And he said, you know, that's the way
the Holy Ghost works with us.
We commit ourselves to serve the Lord Jesus
Christ, and as long as we're in the
tunnel, it's all right.
But when we start to go to the
right, we get a negative feedback.
The peace is disturbed.
We start to go down, oh, we get
a negative feedback.
And he wants to hold us there.
Now he said, you've got to make a
decision.
You've got three invitations.
So what you do when you get to
California is this.
You take the first letter, forget about the
others.
You read that letter, you look at it,
you examine it, you study it, you examine
your heart.
And he said, you know, that's the way
the Holy Ghost works with us.
We commit ourselves to serve the Lord Jesus
Christ, and as long as we're in the
tunnel, it's all right.
But when we start to go to the
right, we get a negative feedback.
The peace is disturbed.
We start to go down, oh, we get
a negative feedback.
And he wants to hold us there.
Now he said, you've got to make a
decision.
You've got three invitations.
So what you do when you get to
California is this.
You take the first letter, forget about the
others.
You read that letter, you look at it,
you examine it, you study it, you examine
your heart.
And if it's according to the word of
God, and if they've asked you to do
it, and you think you could do it,
that's a lot of things.
But you can't do it if you don't
have peace about it.
And so he said, if you don't feel
that you have peace, you say, now, Lord,
I've got to make a decision.
I kept these people waiting long enough.
And he said, you know what I'd do,
Father?
I'd just take a coin up at the
end of your arm, and you'd say, now,
Heavenly Father, I've got to make a decision.
I might as well do it sooner or
later.
I'm going to drop this coin.
And when this coin hits the desk, I
said, would it mind if I let it
hit the floor?
He said, when that coin hits the floor,
if you don't have peace to say yes,
you've got to say no.
Because you've got to let the peace of
God referee and arbitrate and umpire.
And then he said, you're either going to
say yes, if you say yes to that
one, or you say no to the other
two.
And if you say no to that one,
then write a letter, and that's finished.
Then take the next one.
Well, when I got to California, I got
the paper and the pen, and I got
my coin, and I thought it over, and
I dropped it.
And I wrote, dear Stacy, I'm awfully sorry,
but I can't.
Put it up.
Dear hell, I'm awfully sorry, but I can't.
Betray and umpire.
And then he said, you're either going to
say yes, if you say yes to that
one, or you say no to the other
two.
And if you say no to that one,
then write a letter, and that's finished.
Then take the next one.
Well, when I got to California, I got
the paper and the pen, and I got
my coin, and I thought it over, and
I dropped it.
And I wrote, dear Stacy, I'm awfully sorry,
but I can't.
Put it up.
Dear hell, I'm awfully sorry, but I can't.
And the other letter.
And within a half an hour, I didn't
have three opportunities.
I had three letters and no opportunity, because
I didn't have peace to say yes about
any of them.
Do you understand what I'm talking about?
Follow me.
Well, how?
He wired you for guidance.
The Holy Spirit will guide you.
Let the peace of God rule in your
heart.
He wants you to follow him.
And the manner by which you're going to
do it is the peace of God.
Then when the invitation came to candidate at
the Tabernacle, I was the fellow that said,
I'll tell you one thing, I'll never go
back into the pastorate.
I know the Lord wants to use me
in Bible conference ministry.
And then I said, but if I ever
do, there's one place I'll not go, and
that's New York.
Well, friend, don't talk like that, because you're
just making the Lord have to do things
to set you straight.
And the invitation came and the responsibility came,
and that's where he had me spend ten
wonderful years, difficult years, but ten years.
I'm grateful for them.
What I'm pointing out to you is this,
that he said, follow me.
That means that you're committed to do his
will, irrespective of whether it's seemingly to your
advantage or to your career.
I remember one of the men said, you
know, I just don't understand you.
You accepted the call to New York.
I thought you had better sense than to
do a thing like that.
I said, I really have.
But I have a heart that says I've
got to do what the Lord told me
to do, and he's told me to go,
and I don't have any choice about it.
If I followed my head, I'd know what
to do, but my heart's the thing I've
got to obey.
I've got to follow him.
And this is correct.
Let the peace of God rule in your
mind.
Follow me.
Obey me.
Now, does what's this mean in respect to
mission?
Well, he said, as you are going into
all the world, preach the gospel, teaching them,
and lo, I am with you always.
Christ has committed himself to you.
That's the commitment I'm talking about, to the
degree to which you will follow him and
seek his mind and his will and the
fulfilling of his purpose, the Lord Jesus Christ
has committed himself to you, to live his
life in you, to be your wisdom, to
be your grace, to be your love, to
be your power, to be everything you're not.
But if you make the plan and you
make the decision and you set the course,
then you have to provide the power and
you have to provide the wisdom and you
have to provide the grace and the love
because he has committed himself to you only
on the basis of your following him, on
your basis of your going where he wants
you to go.
Now, what about this matter of getting the
gospel out to the ends of the earth?
You said you've already said the commandment isn't
to go, no, the commandment is to follow,
to follow.
And consequently, if you are prepared tonight to
say, Lord Jesus, I will follow thee, then,
as far as I'm concerned, we're not going
to have a shortage of missionaries on the
field.
There won't be a shortage.
There'll be enough that will go.
The reason that they're not going in the
quantity that we need for the marvelous opportunities
that God has given us.
Twenty years ago, we were talking about closed
doors.
We don't have closed doors today.
The only thing we have is closed stations
with open doors because we have the opportunity.
What we need is the people that are
going to follow the Lord.
I believe the Lord has every station filled
and every opportunity man.
Why aren't they?
Because people have failed to understand that by
their definition as Christians are committed to follow
Christ.
And if he has his way, every station,
I drove by the stations in Upper Volta.
This station was closed.
The next one was closed.
That one was closed.
And my heart ached because I just do
not believe maybe one of them should have
been closed because the people had moved from
the area.
But the others never should have been closed.
Why weren't they fully banded and staffed?
That is only one answer.
His people were not hearing his voice and
following him.
Perhaps it's because they were waiting for some
call to go instead of a command to
follow, to follow him.
Let me illustrate how God works.
Many years ago in Toronto, Canada, there was
a young man by the name of Tommy
Titcom.
And he learned of a Bible Institute down
on the hillside off of the Hudson River
at Nyack.
And he had a mother to support, so
he came down only for one semester or
two.
And he was there under Dr. Simpson.
He went to Dr. Simpson and he said,
Look, I want to go to Nigeria, to
West Africa.
And just about that time, the alliance had
committed itself very heavily to the Congo, and
there wasn't any possibility of it.
Then he had to go back home.
He had to go back to work in
Toronto and take care of his mother and
his family.
And he replied to the mission, and the
mission said, Sorry, we can't take you.
You aren't well enough educated.
You're far too small.
You're far too frail.
You have a mother that's dependent upon you.
You're just not missionary material at all.
And we can't take you.
Well, he could have gone back home and
taken a job, but you see, the Spirit
of God had burdened him for West Africa.
And he was following the Lord.
And he wasn't following the dictates and the
decisions of the board.
He was following the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he knew that the mission working there
was the Sudan Interior Mission, and so there
wasn't any question in his mind.
They had to take him.
So he arranged for his mother to be
cared for.
He arranged to get his outfit in his
passage.
He carried his whole outfit in one little
suitcase.
And he arrived in West Africa, and he
went up to where the whole staff was
having a field conference.
The whole staff consisted of Dr. Stirrup.
He represented 100% of the missionaries, so
when Tommy came, it just doubled the entire
staff.
And so they had a field conference, and
they decided that it wasn't right for one
tribe to have half all the missionaries, so
they divided half the missionaries, of which there
was Tommy.
And Tommy was to go out and open
the work in the Yagba area.
So he picked up his outfit and carried
it on his back and started off, walking
down the jungle path until he came to
Yagba area territories where the paramount chief was.
Now, he knew he had arrived because strung
across the path were human skulls.
And any way you went through that aperture
into the village, those skulls were going to
rattle.
And so he gave them a little clout
and went on through, walked into the village,
saw the chief, threw down his bundle, and
he said, where am I going to stay?
Well, they were too surprised to kill him
and eat him right then.
They thought if they had him there, they
could make a meal later.
And so they pointed and said, well, go
over and stay with that old widow.
She's got a place.
So he went over and slept on her
husband's grave.
That's where he put his blanket.
And he stayed there.
And he ate, and he knew sometimes what
he ate.
He took Paul very literally, asked no questions
for conscience sake because it may have been
somebody's cousin that they were eating.
And he was very careful about that.
And he started to preach.
And they said, you can't preach here.
We won't listen to that stuff.
And the witch doctor got after him.
So Tommy, at night, as he learned the
language, would sneak out and up on the
hills overlooking the village down in the valley
there on the rocks.
And Tommy would go out and lean over
the rocks.
Now he was a frail little man, maybe
about five foot two or three.
And he had a high-pitched squeaky little
voice until he was there in Yagba territory.
And he would lay down on those rocks.
And then he would shout the gospel down
and filter through the...
And they didn't know what had happened.
Here was this voice coming.
It sounded like thunder.
Couldn't be that little peeled white man.
That's what they called him, Ian Belegby, little
peeled white man there.
It couldn't be him.
You see he had skin peeled off.
That's why it was like he was.
And so he would preach the gospel.
And he was over there and he didn't
talk like that.
God gave him a base voice.
And so here he was shouting the gospel
down.
And then one at a time these people
would sneak out.
By this time he built a little house
out the edge of the village.
And there at this village edge he had
this experience of having 11 other men, there
were 12 of them, that would meet together
for prayer in the morning.
But the witch doctor was very excited about
this, very angry.
And so he kept festering the people.
And so finally one day when they were
amidst the morning prayers they heard this dancing.
It was the death dance.
And he opened the shutter.
He didn't have glass.
And outside were all the people gathered.
All the men gathered in their regalia and
their markings that meant somebody was going to
die and going to be sacrificed, the evil
spirit.
And they were dancing around the hut.
Well they had a supply of water, they
had a supply of corn, they had a
little fuel.
And they just decided to extend the prayer
meeting because it didn't look too hospitable out
there.
And so they stayed there for 13 days.
For 13 days that witch doctor went up
and down railing at the people, screaming.
They were taking turns eating and sleeping.
And Tommy, Tommy said that on about the
eighth day when the men were getting a
little discouraged they could hear their names being
called.
And they knew what these men would do
if they had a chance.
They didn't know, as they later found out,
that they didn't need really to have worried.
Because afterwards the men said, you know who
were those figures in white that stood out
there that had those very white shining things
that kept us away when we wanted to
come at you?
Who were they?
The Lord Jesus appeared to Tommy during those
days and spoke to him and encouraged him
and told him that there was going to
be a great harvest in that village.
They waited until the 13th day and then
it was silent and they looked and saw
that the people had all gone up the
hill to pray to the evil spirit.
And Tommy said to his friends, now follow
me, do just what I tell you, come
with me.
And they went out of the house right
down to the center of the village and
stood under the spirit tree that was just
festooned with skull and waited there.
All this time they'd been singing a song
with a native tune, one of these death
dance tunes.
And after a while they came down from
the top of the mountain and came by
and saw the door open and the tracks
leading into the village and came rushing into
the village and there stood Tommy Tipcomb and
his 11 brethren and they were singing the
same tune but with Holy Ghost words, with
words God had given, but the same tune.
And Tommy was there standing in front of
them and worshiping Jesus and adoring him and
with the witch doctor at the head and
all the warriors coming with their drawn spears,
Tommy waited until they were just in front
of them where they could release the spears
and would reach them and he put up
his hand and said, Stop!
In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son
of God.
And it was as though a cable was
stretched across, men were leaning over it, they
lost their balance.
They stood back and Tommy kept singing, he
said, Do you like the song?
And the witch doctor ran and he said,
Listen, you be quiet.
They've listened to you for 13 days and
what have you done?
Nothing.
They've listened to you too long.
Do you want me to go on singing?
They said, Yes.
Then he said, Tell him to get away.
So the people said, You go away, we've
followed you long enough.
And Tommy began to sing to them the
gospel and God gave him the words.
And then they had prayer, and then he
preached, and then he went back home.
And the next morning when he got up,
he went out and there in the yard
were groups of 10 and 3 and 12
and families all sitting alone around in the
yard.
No one talking to the other, just little
groups.
And he said, What are you doing here?
And they said, We want your talk.
So he said to the near ones, Come
in.
And he talked with them and they wanted
to receive Jesus Christ.
And he pointed them to the Lord, led
them to the Lord.
And they went out the back door and
another group came in the front door.
And that went on until there were over
1,500 people.
The Spirit of God settled down on that
area.
It wasn't all by any means, but God
had given a great harvest.
It had gone from 12 to over 1
,500.
It went on, the church was built.
One day Tommy was working in the dispensary
and he reached up to get a bottle
of sulfuric acid and it slipped out of
his hand and it hit a shelf and
it broke and the raw sulfuric acid came
into his face and into his eyes.
He picked up some water, threw it in
his face, went in, laid down on the
bed, wrapped his head in a wet towel
and called one of the people to him
and said, Go to the next station, which
was about 40 miles away.
And the brother, the Christian brother, went as
fast as he could, but it was some
time before he got there and the other
missionary could get back.
But shortly after this happened, two of the
godly women came outside the door, outside the
window, and they started to pray.
And they prayed and they prayed and one
of them was there all the time, praying
and worshiping and praying.
When the missionary came from the other station,
Tommy was lying there.
He peeled it back.
He saw what the acid had done to
his face and to his eyes.
He couldn't see.
And he just lay down on the bed
and he took him in his arms and
he started to sob like a baby.
And Tommy said, Don't, don't sob.
Don't sob.
It's all right.
God's going to heal me.
Oh, Tommy, Tommy, your eyes are gone.
He says, God's going to heal me.
It's all right.
God's going to heal me.
How do you know, Tommy?
These two women have been praying ever since
it happened and God has told them he's
going to heal me.
He's going to make me well.
And a matter of time went on until
he could see daylight, a little bit of
light, and then he could see forms.
And when I traveled with him, the skin
that had been replaced, no sky.
The only thing about it, the new skin
that God gave on his eyelids and on
his cheeks, never tanned, just always stayed white,
never tanned, wasn't like the rest.
But his eyes, just as bright as could
be, clear as could be.
There came a time when there was a
scourge of smallpox.
It was just taking the people.
And so Tommy went to the Lord about
it and he said, Lord, what are we
going to do?
What are we going to do?
You see what's happening?
This epidemic is coming.
And he went out to the people and
he said, listen, God has told me that
he wants a testimony here.
Anyone who moves in on the compound will
not be affected by this disease.
Now that's a brave thing to do.
He didn't know what had happened.
But the people moved in.
Some did, some didn't.
But as this scourge went through the place,
there was not one person that had moved
his family and things onto the compound that
died from the disease.
There was a drought in that area.
They'd planted their corn once.
It had come up and it died.
They'd planted it a second time.
It had come up and died.
And they had to have food or else
everyone was going to be hungry.
There'd be great privation in death.
The Muslims had gone to their sacrifice.
The pagans had gone to their sacrifice.
And the elders of the little church now
came and said, Ian Blagby, what are we
going to do?
What are the Christians going to do?
What do you mean, what are we going
to do?
What are we going to do about the
drought, about the fact there's no rain?
They said, well, what's the scripture tell us?
And one of the elders says, it tells
us that Elijah was a man of like
passion and he prayed and it didn't rain
and he prayed and it rained.
He said, tell the drums that there's going
to be a meeting tonight in the church
to pray for rain.
That's all he needed.
And so the drums carried the message to
the believers together in the church.
But then the pagan drums went and the
Muslim drums went and they said, well, the
pagans have sacrificed to the evil spirits.
The Muslims have prayed to Allah and now
the believers are going, we'll see whose God
is God.
Donnie didn't know, but he did know that
the Lord Jesus said, you go and as
you're going, Lord, I'm with you always.
He didn't have any question about it when
he went into that church that night.
He said, these people had all brought their
great big rain hats.
That's right.
The outside aisles were filled with rain hats
and there wasn't a cloud in the sky
as big as your hand.
And they came to church to pray for
rain and they weren't going to get wet
going home.
They brought their rain hats.
He said, they started to sing.
They sang one song.
They sang a second song.
They had some prayer and then they heard
a patter on the roof.
And then they sang a third song, but
they couldn't finish it because they couldn't hear.
That tin roof rattled with rain until it
sounded like an inside of a drum.
They just couldn't.
And anyway, all they wanted to do was
praise the Lord because the rain had come.
I happened to be with Tommy just after
he'd come back.
He'd come home.
He'd been doing deputation work and he'd gone
back.
Well, it was his last trip to that
part of the world.
He'd gone around to the churches.
He'd seen the people and the day had
come when he was to leave to go
back to America.
He'd come in from preaching in the morning.
He'd had lunch with one of the missionaries.
He didn't know what was going to happen.
But when he came out from lunch, there
were over 50,000 people that were there.
They'd been walking for two or three days
from various villages because they were all coming
to see the Yimbo Egbi and bid him
goodbye because they wouldn't see him until they
met him at Jesus' feet.
And so there was a truck and they
had a little pulpit on it.
They had a chair and they had a
canopy over it.
He didn't know that was prepared.
And he got up on it and they
parted and he went out into the square
of the village near the front of the
church.
And there they were.
There were some of these old men that
had been dressed in war paint with 13
days dancing with their spears to call for
his blood.
Instead of seeing Tommy die, they'd received the
Lord Jesus Christ and had been faithful followers
of Christ for all these years.
And there was two of the men that
had been with him those 13 days in
that prayer meeting.
And there they were, over 50,000 people
who'd come in from all over the area
to see this little man that had walked
in under the skull strung across the path
and threw his bag down and said, where
am I going to stay?
And there they were.
And when the last message had been given
and the last testimony and the last embrace
of the last of the leading brothers, they
started the motor of the truck and it
slowly moved out.
And Tommy said, 50,000 voices lifted all
hail the power of Jesus.
Let angels prostrate fall.
Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him
Lord of all.
Oh dear friend, that's what we're talking about.
If you love me, keep my words.
If any man serve me, let him follow
me.
Tommy followed him.
The Lord Jesus is asking you to follow
him tonight.
He's asking you if you're prepared to just
follow him.
He isn't going to tell you where he'll
lead you.
He doesn't have to.
He's God.
What difference does it make where he leads
you?
Where he leads me, I will follow him.
Not because of where he leads me, but
because of who he is.
I'll follow him.
That's what we're talking about.
And he said, if you'll follow me, I'll
commit myself to you.
And I'll be with you.
I don't think what happened to Tommy Titcomb
is an unusual chapter.
I brought these things to you so that
you can see the implications of what it
means when Jesus Christ is with you.
Oh, he isn't going to do the same
for everyone, perhaps for you.
But he's the same Jesus.
And he's able to do exceeding abundantly above
all we can ask or think.
Now the question tonight is, do you love
him?
And will you follow him?
If you love him, you'll follow him.
If you follow him, then you do love
him.
Let's bow our heads and close our eyes.
I'm particularly asking tonight for the young men
and the young women under 25, 28, who
will say, yes, I do love Jesus Christ.
I've been washed in his blood.
I've been born of the Spirit.
And I know I belong to him.
But tonight, I want to tell the Lord
Jesus, perhaps for the first time, that I
will follow him as far as he leads
me and wherever he leads me.
And I want to slip my hand into
his hand and I want to start going
with him.
And if he wants me to go out
to the ends of the earth, I'm willing
to go.
I'm ready to go.
And more than willing and ready, I'm going
to start going.
I'm going to start going.
And I'll just let the Lord show me
where and when and how soon.
But I'm going to follow Christ.
In a new way tonight, I want the
Lord Jesus to know that that's what it
means to love him, to follow him.