The Children of God

In November 1971, Dad wrote, “Persecution is not bad, but good, and good for you! It is persecution with a purpose. It shows if you really love Him and His all the way! Second, it purges the ranks of those who don’t mean business and who are not devoted, loyal and true. Third, it will really show you who your enemies are and what to expect from them. Fourth, it also shows who you are, the true prophets of God, and that your message is the truth, by the very fact that they perse-cute you. Fifth, it shows you’ve done a good job, delivered your soul, warned the wicked, and finished the job. Sixth, now that you’re out of the way, God can bring His judgments on those who first rejected your message and finally rejected you. Seventh, you continue on God’s way, giving some other city or land their chance. Hallelujah!”

Dad had even predicted in his tape “Follow God” (Oct. 22, 1970) that “To scatter us around the globe... God is going to put the pressure on, I don’t doubt, to make us send some of our kids to Europe! If we don’t do it just in obedience and willingness to follow God, God is going to put the screws on and the pressure on somehow so that we’re going to have to do His Will.”

And that’s exactly what happened! Dad had often warned the COG to be prepared for their wave of good publicity to crash on the rocks of persecution. But beginning with his Letter “Decentralization” (Oct. 23, 1971) and culminating with “The Great Escape” and others, Dad warned the disciples once and for all to break up their oversized colonies and to take the Revolution into all the world! And in that year of 1972, they began to explode throughout North America, Europe and parts of Asia, into 140 colonies in 40 countries with 2,400 full-time workers, two-thirds of them outside the U.S.!

A small pioneer team had already gone in July of 1971 to prepare the way for that massive exodus of 1972: Faith and her tiny team of only five other volunteers. It was a venture of faith, motivated by love and in obedience to God’s commandment to “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

The BBC “Man Alive” program had filmed a television special of some of the colonies in America called “The Jesus Trip”. When the COG found out that they were going to be on the air in London on July 7th, they knew someone had to be there for the showing. If it was to be anything like “First Tuesday” had been, they knew it would open England wide up to God’s Revolution!

July 2nd, the European team was formed and told that they needed to be in England in five days! Faith had just arrived at the Zion, Texas, colony from the Louisiana Festival of Life. Someone said, “The London team is leaving. Are you ready yet?” “They’re leaving?” she asked. “Who’s going?” And before she knew it, she was in New York City buying one-way tickets on a cheap charter flight across the Atlantic.

On the night of July 4th, Faith was on her way with Jonas, Dutch Benjamin and his wife Miriam, to be followed the next day by Apollos and his new wife Lois. They were so ignorant of international travel that they almost didn’t even get into England, having a hard time proving financial responsibility, that they could provide for themselves while there and then pay their way back. Faith later said, “Only God could have picked and used such a crazy group!”

Arriving in London, they went to the only place they knew in England, a “bed and breakfast” boarding house where Dad and Maria had stayed a couple of months before. Besides a fleeting acquaintance with the BBC film crew, they didn’t have one friend. “All we had was the Spirit and Love of God,” Faith said. “What else do you need?”

“The first people I called when we arrived was BBC television. I said, ‘This is Faith from the Children of God. We’re in England. We wanted to let you know we were here because you came and filmed us in America.”

The documentary was to be shown the following night, and the director arranged to have a taxi pick up the little team and bring them to the studio to view it there. There was to be a panel discussion after the program and they wanted Faith to be on it with Lord Soper of the Church of England and other luminaries of England’s intellectual elite.

The film was favorable and fair at the beginning, showing disciples witnessing at the beach and a young boy weeping as he asked Jesus into his heart, but then it took on a biased slant, portraying them as such mindless robots that Benjamin couldn’t help speaking out, “That’s a lie! That’s a big lie!”—shocking some of the people in the studio.

Immediately after the film Lord Soper opened the panel discussion, accusing the Children of God of having “no theological underpinnings. They are pig-headed fundamentalists ... escapists and arrogant; they suffocate you with their preaching and perfervid (for all you non-intellectuals, that means “fervent”) evangelism.” And to Faith, “Oh, it just can’t be that simple! Go away with your simple rubbish! Why, the Bible is so complex! Theology is so complex!”

The other two panelists soon chimed in with their overeducated denunciations of the film, God, Jesus, “being a baby to go to Heaven,” and everything connected, or that they thought was connected with the Children of God.

“I felt so discouraged,” Faith wrote. “Surely we have taken on too big a task for us. The whole cause was at stake, because I knew that this interview was one of the reasons why God had brought us here.

“I wasn’t a professional debater and I didn’t have a chance against them, so I just put it in the Lord’s hands and He took care of us! When they asked me a question, I just looked right into the camera and spoke to the young people who were watching the show. I forgot all about the people sitting around me and I just spoke right to the young people. I told them, ‘We want you to know that we love you! Jesus loves you young people of Britain!’ I just told them about the Gospel!”

Despite Faith’s radiant testimony, it looked as if they were defeated almost before they had even started in England, the show seemed to cast them in such a bad light. They wrote in their log:

“That night we went to bed a little sad, thinking of all the people we had urged to watch the program. However, we have a saying: ‘God gets some of His greatest victories out of seeming defeat’.” And the next morning their log read: “We woke up to the sound of the phone and Mama Helen (the boarding house proprietress) running upstairs to tell us it was for Faith. And that’s how it was the whole morning—people calling up all the time to congratulate us and let us know how glad they were that the Jesus movement had come to England!”

They had calls from the President of the Baptist Churches of England, the son of the Director of the Billy Graham Association in England, and many other people. They said Lord Soper had creamed Billy Graham when he was there a few years before, and had dealt similarly with Dave Wilkerson. But Faith had wiped the floor with him! An Anglican Bishop later apologized to Faith for Soper’s behavior and told her that he had never heard such a powerful speech for Jesus on British television.

“I certainly couldn’t take credit for it myself,” Faith said, “so I told him, ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings God has ordained strength’!” (Psalm 8:2.) They put her on television with the great Lord Soper and he couldn’t nail her on a single issue because she just turned to the camera and gave the people the simple message of the Love of Jesus—the one thing Soper and his cronies weren’t prepared for—and it blew them away. The people phoning in said it was like David with Goliath!

From there on, things started to explode. It seemed as if every church in England wanted them to come to sing, preach, and give testimonies, and they went to any who would invite them. They would bring along the First Tuesday NBC film and it was mightily used to give the message of their sample.

As a result of the NBC First Tuesday film, these meetings would always lead to a barrage of questions, and sometimes direct confrontations. Faith would sock it to them: “The true Children of God are coming to you with the true message of God, and we’re challenging you to help us start this Jesus Revolution in England that will spread across all of Europe and into all the world! But we’ve got to obey the message of Jesus Christ, and it’s got to be 100% total discipleship and commitment.”

The television show and other media publicity, along with material help from different church groups, was the formal introduction which helped open the door to England, but it took the personal touch, the personal “Jesus loves you” to open the doors of the kids’ hearts to God’s message. Every day they were at Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, singing their hearts out.

Just the day after their arrival, they were at Trafalgar Square singing to a few people, but when the crowds began to press in to see what was going on, Apollos began jumping up and down with his guitar, ad libbing to the music, while the others joined hands and danced. Things like that just weren’t allowed in those public places, but usually the kind Bobbies looked the other way—until the crowds grew to several hundred, and then they would put a stop to it.

However, after about three weeks, the little team had become infamous, and one afternoon as Apollos and the boys showed up at the square, two Bobbies stepped in front of them and escorted them to a notice on the wall prohibiting just such things as they had been doing. One of the Bobbies pointed to it and said, “Read this!” Then the other added, “Read this. You’re allowed only two warnings, then we arrest you; you’ve just had them both!”

Undaunted, they continued their witnessing, singing and dancing on other streets, and the Lord rewarded their tireless efforts. Only two weeks after their arrival in London, they won their first disciple, French Joseph. He spoke so little English that for weeks he thought their exuberant “Amen’s!” were “Hey, man!” They weren’t able to bring Joseph into their boarding house because the old Polish landlady was so strict about hippies, so Jonas had to sleep out in St. James Park with him every night. But the Lord answered their prayers and rewarded them with help—from a surprising source.

Of all the places that God should choose to help them in a concrete way, to really take an interest in them and house them and supply many of their needs, He used the old London City Mission, the most staid, established, fundamental evangelical mission in England. Though they looked at the COG in much the same way as Fred Jordan had, the Director really wanted to help, and his workers said they had never seen him work so fast on anything. His attitude was, “Will you have a car?” (and they donated one); “Will this place in the country be suitable?” (and they came up with two places—a country cottage in Horsmonden and the Bermondsey City Mission in London).

PIONEERING HOLLAND

It was right after this opening that Ho and three more reinforcements arrived. There was enough work in England to keep them busy for years to come, but God wouldn’t let them stop there or slow down. Once He got them started, He just kept pushing them into all the world! This time He used four expired visas to do it. The London team had only ten older brothers and five new disciples when, on the fourth of August, Jonas, French Joseph, Ben and Miriam took the first leap to Holland and the European continent, followed a few days later by Faith.

Having no other friends in Holland, they stayed the first night with relatives of Ben and Miriam, but the next day found them in Amsterdam’s Vondel Park, at the time a haven for young travelers from all over Europe to meet, sell their drugs, and share their experiences. Most of the hippies there were hardcore, as the Dutch government was providing their medical care, giving them cheap housing in abandoned factories, and even subsidizing their drugs.

Miriam writes: “We found them lying around, playing their instruments, sleeping, or just watching each other. All we could think of to do was to sit down and start singing—just four of us in a large park, but God was with us. We soon had a big crowd around us and kids break-ing away from the other circle of onlookers to sit down with us and play their flutes, sing and clap with us. It was unbelievable how quickly they responded! Looking around during an interval while Jonas tuned his guitar, we saw several girls crying, and in that little time we took their hands, showed them Revelation 3:20, and prayed with them to receive Jesus.”

They witnessed there at Vondel Park all afternoon, then at Dam Square until late in the evening. At night they took advantage of one of the “sleep-ins,” really just an old factory where you could put your sleeping bag down for about 60 American cents. There were warning signs everywhere about thieves and pickpockets, and a little notice about bad acid that someone was selling. All night long there was talking, music, and people coming and going.

Amsterdam was a very different situation from London; there was no big explosion on television or in the press. Miriam writes again:

That first summer month of August, we spent all our afternoons singing and witnessing on Dam Square in the center of Amsterdam. The five of us often held a crowd of hundreds for up to five and six hours with songs, impromptu skits, and Gypsy dances hand in hand, leading the crowds in circles that stretched to cover all of Dam Square as everyone joined in.

We slept in the Park and in the sleep-ins until a hotel owner gave us our first place—an attic in the roof of his hotel right off Dam Square. The attic became quite a refuge for us. It had a full-scale restaurant kitchen that we began to put to use feeding all the people we’d meet each day. Every night we’d sneak 30 to 40 people up the stairs with us after witnessing; we always had some food to share and would continue to witness to them there. Nearly everyone who needed a sleeping place was welcome to stay.

The Lord provided every step of the way. When we needed a phone to keep in contact with all the people we were witnessing to, He led us to Elsa, an aristocratic, eccentric old lady whose house adjoined Vondel Park. She let us use her office phone for our base of operation, even letting some of us sleep there and use a little empty room for storage.

During this time we had no place for training new disciples, so Faith would periodically take the ferry to London with a group of new disciples to a training colony that the brethren had established in Horsmonden. It got to be such a regular run that the English customs officials became suspicious of all her entry stamps, and she joked that they would soon need their own private ship to ferry disciples across.

After a while some of the hotel guests started to get upset about all the strange characters they would meet on the stairs, so one night the manager paid us a visit and, finding wall-to-wall people, ordered us out of the hotel. So it was back to the Park again.

The day we heard we were losing the attic of the hotel, we were visiting some Christian friends. We all got on our knees and cried out to the Lord to provide a place for us. Our friends remembered a real estate dealer who has houses in Amsterdam, so we went to visit him and shared with him about our work. He first said he didn’t have any housing for us, but we told him that God had given us a promise, so we knew there must be something. He suddenly looked at us again and said that he had a little house for us by the Leidseplein, right in the center of Amsterdam!

That was also the beginning of our first publishing venture in Amsterdam, as this same man owned a Christian publishing house. He printed our Revolutionary Classbook, The Hem of His Garment and Streams That Never Run Dry for our worldwide COG. In return, we illustrated the Dutch edition of Ed Plowman’s book, The Jesus Movement, with action shots of our wit-nessing and singing to kids everywhere. We also added a final chapter on the Children of God in Holland, which left Mr. Plowman, a writer for Christianity Today and one of our staunchest critics, wondering how it got there.

They went into these countries and God just led them to the right people and places. They would meet someone or end up in a situation that provided free publicity for the message, or a house, a car, a meal, a night’s lodging, or an invitation to another country. One of these opportune situations took place three weeks after they arrived in Amsterdam: The Congress of Evan-gelism, one of the most important Christian events there that year!

The program consisted of testimonies from converted pop singers and actors, followed by a narrated slide show. About 20 slides were shown of people preaching in churches or in panel discussions, but the actual witnessing pictures were of the Children of God in Trafalgar Square, London, with Bibles open, sharing the Word of God with the many kids there.

From this congress, the message spread that the Revolution for Jesus was in Europe, and they received invitations from many other cities and countries from young European pastors. And from Amsterdam, the mecca of international youth, with its lure of easy drugs and many pleasures, they won the disciples who spoke the languages of these countries and who helped them to enter these open doors and the hearts of Europe’s youth.

REACHING GERMANY

Germany was their next venture, and again Faith reports:

Our pioneering of Germany actually began in September 1971, as a result of our meeting with Hans, the German publisher of a big Christian printing company. I met him one day in London, and we were immediately drawn to each other. He was so open and receptive to us and our message, and we felt a real kindred spirit with him. We spent many hours together, sharing our testimonies and lives, and pouring the new wine into his ready new bottle. He told me later that when he returned to Germany after his meeting with us, both he and his wife had had one of the most precious experiences with the Lord—the baptism of the Holy Spirit!

He was so influenced by our meeting, to seek the Lord for a greater spiritual walk that he said he almost gave up his publishing business. He didn’t care about anything but finding out more about us and our way of life. But he didn’t quit because he was just putting out a book called Jesus Kommt (Jesus Is Coming) about the new Jesus Revolution that was exploding in America at the time. We were like the answer to his prayers, and he pleaded with us to go to Germany to help advertise the book—and also the Word of God! It certainly seemed like the Lord’s open door for us, so on September 20, we were off again.

This time I took Apollos, Lois, American Gideon, English Daniel, and German Lukas, with only the latter two speaking German. As soon as we got off the train in Dusseldorf we were hit with the spirit of the area, the Ruhrgebeit, with its hard, cold industrial cities. It is located right in the center of the country, the most densely populated area in Europe, with 15 million people—the same as New York City. It was the ideal place to start our work, since it hadn’t been hit with the message or any type of Jesus People at all.

The young people were our main target there, as many were trapped by dope, espe-cially morphine and heroin, but most were caught in the middle between trying to earn a living in the system and following the radical life of Marxist communism. The government officials told us that the situation was hopeless. There was not one drug center to help the young people in all of the Ruhr area! I said, “Well, we’re going to do something about it! We’re going to help these kids right here.” They told us it was impossible, but we went right ahead because we had to identify with the people we loved and were trying to help, those we wanted to reach, those no one else could or would reach.

Our German hosts really went out of their way to help us get started. Another of Hans’ friends, the director of the local YMCA, also offered us his services. The Essen YMCA was one of the most modern I had ever seen, like a big hotel/youth club combined, but it was almost totally empty. He showed us around the huge building with accommodations for hundreds, saying that most of the rooms were at our disposal to use as we saw fit—for meetings, Bible studies, dining rooms—anything to bring the youth off the streets. We were overwhelmed!

But as we tried to decide which rooms to use, we realized that most of them were so clean, polished, huge, well furnished and almost hospital-like that we couldn’t feel comfortable in them. But the Lord had the answer! We went down to the cellar to see the last rooms, and there it was! It was a small, dark room, but with a few lamps, couches, carpets and Children of God with guitars and Bibles, it would be just perfect! And that little room soon became “home” to us and to many friends and visitors who came down to see us nightly.

And did we have a full house! We spent the first few nights there going out into the streets and clubs, witnessing, singing, and sharing with the young in their own territory. But as they got to know us and where they could find us, our little cellar was literally packed out every night! We were usually down there until early morning; then we would drag ourselves up to our rooms at the YMCA for a rest before the next day’s battles.

It was the best reception we had had anywhere, and the people in the YMCA were just thrilled to have some real Jesus People living with them. Although our numbers grew to over 10 people living right there in the YMCA at their expense, still their hospitality didn’t seem to waver.

The first girl who came to our Kellar there in Essen was a morphine addict named Renata, and she became a real testimony to all the government officials who told us “There’s no solution”. When we first met her, her arms looked like pin cushions, they were full of needle marks. She had a difficult time at first trying to kick the morphine habit, even though she had prayed with us and received Jesus and asked Him to help her. But the Lord really worked in her and gave her some dreams that were so real that she gave up the drugs immediately. And then the Lord used her testimony to stop the mouths of many doubters and hecklers in our meetings. She became living proof that we were there to do what they could not do: Give the young people an answer and hope for their lives!

We had been in Germany for only one week and had just begun to get adjusted to the whole situation when we were invited to the Herne Pop Festival, a big Jesus music festival that the churches were sponsoring. A few days before the festival, Hans took us to a big press conference so that we could give them the true, first-hand picture of the Jesus Revolution.

Hans, Lukas and I walked into the middle of this scene–and there we were, the stars of the Jesus Revolution, standing at the back of the room in our old clothes, with no preplanned speeches at all! There were representatives of the largest presses and some of the largest magazines in Germany, but they all turned around when we walked in and said, “Ah, the Children of God are here!” Hans told us that the only reason the press went to the meeting at all was because they had been told that we would be there. And I didn’t even know a thing about it. It was a complete surprise to me!

I really felt like a stranger in a strange land among all those people. The church repre-sentatives were supposed to explain the pop festival to the press and then answer their ques-tions about the Jesus Revolution, but they didn’t know the first thing about it! The press kept firing critical questions at them like, “Why is the church using the Jesus People to get publicity for the churches? Is it to fill them up again?”

When question after question came from the press, not about their pop festival, but about the Jesus Revolution, about which the clergy knew nothing and therefore could not an-swer, I was sitting in my chair about ready to explode! Every once in a while a journalist would say, “Why don’t you let the Children of God speak for themselves?

Then finally they said, “Faith, would you please stand up?” That was all I needed. I stood up and said, “I want you to know that we love you!” to the press, and it shocked them. It brought a hush to the room. You see, the church was trying to capitalize on the Jesus Revolution, and the news media saw right through it. “But the Jesus Revolution started on the outside, not from the inside of the churches,” one newsman said. They were trying to use the pop festival as a sort of publicity stunt and were trying to jump on the band wagon.

Then the Spirit anointed us and we told them what the Jesus Revolution was really all about. They asked me what I thought their country needed, and I replied, “It needs a sample, not just a sermon. The sample of the Love of Jesus Christ is lasting, not a once-a-year pop festival.” I ended the conference by saying to them, “We will pray for all the press that you will meet Jesus, and then you will know what the Jesus Revolution is all about.” They wrote about it for weeks to come, and little did I realize what an impact it was going to have on our work in Germany!

A few days later came the actual Jesus pop festival, where we exploded under the anointing of the Spirit! The German press and television didn’t even begin filming until we walked on to the stage—which shows how interested they were in the actual festival. What they were really interested in were the representatives of the Jesus Revolution, and 20 or 30 of them fol-lowed us around everywhere we went. They took pictures and acted like we were the stars of the whole show and as if nothing else mattered but us.

We really declared our allegiance to the Lord and our love for the youth at the festival. And, surprisingly enough, when I exploded with the true message, the kids applauded and cheered. And during those first weeks after the Herne Festival, we had articles in the papers every day, sometimes a few a day, and God really got His message out!

The following are excerpts from some of these articles in the “West Deutscher Allgemeine Zeitung,” “Rheinische Post,” and “Wesfalische Rundschau”:

At the crescendo of the Protestant Folk Pop Festival in Herne’s largest auditorium, 3,000 listeners from all over Federal Germany there for the Protestant Youth Day, answered with deafening whistles and clapping. Then a solitary, dainty young woman with attractive flowing hair, lifting her right hand, proclaimed the Revolution: “It’s a Revolution—for Jesus!”

Faith, founder of some of the 30 new Jesus movement colonies in America and a main attraction of the Youth Day in Herne, had only five minutes to proclaim her joyful message about Jesus. But what the charming 21-year-old girl from California with the long blonde hair and open smile achieved Saturday in the Herne Sports Auditorium was what two internationally-known bands had tried to do, unsuccessfully, beforehand.

While the song group offered “Walk and Talk with Jesus” to a clapping march beat, Faith imploringly called, “Jesus is not a trip, but the truth!”

In the YMCA cellar there are already 20 young people from Essen who have joined the “Family of the Jesus People”. Faith says, “We want to show the young people that Jesus is not a fairy tale figure, and we want to show them the right way to the true life.” The movement has attracted young people who don’t go to church and who, in search of a better world, have found Jesus. ... Evangelist Billy Graham reminds his “competition”: “Jesus worked with His hands and was certainly not a loafer.” But the Children of God sing on, undaunted, “You gotta be a baby to go to Heaven!”

“Jesus is better than any joint,” laughs and calls Renata, who for one week has been a member of the Jesus movement. For three years she had fixed (drugs) and had lived a life of confusion, until she met the Children of God. She was then set free from drugs and has found a new life in Jesus.

Faith said, “We want to show the young people that we love them, that Jesus loves them. We want to prove to them the reality of this love, that it’s not just tradition or religion, but real love. It’s just the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of God. He is showing the young people a way out of the masses, out of this sick world.”

They sing, “All is clear (good) with Jesus…” One can laugh at all of this, or can just let it be. But they are no longer on the way to Katmandu, the Mecca of the hashers and hippies. They are now on the way to Bethlehem.

“So that’s the way we started there in Germany,” continues Faith, “and through that initial publicity we rode the wave of popularity for quite some time. The Lord took us right to the top of the Lutheran Church, first going to little town hall meetings, YMCAs, Christian groups, and finally speaking with the Bishop of the Lutheran Church himself, the equivalent of the pope. But it was as a result of those first little meetings that we won the German disciples who helped us reach the rest of the country.

“I spent more time in Germany, actually pioneering myself, than I had spent in any other place. I was there for two months, travelling from city to city and making different contacts which were to help the work there in the future. But then it was time for me to leave, this time to scout out the Canary Islands and Sweden.

“As you know, I’m a pioneer, and a pioneer can’t stay around too long in one place, so off I went and left Apollos, a 19-year-old boy, to establish the work in Germany. I’ll never forget the horrified look in his eyes when I told him I was leaving. I said, ‘Brother, don’t tell me you don’t have the faith, because I’m leaving you here.’ And he was really in tears. He said, ‘But I don’t know anything!’ I said, ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know anything! All you need is faith, because you’re going to be here, and you do have the faith!’ And he did! He helped to establish the work in Germany, along with wife Lois; they won our friends and helpers, they and a few others, and they gave it the groundwork for the future revolutions that were to take place there. We may have made some mistakes, but we did it, and we’re here! A whole revolution is in Germany now, and the Lord did it! Hallelujah!”