David Berg
France, 11/80—Dad's Comments on Roy Wallis' Book! DO 2348
(After receiving all of the above about Roy Wallis‚ we dug out the following Letter to show you what Roy Wallis has had to say about us in the past, & what Dad has said about him!:)
1. WELL, YOU'LL BE ENCOURAGED TO HEAR WHAT ROY WALLIS HAS TO SAY ABOUT "YESTERDAY'S CHILDREN"! I've just been reading his latest paper‚ really a book he's working on, have you heard about it? Well, I've read it so don't waste your time reading it‚ it's pretty sickening in some ways. It's how the carnal mind tries to analyse us & interpret us, trying to figure out what our motives are etc., leaving God out of it & the Lord out of it completely!
2. IT'S TYPICAL SCIENTIFIC APPROACH! "God & Jesus & all that of course has nothing to do with it! These gurus must have some other ulterior selfish motivation of personal aggrandisement‚ power of love, or love of power, ego-maniacs"—& all the rest of the stuff that they say about the leaders. He doesn't come out & say it in exactly so many words, but that's just the accepted attitude: "Of course the guy isn't really for real, he's a phoney, they're all phonies, like all religionists are phonies!" See? That's the approach science takes. "So what makes them tick? Why do they do what they do?"
3. I COULD SAY IT'S GOOD FROM THIS STANDPOINT ONLY‚ THAT THEY ANALYSE IT FROM THE PURELY CARNAL MATERIALISTIC POINT OF VIEW OF THE SYSTEM, EXPLAINING US TO THE SYSTEM, & having finished explaining us that way, we're safe. Because these were not our reasons‚ these were not our motives, & it's almost a good cover for us to impute that we are that dumb or that selfish or that these are our motivations, & not a divine higher Power or an unselfish motivation at all. Because science, of course, doesn't believe in Love, there's no such thing as Love because there's of course no such thing as God either & all the rest! So he tries to explain us all away—sympathetically, don't misunderstand me, because he's supposed to be our friend!
4. BUT HOW CAN ANYBODY‚ WITHOUT JESUS CHRIST & WITHOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT & NO KNOWLEDGE OR FAITH IN GOD, EXPLAIN US? He's really even trying to explain us to himself! We're an enigma, a real mystery! "How do we get this way? How did it ever happen, anyhow? How could people be so loyal to a cause, willing to suffer for it & keep on going after ten, twelve years now? How can it happen?" So he tries to explain it all away by saying, "Well, this is the usual course that denominations have followed."
5. HE MAKES A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CULTS & SECTS, THAT THEY START OUT AS A REAL RADICAL CULT OF SOME KIND, THEN THEY EVOLUTE INTO A SECT, & in his way of a definition, a sect is a little more acceptable than a cult. It's all an evolutionary approach: "If the sect manages by the process of adaptation & assimilation..." It's evolutionary language, the whole thing, explaining religion as an evolutionary thing. He says that we adapt & we assimilate & we accommodate & we compromise, we do this & that, till finally we find a kind of a middle-of-the-road to where the System, if it can't accept us, will at least tolerate us.
6. AND HE COMPLIMENTS US SAYING THAT MANY SECTS & CULTS HAVE GONE DOWN THE RIVER BECAUSE THEY NEVER COULD MAKE THE CHANGES, they never could compromise, they could never adapt themselves or assimilate or accommodate or meet the System half way. But he says that we are now entering the process of what he calls "denominationalisation"—it's one long word, I counted nine syllables! In other words‚ he's really trying to compliment us‚ that this is one outfit that's not just going to fade away as a fad‚ but it's becoming an established religious denomination.
7. HE COMPARES US VERY CLOSELY TO THE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES. I don't know why he doesn't mention the Seventh Day Adventists or the Mormons‚ although I think maybe he does mention the Mormons a little bit. But he compares us more closely to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Apparently he studied them more, & he draws mainly similarities & comparisons with us & them etc. And he says we are really entering the "denominationalisation stage".
8. AND HE INDICATES WE'RE GOING TO ENDURE!—AND IN THIS POINT IN A WAY HE'S RIGHT. Some former fanatical religious fads have come & gone & not endured, haven't lasted any longer than the life of a leader at the very most‚ & some of them haven't lasted even that long. In fact‚ he gives comparisons of how some of the little sects & cults that arose actually even before the leader's death kicked him out & got rid of him & kept on going—such as the Coonyites. Not Kooties, Honey, Coonyites! You never heard of them?
9. WELL, IN TEXAS THE COONYITES USED TO GO AROUND LIKE THE MORMONS & JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES, TWO–BY-TWO, ONLY THEY CALLED THEM THERE THE "NO-NAME PEOPLE", because you could never pin them down to a name. In fact, they themselves could never agree on a name, so they just went ahead without any name. They got nicknamed the Coonyites after their founders Charles Cooney & Edward Cooney, & really, they sounded like they must have been pretty good guys.
10. LIKE MOST RELIGIOUS PIONEERS‚ NEARLY ALL OF THEM ARE AN ATTEMPT AT A THROWBACK TO PURE PRISTINE CHRISTIANITY, Early Church Christianity or the pure method of Christ & His method etc. And the fact that they go out witnessing & they go two-by-two as missionaries & live by faith & all the rest I think stands to their credit.
11. BUT A LOT OF THE STUFF WALLIS HAD TO SAY WAS TRIPE!—Which shows you how totally misunderstood we can be even by our friends. They always have to contribute some motivation that isn't so, like saying we turned to FFing in order to get better support from the guys who had the money. Well, that came as a secondary thought.
12. OUR FIRST FFING HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH SUPPORT AT ALL! We never dreamed it was going to be a very large source of support. The whole idea was to try to reach some guys with Salvation & with the Message that we hadn't reached before. Instead of just a bunch of hippies, we began to reach businessmen & leaders & all kinds of people. Thank God!
13. NOW OUR GIRLS HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SUPPORT SOME HOMES IN CLOSED COUNTRIES, reaching top businessmen & leaders of the country, politicians, men of influence that were able to help them to stay in the country & survive & keep on preaching the Gospel & witnessing! Think of that! It has paid in the main way we wanted it to pay, & that is in souls, but those souls were the kind that were able to help us—& we sure needed some friends in a lot of those countries! That's how it all got started.
14. WE WENT DOWN TO THOSE FIRST CLUBS IN LONDON & IN TENERIFE WITH NO IDEA IN THIS WORLD THAT THOSE GUYS WOULD EVER BE ABLE TO SUPPORT US! We had no intention & no such motive! But this is what dear Roy Wallis thinks. I'm sure he sincerely thinks that's one reason we went after them, because they had the money. Since they don't believe in God, they can't believe in a pure, unselfish love that our girls would literally go to bed with them just out of love & a love for their soul & try to win them to Christ. They cannot believe that there mustn't be some other reason such as to win powerful friends & to get financial support. It has done that, I don't deny it, & thank God for it, but that wasn't our original motive at all! It's still not our primary motive.
15. OUR PRIMARY MOTIVE IS TO LOVE'M & WIN SOULS, THESE POOR GUYS, THE MOST NEGLECTED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD! And we have finally‚ thanks to the Lord, figured out a way to reach'm. And the surprising thing was that they turned around & turned out to be some of our biggest helpers, some of our best converts, some of our best friends, some of our best supporters, some of our best defenders! I mean, that was a surprise! That was not our original motivation at all—contrary to Roy Wallis!
16. BUT THAT'S THE WAY THE SYSTEM LOOKS AT IT & YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM BELIEVE IT! So all right‚ let'm think that you're smart enough to figure it out that way, that you were after the money & you were after the power & you were after the influence so that you could survive. They could at least understand your desire to survive, which at least helps them understand you from some reasonable reason that they can understand.
17. YOU CAN'T EXPECT THEM TO EVER UNDERSTAND IT WAS JUST PURE UNSELFISH LOVE, NOT UNTIL THEY'VE GOT IT! So, let'm think it, I don't care! It's one way to explain us to them. Then they can say‚ "Well, I can understand that, they needed help, they needed money‚ they needed defenders, they needed influence, well sure, why not? That's what I would have done, that's what we do! We use our girls for the same purposes." Did you know that almost every big corporation employs girls for that reason, to influence buyers & sellers & all kinds of things? The Devil uses sex like mad! He hates it, but he uses it! (See "The Devil Hates Sex!"‚ #999.)
18. SO ROY WALLIS, GOD HELP HIM & GOD BLESS HIM! I guess in a way‚ at least he's sort of explained us to the System & tried to help them understand what makes us tick & tried to help them not worry so much about us, that we're not going to destroy them & we're not out to hang'm up by the heels & gut'm & blood–let'm like Witchcraft & Manson & some of those guys did, but we're really fairly harmless idiots that are just religious fanatics. We're not really going to hurt anybody & that there's a little bit of common sense to support our practices etc.
19. SO HE SAYS WE'RE NOW APPROACHING THE POINT OF DENOMINATIONALISATION.—IN OTHER WORDS, WE'RE HERE TO STAY! Outside of your major religious groups. We have more or less arrived on the scene, not the passing scene, but permanently, & he expects us to survive now that we've had some wisdom to try to get along with the System & to try not to offend parents & doing all kinds of good things & good works etc. He's really trying to defend us & explain us & help the System understand us so they won't freak out & get scared to death of us that we're going to blow'm up or destroy'm or hang'm up to dry or whatever! They're dry enough already anyhow!
20. SO IT'S PRETTY INTERESTING, BUT AS I SAY, I WOULDN'T ADVISE YOU TO READ IT BECAUSE IT'S A LOT OF TOMMYROT THAT ISN'T SO! How can you tell him it's not so, that that's not the reason we did it or why we did it? You couldn't convince him! He couldn't possibly understand our reasons, that we were really led of the Spirit, we really had these revelations & they were really from God & I had nothing to do with it! I didn't even know what I was doing!
21. HE GIVES ME ALL THE CREDIT! He gives me all the credit for being smart enough to figure it all out & think it all out & be the inspiration!—Because he doesn't really believe, of course, that God told me to do these things & showed me these things. He just says, "It was getting too tough to buck the persecution‚ it was getting blah blah & so on & so on & so on, so they changed their tactics.—Not that God necessarily told them anything or revealed anything to them. That guy is just a smart guy, he's a real virtuoso!"—Ha! I didn't even know what virtuoso meant, I had to look it up in the dictionary! It means a particularly clever conductor, usually applied to music, like a musical conductor of a symphony or someone who is especially skillful & clever etc.
22. SO HE'S GIVING ME ALL THE CREDIT FOR BEING SKILLFUL & CLEVER & SMART & FIGURING OUT ALL THESE DEVIOUS THINGS! Some of you guys that live with me know I'm not that smart, just the Lord is, that's all! He did the whole thing & all I did was follow directions, & we're still here. I think that's the reason some of these other guys didn't survive, they didn't stay close to the Lord & follow directions—like Jimmy Carter! Carter-ism is dead. It's a dead duck & will never be resurrected, its leader is gone.
23. SEE, WALLIS IS AN EDUCATOR, HE'S A SCIENTIST, HE'S HEAD OF THE SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, & as far as he's concerned, it's a mere scientific sociological study of a rather weird religion that he has been interested in for quite a few years & has taken a very positive, unbiased fair attitude toward. Not all the things he said about us were nice, but at least they were understandable & most of what he said about us is true. I'm sure that everything he said about us he thought was true, including giving me all the credit for being so damned smart & clever as to figure out all these things & do the right thing!—Ha! I mean, even any dumb Jew ought to know when he's losing & try to figure out some way to win!
24. SO WE CHANGE METHODS AS FAST AS NECESSARY, BUT WE NEVER CHANGE OUR MESSAGE, WHICH IS SALVATION! I don't know that we even changed anything, we just added a lot of fringe benefits—the Lord has—new doctrines & revelations etc., but we're still just as Fundamentalist & as conservative in theology as we ever were despite the fact that they consider us fanatical liberals & whatnot! Well, he does give us credit for being Bible Fundamentalists, that we do believe in the Bible—but not the same way the churches do!
25. HE ACCUSES US, OF COURSE, OF NOT ACCEPTING TRADITIONAL CHURCH CHRISTIANITY & TRADITIONAL CHURCH MORES & MORALITY. Well, we don't‚ because we consider them false, unscriptural & no longer binding. He called us "antinomians". Do you know what an antinomian is? Well, I had to look that up in the dictionary too. It means "against the law & illegal"—meaning against generally accepted Church law & Church rules. In other words, we're rebels when it comes to the usual Church customs & rules & laws, the Ten Commandments‚ Mosaic Law & all the rest, we're antinomian. Only he used a great big long word, antinomianism.
26. HE SAYS THOUGH WE HAVE DONE THIS & THAT & THE OTHER, WE STILL HAVE NOT SLACKENED IN OUR ANTINOMIANISM, that we're still very anti-church rules & Mosaic rules etc., that we're still anti–Law. Well‚ so was the Apostle Paul! So was Jesus! That's why they strung Him up, because He was against their laws, because they no longer manifested love, & we are for love & he even gives our nice little quote, "God's Only Law is Love!" He says‚ "Believing that God's only Law is Love, they have always been very antinomian." I didn't even know what that was so I looked it up. All these big words he calls us‚ I don't know what we are until I find out in the dictionary!
27. HE KEPT SAYING IBID, IBID‚ IBID in parenthesis after something he quoted—does anybody know what "ibid" means? When you give a reference, like the name of the Letter & where you got this particular quote, if you go on quoting it, instead of repeating the reference again, you just say "ibid". It's a Latin word for "ibidem", which means "the same". Well, I did remember that from my Latin & that's what I thought it meant, something about "the same".—But I couldn't figure out what was the same! Anyhow, I finally looked it up in the dictionary & I was right, it means the same.
28. THESE SCHOLARS & SCHOLASTICS TALK A WHOLE DIFFERENT LANGUAGE, & unless you've been to university & you've got degrees, you don't even understand what they're talking about! If you think my sentences are long & involved, you ought to read his! By the time you read this whole paragraph & look up all these words that you don't even understand, you've forgotten what he was driving at in the first place! Then like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, you've got to read the whole thing all over again now that you've found out what the words mean, to finally understand it.
29. REALLY I DON'T THINK HIS WRITINGS COULD EVER DO US VERY MUCH DAMAGE BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE COULD NEVER EVEN UNDERSTAND IT! —Ha! That's a fact! That's what I came to the conclusion of! I thought‚ "Well, he's never going to reach the general public this way, only scholars & scholastics & educators are going to understand what he's talking about!" He used too much philosophical & sociological terminology, scientific words that only they understand & know. They've developed all these things to a science, sciences of religious sociology & philosophy & the evolution of religion & blah blah!
30. SO I THOUGHT THAT WAS INTERESTING, IN CASE YOU HADN'T HEARD ABOUT IT, THAT WE ARE BECOMING A DENOMINATION! And since we are supposedly becoming a little bit more accommodating, a little bit more understanding of the System & a little bit more compromising—as he would say it—& a little less fierce & fearsome & radical & fanatical because we're beginning to understand we can't get away with all those things, he says, "If not accepted, at least they're becoming more tolerable." He says this is the usual pattern of religious movements, that they finally become a little more sensible, a little wiser, as we have.
31. IF WE KEPT UP SOME OF THAT RADICAL FANATICAL STUFF THAT SOME OF OUR UNDERLEADERS WERE DOING, I KNEW WE WOULDN'T SURVIVE VERY LONG! We had to get rid of them & get everybody back on the right track. I never taught them to do stuff & say stuff & act that way! No wonder we were making so many enemies back on the West Coast & Los Angeles—we had Josh in Los Angeles & dear "Deth & Jeb" in the Northwest, that was bad enough, & then Rachel in Europe! Oh my! I mean, those people were just...whew! Well, we just had to get rid of them all to get back to the Word & the Letters & the Truth & common sense behaviour!
32. HAVE YOU READ "KNOW THEIR MEAT OR GET BUTCHERED!"? (No.942) I have written on that subject I don't know how many times! But you have to have a graphic art illustration like dear Jac did for that, something really shocking, that short sharp shock that really socks'm in the eyes & wakes'm up with something very drastic like that that they'll remember for a long time! Every time they think about it they'll think about that guy with the sword & maybe they'll come to their senses & not do some stupid idiotic thing which is bound to bring the sword down on them!
33. THIS IS THE JOB OF A REVOLUTIONARY! In a way, to shock people out of their lethargy you almost have to go to the extreme in order to pull the rest of them halfway to an even temperate or moderate reformation!—Even if you can't get them to revolute all the way. I mean, if not everybody has revoluted, at least we've got quite a few people who have reformed & are not the same as they used to be, thank God!
34. I STILL PREFER REVOLUTION MYSELF! That doesn't mean violent revolution, by the way, whoever happens to be tape recording or bugging me here! I suppose there are a lot of things that I have said they could twist if my enemies ever get me in court! Of course, the easiest road right now is racist anti-Semitism, but it used to be in the States advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. They could contort a lot of things I've said: "He's advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government by God & the Holy Angels of Heaven!"—Or by the Russians!—Or by the bomb or whatever! I mean‚ they could take those laws & twist'm to mean whatever they want'm to mean!
35. JUST LIKE I TOLD YOU ABOUT AARON IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN MIAMI BEACH WHEN I WAS FIGHTING EVOLUTION: The District Attorney called me into his office and said, "Now what do you mean taking the School Board to court? How can you prove they used this in the public school?" I said‚ "I can prove it! My own son & others testified they used it right in the school & he had to do work in the workbook & everything." He said, "Wait'll you get to court & see what a lawyer can do with that word 'use'! By the time a lawyer gets through with that word 'use', you yourself won't know what it means!" That's lawyers for you & that's why the Lord had such bitter things to say about lawyers! So‚ praise the Lord anyhow!
36. THAT WAS SORT OF INTERESTING TO SEE YOURSELF AS OTHERS SEE YOU‚ get a bird's-eye view from the World's standpoint of what we look like to the World & the way he's trying to make us look—which is very charitable in his eyes & even a lot of people accuse him of being one of us & one of our friends & supporters! He's never supported us—we help support him! At least we try to give him a little material so he'll have something to write about, an authoritative source.
37. BUT IT'S INTERESTING TO SEE THAT ACCORDING TO HIS VIEW THAT WE HAVE COME TO THE POINT THAT THEY SEE THAT WE JUST WON'T GO AWAY, & there aren't as many people now who want to get rid of us as there used to be. Well, I would say maybe not the same ones—we've got a whole new crop now maybe he hasn't heard about! He said, "Parents are beginning to accept them more & they are supposedly allowed more contact with their children."
38. I NEVER FORBADE CONTACT WITH THE PARENTS—except with some kids who were of age & literally running away from their parents because their parents were like monsters & putting them in insane asylums & beatin' up & imprisoning them & deprogramming & all the rest! Of course I'd advise them to avoid that, but as far as forbidding contact being standard policy‚ that's ridiculous!
39. I GOT SO MAD AT JETH OVER THIS THAT I MADE THEM HAVE A 2-HOUR LETTER-WRITING PERIOD EVERY WEEK AT TSC! I found out just advocating & urging them & begging them to write their folks didn't do a bit of good. I finally had them all sit down in the dining room & I said, "Here's paper, here's pencil, now you write'm a letter!"—Clear back at TSC! And look how long we've been accused of trying to separate them from their parents. That wasn't my fault‚ that was the kids' fault, they didn't want to be in contact with their parents! They were out of touch with their parents before they ever left home & the parents tried to blame it on us!
40. ANYWAY, LET'S PRAY! PTL? We don't even have to hold hands any more or it may look like we're having a seance & invoking the evil spirits! We had one guy come home once & found us sitting at his dinner table holding hands praying, because he was late to dinner‚ & he blew up & threw us out of the house! He said we were having a spiritualistic seance around the table holding hands with our eyes shut with his children & his wife. We were just saying our usual little dinner prayer! Some of these people, when they're already freaked-out & scared stiff of every little thing, it shows you how they can twist things & misinterpret & everything else! Well, I can't say I haven't had a few seances with the spirits!—Quite a few, thank the Lord! I have a little something almost every day, don't I?—Real sweet little things that keep me going, praise the Lord!—Do you?—Why not?