The Children of God

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!”