LOL...love that explanation...if the "sheep is lost" just automatically count him as a member until the age would be 110...logic would be that if there is no contact they should be taken off membership rolls and their records removed from the "active" file after a year or so.
That's what most Christian churches do. 110? LOL!
Your mention of sheep reminds me of one of the ways the occultist Joey Smith pretended to find “hidden Spanish gold”
Joey Smith would injure a sheep and make it bleed...then he would make it walk over the fields and hills... bleeding out all the way...until it was exhausted and couldnt go any further...
Then he would declare that the gold was at the spot that all the blood was pouring and then dig pretending to look for the “gold”...
Of course when no gold was found..either it was the sheep’s fault....or the “faith” of the seeker who paid Joey Smith for his “services” was not lacking...or “spirits” had taken the gold “lower”...
It was never the fraud Joey Smith’s fault...
(The sheep would usual die for its “faults”)
a type and shadow of what happened to the later followers of Joey Smith..