0315 - What Is That In Thy Hand

"WHAT IS THAT IN THY HAND?"--MO October 4, 1974 NO.315--GP Copyrighted October, 1974 by The Children of God P.O. Box 31, London WC2E 7LX, England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936 Dearest Family, Greetings in Jesus' Precious name! Thank you so much for your wonderful letters and reports and all those beautiful photos you've been sending! We hungrily devour every one and they are food for our soul and even for our bodies as well, as they encourage us so much! 2. WE'RE SO GLAD MOM, DEB AND ESTHER ARE BEGINNING TO REALLY PRODUCE the kind of letters the world needs--for families: "Leading Our Children", "Witnessing With Children" and "Is Marriage Worth It?", etc. God bless you for these! 3. I AM CONVINCED THAT OUR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES ARE GOING TO BE SOME OF OUR GREATEST WITNESSES, the proofs of the pudding, the samples of the sermons, like our first kids and Colonies, that what we have to say about living for the Lord the way we do really works!--"Sex Works!", and it certainly is working in our outfit and producing tremendous results, thank the Lord! I go into ecstasies when I see those gorgeous pictures of those beautiful mothers and dynamic babies! Our families are absolutely exploding with a thunderous roar that's going to be heard 'round the world! 4. THE LORD SHOWED ME THIS IN A RECENT REVELATION WHICH HE GAVE WHEN I WAS ASKING WHY WE WERE HAVING SO MANY BABIES when they seemed in some ways to be more of a burden than a blessing! The world's greatest problem today is their children because of their problem parents, and we have the only solution and they know it! That's why they're so glad to have us in so many countries, as they're grasping at any straw that they think might save their children as well as themselves from their children! 5. WHEN THEY SEE OUR HAPPY FAMILIES AND WONDERFUL CHILDREN working together in peace and harmony and truly united in spirit as well as in Colonies they cannot help but marvel as they did at my children when they were small and singing and witnessing together for Jesus! They weren't always good and things weren't always peaceful and we frequently had our problems and differences, but they were minor and mere little childish spats compared to the violent wars which are being carried on in so many families between parents and children! 6. SO YOU CAN SEE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO TRAIN OUR OWN CHILDREN, to train our own little ones in the way that they should go, like we did mine. We weren't perfect and we made lots of mistakes, but because we constantly sought God's help and guidance, they certainly turned out a whole lot better than most. 7. AS A RESULT, WE HAVE LED THE JESUS REVOLUTION of youth for peace, happiness and harmony and freedom from vice, drugs and crime around the world! We have the only cure and they know it, and we have the precious products to prove it, including our wonderful happy children!--Praise the Lord and thanks to your help and training and letters they all need! 8. SO YOU MUST WRITE THOSE LETTERS and more and more of them to guide our children in every phase of the feeding, care and training and education of our little ones in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Your letters on families and children are vital links in the strong chain of our way of life which keeps us strong and together and from falling apart! 9. YOU MUST NOW SET ASIDE EVERY OTHER CONSIDERATION AND PUT THIS CHILDCARE MINISTRY FIRST and foremost in all of your plans and activities, lest we give them too little and too late! You're already far behind in this ministry, and it is going to take every moment of your time to try to catch up, all of you who are already so deeply involved in and concerned about this absolutely vital and utterly essential ministry! 10. WE CANNOT DELAY IT ANY LONGER! You must look more to Him spiritually and become more faithful in this more spiritual ministry of teaching the world as well as our own kids how to take care of, train and let their children be used by the Lord in His work!--Amen? It's up to you! 11. MANY OF YOU ARE PRIMARY LEADERS IN THIS CHILDCARE MINISTRY, the ones most obviously chosen of God, gifted, talented and experienced in this urgent work! You have learned enough, had enough children and experience of your own and have been training others long enough to now really know what you're doing and

how to do it and how to tell others to do it as you have and to produce the good results that your God-given methods have already proven! Now's the time to go! 12. WE NOW HAVE THE LIVING PROOFS THAT OUR GOD-GIVEN METHODS WORK and are the only sure methods in the whole world that do work, as they are straight out of the Bible and the words that He Himself has given us and the experiences and products which He has given to prove it! Now's the time to tell the world about it!--And I don't mean just our own kids around the world who need it desperately, but the whole world! 13. NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN THE WORLD IS DESPERATE ABOUT THEIR KIDS TODAY, and in many countries they are more afraid of their children than they are their foreign enemies! They can understand their enemies, but they can't understand why their children are going astray after all they've given them, done for them, sacrificed for them and educated them for! 14. THEY CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEIR CHILDREN ARE THROWING IT ALL AWAY, leaving home, giving up their education, jobs and their parents' way of life to totally drop out of a society that they seem to hate, in preference to poverty, penury and peace along with drugs, vice and crime! The parents are absolutely baffled by the problem children they have produced! 15. WE HAVE THE ANSWER, AND THE ONLY ANSWER: THE LOVE OF GOD that He has given us for each other and our children and our children for us!--And the whole world is desperately waiting for our answer! Even the Communist countries don't know what to do with their children as their younger generation is rebelling against their own system as well as others without God! 16. WE HAVE TO SHOW THE WORLD, and we have shown the world, but we have to tell them about it and how we did it and how we're doing it and how they themselves can do it too with their own children if they'll go God's way!--And we're the only ones that can tell them!--Are you willing? 17. THE CHURCH HAS FAILED, THEIR FAMILIES HAVE FAILED, EDUCATION HAS FAILED, GOVERNMENTS HAVE FAILED and the whole world has failed to find what to do with their children! So that the whole world is headed not only for an economic crash but also for a social crumble and governmental collapse which may totally sweep away these present failing institutions of church, school, home, capitalism and the whole present world system as the world tries for the last time to seek the solution in the way they have always tried to solve their problems: With another monstrous war which could nearly wipe out our present civilisation!--Only God can save us! 18. WHICH MEANS THAT ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THEM from all their present ills and impending catastrophes by at least saving their children and perhaps even a few of their parents! You have the answer, you have the solution, you have the truth, you know the way and you know God and only you can give Him to them--if you will publish what God has given and shown to you and taught you by experience with Him and your own children! 19. AND YOU MUST DO IT NOW, for it's already too late for most of them, some of whom you're going to have on your conscience for Eternity because you failed them and did not teach them as I told you to when I told you to! It's even almost too late with some of our own children, you have been so long in getting out these letters on Childcare and training which they have needed so desperately! How can you fail any longer! 20. SO YOU MUST BEGIN TO PUBLISH NOW AS YOU HAVE NEVER PUBLISHED BEFORE, fast and furiously, and spread the word now as you have never done before, before any more of these precious little ones are lost to His cause and gone astray! Some of you have been singing and dancing and picnicking and partying to attract their older brothers and sisters, which is all very well and good and a necessary part of our outreach and means to reach them all. 21. BUT MANY OF YOU HAVE BEEN LETTING THE BABIES FALL OVER THE CLIFFS while this has been going on, to be lost and gone forever, when an ounce of prevention could have accomplished much more than your present pounds of cure! 22. IT IS BETTER TO BUILD A FENCE AT THE TOP OF THE CLIFF THAN A HOSPITAL AT THE BOTTOM! Why should we have to spend so much time and energy and expense in trying to cure those who have already grown and gone astray, when we could show their parents how to raise them in the ways of the Lord in our Colonies, schools, or at home and keep them from ever having to leave the fold except to rescue others who are already lost on the mountain and in the wilderness!--Why?

23. WHY DON'T YOU REACH THEM NOW WITH THE MESSAGE AND THE METHOD THAT WILL SAVE THEM NOW rather than to try to rescue them from the rocks of the future below! Why don't you do it now? Why do you keep putting it off until it's more convenient and you have more time? It'll never be more convenient and you'll never have more time! 24. IT'S LIKE THAT DEAR WOMAN WHO HAD NINE CHILDREN whom we met when we only had one, and Mom marvelled how she could care for nine when one already took all her time, and she answered simply: "That's just it--nine can't take any more!" You think you can't do any more than you're doing already, but you can with the help of God! NOW! 25. I HAVE BEEN BEGGING YOU FOR YEARS TO DO THIS JOB, and you have made a few feeble starts at it while in the process of learning yourselves with your own children, nurseries and workers. But you've been learning long enough, perhaps too long, and now it is high time that all of you everywhere repent and start doing your first works of putting the kingdom of God first where children come first, "for of such is the Kingdom of God!" 26. I CONSIDER YOUR CHILDCARE MINISTRY OUR MOST URGENT WORLD EMERGENCY OF TODAY to save our children before it's too late and to make them and our families the witnesses God wants us to the world! Caring for our own children is even more important than your show business, music and discos that God is using to reach the children of others who are already lost! 27. FOR OUR OWN CHILDREN AND THE EXAMPLE OF OUR OWN FAMILIES CAN DO MORE TO WIN THEIR HEARTS WITH THE LIVING PROOF than all the singing and dancing and skits and showbiz in the whole world! God puts the Kingdom of His own children first!--Do you? 28. PLEASE DON'T MISUNDERSTAND ME: SHOW-BIZ MAY BE NECESSARY TO ATTRACT THEIR ATTENTION, and particularly, believe it or not, even the attention of their parents to our sample of what their children could and should be like in order to give us their favour so we can reach them! But if we neglect our own while trying to help our neighbours', we will not only be very poor parents but also dandy bad examples of those who don't practice what they preach, sermons without samples and faith without works, which is dead! 29. DEAD WORKS FALL UPON DEAF EARS, AND NEITHER THE PARENTS NOR THEIR CHILDREN WILL LISTEN IF THEY CAN'T SEE THE RESULTS! What are they seeing in you and your Colony and your children? Do they want what you've got or are they horrified! Are they terrified by your own little unholy terrors, or are they so pleased by the peace and harmony and good care of your family that they want to be like yours and are even willing to give you their own children to try to help make them like yours?--What kind of a sample are your children? 30. NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN GOD'S CHILDREN AND THEIR CARE, FOR THEY ARE HIS KINGDOM! What are you doing to make them a sample of His Heaven on earth, little angels of His love and mercy? Or have they become little devils of destruction and more like the children of the Enemy and his present Kingdom of hell on earth and their children? 31. WHICH ARE YOU GOING TO PUT FIRST?--God's Kingdom of His children, or run around trying to correct the neighbours' children while your own are going astray? If you do not put the Kingdom of His own children first, you are failing both God and them and will have the Devil to pay, and his wages are death!--Which will it be for yours? 32. TRUE, YOU MUST BE WILLING TO FORSAKE ALL TO FOLLOW JESUS, EVEN SOMETIMES YOUR OWN CHILDREN, as many of you have. But this only means that you have put God first even above His Kingdom and love Him more even than your own children, like the test He gave Abraham with Isaac on the altar of sacrifice! 33. BUT YOU'LL NOTICE THAT WHEN ABRAHAM PROVED HE WAS EVEN WILLING TO GIVE UP HIS OWN CHILD IN PREFERENCE FOR GOD AND HIS SERVICE AND OBEDIENCE, GOD GAVE HIM BACK his Isaac and made of him a great nation which is ruling most of the Western nations of the world today--the Jews! 34. YOU HAVE FORSAKEN ALL, YOU HAVE SACRIFICED YOUR CHILDREN, YOU HAVE PUT GOD FIRST: NOW YOU MUST CARE FOR HIS KINGDOM OF HIS OWN LITTLE CHILDREN more than you have ever cared before, that He might make of them a great nation: ("As the seed of Abraham so have I given unto your father

many children who shall rule the world!") Hallelujah! Praise God! What a wonderful promise!--But what a great responsibility! 35. ARE YOU EQUAL TO THE TASK?--NO, BUT GOD IS!--AND HE WILL HELP YOU to make them His good children, His faithful witnesses and His future rulers if you'll do your best as His queen mothers and kingly fathers to rear them in His house as the fine and worthy princes and princesses that they should be and must be to rule His future Kingdom with us! What a task!--Are you fit for it?--God will help you if you try!--Amen? 36. SO THE FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS!--THAT TINY BABE WILL BE A KING SOME DAY!--THAT LITTLE GIRL WILL BE ONE OF HIS QUEENS!--Those happy, laughing, shouting children will be His princes and princesses and officers and governors and governesses who shall "rule the Earth with His iron rod" of love! Are you teaching them how with the rod of His love today so they'll remember how to use it tomorrow as they teach and train others in love to obey? 37. "WHAT IS THAT IN THY HAND?" GOD SAID TO MOSES WHILE ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS TENDING HIS TINY LAMBS! ("What visions of wisdom God has given thy Father!") I don't have to do anything! All I have to do is look at the pictures He shows me and describe them to you!--There is Moses sitting alone and dejected on the semi-desert mountainside watching a mere flock of little sheep and wondering why he can't be out saving his people from the slavery of Egypt, and feeling like such a failure after 80 years of nothingness and seeming further from his goal than ever, now just a shepherd when he could have been Pharaoh!--What a picture of defeat with only a wooden rod instead of a golden scepter! 38. BUT SUDDENLY GOD SPOKE AND SIMPLY SAID, "WHAT IS THAT IN THY HAND?" In effect Moses answered, "Only a wooden rod, Lord, only a poor old shepherd's crook and a few dumb sheep in the wilderness of a strange land amongst strangers!--What could I do, Lord? I've made such a mess of things! I'm such a failure! I'm nobody now when I could have been king if I'd stayed in Egypt as Pharaoh's son! But what am I now, Lord?--I'm old and I'm nothing but a poor shepherd with a few dumb sheep and living on the charity of others who are not even my kindred in the flesh! I guess I've really failed, because now You can't trust me with anything but a few dumb sheep and no more authority than this old wooden rod, and I've failed to save Thy people, and now it's too late!" 39. I KNOW HOW HE FELT BECAUSE I WAS THERE ONCE THINKING MY LIFE WAS BEHIND ME and I'd never accomplished much for the Lord, and for my whole life's work I only had my own little family and my own children to show for it, living in the equivalent of a tent by the wayside watching over nothing but one tiny little flock with seemingly nothing but wood in my hands, no gold, no job, no home, no nothing but those little lives that He had given me to rule with the authority of His Word! 40. WHO WAS I? WHAT WAS I? WHAT COULD I DO? I WAS NOW LESS THAN NOTHING after all those years of training and the education and the opportunities I had had!--All lost and gone forever!--Useless!--With nothing but a little bunch of dumb sheep and His seemingly wooden words left in my hands! What had I done? What could I do? I was still nothing! 41. BUT AT LAST GOD SPOKE AND SAID, "WHAT IS THAT IN THY HAND!"--NOTHING, LORD! NOTHING BUT AN OLD WORN OUT WOODEN ROD AND A FEW DUMB LITTLE KIDS who seem sometimes more like goats than sheep, and my wife is even the daughter of a stranger and knows not what I used to be and honours me not! What are these amongst so many? I guess I'll never be anything! It's already too late! 42. BUT GOD KEPT SAYING, "WHAT IS THAT IN THY HANDS?"--And I kept thinking, "Just thy old wooden Word, Lord, that doesn't seem to be accomplishing much even with my own children, they're sometimes so naughty, and when I speak them to others they seem to fall only upon deaf ears! I'm finished! I'm a failure! I've failed You! I might as well curse it all and die!" 43. BUT AGAIN GOD SAID, "WHAT IS THAT IN THY HANDS?" And still I questioned, "What do you mean, Lord?--You can see what I have in my hands!--Nothing! Nothing but this Rod and my little lambs! What can I do with these? They're nothing! We're nobody!" But He said, "If you will go in My Name and say only that I have sent thee, I will do great things which thou knowest not of!" 44. SO WE WENT TO THOSE WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HIS OWN PEOPLE IN THE CHURCHES, AND LIKE ISRAEL OF OLD THEY REJECTED BOTH MOSES, AND HIS MESSAGE, and said:

"What have we to do with thee? What is thy name, and who art thou from, and what is thy doctrine?"--And when we answered that we were nobody from nowhere, but the Lord had sent us with His message of deliverance, they laughed us to scorn! Our children merely amused them, and they refused to follow us out of Egypt! 45. SO IT SEEMED I WAS CASTING THE ROD OF HIS WORD ON BARREN GROUND! But suddenly it became a writhing, biting, stinging serpent which tormented them which were disobedient, until, as God had said, "I will make thee a sharp-toothed threshing instrument which shall thresh the nations as chaff and rip with violence the pillows from under the arms of them which sit at ease in Zion!" 46. THE ROD HAD BEGUN TO BITE AND THE CHURCHES THREW ME OUT, saying, "Behold, who hath made thee a ruler over us?"--And they cast forth both us and His Word!--So where did it get us?--Nowhere! 47. THEN ONE DARK NIGHT, PENNILESS AND IN DESPAIR, I WALKED THE STREETS WITH DRUGGED AND DESPAIRING HIPPIES AS DISCOURAGED AS MYSELF and wandering about as sheep having no shepherd, when God suddenly spoke again: "Art thou willing to go to these lost sheep to become a king of these poor lost beggars? They need a voice to speak for them, they need a shepherd to lead them and they need the Rod of My Word to guide them to the Light!" 48. ("THANK YOU, LORD, THAT THOU GAVEST THY FATHER THE COURAGE AND THE FAITH TO OBEY THY WORDS! Thank you, Lord, for how Thou hast used Thy shepherd when he was in the depths of despair, and hast raised him from the mire to become the shepherd of Thy sheep and the father of Thy flocks!") Hallelujah! Amen! Thank You, Lord! 49. I REMEMBER WHEN MOM, TOO, WHO HAD BEEN AN OUTSTANDING YOUTH LEADER AND TEACHER, WHEN WITH FOUR SMALL CHILDREN, TWO OF THEM STILL IN DIAPERS, and a poor bungling pastor of a little mud church for a husband, thought she would never have a ministry again! But look at her now!--She's a leader and teacher of millions! Praise God! 50. NEVER BELITTLE THE LITTLE THINGS OR LITTLE ONES! So if you're nothing but a nursemaid to your own or maybe even somebody else's children sitting there alone in the nursery, helpless, hopeless, and despairing, sometimes in the midst of bedlam and wondering what you could possibly do with nothing but a Bible and those babes in your hands, think of Moses and me!--We led His little children into a Promised Land to rule the world--Amen? 51. AND IT WAS MY LITTLE AARON'S MUSIC and my little kids who became my voice and led the way!-Will yours? 52. SO THAT OLD WOODEN SHEPHERD'S CROOK IN MOSES' HAND THROUGH THE VOICE OF HIS AARON BECAME THE SYMBOLIC SCEPTER of his kingly authority over the six million Jewish slaves of Egypt, a serpent to its religions leaders, plagued the world's leading power, parted the Red Sea and delivered the little lambs of those dumb sheepy slaves from their Egyptian bondage through great tribulation into the Promised Land, although Moses himself died on the mountain and never got to see the fulfillment of his dreams in this life. 53. IN LIKE MANNER, THROUGH THE MUSICAL VOICE OF MY AARON AND OUR CHILDREN, GOD HAS TURNED HIS SEEMINGLY WOODEN WORDS INTO A GOLDEN SCEPTER of kingly authority over the multitudes of System-enslaved beggar-like hippies, made it a tormenting serpent to false religious leaders, a plague to the world's worst warring power, America, and has divided the ranks of the Red Communist sea to deliver God's flocks from the System! 54. AND THIS SAME STAFF OF GOD'S GOLDEN WORDS WILL CONTINUE TO LEAD THE LITTLE LAMBS of our present sheep through the Great Tribulation into the Promised Land of the Kingdom of God on Earth, long after their Moses has died on his mountain! But I will view from the Heavenly heights of the Spirit World the final fulfillment of the true mission of God's ruling Rod through His little lambs of today as they become the reigning rulers of the world of tomorrow! Hallelujah! 55. DO YOU FOLLOW ME? WILL YOURS?--That depends on how good you take care of them, train them and teach them now to know and to wield the Rod of His witnessing Words of today--if you are faithful shepherds and shepherdesses of His sheep and our little lambs!

56. ARE YOU A GOOD SHEPHERD OR SHEPHERDESS OF YOUR FLOCK, or merely a money-minded hireling who flees from the wolves at the door of your fold every time the going gets tough!--"The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep!" 57. "WHAT IS THAT IN THY HAND?" DO YOU KNOW THE WORD AND HOW TO WIELD THIS ROD of His authority?--Then use it to save your flock from the wolves and to lead your little lambs into the safety of His Fold forever!--They're all God has given you that can follow you from this world into the next! 58. ARE YOU LEADING, GUARDING AND GUIDING THEM WITH THE ROD OF HIS WORD IN YOUR HAND TODAY?--TOMORROW WILL BE TOO LATE! With His Word and lambs in our hearts and hands we can win the world for Jesus!--Amen?--God bless and keep yours for Jesus!--What is that in thy hand? Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family