SURVIVAL! - Part 1

From Moses with Love! June, 1972 NO.172--GP

THE TRUE STORY OF "MOSES" AND THE "CHILDREN OF GOD", original Founders and Leaders of the Jesus Revolution, told for the first time by "MO" himself, author of the now famous "secret MO Letters"!--Their history, cause, beliefs, enemies, answers, secrets and warnings!

To our own Dear Loved Ones, Family, Friends, Associates, Co-Workers, Helpers, Parents, Grandparents, and even Strangers and Enemies of The Children of God:

INTRODUCTION AND MO'S REASONS FOR DESIRING TO REMAIN UNKNOWN.

Dearly Beloved in the Lord: Greetings in Jesus' precious name! It has been a long time since some of you have heard from me directly, personally, and most of you have never heard from me before, although many of you may have heard about me, either through your own children or friends or even from enemies who have given us widespread publicity during the past few months!

IT HAS BEEN OUR OWN PERSONAL DESIRE TO REMAIN UNKNOWN in person and in name to the world at large, and known only in the Spirit by our fatherly counsel in the form of our letters and writings to our own children, now known as the Children of God. We have felt it better to remain anonymous in this way as long as possible in order that we might fulfill the words of the great and courageous St. John, predecessor and introducer of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he said, "He must increase, but I must decrease!"--John 3:30.

IT WAS MY OWN PERSONAL PREFERENCE TO REMAIN AS UNKNOWN AS POSSIBLE, and that personal knowledge of me and personal acquaintance and contact with me should decrease as much as possible in order that we might glorify our Lord the more, and encourage our children the more, that He is with them even when I am not, in order that they might learn to depend more on Him rather that on me, as this is their only hope of survival, of which we're going to speak more later in this letter.

WE HAVE ALSO SEEN MANY GREAT MEN OF GOD AND THEIR MINISTRY DESTROYED THROUGH TOO MUCH EXALTATION by either their followers or the general public. It has therefore been our personal desire to minimize the possibilities of such glorification of the cult of the personality and to virtually eliminate it if possible by remaining almost unknown, both in name and in person, in order that we might say indeed: "To God be all the Glory!"

IT HAS ALSO BEEN OUR FEELING THAT, IF ANY CREDIT WERE TO BE GIVEN AT ALL BY OTHERS AND OUTSIDERS, IT SHOULD NOT ONLY BE GIVEN TO THE LORD BUT TO THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES, if to any, for it is they who by the help of God have done such a marvelous work in the world today in helping to rescue the youth of their own generation from the evils of their time: Godlessness, unbelief, confusion, paganism, drugs, violence, crime, and anarchy!--as well as shame, death, and despair!

GOD'S ANSWER TO TODAY'S PROBLEMS AND AN EXPLANATION OF SALVATION!

THE ANSWER TO ALL OF THEIR PROBLEMS HAS, AS USUAL AND AS ALWAYS IN EVERY AGE AND EVERY GENERATION, BEEN A VERY SIMPLE ONE: LOVE!--True Love, the Love of God and the love of their fellowman!--The Spirit of God's divine Love which helps us all to fulfill His Great Commandment to love one another! Jesus said the greatest commandments in the Mosaic Law were first to love God and then to love thy neighbor as thyself! Herein, He said, are all the Law and all the Prophets, or as Solomon said, herein is the whole duty of man: to love God and to keep his Commandments! Herein is the Children's Salvation and Message!

GOD'S ANSWER TO THE PROBLEMS OF TODAY AS WELL AS TO THE PROBLEMS OF THE PAST HAS ALWAYS BEEN SO SIMPLE, so childlike, so easy that many could not even believe it!--That the simple Love of God and each other could solve all of our problems! But that is still God's solution for today, even in such a complex and confused and highly complicated society as that of the world of today! It's still just that simple: If we love God, we can love each other, and even respect ourselves as His Creation! We can then follow His rules of life, liberty, and the possession of happiness, and all will be well and happy in Him!

THE WHOLE IDEA IS SO SIMPLE AND SO CHILDLIKE THAT JESUS HIMSELF SAID THAT YOU MUST BECOME AS A LITTLE CHILD to enter His spiritual Kingdom of joy and happiness, a blissful state of mind and spirit and even physical and material well-being--the spiritual Kingdom of God on earth! In fact, He told a learned Doctor of the Law, "Except ye become as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!" He even said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot even see or understand the Kingdom of God!"

THIS, OF COURSE, WAS QUITE AND ENIGMA TO THIS OBVIOUSLY LEARNED AND LITERARY OLD GENTLEMAN, a "rabbi of Israel" to whom Jesus was speaking. To this very well educated teacher of the Law, Salvation was apparently in knowledge and great education and the wisdom of the ancients, such as the Torah and the Talmud. But here Jesus was telling him very simply, as our Children sing in their very popular theme song around the world: "You Gotta be a Baby to go to Heaven!"

IN OTHER WORDS, YOU MUST ACCEPT GOD'S SIMPLE AND UNCOMPLICATED, UNADULTERATED, UNEDUCATED LOVE AND TRUTH AS THE WORD OF YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER TO HIS LITTLE CHILD--YOU!--and through the acceptance of this Good News of His Love as manifested in His Son, Jesus Christ.

THAT THIS SIMPLE CHILDLIKE TRUTH WAS VERY DIFFICULT FOR THIS OVER-EDUCATED RABBI TO UNDERSTAND WAS OBVIOUS FROM HIS REACTION and overly-literal interpretation, wondering if Jesus was speaking of some kind of physical miracle of material rebirth. But Jesus quickly explained that he was not speaking of a physical rebirth from a fleshly bag of water, but a spiritual rebirth of man's spirit and spiritual attitudes performed by a supernatural miracle of the Spirit of God Himself!--the gift of a new spiritual heart, so to speak, from the Lord.

WHAT JESUS WAS DOING BY THIS WAS MAKING IT VERY PLAIN AND SIMPLE THAT WE CANNOT SAVE OURSELVES BY OUR OWN WORKS, OUR OWN GOODNESS, even our own attempts to keep His laws and to love Him, even our own endeavors to find and follow His truth. He was saying that Salvation is a gift of God performed by a miraculous transformation for our lives when we accept His truth in the love of His Son Jesus by the work of God's Spirit. All we have to do is receive Him, and His Spirit in us will then cause us to do the humanly impossible: Love God and man!

"FOR BY GRACE ARE YE SAVED THROUGH FAITH; AND THAT NOT OF YOURSELVES: IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD!--Not of works, lest any man should boast! For we are His workmanship!"--Ephesians 2:8,9. So you cannot save yourself no matter how good you try to be. You can't be good enough, you can't be perfect enough to earn merit or deserve the Heavenly perfection of His own holy Salvation by His own Grace, Love and Mercy!

"FOR ALL WE LIKE SHEEP HAVE GONE ASTRAY! We have turned every one to his own way; But God hath laid on Him (Jesus His own Son) the iniquity of us all!" Read the rest of this 53rd Chapter of Isaiah, the Old Testament Prophet, if you want a beautiful picture of the Love of God as shown in His Son Jesus taking the punishment of our own sins in Himself on the Tree! "For He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people!... when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin... and hath poured out His soul unto death... and he bare the sin of many!"

"AS MOSES LIFTED UP THE SERPENT IN THE WILDERNESS, EVEN SO MUST THE SON OF MAN BE LIFTED UP: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life!"--John 3:14-16.

SALVATION IS JUST THAT SIMPLE! All you have to do is receive Jesus, God's Son, as your Savior by asking Him into your heart! You can do it right now, if you want God's answer to all of your problems and His love and happiness to fill your heart and life with joy unspeakable and full of glory with a new plan and purpose in living! He'll meet all your needs and solve all your problems! He's just that wonderful, and it's all just that simple! Why not try Him?

AS I USED TO TELL MY OWN NATURAL CHILDREN WHEN THEY WERE LITTLE: "God is our great Father in Heaven and we are His children on earth. We've all been naughty and deserve a spanking, haven't we?--But Jesus, our Big Brother, loved us and the Father so much that He knew the spanking would hurt us both, so he offered to take it for us! So God let Him and promised to forgive us if we would love and thank Jesus for it and let his Spirit live in our hearts and lives from now on and obey His Word by letting Him love others through us." It's that simple!

THEN I WOULD LEAD THEM IN A SIMPLE CHILDLIKE PRAYER, and you can pray it with us if you wish: "Dear Lord, please forgive me for being bad and naughty and deserving a good spanking! Thank You so much for sending Jesus, Your Son, to take my spanking for me. I now receive Him as my Savior and as Your Son and ask You to come into my heart and make me be good and love You and others by your Spirit. Help me to read Your Word and obey it and try to help others. In Jesus' name. Amen."

THIS IS THE PRAYER WE FIRST PRAYED AS A LITTLE TINY FAMILY OF SIX, just so simple and childlike, without a church or a building or a preacher, in the quiet sanctity of our own little home, a tiny little house trailer, with nothing but the Word of God and His Spirit as our Teacher!--And look how God has answered! Look how He's helped my children to help your children and the children of others to become God's Children--Our Children--Yours and Mine and God's! Hallelujah!

THE MIRACULOUS CHANGE OF SPIRITUAL REBIRTH.

GOD BLESS YOU FOR BEING WILLING TO YIELD YOUR CHILDREN TO HIM FOR GOD'S USE, THAT HE MIGHT HELP THEM TO HELP OTHERS and in so doing give you and us both many more children in His Spirit for His Kingdom! This has made both Him and them very happy, as well as bring joy and happiness and His wonderful Salvation and Love to many, many others! How thankful you should be for them and how proud you should be of them for their self-sacrificial love and service in saving multitudes of other young people by helping them to find the Lord and showing them the joy of a life of service for others! Thank God! May you never regret your own personal sacrifice in letting them go for God!

WE REALIZE THAT MANY OF YOU MAY HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD THIS INSTANTANEOUS, MIRACULOUS, AND SUPERNATURAL CHANGE of mind, heart, and life which occurs by the power of God's Spirit in this spiritual transformation which God calls being born again, or a spiritual rebirth, it is such a drastic change! Some of you have even been misled to believe that because of this sudden change and desire to live an entirely different kind of life that your children must surely have been drugged, hypnotized, brainwashed, kidnapped, or imprisoned, or they would not have so suddenly and somewhat dramatically left home, loved ones, school or job and entered upon such an entirely new and different kind of life!

HOWEVER, IF YOU WILL RECALL SOME OF THE BIBLE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE HEARD ABOUT SOME OF THE INSTANTANEOUS TRANSFORMATIONS of life, mind, and heart which befell some of God's greatest characters at some crisis time by the power of God's Spirit such as Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, some of the folks Jesus Himself called or healed, and his own Apostles, as well as many other men of God throughout history, you will realize that this is actually nothing new, but something which God has been doing throughout the ages in the lives of men!

SOMETIMES IT HAPPENS SO SUDDENLY AND SO COMPLETELY AND THERE IS SUCH A DRASTIC CHANGE THAT IT CAN BE VERY DRAMATIC AND MUCH MISUNDERSTOOD! Many have even been thought, like the Apostle Paul, to have suddenly gone mad, or "driven crazy by religion", there has been such a sudden change in their lives and their way of thinking, speaking, and living! Their whole attitude toward life and others has changed, and changed so suddenly that their friends, loved ones, or others have thought them to have suddenly had some traumatic psychological experience which has made such a personality change as to make them seem even schizophrenic!--and in need of psychiatric care!

SOME HAVE EVEN GONE SO FAR AS TO HAVE HAD THEIR OWN LOVED ONES PLACED UNDER A DOCTOR'S CARE OR IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION for observation to try to find out what's happened to them to make them such a different person! But let me remind you and reassure you that this has been a very common miracle of God throughout history! Jesus called it being born again of His Spirit, and Paul called it the new birth in which "old things are passed away and all things are become new" and "ye are become new creatures in Christ Jesus"! The Bible calls it "putting off the old man and putting on the new" and it is often such a remarkable transformation and actual personality change that God's Word often likens it to the death and burial of the old and a resurrection of the new to an entirely new life and way of living!

SO SALVATION, OR THIS DRAMATIC "CONVERSION" AS IT'S SOMETIMES CALLED, IS SOMETIMES QUITE A SURPRISE TO OUR LOVED ONES and former associates! The great St. Augustine had been a libertine and a profligate while in college. But then one day after his conversion, as he tells it himself in his own writings, he was walking down the street when one of his old girlfriends passed him by, and he didn't seem to recognize her. So she turned and called after him, "Augustine, it is I!" To which he replied, "Yes I know!--But I am no longer I!" As the Apostle says, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me, and the life that I now live, I live by the grace of the Son of God!"

SURELY YOU MUST HAVE HEARD OR READ SOMEWHERE in your life by this time of some of these remarkable conversions of great and famous characters, both in the Bible and out! Believe it or not, God is still alive today and just as powerfully changing your children!

THIS IS ACTUALLY THE SAME CHANGE WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN YOU or me or others upon the declaration of our individual faith at the time of either our Bar-mitzvah, Confirmation, or Salvation, or Baptism. However, with some, these occasions are, merely traditional ceremonial formalities or customs and they do not really have a change of heart. With others, the change which has taken place is not as noticeable or is more gradually noticeable because they were already living a fairly clean, good, or exemplary life and this experience did not make a great deal of change in their looks, manner, or way of living.

MO'S LINEAGE

AS FOR MY OWN PART, MY FOREFATHERS ON MY MOTHER'S SIDE WERE BRANDTS, GERMAN JEWS no doubt related to Willy, the former German Chancellor! However, the three Brandt brothers, Adam, Isaac, and Jacob, and their families had accepted Jesus as their Messiah long ago, and as a result left Stuttgart, Germany and sailed to America in 1745, thirty years before the American Revolution!

AS PEACE-LOVING MENNONITE FARMERS, THEY SETTLED FIRST AMONGST OTHERS IN PENNSYLVANIA, and later moved to Ohio where my own Grandfather, Dr. John Lincoln, was born in an old farmhouse still standing near Somerset. One of the three huge German Lutheran oak-bound Bibles which those three brothers brought with them from Germany can still be seen at the museum in Columbus, Ohio!

MY GRANDFATHER'S MOTHER WAS AN ENGLISH LOVEBERRY, and his wife was a member of the Marquis family of French nobility. As a young farm boy, John was very bright, hard-working and ambitious and was soon teaching school at the age of nineteen. This soon proved too unexciting for his dramatical talents and he left school-teaching for the stage with a theatrical stock company which toured the Nation. He soon married Nina Lee Marquis, a member of the same company and quite a talented actress herself, who was not only a Marquis but also a direct descendant of Lighthorse Harry Lee of the Robert E. Lee's of Virginia, of Civil War fame.

ONE NIGHT DURING ONE OF THEIR SHOWS, MY GRANDFATHER FOUGHT A SABER DUEL ON STAGE as a part of what was supposed to have been a play. But the other actor, who had been drinking, took it a little too seriously and nearly killed my Grandfather! So immediately after the show, he became so worried about his spiritual condition in the event of his death, that he went out looking for a preacher to find out how to be sure of his Salvation.

ONE HIGHLY EDUCATED DENOMINATIONALIST HIGH PRIEST TOLD HIM IT WOULD TAKE HIM ABOUT EIGHT YEARS of theological training to find out, but that was too slow for him! He figured if he had to fight that duel again tomorrow night he needed to know now! So he finally found and old-fashioned Methodist preacher who led him to Christ on his knees on the spot!--And he was superbly happy!

HIS CONVERSION REALLY RESULTED IN A DRAMATIC CHANGE in his life, because he always did whatever he did with all his heart! So he figured if Salvation was good enough for him, it would be good for everybody, and he immediately launched into the Methodist ministry as a young, dramatic and flaming evangelist. To make a long story short, he went from circuit riding in the hills of Virginia where my mother was born, to a string of degrees and the eventual presidency of Virginia College, a more or less self-made man, but by the Grace of God. By his writings and investments he became a multi-millionaire!

AS THE AUTHOR OF SIXTEEN BOOKS, including "Turning Points in Life" and many others, the young Dr. John L. became a world traveler, popular pastor, and famous lecturer on the old Ridpath Chautauqua Circuit, where he often shared the same platform with such personal friends as James Whitcomb Riley, the world-famed children's poet, and William Jennings Bryan, of the famous Monkey Trial, and President Theodore Roosevelt, for whom he campaigned.--And his name is still to be found in "Who's Who", as late as the 1930s.

BY THIS TIME, HE HAD JOINED THE ALEXANDER CAMPBELL MOVEMENT OF THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST, now known as the Christian Church and was one of the outstanding leaders of the movement, building and pastoring exactly 50 churches in his lifetime, including such famous edifices as First Christian of Toledo, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Melbourne, Australia, the largest in two countries.

BY WISE INVESTMENT OF HIS HIGH SALARIES AND ROYALTIES HE BECAME RICH ENOUGH TO HOB-KNOB WITH HIGH SOCIETY, and his daughter, Virginia Lee, toured Europe in style with Olga Busch, of the Anheuser Busch of the famous St. Louis Thomas brewing family, and John Charles Thomas, world-famous operatic tenor, her old flame. I mention these names because some of them, I'm sure, will be very familiar to some of you, especially some of you old timers, and to let some of you who may be doubters know that this thing was not done in a corner but comes from some considerable background!

WHILE A YOUNG SOCIETY GUEST IN THE FAMILY HOME OF THE LATE GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT of American war fame, Dr. Brandt's daughter, Virginia, depressed over the recent untimely death of her dear Mother, and sickened with the superficiality of wealth and society, was prevented from taking her own life by the words of her Father from one of his sermons: "If you must throw your life away, why not give it to some good cause?"

SHE IMMEDIATELY VOLUNTEERED FOR SOCIAL SERVICE and was chosen to take Charles Crittenden's place when he died as National Field Secretary of the famous American Crittenden Homes for girls, and as such, raised millions of dollars for this work and founded many of these homes, particularly throughout the West, and became known as an authority on "the girl problem of America", speaking on the subject in such famous and unusual places as the Mormon Tabernacle, the only woman at the time who had ever spoken from its pulpit!

ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED TO BRUCE BOGART, A COUSIN OF HUMPHREY Bogart, the movie actor, and with their sumptuously wealthy home already furnished for their marriage, Miss Brandt was being given a gala farewell reception in Ogden, Utah, where she had built her last Crittenden Home. A handsome young Swedish professional concert tenor was invited to sing for the entertainment of this society bash, and during his rendition of "Oh, Promise Me" my aristocratic Mother promptly fell in love with this poor, young, Swedish immigrant, and eloped! She left her poor Bruce blind with shock, and the newspapers screaming headlines: "Society girl jilts millionaire to marry poor boy!"

MY FATHER, HJALMER EMMANUEL, was born near Kalmar Castle, in the Shmoland area of Southern Sweden (not Shmoo-land!), son of a poor shoe cobbler with a large family. His father and brother used to abet their meager earnings during the summers by traveling about Sweden as wandering minstrels, singing and playing their guitars and putting on acrobatic shows until they moved to America.

His older sister had gone to visit relatives in Nebraska and persuaded her father and family to follow. So AT THE AGE OF FOUR, MY FATHER WAS BROUGHT TO AMERICA in the horrible steerage compartment of an old freighter, under indescribable conditions, like many poor European immigrants of the late 1800s. They were so poor they had no silverware, so they ate from a common bowl in the middle of the table with their bare hands! They also had no chairs, and my Father could not remember sitting at the table until the age of twelve, at which time he was working in a coal colliery as a little boy sorting coal! There were no child labor laws and he worked hard!

FOR THE FIRST SEVERAL YEARS HE AND HIS WHOLE FAMILY SPOKE NOTHING BUT SWEDISH, since they lived in the nearly all-Swedish town of Oakland, Nebraska; and his father and mother, my Grandfather and Grandmother, "Far-Far and Mar-Mur", as we affectionately knew them in Swedish, never did learn to speak the English language, constantly contending that Swedish was good enough!

BY THE TIME I CAME ALONG, THE FAMILY HAD MOVED TO OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, WHERE I WAS BORN. There they had several prosperous businesses and owned considerable property, and my Father was a bookkeeper for the Southern Pacific Railroad and earned extra money as a concert singer on summer tours, which was how he met my Mother in Utah.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THEIR MARRIAGE MY MOTHER CABLED HER FATHER, who was touring China at the time, and he invited my Father to sing for a series of meetings he was to hold upon his return, at Aberdeen, South Dakota.--And it was during those meetings, under my Grandfather's persuasive preaching, that my Father himself had one of those remarkable life-changing experiences and volunteered for the ministry!--Much to my Mother's horror, who by this time had herself become a blatant atheist during her college years at TCU!

THIS DRAMATIC AND CLIMACTIC CHANGE from a cigar-smoking, beer-drinking, wild-dancing, party-going, good-looking, and loose-living young man of the world to a suddenly sober, serious-minded, zealous, young, idealistic minister of the Church was almost too much for my Mother, for it was not at all the man she had married.--Much the same shock some of you have gone through when you have found your own children or loved ones likewise so changed through conversion!

NEVERTHELESS, WHEN SHE FOUND NOTHING COULD DISSUADE HIM FROM HIS TOTALLY NEW DIRECTION of life she decided to try not to discourage him any further, but to actually go along with him the best she could. So she accompanied him to Drake University at Des Moines, Iowa, for his theological training for the ministry of the Christian Church.

THE STORY OF GRANDMOTHER'S ILLNESS AND MIRACULOUS RECOVERY.

IT WAS THERE THAT MY OLDER BROTHER, HJALMER JR., WAS BORN, AND WHERE MY MOTHER'S BACK WAS BROKEN AND SHE WAS ALMOST TOTALLY PARALYZED IN A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT WHICH NEARLY KILLED HER and left her on a deathbed of agony for five years, a total invalid. The story is told in her own book, "The Hem of His Garment", which has now been read by millions.

WE HOPE YOU CAN READ HER BOOK, AS WE HAVEN'T TIME HERE TO TELL YOU THE FULL STORY OF THE MARVELOUS MIRACLE GOD DID IN HER LIFE by restoring both her faith and her health in answer to my Father's prayers, one of the most startling and supernatural of total changes in the life of anyone that you could ever hope to hear!--after which she herself was a completely different woman than my Father had married!

ALTHOUGH MY MOTHER'S BACK WAS OPERATED ON at Still Medical College, Des Moines, Iowa, under the direction of Dr. Still, the founder of Osteopathy, and Dr. Charles Mayo, founder of the world-famed Mayo Clinic, with 19 other consulting surgeons in attendance, removing eight inches of the dorsal vertebrae of her spinal column in an attempt to relieve the paralysis, she became even worse. Despite the fact that her wealthy father, before he lost his riches in Chinese bonds and German Marks, spent a fortune on her case calling in specialist after specialist, they all agreed her condition was hopeless and she would soon die.

AT LAST, DRS. LUTRELL AND RIGDON OF SAN FRANCISCO BEGGED MY FATHER TO TAKE HER HOME to his poor pastorate in Ukiah, California, and let the poor woman die in peace! By this time, at the end of five awful years of suffering, she only weighed 78 pounds of skin stretched over a skeleton, her hair had all fallen out from strong medicines, she was almost totally blind, totally paralyzed, a confirmed morphine drug addict, stomach salivated, left lung gone from tuberculosis from being in bed so long, heart dying of angina pectoris and mitro-stenosis of the valves, unconscious most of the time, fed by the injection of liquids by a glass tube through a hole in her throat (before the days of intravenous injections), and much more dead than alive.

BUT MY FATHER NEVER GAVE UP HOPE, CONTINUING TO PRAY in simple childlike faith that God could still answer prayer and still do miracles, until one day my poor atheistic Mother cried out in the midst of her horrible suffering: "O God, if there is a God, please help me!"--And God answered her pitiful heart cry, and instantly faith came, and for the first time in her life she began to comprehend His Love and Salvation!

AT 8:00 ON SATURDAY NIGHT SHE WAS INSTANTLY RAISED by the Hand of God from that deathbed of total and hopeless invalidism to walk the floor for the first time in five years--a human impossibility even if there had been nothing wrong with her! And she walked to my Father's church the following morning and stood in his pulpit and told what a miraculous change God had wrought!--A sudden conversion from absolute atheism to total faith, and an instantaneous healing from complete invalidism to supernatural health! Hallelujah! God lives!

THIS SPECTACULAR EVENT STARTED A REVIVAL of faith throughout the churches of Northern California, and the news of it was "everywhere spread abroad, and the multitudes gathered together!" Mother began to be everywhere in demand as a very popular inspirational speaker telling what God had done for her and that He could do for others, and "many mighty miracles were done at the hands of the Apostles" under her ministry!--Unbelievers were converted and believers were healed, a ministry which began in that memorable year of 1918 at the age of 32 and continued almost exactly 50 years, until the age of 82 when she passed away quietly and peacefully in her sleep in her little cottage in California to her eternal and glorious reward!

ALTHOUGH HER OWN DOCTOR AND NURSE WERE CONVERTED, as well as half the town and a good deal of Northern California, through this mighty modern miracle of God and through this observable and provable evidence that God is still alive, well and working, there were still the skeptical, hard-hearted scoffers who refused to believe! As Jesus said, if they won't believe the Bible, "though one should come back from the dead, yet will they not believe!"

AT THE CLOSE OF MY MOTHER'S TESTIMONY THAT FIRST MEMORABLE MORNING in my Father's own church, his leading elder walked the aisle and shook his finger in my Mother's face and said: "Nina Virginia, I would rather have seen you, the daughter of Dr. John L., dead and in your coffin here today and heard your funeral, than to have heard you stand here this morning proclaiming the doctrine of Divine Healing, which is not in the annals of our church!" There are none so blind as those that will not see, and those whose minds are so made up they don't care to be confused with the facts!--so bigoted, so set in their ways, so rigid and unchangeable they prefer lies to the truth! Do you?

MY FATHER'S OWN DENOMINATION, THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, OFFERED HIM A LARGER AND MORE LUCRATIVE PASTORATE IF HE WOULD STOP PREACHING AND PRACTICING "FAITH HEALING" as they called it, but he refused and resigned to launch out into an entirely new life of living totally by faith! He and my Mother entered into full-time evangelistic work together for most of the rest of their lives until he, too, passed away at the age of nearly 83, in 1966 in California, where their bodies are both buried side-by-side on a green hillside overlooking the sea and awaiting the Resurrection! Hallelujah!

MO'S HISTORY--FROM BIRTH TO DISCHARGE FROM THE ARMY.

ALTHOUGH THE DOCTORS HAD SAID MY MOTHER COULD NEVER HAVE ANOTHER CHILD, I WAS BORN NATURALLY AND HEALTHILY at an amazing eleven pounds in weight at home in a humble little cottage in the poor Melrose section of Oakland, California, on February 18, 1919--one of the last of the Aquarians, barely making it under the line that year! This was during the great Spanish influenza epidemic which killed millions only three months after World War I, but God spared me.

DEDICATED TO THE LORD AND NAMED BY MY MOTHER BEFORE I WAS EVEN BORN, I WAS PROPHESIED OVER MANY TIMES by many prophets of God as having been filled with the Holy Ghost from my Mother's womb, like John the Baptist, and many great things were foretold that I would do--some of which have already been fulfilled, thanks to God's miracle-working power through our children, the Children of God! It was prophesied at various times that I would be like Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and even David in the kind of ministry God would bestow upon me.

SOME HAVE EVEN SAID THAT OUR MINISTRY WOULD BE A FULFILLMENT OF THE PREDICTIONS OF DEUTERONOMY 18:15-18; Psalm 68; Psalm 89; Psalm 132; Isaiah 55; Jeremiah 1, 30, 33; Ezekiel 2 and 3, 34 and 37; Daniel 9 and 10; Hosea 3; Zechariah 8; and Revelation 3:7-13. Some of these prophecies were pronounced over me identically, word for word, by different prophets in different places at different times who did not even know me or my name! Many of these are already being fulfilled! Praise God!

BE THAT AS IT MAY, MY EARLY YEARS GAVE LITTLE HINT OF ANY GREATNESS TO COME, OTHER THAN THESE REMARKABLE PROPHECIES. I was frail, shy, and very reticent, a veritable bookworm and recluse who preferred to retreat to the world of study of other times and other places rather than participate in the foolishness and horrors of the hard, cruel world around me. I loved to be alone and wander alone over the hills and through the woods and climbing mountains to observe and study for hours and days on end the beauties and wonders of God's Creation, and to listen to His still, small Voice explaining these things.

AS A RESULT, I WAS CONSIDERED A LITTLE ODD AND A LONER at school, who preferred the loner's sports such as hiking and swimming, in which I excelled, as well as top grades in all my studies. I finally graduated with the highest scholastic record in the 80-year history of Monterey Union High School in historic old Monterey, California, on beautiful old Monterey Bay, and honored by the California Scholastic Federation and with offers of scholarships at several outstanding colleges and universities.

I MIGHT HAVE GONE ON TO SOME SUCCESS IN THE FIELDS OF HIGHER EDUCATION, the only one in which I seemed truly talented and most likely to succeed, to become a college president like my Grandfather, or college administrator like my father and brother, Dr. Hjalmer E., who were B.A.'s, M.A.'s, Ph.D.'s, LL.D.'s, D.D.'s, etc. But my first love was still the Lord, and I desired to serve Him and others with all my heart in whatever capacity He thought me best suited or for which He was fitting me.

WE HAD TRAVELED FROM BIRTH IN PASTORAL AND EVANGELISTIC WORK with my parents throughout the United States and Canada, even during our school years, attending as high as nine different schools in one school year! We were usually very poor, and my earliest memories are of old cars, tents and trailers, like Gospel Gypsies on the road! Most of these activities were centered in the widely scattered areas of California, Texas, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Florida, so this kept our little family much on the move.

WE SETTLED IN MIAMI, FLORIDA, IN 1924, where my parents built the largest Gospel Tabernacle in Southeastern United States, which was packed with about 5000 people nearly every night of a mighty spiritual revival campaign which lasted until the Boom burst in 1925 and the Great Hurricane struck in 1926 destroying the Tabernacle and much of Miami and killing over 2000 people and injuring multiplied thousands more, but not even hurting one of our members!

MY PARENTS TOOK THIS AS A SIGN THAT THEY WERE TO SPEND MORE TIME IN EVANGELISTIC WORK, but they still did not seem to get the point that God was evidently displeased with church buildings, so they rebuilt the old Tabernacle, which still stands at the corner of N.W. 5th Ave. and 33rd Street and was affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the new denomination which they had since joined. They later also founded in Miami the Church of the Open Door, now known as Central Alliance Church, and for 15 years my Mother was the Voice of Meditation Moments, WQAM, the oldest religious broadcast in Florida.

BY THE TIME I GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL, THEY HAD RETURNED TO CALIFORNIA AND FULLTIME EVANGELISTIC WORK, in which I joined them. My Father soon retired from the field to join the faculty at Westmont College, which my brother and Mrs. Kerr (of the Kerr-Mason Jars) and other wealthy, conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, mostly Presbyterians at the time helped to found at Santa Barbara, California, under the direction of Dr. Emerson, former Dean of Wheaton College, Illinois, and designed to be the "Wheaton of the West".

THIS WAS IN THE EARLY FORTIES, DURING WORLD WAR II, AND MY FATHER CONTINUED ON WITH WESTMONT FOR TEN YEARS UNTIL HIS RETIREMENT. My brother went on to become a Superintendent of Schools and then Executive Vice President of San Francisco State and Oakland College, and finally Director of Personnel of Aerojet General, Sacramento, until his present semi-retirement in Grass Valley, California. His wife is still principal of Oakland High, largest in the U.S. My sister, Virginia, mother of a family of five, still lives in Huntington Beach, California, to which lovely little city my parents eventually retired.

MEANWHILE, JUST A FEW DAYS AFTER THE BOMBING OF PEARL HARBOR, I WAS DRAFTED INTO THE ARMY IN 1941, serving with the U.S. Army Engineers, Headquarters Battalion, at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, home of the Engineers, until my Complete Disability Discharge because of heart trouble. The Army had notified my parents I was dying with double pneumonia at a temperature of 106 degrees and they feared my already enlarged and leaky heart, twice normal size, weakened by the strain, would collapse. I was unconscious for three days, but when I finally promised God I would try to serve Him faithfully for the rest of my life if He would save it, I was instantly healed in answer to prayer, to the amazement of all my doctors and nurses! They used to say I was the sickest boy they had, but got well the quickest! Praise the Lord!

Continue on to Part 2 ....

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family International

- Faith
- Love
- Prayer
- Success with People
- The Future
- Marriage
- Parenting

...and much more--all in terms that are relatable and easy to follow. Personal accounts from active Christians around the world confirm that God is still alive and working just as wonderfully as ever on behalf of those who love Him.

Put that power to work for you! Connect with the source of love, happiness, peace, freedom, contentment, and the rest of the best life has to offer--God, who the Bible says is love. Change your life! Change your world! Get activated!