numbers, but I'll bet you remember some of those little ones! Amen! Those big numbers are too big to even comprehend, but if we boil it down to how many souls a day, you can remember those little numbers like that. So in the final reports, Peter, try to boil some of those down to how many a day or a minute, because that's a figure they can remember. They have a hard time remembering those big numbers. I can't even remember them myself, but I can remember some of those little ones. PTL?

92. AMEN, WELL THAT'S WHAT IT IS & THAT'S WHAT YOU DID—YOU DID IT, THANK THE LORD‚ & OF COURSE THE LORD DID IT ALL! PTL! Amen! TTL! Well, we've already had our prayer session so why don't we just stand up & join hands, each one of you join hands the best you can, & pray the prayer He taught us to pray. That covers everything‚ amen? Wasn't that a good report by Peter? TTL! He wrote the whole thing, so you can give him all the credit. He worked hard all day & so did everybody else. And you did the whole thing, you worked hard every day all year long to make it all possible! TYJ! PTL? Amen?

93. AMEN, LORD‚ THANK YOU JESUS FOR ALL THESE WONDERFUL VICTORIES, MARVELOUS, MIRACULOUS STATS, LORD‚ THAT YOU MADE POSSIBLE, OF OUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS! Thank You Lord we've kept records, kept books. You told us in the very beginning, "Write all these things in a Book of Remembrance," & that's what our stats are, Lord, & all of our many historical publications. We're to remember, to have counted them & know exactly what we've accomplished & exactly where we're at, Lord, to keep books like any business‚ & this is the most important business in the world! We're to keep books or we wouldn't know where we're at! Thank you Lord that these have faithfully kept books‚ & our accounting shows what we're accomplishing. TYJ!—It's the proof! We've got the numbers to prove it, the stats to prove it, Lord, the figures to prove it, that we have really made tremendous progress, just this past year, the greatest year of all so far! Lord, we're hoping that this coming year of 1985 will be even greater, but we'll talk about that tomorrow. TYJ! As we pray the prayer for Your Kingdom that you taught us to pray: (Prays the Lord's Prayer.) Thank you Lord for this beautiful home to live in & the good meal that these are about to imbibe, in Jesus' name. PTL! God bless you all, I love you!

94. HALLELUJAH! WASN'T THAT TERRIFIC? WAIT TILL YOU HEAR ABOUT THE FUTURE! TYL!—Tomorrow morning, Lord willing. So be prepared to assemble at ten o'clock. And don't just sit here & fool around while you're waiting for us to come, either be quiet & pray or study your Bible or whatever, so that you'll be prepared in heart & mind for whatever the Lord has for you. GBY!—Even if I'm not here yet, but so what? The Lord is here! Sit down here & talk to the Lord.—And let Him talk to you, that's most important. Amen? GBY all! I don't have time to kiss you all but I'll blow you kisses! ILY! GBY! Thanks to all of you for helping to make it all possible! GBAKY doing even more in 1985‚ in Jesus' name, amen!