KEYWORDS: them, people, they

Who To--Pushers or Problems?

David Berg

—MOApril 22, 1975NO.334A—DFO

The Disciple Standards of the New Do-It-Yourself Revolution!—Part V

P.O. Box 31, London WC2E 7LX, England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan‚ Puerto Rico 00936

GOT A CONTINUAL PROBLEM? GET RID OF IT!

1. GOD COMES TO A POINT WHERE "HIS SPIRIT WILL NOT ALWAYS STRIVE WITH MAN": "He that being often reproved and hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed!"

2. IF THEY KEEP IT UP AND WON'T GET THE VICTORY‚ THEN YOU JUST HAVE TO GET RID OF THEM! They can act so pitiful and they always feel so sorry for themselves and feel so abused and mistreated! They always go out and complain afterwards that they were mistreated and abused, and sometimes become your bitter enemy.

HALFHEARTS ARE THE DEVIL'S TOOL TO SLOW DOWN GOD'S WORK!

3. THE DEVIL SENT THEM TO CAUSE TROUBLE, and if they can't stay inside to cause trouble then go outside and cause trouble. We've spent enough time on these cases and God has shown us enough about them that we should have learned our lesson!

4. THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH GOD ALLOWS IT NO DOUBT IS TO TEACH US A LESSON so that we won't let it happen again and waste more hours and days and weeks and months and years of leadership time all throughout the whole Revolution dealing with the same kind of problem cases!

5. THE DEVIL'S GOING TO BE REAL BUSY RIGHT NOW TRYING TO PUT THAT KIND OF PEOPLE INSIDE!—Everybody has to get their new disciples to get their Letters, so they're going to be tempted to pick up just anybody that will come. But they'd better not, because it can cause more trouble than good if they're not prayerful!

6. THERE'S ENOUGH GOOD FISH IN THE SEA IF THEY'LL GO OUT AND HUNT FOR THEM. They don't have to keep the sick ones and the weak ones and the diseased ones! They just can't do it, that's all!

BLOBS: A GATHERING PLACE FOR THE WEAK.

7. THE WEAK ONES GET TOGETHER and they sort of help drag each other down and sympathise with each other. I've seen it happen many times. If they'd only read the Letters they'd learn not to fool around with problem cases and weak sisters!

8. THEY CAN LIVE IN THOSE BLOBS AND BE HIDDEN so nobody ever knows the difference, it's never even brought out. As long as they're there and they're happy and enjoying life, the Devil's happy. But just get them out in a small Colony and put the pressure on and you'll find out who the real soldiers are and who the weak sisters and stretcher cases are!

INVITE YOUR PROBLEMS TO LEAVE!

9. I DIDN'T USED TO HAVE ANY TROUBLE GETTING RID OF THEM. Usually they're already a big problem causing all kinds of trouble and other leaders are spending hours and hours dealing with them and praying with them and wasting God's time. I'd simply bring them in, smile at them and say,

10. "I'M SO SORRY YOU'RE NOT HAPPY HERE. HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE YOU TO PACK your bag? We're getting a car ready now to take you to the bus station. We'll pay your fare to the next town. It was nice, but you know if you can't make it, you just can't make it."

11. "THIS KIND OF LIFE IS NOT FOR EVERYBODY AND APPARENTLY IT'S NOT FOR YOU.—You're not happy, you're dissatisfied, and you're causing lots of trouble‚ and obviously you'd be happier somewhere else. We'll help you get out of here and you can go wherever you want."

MA & PA WILL GLADLY TAKE THEIR WOLFLETS BACK!

12. USUALLY ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS GO STRAIGHT TO THE NEAREST PHONE AND CALL MAMA and papa and they'd wire them the money to come home immediately, no problem. That's what mama and papa had been wanting all the time.

13. THEIR MAMAS AND PAPAS ARE USUALLY JUST LIKE THEM and are very happy that they got the victory and everybody was proven wrong but them. So mamas and papas don't let their dear little wolflets suffer out in the cold anywhere. They eagerly take them back into their den‚ sad to say.

14. IT'S AWFULLY HARD TO KEEP THOSE PEOPLE AS FRIENDS. They always go back, and even if they don't become an outright enemy, they're always malcontent. They're almost always a witness against you—they usually have to be.

WE'RE NOT LOOKING FOR JUST ANY KIND OF DISCIPLES.

15. BUT THAT'S ONE OF THE PROBLEMS YOU HAVE WHEN YOU TAKE SOMEBODY IN THAT'S NOT REALLY GENUINELY SAVED, born again, changed radically and really living a new life.—They're certainly not really the kind of material that's going to make a fighting soldier. If they're one of these long, drawn–out cases where they've got to be given some long time-consuming kind of cure, we haven't got time for them.

16. IF GOD CAN'T CURE THEM right on the spot, because they haven't got what it takes to get the real cure right this minute, boom!—Then forget it! We're not in the business of taking in these guys who just want a free ride or a soft bed or a hospital cure.

17. WE ARE AN ARMY! We're not only an army, but we're training the officers of the army! We're the toughest officers training school there is, and that's what you've got to remember!

18. WE'RE NOT LOOKING FOR JUST ANY KIND OF DISCIPLES. We're looking for the right kind who are going to make good fighters and good officers, and the rest of them can go back to church or some other spiritual hospital.

THE SPIRITUALLY WEAK ARE SICK AND HANDICAPPED.

19. MOST OF THE CHURCHES ARE FULL OF SPIRITUALLY HANDICAPPED, retarded stretcher cases. They've got nothing better to do, and they're not going to do any better‚ so let them take care of them!

20. IN THE CASE OF COUPLES I DIDN'T HESITATE TO GIVE BOTH THE MAN AND THE WOMAN A CHOICE, and it was usually the woman who wanted to stay, believe it or not‚ with the kids, and the husband got angry and wanted to take off!

21. THE WOMAN'S GOT HER FREE WILL and the choice to do what she wants to, and to prove it I'd call her husband right in and say to her, "What do you want to do?" And she'd say‚ "I want to stay." You've got a free will and choice and you can go with your husband if you want to." I don't want to, I want to stay."

22. AND SHE WOULD STAY, EVEN THOUGH HE HAD TO GO, because we had given him enough chances and he had no choice anymore. I'd try it give them a nice little farewell talk and try to send them out as a friend.

23. YOU'VE GOT TO JUST TREAT THEM LIKE YOU WOULD SOMEBODY WHO'S SICK, which is what they are. "So sorry you're sick, but you know this is a hard life for sick people, so you'd better go home where you can go to bed, and if you're spiritually sick you can go to the churches. They're just full of the spiritually sick, and they've got time for people like you—we don't!

FIGHTING A WAR IS ONLY FOR THE TOUGH!

24. WE'RE FIGHTING A WAR! We're in an army and we're in a hurry, and we haven't got time to fiddle around and hold their hand and let them cry on our shoulder.

25. PAUL MADE IT PRETTY CLEAR THAT IT WAS A TOUGH FIGHT and only for soldiers, not for namby-pamby babies and cry babies and sick and handicapped people. "Endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Entangle not yourself with the affairs of this world, that you may please Him who has called you to be a soldier!" (II Timothy 2:3,4)

26. WE TALK ABOUT REHABILITATION FROM DRUGS AND CRIME‚ BUT WE SPECIALISE IN THE KIND WHO GET INSTANT DELIVERANCE through Jesus Christ right on the spot before they join!—Not those we have to fiddle around with for years after they join trying to get them to get the victory.

27. THEY'VE GOT TO GET SAVED‚ CHANGED, DELIVERED, AND HEALED RIGHT THEN and then join, or for God's sake don't let them in! We have not got time for people who are going to always be a problem and drag us all down!

"REVOLUTIONARY RULES"—A MUST FOR DISCIPLES TODAY!

28. WHAT DO YOU THINK I WROTE "THE REVOLUTIONARY RULES" FOR? I tried to make it sound as tough as possible so nobody would even want to join unless they really meant business!

29. I TRIED TO MAKE IT SOUND TERRIBLE AND HARD. But there are still some of these people who think that the "Revolutionary Rules" were just for the days when we were on the road.

30. THOSE RULES HOLD TRUE TODAY JUST AS MUCH AS THEY EVER DID! They're just as right as they ever were and they'd better stick to them just like they ever did or they're going to have trouble! If they start taking in namby-pamby cases and people like that they're going to have big problems.

VICTORY IS BY CHOICE!

31. YOU CAN'T FORCE ANYBODY TO GET THE VICTORY. They either make the right choice and have the will to do it and get it or they don't.

32. THEY CAN THE VICTORY IF THEY CHOOSE to, because God's got it for them, and there's oodles of promises on it. So they have absolutely no excuse for not getting the victory.

33. IF THEY WILL DO THEIR PART AND FORSAKE THEIR SINS and make the right choice to do God's will, He'll give it to them—If not, nobody can! I don't care how many hours of counselling you waste on them, they just become nothing but a drag and a hindrance and a terrible weight on the whole Colony, and in some cases the whole Revolution!

34. THESE HALF-HEARTED PEOPLE HAVE SLOWED DOWN THE WORK OF GOD ALL OVER THE WORLD and will try to do so even more right at this most important time while we're making this tremendous big push.

35. I'LL TELL YOU, THE DEVIL IS MAD and he'll always try to throw the monkey wrench right in when and where he knows it will do the most harm. But he can't stop us‚ and we'll all go ahead in spite of him, thank God!

MAKE IT SOUND TOUGH AND HARD TO DISCOURAGE THE WEAK!

36. THE KIDS ARE GOING TO HAVE A REAL HARD TIME STRIKING A HAPPY MEDIUM between the way they were doing it‚ almost shutting the door entirely on new disciples, and now throwing their doors wide open.

37. WHAT WE ALWAYS DID WAS TO MAKE IT SOUND AS BLACK AND AS BAD AS WE COULD. We didn't say, "Oh, come in! This is such a nice life and you're going to be so warm and cosy and you won't have to work anymore and everything's going to be so nice!"

38. YOU'VE GOT TO PAINT THE PICTURE AS BLACK AS YOU CAN AND MAKE IT SOUND AS HARD AS POSSIBLE and as tough as possible and do almost everything you can to discourage them from joining, except putting them on weeks of probation.

39. TELL THEM, "REMEMBER THIS IS NO OUTFIT FOR WEAK SISTERS AND SISSIES and people who aren't real tough fighters. I'll tell you that in advance. We'll give you a chance, but if we soon see that you can't take it and can't make it, just remember, out you go! We'll let you know."

40. YOU JUST SIMPLY CANNOT HAVE ANY FORMAL TWO WEEKS PROBATION PERIOD. You take them in one day and if they right away prove they haven't got it‚ then they're out the next! Why promise them two weeks?—I wouldn't put up with some of these people two minutes or two hours much less two weeks!

41. YOU CAN USUALLY FIND OUT WITHIN THE FIRST DAY OR TWO WHAT PEOPLE ARE REALLY LIKE. It didn't take us long to find out what people were like when we took them into our house and had to live with them. If they expected to be treated like guests of honour and served everything and never turned a finger to hardly to anything‚ we found out real fast what they had in mind.

42. HAVING THEM COME IN AND LIVE WITH YOU IS EVEN BETTER THAN A PROBATION PERIOD where they just come in every day and study. You can never find out as much about what they're like then. It doesn't mean a thing just because they're good on paper with pencils and they cant sit there in class singing, "La-di-da-di-da!" and shout "Hallelujah!" But if they come in and have to take part in the duties and the rough stuff‚ then you find out what they're like real fast!

43. JUST TELL THEM IN ADVANCE EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO DISCOURAGE THEM: "This is a tough life and it's going to be rough! It's no bed of roses, no life of ease, and if we find out that you can't make it or you can't take it and you're not the kind of material we're looking for, why we'll let you know right quick and out you go, right back out again! You've got no guarantee or reservation in this Colony." What we told Maria when she came was‚

44. "YOU'RE ON PROBATION: YOU TO SEE IF YOU LIKE US, AND US TO SEE IF WE LIKE YOU! And if you don't like us, why there's the door!—And if we don't like you, it's the same door!" We cannot fiddle around with people that we have to spend years trying to learn to like, and they have to spend years trying to learn to like us!

IT'S INSTANT LOVE OR NOTHING!

45. IT'S EITHER INSTANT LOVE OR IT'S NOTHING! These people that they have wanted to win so bad because they were somebody important or they thought they would make a nice trophy and provide a star in their crown, so they made it as easy as they could and they did everything for them including going the 110th mile, more often than not they never came through!

46. JESUS SAID. "RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW! FORSAKE ALL! Come follow Me and I'll make you fishers of men!" And they dropped everything on the spot!—Boom!—Right then, that was it! No fiddling around about, "Well, let me count the fish first", or "Let me help my father first. Let me do this. Let me do that."

47. IT WAS NOT, "WELL, LET'S PLAY ALONG AWHILE WITH THIS GUY, Lord. Please!—He's a pretty important fellow!" Or "He'd be quite a haul! Let's try to wean him from the world little by little and gradually bring him through." I've never seen it work yet, never!

48. THEY'VE GOTTA LIKE WHAT THEY SEE AND GO ALL OUT FOR IT and burn their bridges behind them on the spot like Elisha did! He burned his bridges right behind him and made it impossible for him to go back!

49. THESE PROBLEM PEOPLE KEEP ONE HAND IN THE COLONY AND ONE BACK SOMEWHERE ELSE always figuring out how they're going to go back in case they don't make it or can't take it.

50. THEY ALWAYS GO BACK, because they didn't come in all the way in the first place with all their heart and all their soul. They were double-minded to begin with. I have no patience for those people! I never have had.

TEST'EM BUT DON'T LOAD'EM DOWN!

51 MAKING IT DIFFICULT FOR THEM DOESN'T MEAN LOADING THEM DOWN WITH ALL THE HEAVY STUFF. I said you make it sound as difficult as possible. It doesn't mean you deliberately try to make it hard on them like that mental torture chamber they used to have in L.A. where they put them through the "Purge Room" and they deliberately tried to make it hard for them.

52. IT'S HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM WITHOUT THAT. It doesn't have to be like Bill did on the ranch where he said, "Don't pipe them any water. We've dot to try to make it hard on them so they'll know how to be a real missionary!" I said, "Listen, it's hard enough here. I think we ought to try to make it a little a bit easier for them so at least some of them can make it instead of making it so hard that nobody makes it!"

53. I'M SAYING TO PAINT THE PICTURE BEFORE THEY JOIN AS BLACK AS YOU CAN and tell them how hard it is and how tough it is. Do that and after they join they'll think it's great compared to what you told them!

54. YOU BUILD THEM UP FOR A TERRIBLE LETDOWN REALLY. They thought it was really going to be bad, and then by comparison to what you told them they find it's not so bad after all!

THE GIFT OF DISCERNMENT: BE SURE OF EVERY DISCIPLE.

55. WE SHOULD NEVER LET THESE GUYS IN THE DOOR TO MOVE IN UNTIL WE KNOW something about them and we've got a real conviction that they've really got the goods! It's a whole lot harder to get rid of them than it is to take them in.

56. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY'RE LIKE if you accept them on the spot? Well, that's when you need a little discernment, and in the absence of that they need to pray for it!

57. IF THEY EVER NEED DISCERNMENT IT'S WHEN THEY TAKE PEOPLE INTO THEIR COLONIES. That's why they always used to bring them to me to look over first. I could spot and smell a rat a block away! I even used to have to go down to the Greeting Room once in a while when they had a problem case and they wanted to see what I thought.

58. FOR THE LORD'S SAKE SOME OF THESE GUYS NEED TO GET THE GIFT OF DISCERNMENT, especially a Colony Shepherd so that he can figure what kind of a guy or person this one or that one is! They can't just automatically accept every Tom‚ Dick and Harry a little disciple brings to the door!

59. THE COLONY COUNCIL HAS TO GET TOGETHER AND TALK TO THE GUY before they can even accept them. The Council has to set the standards and the rules and they've got to make the decision on who's accepted in the number.

A NEW TESTAMENT SAMPLE OF SELECTIVITY!

60. YOU READ THE NEW TESTAMENT AND YOU'LL FIND OUT they had pretty strict rules about who they accepted in the churches. Some they wouldn't even accepted. They were very strict about it because their churches were like our Colonies now, they lived in and ate in and literally joined the Family.

61. THEY DIDN'T ACCEPT JUST ANYONE WHO SIMPLY WANTED A FREE MEAL OR A FREE BED, which is about all some of them want. We've had a lot of those.

NO OVERNIGHTERS: AN ABSOLUTE RULE!

62. I USED TO REFUSE TO EVEN TAKE THEM IN down at the Club. I said, "Nothing doing unless they really get saved and want to join‚ not these overnight wall-to-wall hippies! They ether have to want to join the army or forget it! They can go sleep on the beach or in jail or go home or something. There's plenty of others places they can sleep."

63. THEY DON'T HAVE TO SLEEP IN OUR PLACE. Our place is for officers, fighters, soldiers—It's an army! But these tender-heated little guys were always saying‚ "Oh dad, please! Just this one night, just overnight!" You'd be surprised at what a helluva lot of trouble one guy can cause in one night!

64. THERE WAS THIS ONE GUY THEY DISOBEYED ME ABOUT AND TOOK IN—"Well, Dad said we shouldn't do this, but I feel so sorry for this poor guy we'll sleep on each side of him like guards to make sure nothing happens." The guards went sound to sleep and the guy was smarter then they were.

65. HE WOKE UP NICE AND BRIGHT AND EARLY AND TOOK OFF WITH ALL THEIR MONEY! I said, "That's just what you deserve! That's a good lesson you'll never forget! That's not the kind of people we want, and you better not take just anybody overnight!"

66. NO MERE OVERNIGHTERS, THAT WAS OUR ABSOLUTE RULE, no overnighters. They either joined or nothing doing!

TEST'EM BUT DON'T LOAD'EM DOWN!

67. NEITHER DO WE BELIEVE IN LOADING THEM DOWN with the heavy stuff while you're talking to them trying to get them to join, like, "Would you be willing to give up or share your wife or husband?" You don't ask a baby before it's born if he's going to be willing to do something!

68. YOU'VE GOT TO FIRST OF ALL LEAD HIM TO THE LORD! It's like asking a sinner, "Now if you get saved, will you be willing to forsake all your sins?" Well of course not! Because he knows he can't and he doesn't even want to. But he's got to get saved first and have the power to and then want to.

69. BEING "A NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST JESUS" HE'LL HAVE THE DESIRE to and the power to‚ and if he's really saved and filled with the Spirit, then you can warn him about how hard it is or how hard it's going to be and that it's really an army for soldiers.

70. BUT YOU DON'T WARN HIM OTHER DEEPER HEAVIER THINGS like that even when he's saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "There are many things I have to say unto you, but you're not yet able to bear them!"

71. YOU JUST CAN'T DUMP EVERYTHING ON A BABE! You simply warn them that it's going to be hard. You don't tell them everything about how hard it's going to be.

72. ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS TO TELL THEM IS THEY'RE GOING TO HAVE TO WASH DISHES AND CLEAN TOILETS, sweep floors, and peel potatoes, and you'll be amazed how well that weeds out a lot of the people! "It's hard work! You're not just coming here to freeload and live it up and take it easy. Everybody here works and works hard! You'll probably work harder here than you worked out in the System and have less free time‚ and more work and less comfort!"

73. I JUST BELIEVE IN BEING HONEST AND FAIR with the people and let them know how hard it's going to be so they have a choice to get out of it before they get into it. I never even went that far with someone that wasn't even saved and filled with the Spirit and enthusiastic about joining.

NOT ONLY SAVED BUT FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT BEFORE JOINING!

74. I USED TO TELL THEM THAT WE DIDN'T EVEN WANT THEM TO JOIN UNLESS THEY GOT FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT and the power to be a witness. I had my doubts about any of these guys who got saved and didn't get filled with the Holy Spirit too!

75. I DON'T THINK ANYBODY OUGHT TO JOIN UNLESS THEY'RE REALLY FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT, because they're not going to have the power or the grace to take it. Anybody that's not filled with the Holy Spirit is going to be a problem case and a carnal case and a real baby‚ nothing but problems!

76. IF THEY'RE NOT YIELDED WHILE THEY'RE WANTING TO GET IN, THEY'RE NEVER GOING TO BE YIELDED! They're never going to want it any more than right that minute! If there was ever a time they should have the incentive to want to be filled with the Holy Spirit it's right then when they're first saved and they're really softest and tenderest and most yielded and surrendered.

77. THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT too most of the time. The only times it didn't happen was when they didn't know anything about the Holy Spirit. So I'll tell you‚ they need to go back and read over some of the old rules and the old Letters!

78. THESE PEOPLE WHO JUST DON'T WANT ANYTHING BUT THE NEW LETTERS ARE GOING TO MISS A WHOLE LOT! What I've already said I'm not going to repeat again and go over and over and over the same old thing.

79. THEY'VE GOT TO BE SAVED AND FILLED WITH THE HOLY GHOST and absolutely desperately wanting to serve the Lord, just dying to serve God and willing to absolutely forsake all to do it, then and there on the spot, to prove it!

FORSAKING ALL!—ANOTHER TEST!

80. FORSAKING ALL IS ANOTHER TEST to see if they really mean business by giving up everything they have. Make it clear that they give it up forever and even if they don't want to stay, they've given it and can't get it back.

81. THEY HAVE GIVEN IT TO THE LORD AND THEY DON'T GET IT BACK. God doesn't want to make an Indian–giver out of them.—Once in forever in! It's given "as unto the Lord, not as unto man". We're not going to give any refunds!—That's one of the acid tests. They've got to forsake all, period!

82. BUT IT'S A TERRIBLE THING FOR COLONY SHEPHERDS TO TAKE THEM IN WHEN THEY KNOW THEY'RE WEAK SHEEP and take everything they've got and then throw them out! I mean that's a con-game, that's a real criminal act as far as I'm concerned! I think it's terrible to take a little sick sheep in, shear it and then throw it back out in the cold, because then they've worse off then they were before!

83. A NEW DISCIPLE MUST BE WILLING TO BE SAVED, FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT AND FORSAKE ALL!—Those should be some of the first acid tests before they join, or they don't join! What other tests can you give them? What Jesus did with His disciples was that from then on they had the hard life and many other tests to see if they could keep on going on.

ALMOST ALL HANDICAPS INTERFERE WITH DISCIPLESHIP!

84. I JUST DON'T BELIEVE IN TAKING IN THE PHYSICALLY OR MENTALLY HANDICAPPED. There may be some possibility for the physically handicapped if they're only crippled or something so that they can still serve the Lord. What I used to make as a rule was, if maybe they've got a handicap: Paul had a thorn in the flesh.—But as long as it doesn't keep them from serving God any more than it kept Paul from serving the Lord, then it's all right.

85. IF YOUR HANDICAP DOES NOT INTERFERE WHATSOEVER IN ANY WAY WITH YOUR SERVICE and your work duties‚ litnessing and witnessing, studies and classes and what not, then fine!—All the more credit to you! But if you think we're going to take you in as a handicapped person and ease off on you on the duties and on the litnessing and on everything else, so you're just going to be a partial disciple, nothing doing! We can't do it.

86. I DON'T RECALL THAT ANY OF JESUS' DISCIPLES WERE HANDICAPPED in any way. He didn't have time to fiddle around with handicapped disciples. They had to be tough‚ robust, strong men who were able to handle a tough job, and that's the kind of an outfit we are! We're an army! We're not just a bunch of church hospitals, and the kids have got to be warned in advance of the costs!

COUNT ALL THE COST FOR THEM.

87. IT SAYS TO SIT DOWN AND COUNT THE COST, AND YOU'VE GOT TO COUNT IT FOR THEM if they don't know what it is. Then, in view of all that, forsake all and bring everything you've got, being warned that you might get tossed out tomorrow because you can't make it or can't take it or you're not what we want. Then you've been fair to them and you've told them the whole story.

A LITTLE POISON CAN KILL A WHOLE BODY.

88. YOU'VE GOT TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO SERVE THE LORD, BUT NOT TOO EASY. Then you'll get the good kind of material that you need and that won't be a constant source of trouble and problems. We don't need somebody that's mentally, spiritually or physically sick, because they're just a drag on everybody!

89. WHY LET ONE PROBLEM CASE DRAG DOWN A WHOLE DOZEN, or God knows how many, good physically able-bodied healthy soldiers? You'd be better off with one less member than to have a diseased member that's going to cause you nothing but trouble! It's like having a gangrened arm!

90. WHY LET IT POISON THE WHOLE BODY SO THE WHOLE BODY DIES? It's a lot better to just chop it off and get rid of it so at least the other members of the body can survive and go ahead and do their job! The idea of trying to nurse it along to try to save one member while he's killing the whole body is ridiculous!

A PROBLEM CASE IN A FAMILY.—ONLY THE PROBLEM HAS TO LEAVE.

91. IN THE CASE OF FAMILIES, IF EVEN ANY ONE OF THEM PROVES TO BE A PROBLEM, YOU HAVE TO GET RID OF THAT ONE and the rest of them have to be willing to get rid of them too. If they're not willing to "forsake husband or wife, mother or father, brother or sister, or children for My sake and the Gospel's, as Jesus said‚ then they ought to go too, because they're another weak one.

92. IN SOME CASES THEY HAVE TO TAKE THEM HOME and get them settled and try to see that they're taken are of before returning. You have to judge every case on its own merits and its own situation.

93. IT MIGHT BE A GOOD TEST FOR THEM TOO if you give them adequate opportunity to leave and go home with their mate and they wind up finding they are royally received at home and given the red carpet treatment and that lovely apartment of their own, money to live on and everything else! It can be a great temptation!

94. IF THEY'RE WEAK THEY'LL STICK TOGETHER‚ just like many have done. If they really mean business and really want to come back, they'll come back no matter what!—And if they don't, you don't want them!

QUALITY!—NOT QUANTITY!

95. FOR GOD'S SAKE, WE'RE NOT SO HARD UP FOR DISCIPLES and want disciples so bad that we're just willing to take anybody in!

96. IT'S IN "THE REVOLUTIONARY RULES", and it's in all the early Letters about problem cases and these retarded cases and all the rest. In those days when we had so many new disciples I told them to quit bringing in so many and to just bring in the good ones.

97. WE'RE NOT FOR QUANTITY—WE'RE FOR QUALITY! How much have I written on the subject? They need to get back and read some of those early Letters. Those Letters are just as good as they ever were!

98. THE NEW REVOLUTION IS REALLY DOING NOTHING BUT GETTING BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED: Getting out and witnessing and winning disciples and splitting up in little teams to go out and evangelise the world! That's what we were doing to begin with! There's nothing new about it really. It's new to some of the new people, but it's the same thing.

99. LORD FORBID THAT WE HAD TO HAVE A REVIVAL like the churches, but we sure did! We had to get revived and back to life the way we used to be. It sure doesn't take long to cool off and go dead!

100. WE NEED TO LOOK FOR GOOD MATERIAL, GOOD DISCIPLES‚ real fibre, real timber‚ real soldiers, real workers! That's what the army does, the world does it.

101. EMPLOYERS DON'T PICK JUST ANYBODY who applies for the job—they're selective. And that's the way we ought to be with new disciples. Have them make out their application and then say, "Now leave this with us and we'll let you know tonight, tomorrow or in a few minutes".

102. CALL THE COUNCIL TOGETHER AND LOOK HIM OVER and make a decision. Right at that moment when they make out their application they should have time to write out their life story and testimony in brief.

A TESTIMONY IS A TELLING TOOL!

103. I'VE BEEN AMAZED AT SOME OF THE PEOPLE WE'VE TAKEN IN and had working with us for years, yet when I read their life story I knew right away what was causing them to be a problem all the time!

104. THEY WERE EITHER MENTALLY HANDICAPPED OR HAVE A DEMON or all kinds of things!—And yet people have been working with them all those years and dealing with them for hours, counselling blah–blah–blah-blah-blah for hours and hours, years of problems, and yet never once had them write out their life history and testimony to really see what the problem was!

105. YOU CAN TELL A LOT BY A PERSON'S LIFE HISTORY AND TESTIMONY. That's exactly what a psychiatrist does: He says, "Lie down on the couch!—Now tell me everything."—And in the multitude of words there lacketh not an opportunity to find out what their sin or weakness really is! They'll tell you right there.

106. WE WERE THOUGH IN THOSE EARLY DAYS, but in the days when we were the toughest we got the most real disciples! You need to go back to those Letters of those days when the disciples were pouring in and comb through them and see what we had to say about it then.

DON'T GUARANTEE TOMORROW!

107. WE'RE NOT GOING ON THIS ALL-OUT DRIVE FOR QUANTITY—WE WANT QUALITY! There's plenty of quality around, and we can find it! You can just let them know that it's a tough, hard life and they've got to be willing to give up everything and prove it in every way‚ and if they don't‚ there's no guarantee they're going to be able to stay forever!

108. WE'RE NOT SIGNING ANY LIFE CONTRACTS WITH ANYBODY! Their place is not guaranteed! The Lord guarantees salvation but He doesn't guarantee rewards, places of service or anything else. You're not guaranteed very much, but He says, "Having food and clothing therewith be content!" (1Timothy 6:8)

109. NEARLY EVERYTHING IN "THE REVOLUTIONARY RULES" IS BASED ON SCRIPTURE or quoting Scripture all the way through, and it's all right there. It's still just as good today as it ever was, and it ought to be applied as a standard rule to each new disciple just like it always was.

110. STICK A COPY OF IT IN THEIR HAND AND SAY, "SIT DOWN AND READ THIS AND BEWARE! This is a hard life and not for everybody. You may not even like it, and we may not like you!" When they get through and they have read the whole thing and you've warned them and everything else, they may still insist that they want to make it and they can take it.

111. THEN HAVE A MEETING WITH YOUR OFFICERS AND LOOK HIM OVER and talk to him, and if all agree to give him a chance, then his next step to prove it is to go home and get all his stuff and his bank accounts and his money and everything else and turn it over then and there, forsake all and move in!

112. WHEN HE FINDS OUT HE'S GOING TO HAVE TO SLEEP ON A COLD BARE FLOOR with no heat or something like that, that begins the next tests to see if he really has got what it takes.

113. WHEN HE'S PEELING POTATOES OR WASHING DISHES OR SCRUBBING TOILETS HE'LL HAVE A FEW MORE TESTS and trials and tribulations, and having to memorise, study‚ litness‚ witness and everything else! We found out we didn't have any probation period. It just almost invariably proven that nearly all of our backsliders went back within the first two weeks.

114. IT USUALLY ONLY TAKES THEM ABOUT TWO WEEKS FOR THEM TO REALLY KNOW THE SITUATION AND YOU TO REALLY KNOW THEM! I used to say this in evangelistic work, that in two weeks you can do about the best you can do in any church. You either know they're going to make it or they're not.

115. THERE'S NO USE FIDDLING AROUND WITH THEM AFTER TWO WEEKS because after that they've either already made it and they've all surrendered and got saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and are on fire and are going to serve the Lord or they're not! Any time you go beyond that you're wasting your time.

DISCERNING CITY SPIRITS.

116. I USED TO SAY THAT EVEN ABOUT GOING INTO A TOWN TO LIVE: You can soon sense what the people are like, what the spirit of the city is like, and in two weeks to a month you learn to like a town and its people or you don't.

117. SOME CITIES GAVE ME A GOOD FEELING AND SOME CITIES GAVE ME A HORRIBLE FEELING of darkness. I often couldn't step out on the airplane gangplank with the atmosphere of the city hitting me in the face but that in an instant I sensed what kind of a city it was!

118. I DON'T BELIEVE IN MAKING IT TOO HARD FOR THEM OR TOO EASY. You can go to either extreme. You have to learn to hit the happy medium when you're fishing with your net. Jesus said He'd pull out all kinds of fish, but then you sit down on the ground and you sort out the good ones from the bad ones, and throw the bad ones back where they came from! We did that all the time when we were fishing.

119. WHEN WE CAUGHT A KIND OF FISH THAT WE DIDN'T WANT WE JUST THREW IT RIGHT BACK IN AGAIN. You don't have to keep him just because you caught him. That ought to be a good lesson for everyone to remember:

120. YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP HIM JUST BECAUSE YOU CAUGHT HIM! If you caught them and you don't like them, throw them back in again! If they are really saved and filled with the Spirit they'll get by somehow. They'll probably go join some church and be nice namby-pamby little Systemite Christians or something, but you don't have to keep them. You don't have to feel bad if you can't keep them, because you just haven't got room for anybody that weak.

ONLY TAKE THOSE YOU CAN'T DO WITHOUT!

121. OUR PEOPLE ARE NOW GOING TO NEARLY EVERY ONE OF THEM BE PIONEERS, because you're going to have to be splitting so many colonies are pioneering so many new ones that they've all got to be real fighters and real soldiers!

122. YOU CAN ONLY AFFORD TO HAVE THE ONES THAT ARE REALLY GOING TO BE A HELP. Our attitude should not be: "Well, we hate to turn this poor guy out with no place to go. I feel sorry for him‚ he needs help." Maybe he does need help, but there are oodles of other places that'll help him—all kinds of charitable organisations and churches and missions and whatnot.

123. I USED TO TELL OUR STUDENTS right off the bat, "Don't bring any of these drunks and bums in here! They'll take a nosedive everyday for a cup of coffee and donuts! "Are you saved?"—"Why of course, I've been saved a thousand times!"

124. "THESE BUMS ARE THE GREATEST THEOLOGIANS THERE ARE! They've heard more sermons than anybody! They hear them three times a day‚ breakfast, lunch and dinner! They know more about the Gospel than most of the Christians sitting in Church once a week!"

125. I USED TO SAY, "THERE'S PLENTY OF MISSIONS FOR THOSE GUYS, so you take them right out of here! This is a school for Bible students and prospective missionaries! We've got nice sweet little innocent girls in here‚ and we can't have these old disease–ridden, bug-laden bums in here!"

126. THEY'RE LIKE A LOT OF THE HIPPIES RUNNING AROUND NOWADAYS too, and you just can't have them! Just take them down to the institutions that were built and financed by the city and the churches and charitable welfare organisations to take care of them. I'm sorry but we haven't got room for them.

127. THE CRITERION IS SUPPOSED TO BE KIND OF LIKE MY MOTHER USED TO SAY ABOUT MARRIAGE, "Son, don't marry the woman you think you can live with, but marry the girl you cannot live without!" That is the attitude they should have toward their new disciples.

128. "HOW CAN WE GET ALONG WITHOUT THIS GUY? Look at the talents he's got, look at the drive he's got! Look at the spirit he's got! Boy what a soldier he'd make, what a litnesser, what a witnesser! Man, we can't do without this fellow!—We need him!"

129. YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE THE ATTITUDE: "WELL NOW LET'S SEE: HE'S APT TO BE A HINDRANCE and he looks like we're going to have some problems. We're going to have to do quite a bit of counselling and quite a bit of nursing him along, you know. He has a lot to learn. But we'll give him over to so and so—they're pretty good with these real difficult cases."

130. IF HE'S SOME KIND OF A "CASE"‚ FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T LET HIM THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR!—I mean it! We're not a place for "cases"! Send the "cases" to the hospital and the doctors and the churches and the psychiatrists! There shouldn't be any doubt in your mind about the guy!

JESUS CHOSE THE DEVIL FOR HIS DISCIPLE BUT HE HAD A PURPOSE!

131. I DON'T THINK JESUS HIMSELF HAD ANY DOUBT ABOUT ANY OF HIS DISCIPLES. Even when He chose one of them that He knew was the Devil, He had a purpose in it! He had to fulfil His mission.

HE SAID, "HAVE I NOT CHOSEN YOU TWELVE, AND YET ONE OF YOU IS THE DEVIL!" Jesus chose the Devil himself as one of His disciples! Well‚ before you decide to choose the Devil as one of your disciples, you better make damn sure that you're Jesus and can handle him! Maybe Jesus can stand to have the Devil hanging around for there-and-a-half years, but I tell you I can't, and I doubt if you can either!

132. SO YOU BETTER BE SURE YOU'RE JESUS OR PRETTY CLOSE TO BEING HIM BEFORE YOU START CHOOSING SOME DEVILS just because they'll do you good to keep needling you all the time and try to drag away the weak disciples and devour the little weak sheep and everything else just to try to test your Colony to see how strong it is and how strong your disciples are!

133. SO DON'T TAKE PEOPLE IN THAT ARE SICK IN MIND, BODY OR SPIRIT, or pretty soon their sickness is going to be so contagious that everybody's catching it, and pretty soon the whole Colony's sick and unable to do anything because of one God-damned clever fiendish little devil that got in though somebody that you were sorry for! A lot of kinds we sent home!

WE'RE NOT A DRUG REHABILITATION CENTRE!

134. THE KIDS HAVE GOT TO GET OVER THIS IDEA THAT WE'RE LIKE THE DRUG REHABILITATION CENTRES that we've talked about in our literature and our PR brochures, because we're not! We are nothing like any drug rehabilitation centre that I know of!

135. WE ARE NOT LIKE ANY OTHER OUTFIT IN THE WORLD except the Early Church, and it's long gone! Well, I'll tell you something we are like:

DAD vs. THE U.S. ARMY!

136. WE'RE LIKE THE ARMY, AND THEY WEED OUT THE WEAK GUYS REAL FAST! When the doctor said on my report to the U.S. Army that I had heart trouble, they said, "Don't let that worry you.—We'll soon find out." Well, they found it out all right‚ and I didn't last in that Army very long! But that's their attitude: "We'll put you through the mill, and we'll find out whether you've got what it takes or not!"

137. THEY DECIDED TO GIVE ME A TRY BECAUSE I HAD BRAINS‚ an I.Q. of 179, I was a crack shot with a rifle and had a few other talents. They did their best to make a soldier out of me, but it didn't work very well 'cause I just didn't want to be a soldier!

138. I AM A DROPOUT AND I DIDN'T MAKE IT IN ANY MAN'S ARMIES OF THIS WORLD! I "washed out" real fast! It's like a lot of ours wash out. I didn't want to get out and do their kind of "litnessing" or "Witnessing": I didn't want to kill people!—And even though I was a crackshot, I didn't want to shoot my rifle at people, so finally I decided I didn't want to even peel spuds for a bunch of killers!

139. I DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT KILLERS OUTFIT! So in spite of all my talents which they would like to have used, it didn't do them any good because I didn't have the physical stamina to do it and I didn't have to spirit for it, to want to go out and kill people.

140. I WASN'T THAT CONVINCED OF THE USA's RIGHTEOUS CAUSE, so I didn't see why I should have to go killing poor little JAPANESE who'd never even heard the Gospel and weren't saved! Why should I go out and shoot them and send them to Hell? I ought to be over there loving them and dying for them to give them the Gospel!

141. I WASN'T MAD AT THE JAPANESE!—I WAS MAD AT THE AMERICANS for making the Japanese what they were! The Americans were the ones that aggravated the Pearl Harbor assault by being so mean to the Japanese by trying to starve them to death out of the markets of the world!

142. THE POOR JAPANESE HAD TO LIVE, SO THEY FINALLY DECIDED THEY'D HAVE TO FIGHT TO SURVIVE! So, the Americans' supremacy was challenged: "What's the big idea of these little Japs deciding they have a right to live when it's interfering with our right to live? Let's kill'em!"

143. THE AMERICANS DIDN'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER THEY SENT THEM TO HELL or not. Well I didn't have the killer's spirit for that kind of an army‚ and that's just the kind of people we don't want in our army.

144. IF THEY DON'T HAVE THE SPIRIT AND THEY 'RE NOT ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF OUT CAUSE and have the spirit to want to do or die and die daily to love people, we don't want them! If they haven't got the physical stamina to be able to take it and the mental capability and capacity to be able to make it, we don't want them! So my God, if they've got physical handicaps and they've got physical handicaps and they're mentally retarded or demon possessed, I don't see how we can use them! They just cause more trouble then they're worth!

145. I MEAN I WAS ONE POOR LOUSY SOLDIER! I FLUNKED OUT VERY FAST!—And then I kept a whole bunch of so many doctors and nurses and everybody else busy taking care of me, I was a real drag! I bet I cost the U.S. Army an untold number of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of time! What a horrible total waste on a soldier who didn't even like it and didn't want to fight their God-damned wars, didn't want to die for their cause, didn't want to kill their enemies!

146. I HAD NO SPIRIT FOR IT‚ no stomach for it, no mind for it‚ no heart for it at all, and I got out of it as soon as I could! I thought they were stupid in the first place for taking me in! I told them I wouldn't make a good soldier. I said‚ "I've got heart trouble," but than didn't make any difference, they were desperate for me!

ONLY THE SOLD-OUT SURVIVE!—NO ROOM FOR THE SLIGHTLY WARM.

147. THERE WAS A STANDARD JOKE IN THESE EARLY DAYS OF THE WAR ABOUT THE MEDICAL ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS: "what do they do", the guy says, "on the medical entrance exam?" "Oh, they just feel you to see if you're warm!"—And that's about what some of our people do!

148. SOME OF OUR COLONIES JUST FEEL THEM SPIRITUALLY TO SEE IF THEY'RE JUST SLIGHTLY WARM! "Well he's sort of them.—Let's try him, let's take him in.—Maybe he'll revive and open his eyes. At least we'll get out Letters next month!"

149. WE'VE GOT TO HAVE A NEW DISCIPLE THIS MONTH, we've got to have somebody. Let's bring him in on a stretcher—maybe he'll come to, maybe he'll regain consciousness. At least we had him in today, and we can shove him out tomorrow so we got our new disciple for the month!"—Well that's not the way it works!

DISCIPLE QUOTA: ONLY COUNT THE ONE THAT STICKS!

150. YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO HAVE A DISCIPLE THAT STICKS and shows it on the statistics, an increase of that many disciples, not how many disciples came in the front door and were kicked out the back door! "Oh, we got six new disciples this month! Of course we're still only six here because all of them backslid.—But we got more than our quota!" Well that's not the kind of quota that's going to count!

151. IT'S THE KIND OF QUOTA THAT UPS YOUR TOTAL COLONY COUNT by at least one more disciple a month, one new member a month, a disciple that sticks and stays! I don't care how many disciples that come in the front door or go out the back door, they're not going to count unless by the end of the reporting period the total number of people in your Colony has increased by at least one!

152. I WOULDN'T BE SURPRISED IF SOME OF THEM MIGHT HAVE THAT IDEA: "Well we've got our new disciple!—We can shove him in on a stretcher today and take him out in the ambulance tomorrow." But that's not the kind of soldiers we want, and it's not the kind of people we need or the Lord needs!

SMALL TEAMS: EVERY MEMBER IS ESSENTIAL!

153. THAT'S NOT THE KIND THAT'S GOING TO SURVIVE IN THESE SMALL NEW COLONIES WHERE EVERY MEMBER COUNTS and you know every one of them like a book, and where if anybody fails in their job the whole Colony feels it! It's no longer where if just one of the potato peelers happens to go out for a beer, nobody knows that difference because there are already ten potato peelers for the 300 people in the Colony. But now in a small six-to-12 man Colony if even one guy steps out and he happens to be the cook—he's probably cook, potato-peeler, pot-and-bottle washer and everything else—and the whole Colony comes to a standstill!

154. NOBODY'S GOING TO GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING IN THESE SMALL COLONIES! Everybody's going to know what everybody else is doing, and everybody is going to have something to do that is absolutely essential and that nobody else is doing for them!

155. THEY'RE GOING TO KNOW IF THE JOB'S GETTING DONE BECAUSE THERE'S NOBODY ELSE TO DO IT! So they're not going to get away with these weak sisters in these small Colonies. I'll tell you right now, we're not going to be able to put up with people who can't carry their own weight!

156. WE'LL GIVE A CHANCE TO WHAT LOOK TO US LIKE HEALTHY BABES, and we'll tell them what to do and try to teach and train them and hope they learn, and if they do, fine! But, if after even being taken in they don't prove to be as healthy as they look and as able as they seem to be, and they've got some disease or trouble or mental block or demon or something, then you're just going to have to get rid of them quick!

157. THEY CAN'T JUST KEEP ON RIDING ALONG ON EVERYBODY ELSE'S COAT–TAILS like they could in a big Blob Colony of several hundred people where you wouldn't even know the difference whether they're there or not!

158. EVERY ONE OF THESE SMALL COLONIES HAS GOT TO BE JUST LIKE A LITTLE SQUAD OF SOLDIERS ON THE FIELD—every single one is essential! If you've got a small patrol, let me tell you, you can't do without any of them! They've all got to do their job or the mission is defeated! So Lord help us to get the right kind of material and the right kind of disciples.

THERE IS ONLY ONE CLASS OF DISCIPLES IN THIS REVOLUTION!

159. I'D VENTURE TO SAY THAT A LOT OF THESE PEOPLE WHO ARE GETTING SENT OUT OF THE BLOBS NOW AREN'T GOING TO HAVE WHAT IT TAKES are aren't going to make it, because they never had it in the first place! They were able to ride along on everybody else's load when just a few people in the Colony were pulling the whole weight and all the rest of them were sitting in and riding!

160. WE'RE GOING TO DITCH ALL THESE" FIRST CLASS" PASSENGERS! We're not going to carry them! It reminds me of the little story about the bus with the first-class passengers, second–class passengers and third-class passengers: A guy went to buy a ticket on the bus and asked,

161. "THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE IN THE CLASSES?" The ticket agent said, "Oh, not very much." "Do we all sit in the same part of the bus?" "Yes, all the accommodations are all the same." "Well," he said, "then I guess I'll just buy a third-class ticket.—Why should I pay for first-class ticket?" But he soon found out! They came to this big hill and the bus couldn't make it, so the driver said, "First-class passengers stay in and ride, second-class passengers get out and walkthird-class passengers get out and push!"

162. WE'VE GOT A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN SAILING ALONG LIKE THEY HAD FIRST–CLASS TICKETS just riding along, and a lot of others who thought they weren't any particular load but they weren't much help either, they were just out walking alongside. Whereas the poor little mistreated third-class passengers have been doing all the work and pushing all the load from way down at the bottom!

163. SO AS FAR AS WE'RE CONCERNED‚ THE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGERS CAN GET OUT and take off! And the second-class passengers, if all they want to do is get out and walk and don't want to help push, they can go too!

164. WE'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANYTHING LEFT BUT THIRD-CLASS passengers, real pushers! The only ones left'll be the guys on the bottom that are really willing to push their way up and push that bus to the top of the mountain! So you first and second class passengers better beware, because if we come to some hill and we can't make it with you in the bus, we're going to get rid of you, dump you, leave you somewhere behind!

165. WE'RE NOT GOING TO PUSH YOU UP THE HILL OR JUST LET YOU WALK ALONG AND DO NOTHING! Either you get out and push, brother, or you're no longer a passenger at all‚ amen? So that's the way I look at it and I hope that the Colonies will have enough sense to know the difference.

GIVE A LITTLE TIME AND A FEW WARNINGS FIRST.

166. WHAT DO YOU DO ONCE THEY'RE IN AND YOU FIND OUT THAT THEY CAN'T MAKE IT? You give them a few little warnings and you give them a little time to straighten out.

167. EVERYBODY MAKES MISTAKES‚ EVERYBODY HAS A FEW PROBLEMS including you and me, and God's merciful and He gives us a little probationary time. But "he that having been often reproved" and still doesn't improve "is suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy!"

THE FINAL WARNING: THEY'LL OFTEN LEAVE BEFORE THEY'RE KICKED OUT.

168. WHEN YOU PUT THE SCREWS ON THEM if they're a problem case they're either going to get the victory and get rid of it and come through with flying colours with the real stuff, or they're going to get worse, one or the other.

169. YOU PRECIPITATE A CRISIS and they're going to go up or go down. They're going to get better or worse—they're not going to be able to just roll along.

170. THEN YOU FINALLY GIVE THEM ONE LAST WARNING and just say, "Now this is your last chance. Either you do thus and so and show you can take and make it and are a blessing and an asset and a help to this Colony and not cause any more trouble or problems‚ or we're through with you! The next time you do it, you've had it—that's it!"

171. WHEN THEY SEE THEY'RE GOING TO GET KICKED OUT, THEY OFTEN DECIDE THEY'RE GOING TO QUIT. They say "You're not firing me—I quit!"—and so they themselves save you the trouble.—You kind of pray them out. My Mother used to say, "I never fired anybody yet—I prayed them out!"

172. SO YOU JUST DEAL WITH THEM BRIEFLY—AND I DON'T MEAN SPENDING HOURS and hours counselling them and wasting all that time praying‚ "Blah, blah blah, blah, blah!"—I mean have a little chat with them and tell them what their problem is and what you plan to do about it and what they'd better do about it, or they're gone!

173. IF THEY DON'T WANT TO STRAIGHTEN UP, PROBABLY THE NEXT THING YOU'LL HEAR IS THEY'VE ALREADY PACKED THEIR SUITCASE AND ARE GONE before you had a chance to kick them you, before they had to get embarrassed by getting bawled out and kicked out. They will leave voluntarily of their own accord, which is the best way in the world for it to happen.

174. WHEN I HAD THAT FINAL CHAT I REALLY SOCKED IT TO THEM and said, "That's that, and we're not going to have any more of it! Until you get the victory you're going to be put under certain duties and certain demotions and disciplinary action." I really put the screws on them and made it tough because of their constant disobedience or constant troublemaking.

175. YOU'LL SOON SEE YOU DON'T HAVE TO KICK THEM OUT—they right then and there decide to leave because they don't want to get kicked out! They want to go home and say, "I left! I didn't like it, so I quit!"

176. NOT MANY OF THEM WANT TO GO HOME AND SAY "I GOT KICKED OUT". I mean no matter how good an excuse they may have had or made up, people will always wonder a little bit about them if they got kicked out. But if they can go back and brag, "Well, they were all wrong and I was the only one who was right, therefore I decided to quit and walk out on them, leave them all behind!" The backslider usually makes himself out a great hero, and he's quit the outfit that was so terribly bad and wrong!

177. THE BEST THING TO DO IS TO GIVE THEM A LITTLE TIME AND A FEW WARNINGS AND THEN GIVE THEM THE FINAL WARNING. The final warning usually is the last time that you even have to see them, because then they usually know that their time to fiddle and play around and get away with it is up. The jig is up!

178. THEY KNOW THEY'RE NOT GOING TO GET AWAY WITH IT ANY MORE AND THEY DON'T WANT TO STAY unless they can get away with it‚ so they take off. You don't usually have to worry about kicking them out. You usually don't even have to worry about trying to see them to the next bus station.

BACKSLIDERS USUALLY FLEE TO OUR ENEMIES.

179. IT'S AMAZING HOW WELL THEY CAN TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES and find ways of doing things when they want to go! They will hitchhike for miles and tell people all kinds of stories in order to get out and go, and most people will eagerly help them‚ especially the Systemites, just to help another backslider forsake us. So you don't usually have to give them much help in leaving: They usually get oodles of help from the System!

180. THEY USUALLY FLEE RIGHT STRAIGHT INTO THE ARMS OF OUR ENEMIES, and they help them all they can! I never told the rest of that story about the guy with the nine kids that came back from the Bahamas.

181. HE SAID HE DIDN'T OBEY ANYBODY BUT GOD, not me nor my wife nor anybody, took his orders only from the Lord. I said, "Okay, you take them someplace else, because people on this property take orders from me and consider it as from the Lord! Two hours and off the property you go!" "You mean you're going to kick me and my wife and my children out in the cold just like that?"

182. I SAID‚ "YOU'VE GOT A CAR and you already said you've still got your ranch back in Washington and you've been getting an income from it. You've got money and you've got a car—I'm not kicking you out in the cold. Just get in you car, buy the gasoline with the money and go home!" Well you know what he did, don't you?—He didn't!

183. HE WENT STRAIGHT OVER TO OUR BITTEREST ENEMY in one of the big nearby Pentecostal churches and moved in!—And the pastor took him in gladly to be prime exhibits to his congregation of how evil we were!

184. BUT HE HADN'T HAD HIM BUT ABOUT A WEEK WHEN HE WAS FED UP WITH HIM TOO, sitting around like a little god who wouldn't do dishes and wouldn't do anything‚ and with his whole family of little rapscallions just as much rascals as he was! The pastor soon got rid of him in a hurry, but he wanted to feel real self-righteous about it so gave him a hundred dollars and sent him off on the road and he went home.

185. YOU'LL FIND THAT THE BACKSLIDERS DON'T NEED YOUR HELP TO BACKSLIDE: The System will give them all kinds of help, and all they need is the door! Just let them out the door and they're on their way.

186. THE DEVIL AND THE DEVIL'S PEOPLE WILL HELP THEM ROYALLY! Your nearest enemy is right where they'll usually go first, if they're a real enemy.

PART IN PEACE—NOT IN PIECES!

187. NOW THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST TIRED and they just don't like it here and they just want to go home. They're really not so much enemies, they just can't take it.

188. THEY STILL LOVE YOU. We've got people who still love us and still want our Letters and even distribute them and so on at home, but they just count stand Colony life, it wasn't for them.

189. THEY GO HOME AND THEY DON'T GO STRAIGHT TO YOUR ENEMIES and try to make a big deal and call in newspaper reporters and everything else. They just go home quietly and behave themselves.

190. THEY EVEN TAKE SOME OF THE BLAME THEMSELVES and don't blame it all on us. They go back to work and get a job and go to church and try to be a nice little Christian of some kind. We've even had people come to them trying to get them to talk against us‚ but they don't want to say anything bad. They just didn't like it or didn't fit or something.

191. SO IT'S BETTER TO SEND THEM AWAY AS A FRIEND and try to part in peace and in friendship and tell them you're sorry. Let them take their Certificate of Fellowship home, give them a fistful of MO Letters‚ let them keep their Revolutionary Handbook and a few other sings that they had been with us.

GRADUATES AFTER FIRST 3 MONTHS GET A DIPLOMA!

192. WE OUGHT TO EVEN START GIVING THEM A LITTLE DIPLOMA or something if they've stood us for three months! We used to do that at the Soul Clinic schools.

193. AT THE END OF THE FIRST THREE MONTHS WE GAVE THEM A DIPLOMA, and then if we decided they weren't the kind of material we wanted to use and be in our school and teach and be on our staff, we just sent them home. But they didn't feel like a failure, and we didn't try to make then feel like a failure.

194. WE TRIED TO PART IN PEACE and say, "Well, you finished your course and here's your Diploma! I'm sorry we don't have room for you on the staff so that you can stay, but you can go home now and he a good witness and here's some tracts and you can go back to church." They parted happily, most of them, and went home and we gained a friend instead of making an enemy.

195. SO DON'T GO ACTING LIKE EVERYONE OF THEM THAT LEAVES IS SOME KIND OF A CRIMINAL so that you have to yank the yoke from around their neck and strip them of their stripes and take all their notes and all their MO Letters and everything they had!

196. SOME OF THESE COLONY SHEPHERDS TAKE EVERYTHING THEY'VE GOT! "This is the property of the Children of God! It's not yours, we gave it to you and we're going to take it back." And although they took the guy's whole forsake-all and everything else‚ they sent him out without a note, without a Letter, without a thing!

197. "YOU CAN'T BE WEARING THAT YOKE AROUND YOUR NECK! You don't belong to us! Yank it off!" I mean with that kind of poor shepherds with no more wisdom and no more love for the sheep than that, it's no wonder we've had backsliders become enemies too!

198. I WAS THE GUY WHO ADVOCATED THE USE OF THE TERM "GRADUATE". I figured if they'd stuck with us for three months they did pretty well, and so instead of calling them a backslider‚ why not call them a graduate? They finished all the basic training, they made it that far, they ought to be given some credit for that.

199. SO IF WE CALL THEM GRADUATES MAYBE WE OUGHT TO START GIVING THEM DIPLOMAS, a certificate of award they can hang on the wall and be proud of!

200. INSTEAD OF KICKING THEM OUT STRIPPED OF EVERYTHING and sending them home with their tail between their legs and licking their wounds, you give them a diploma, you give them credit for having passed all the tests that far and having survived at least three months! Of course some of them will have a whole string of diplomas, and that's why we need some kind of a way to keep track of "graduating" personnel.

GRADUATE PICTURE SHEET RECOMMENDED.

201. THEY SOMETIMES LEAVE ONE COLONY AND GO TO ANOTHER AND JUST CAUSE MORE TROUBLE THERE, from one Colony to the other. Of course, it's pretty hard to tell if they've ever been a disciple before unless somebody happens to spot them or knows them. They're sure not going to tell anybody if they just got thrown out of another Colony!

202. THEY MIGHT EVEN CHANGE THEIR NAME or maybe you never knew their system name and the next Colony didn't and so they come in like a fresh babe that never saw the light of day before. They could even fake their system name. So it's pretty hard to tell unless somebody recognises them or their picture.

203. IT WOULD BE GOOD TO PUBLISH A LIST OF THE PICTURES OF THE PEOPLE that have been kicked out. I even advocated that once upon a long time ago clear back at TSC when we began having our first real backsliders and troublemakers. But now you'd have to do like the Federal Government: Publish a rogues gallery and put them on a Colony wall and say, "Here are the criminals, top most unwanted men in the Revolution!"

204. IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO SEND OUT A PICTURE SHEET FROM THE WORLD SERVICES with little one inch square thumbnail photos of the people who have gone back, so another Colony doesn't get sucked in. Of course, there's a hitch to that, because how can you judge if they're being kicked out fairly or not?

A ONE-TIME FAILURE ISN'T FINAL.

205. SOMETIMES THEY GET KICKED OUT WITHOUT A VERY GOOD EXCUSE by the local Colony Shepherd. I don't know how many people have said, "Oh, this guy was lifted up in pride because he wanted to play his guitar!" Or somebody would just ask a question and the leader would snap, "Is that a murmur?"

206. I MEAN A LOT OF TIMES IT'S NOT EVEN THE KID'S FAULT!—It's the Colony Shepherd's fault or the fault of some staff member. So I hope some of those poor kids do find another Colony and have another chance because they didn't have a very good opportunity at the first one, and I think maybe sometimes they ought to leave and go someplace else.

207. BUT OF COURSE THERE ARE HABITUAL PROBLEM CASES going Colony to Colony, and by that time we really ought to be able to spot them. They're trouble-makers, and that's their only job!

208. THEY LIKE TO MAKE TROUBLE, and just like the Devil they like to go from church to church, and Colony to Colony and cause nothing but trouble! They get thrown out of one Colony and they always want to go back to another once someplace else. I've even had them appeal to me by letters to let them back in when they were no end of trouble!

209. I WOULDN'T SAY JUST A ONE TIME FAILURE IS NECESSARILY A SURE THING. I'd say if they're a two-time failure, well, I'd start keeping an eye on them. But certainly if they're a three-time failure you don't have a chance on'em again!

GET THEIR PIC AND TESTIMONY THEIR FIRST DAY WITH YOU.

210. IT SHOULD BE A RULE THAT WHEN YOU ACCEPT THEM THE FIRST DAY YOU TAKE THEIR PICTURE and stick it on their card, because some people may run off the next day, like that other guy did with the money—and we didn't even have a picture to show to the police or anything!

211. WE OUGHT TO TAKE THEIR PICTURE AND GET THEIR TESTIMONY THE FIRST DAY in case we want to find them again or in case we want to warn other Colonies against them.

212. SO IT'S QUITE AN INTERESTING AND DANGEROUS BUSINESS TO RECRUIT NEW SOLDIERS FOR AN ARMY! You're bound to have some failures and washouts, but we don't have to have as many if we're careful and prayerful and really seek for the good material and not just let anything walk through the door with their sleeping bag and their luggage!

213. I DO THINK IT WOULD BE A GOOD THING TO AT LEAST PUBLISH THE NAME AND PHOTO OF A PERSON THAT'S HAD MAJOR PROBLEMS and send it out to all Colonies stating their case in a nice little paragraph like they have on the post office walls about the criminals, We could make it just a little separate sheet and probably put it out every two weeks or a month.

214. BUT THE BEST THING TO DO IS TO SEND THEM AWAY IN PEACE IF YOU CAN, NOT IN PIECES! Because when they pull themselves together they may come charging back with all kinds of charges! Send them away in peace and part as brothers peacefully and be good to them.

JESUS DIDN'T VILIFY THE WEAK.

215. THOSE DISCIPLES THAT COULDN'T MAKE IT WITH JESUS, HE DIDN'T VILIFY them, not even the rich young ruler that went back. He practically wept over him and said it's very hard for guys like that.

216. HE ALMOST SYMPATHISE WITH HIM! He said it's just very hard for those guys with all the money to make it. When the guys went back who wanted to burn their father or go back and tell him good–bye, He just warned His disciples to watch out for guys like this, because they never will make it, they're just not worthy. If they don't want to come now and all the way, then watch out!

217. HE JUST WARNED HIS OWN DISCIPLES ABOUT THEM, but He didn't give them a big bawling out and a horrible lecture and curse them and literally kick them out and send them back a bitter enemy‚ He just let them go. The fact of the matter is He never took them in in the first place! He gave them a test right off the bat before He took in, and they flunked it!

IF YOU'VE GOT THEM TRY TO PULL THEM THROUGH!

218. SO IT'S REALLY PITIFUL HOW SOME COLONIES HAVE HANDLED THE SITUATION of new disciples without proper discrimination and discernment!—And it's very pitiful how some of them have handled those problem cases after they've gotten them! Some of them might have reclaimed them and been able to pull them through.

219. ONCE THEY'VE GOT THEM THEY OUGHT TO TRY TO PULL THEM THROUGH, because it's as much your fault as their fault! But then if they just can't make it, they ought to try to send them out as a friend!—Amen?—God bless you and help you to know the difference!

RECRUIT PUSHERS, NOT DRAGS!

220. LET'S HAVE A FIRST CLASS ARMY OF PUSHERS, NOT DRAGS!—Amen? So if you don't want to be a drag, you'd better start pushing!—Amen?

(caption of picture) Don't you be the one who slows everybody down with your problems!—Amen?—We gotta reach the toppa' this glorious mountain!—So "All class passengers get out and push!"—Amen?—God help you to be a pusher and not a problem!