I saw a picture of a group of
people riding horses.
The horses were answering questions.
And I saw a boat.
The group of people riding horses boarded the
boat.
I saw some fire in the chimney of
the boat.
But there was no one on board.
But when I asked God, God clearly told
me that some of you were already prepared.
You were already prepared, like a horse.
Some people were going to leave the boat.
I saw the boat was going outside.
The fire of the boat represented the fire
of the Holy Spirit.
It was very fiery.
And some people were already prepared.
Like a horse, ready to set off.
But there was still no one on board.
But when I looked at the picture again,
I saw that someone was going to ride
the boat.
That someone, or a very stupid person, was
going to ride the boat and leave.
He had a picture of many people riding
horses.
And the horses are ready to go somewhere.
And these people are ready to go on
board a ship.
And there is a chimney on the ship,
which is burning because there is a great
fire.
And there is also, there is not yet,
but there will be a captain to guide
the ship.
And he believes this means that there are
many people ready, already in this church, who
are ready to go.
And they are very happy to do that.
And he believes that possibly the captain may
be somebody.
He doesn't look very clever.
1 Corinthians 1, verse 27.
No, we start at 26.
Brothers, think of what you were when you
were called.
Not many of you were wise by human
standards.
Not many were influential.
Not many were of noble birth.
I always remember that there was a queen
of one of the Netherlands countries who used
to say, thank God for the M, because
it doesn't say not any were wise by
human standards.
Not any were influential.
Not any were of noble birth.
It just says not many.
So if you are clever, and you have
been to college, if you have some influence
in this world, and if you come from
a good family, the good news is you
can go to heaven.
The other news is you're going to be
in the minority.
However, most of us,
when we are looking for leaders, or future
leaders, we'll choose to invest in those that
appear to be wise, or influential, or a
good family.
And we see here that God has actually
chosen the other ones.
I have some friends in UK, and they're
always talking about the people they're praying for,
you know.
And they say, wouldn't it be wonderful if
Ken came to Christ?
He's got such influence.
And, you know, because he's high in finances
or something.
And I would say, yes, it would be
great if he came to Christ.
But God doesn't need his influence.
And you'll find that most churches or Christian
organizations throughout the world will target students.
I mean, hopefully, because they want the students
to know Christ.
But often it's because they believe that they
will have influential positions, and in the future
they may be able to influence their countries.
God doesn't need that.
He may use it, but he doesn't need
it.
He had his son born into the least
tribe with the wrong education and none of
the right qualifications.
Not of apparently noble birth, though he had
good ancestors, but he was born illegitimate.
God doesn't need what we think in order
to reach the world for Christ.
And I truly do believe that the quickest
way of reaching the world with the good
news of Jesus is through the poor.
I truly believe that.
You know what's happening in China right now?
It's probably the greatest revival that there's ever
been in any country ever in the history
of Christians.
There may be up to a hundred million
who now know Jesus in mainland China.
Never mind what politics they have or freedom
they don't have, the good news of Christ
is spreading more rapidly than in any nation
on the earth these days.
And how is it done?
Well, it sort of happens like this.
Before people come to know Jesus, they already
know that the possibility is actually being killed
and the probability is prison.
In fact, we know groups of people who
feel that they haven't been counted worthy because
they've only been in prison for three years
so far.
This is true.
So they've counted quite a cost when they
come to Christ.
So you hear about 16-year-old girls
or 17-year-olds and they come to
know Jesus and all they've got is a
third of a page of a copied out
bit of Bible.
And they leave their home and in this
home they only live on sweet potatoes and
they carry a few sweet potatoes with them
and their third of a page of Bible.
And if they take a bicycle with them
and if they take one more jacket or
one more clothes with them, they will not
have it by the time they get past
the next village because as they go they
leave their bit of Bible and their potatoes
have gone and they've given their coat away
and they've shared what they know of Him
which isn't very much, but it's much.
And two years later they come back to
their village and their parents didn't know if
they would ever see them again.
And they tell them of the hundreds, thousands,
the villages that have heard the Word of
Christ turned to Him.
The Holy Spirit's come.
The government officials have come to the Lord.
It's spread to the next village and the
next.
And the girls walk because they've got no
bicycle anymore.
Two years later they come back poor yet
making money rich, dying and yet we live
on.
That's why revival's happening in China.
And they've never been to a seminar.
They've never been to a worship service except
what they do in their family.
They don't have hymn books.
They sing scriptures.
But they give everything they have away.
And there was one man that I met
and when I met him his eyesight is
very poor but his face was shining.
And I asked him what happened and what
happened was that he was in the streets
telling about Jesus and he was told not
to do this.
But he said, I cannot not but speak
about my Lord.
So he went on speaking and they put
him in prison.
And I have many friends who've been in
prison or who are there now or who
have disappeared.
Many.
And so he ended up in prison and
they put him in a solitary cell which
was like a pigsty.
It just had a dirt floor.
And he was in there for over a
year in the dark.
And they just threw his food in on
the floor and that was also where he
went to the bathroom.
And so he ate off the floor which
was his toilet.
And when they finally released him his eyes
had suffered very greatly because of the dark.
And when they let him out he went
to a certain village and you know he's
just a very ordinary looking man.
He doesn't know how to preach a sermon
or anything.
He just knows Jesus.
And he spent his time in prison talking
to Jesus and singing a bit.
And when he came out of prison he
was so shiny that when he walked down
the street of the village and the city
people turned to Christ.
He didn't even open his mouth.
And I said to him, Will they arrest
you again?
And he laughed.
And he said, They regret arresting me before.
Because this happens so many times.
Those that have gone into prison come out
so shiny even if their bodies are broken.
Even if their eyes are poor.
And I met a blind woman who'd been
in prison for 23 years.
Suong Wing To's wife.
And he was very sick and he'd been
in prison for 27 years apart from his
wife not knowing if she was alive.
But his eyes and his face he sang
the song in English and Chinese four verses.
All the way my Savior leads me.
And his eyes were shining and he was
laughing.
He didn't think it was hard.
And when they asked him What was it
like in there all those years?
He said, Oh, it was a honeymoon with
Jesus.
So you see, you think it sounds hard
but it's not.
God hasn't chosen a harder way for some
people.
It's not true.
Sometimes people say, Oh, you know, poor Jackie
she's had to live the cross.
No.
Why would you think my life's harder than
yours?
It's probably the other way around.
One man's lot is no harder than another's.
God's not like that.
Will he not give grace for whatever it
is that he's chosen us for?
Whatever that is.
The difficult thing in this world is not
doing what he says.
And then you get sicked up by a
whale or something.
You know, you might as well.
That's how China is experiencing revival.
No visual aids.
No life tapes, changing tapes.
No video of the month for Christian magazines.
Just a few people who aren't very educated,
without microphones, who love their lives not unto
death.
That's it.
God has chosen the foolish things of the
world to shame the wise.
I went to England a few years ago
with one of our girls.
Her name is Afan.
And, well, in the eyes of the world,
and sometimes in mine, I'm sorry to tell
you, she's foolish.
I mean, she doesn't know how to do
things, you know.
She really doesn't know how to do things.
She doesn't know how to behave in company.
And she's not tactful.
She's loud.
Spiritually, she's very sensitive.
Naturally, she's awful to be around.
And I took her on this ministry trip
to England.
And we were in a...
It was for ministers.
Well, she gets up, you see.
And all our guys, I tell them, wherever...
You must prophesy wherever you go.
This is biblical.
So, get up and prophesy.
So, she got up and did her bit.
And, I couldn't translate her bit.
You know, because she couldn't speak any English.
And she said, there's something, something, something has
come between us and God.
And I couldn't get what it was.
So, I got her face out of the
mic, because she was shouting Chinese into it.
And, didn't think the pastors would understand that.
So, and I said to her, out of
the mic, what do you mean?
And she grabbed the mic and said loudly,
you know, you know.
And I said, what do you mean?
She said, you know, you know.
And I'm sweating by this time, you know,
because the, the prophecy is not going well.
Then she grabbed the scarf around my neck.
And she goes, you know.
And I thought she's trying to strangle me
in the middle.
You know, she says.
And, and, this went on for a few
minutes.
And finally I understood what she was saying.
It was just one of those difficult Chinese
words.
And, what she was saying was, there is
a veil in between us and the Lord.
And when the veil is taken away, so,
oh good, I got it.
But this was very embarrassing, you know, because
we've done this sort of loud, embarrassing demonstration
in front of all the pastors.
But she's always like that.
She's always like that.
She, she was on drugs for how many
years, I can't think.
And most of our women drug addicts, along
with their addiction, have had to do many
other things to get money for their drugs.
And she was very, although she's still strange
in the natural, she's very much changed from
what she was.
And, after the meeting with the pastors, we
invited the Holy Spirit to come.
And this is a bunch of pastors who
had not been very receptive historically to the
Spirit.
Up this girl goes.
She lays her hands on each pastor.
And God gives her one English word for
each one.
She doesn't speak English.
It was THE word.
One by one they cracked up.
Fell down.
And were visited mightily by the Holy Spirit,
which had never happened to them before.
And I just stood there in amazement.
And I think, you know, we really think
that it's our preaching that does it.
It's not.
It's the foolish things of the Lord.
Now when you, when you work with the
poor, you'll begin to understand this.
Because the way the poor hear things is
different from the way you hear things.
The poor will be able to hear the
Gospel very much more quickly than your kind
of person.
Because they can hear spiritually.
It's cold, as in the Psalms, deep to
deep.
And I'll explain sort of how it happens.
It's very amazing, this.
You see, in the West we have been
trained to approach people's minds and somehow we
think that we could convince somebody about Christ,
which you can't do.
Nobody comes to Christ through the mind.
Though, having come to Christ, our minds may
then be changed.
But we hear spiritually.
And I was in Japan once, and I
knew that historically it was very hard for
the Japanese to hear the Gospel.
So I said to the Lord, Please, will
you speak to them?
Because I don't think I can convince the
Japanese.
And I was at one of these awful
preaches, you know, where they make people eat
dinner first, which is not a good idea.
Because, you know, everybody's going ...
So there was this big fat green grocer
there, a fruit seller, and he went to
sleep after I'd started for about half a
minute he was asleep.
He slept through the whole thing.
And then he woke up.
And he went up to somebody.
This was after about half an hour.
He went up to somebody and he said,
I have to accept Christ now.
And this is what had happened.
He listened to me for 30 seconds and
he thought, Oh, I don't need to hear
that.
And he went to sleep.
And while he was asleep, Jesus came to
him and said, You need to believe in
me now.
So he woke up and he said, I
need to believe in Jesus now.
Now, this is what it means when it
says God is pleased to use the foolishness
of preaching.
People aren't saved because of the sermon.
They're saved despite it.
No, this is true.
When you hear the average testimony, you'll hear
nearly every single person will say, I don't
know what the preacher was saying, but I
found myself walking forward or tears running down
my cheeks.
Now, we think that we have to convince
and make four points, which will help.
Or maybe it's three points here.
But of course, the poor man cannot get
your point.
He doesn't know why there should be three.
And anyway, you can't do three A's in
Chinese.
But he can hear spiritual things.
He is foolish in the eyes of the
world, but he can hear spiritually.
I'll tell you how it works.
This is what we do in our addicts'
meetings.
This is very exciting.
And you'll begin to see how unfair the
whole thing is.
In our addicts' meetings, nearly all of our
people come to Christ in five minutes.
They walk in the door, and of course,
they've come to meet him.
But because their friend has changed, they want
to know Jesus too.
So it usually happens something like this.
They walk down a street, and addicts are
very thin, and they've bumped into a fat
person.
And they say, why are you so fat?
And the fat man says, Jesus.
And the...
Just a cultural thing.
And the thin man says, OK, I'll have
him.
Because they can't get fat, you see.
And...
Because they have to take drugs.
And so they say, OK, where do I
meet him?
And the fat man says, he's in the
walled city on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
So they would come into the walled city,
and they come to the door, and they
say, OK, where is he?
And one of our guys, like these three
brothers here, will introduce them to Christ.
This usually takes five minutes.
We don't explain anything first, by the way.
There's no point in explaining Christ.
It's better they could meet him.
And so we pray with them immediately.
No explanation.
I will not let people preach at them.
Their minds are blown.
But their spirit is calling.
So no preaching.
We pray with them.
And, of course, as we pray with them,
Jesus comes and touches them, and then we
say, will you believe he's God's son?
They say yes.
They've never heard that before, but they say
yes.
They don't ever so believe, but they want
to come and live with us.
So they say yes.
Which is all right, I think.
And then we say, well, will you believe
he died on the cross for you?
They've never heard that before, but they say
yes, because they want to come and live
with us.
They trust us, you see.
Which is how they accept him so quickly.
And then we say, you know, he rose
again, and they can understand that.
And then we pray with them.
Then we say, will you tell him you'd
like to follow him?
And they say yes.
We haven't talked much about sin yet, by
the way.
And then we say, the Holy Spirit will
come upon you, and he'll give you new
words to help you speak.
So this is how they come to Christ.
And it usually takes about three minutes, or
30 years.
You see, what I'm talking about is an
unfair bit.
Nowadays it takes three minutes.
But it's because they trust us, you see.
They know that we will share our house
and our lunch and our nights and our
free time.
That's why they come to our Jesus.
So it looks very quick.
But anyway, after they've come to Christ, we
then teach them to prophesy.
So we they've just come to know him,
and we say, okay, what did you hear
him say?
And then they'll tell you.
They don't know it's prophecy.
And then we get them to pray for
the sick.
They're still on drugs, by the way.
So, then, the most fun bit is the
Bible study.
Now you see, their minds are still blown.
Understand this.
We're not operating in the mind.
We're operating spiritually at this point.
We will work on the mind later.
But right now, we're doing spiritual things.
Now this is very easy with the poor.
And I never teach them Bible.
Because I trust that as they've come to
life through the Holy Spirit, they can hear.
So I get them to teach me Bible.
So anyway, they go to sleep in a
sermon, because they're, you know, they've got a
20-year drug addict habit.
And they're probably injecting six times a day.
So we go through Gospel stories.
We only ever do Gospels at this point.
I will not allow people to teach epistles.
So, they're completely new Christians.
And I want them to meet Jesus like
people met him.
So we do parables or miracles only.
These are addicts meetings.
We have them twice a week.
And this is to tell you that these
people are foolish.
Most of them have not been to school.
But they can hear deep and profound things.
And I'll give you two illustrations.
We always do the parable of the man
who found the treasure in the field and
sold everything.
And we do this twice a year.
And I only let people who've known Christ
less than four weeks answer the questions.
And I say to them, okay, who is
the one who sold everything he had?
And who is the treasure?
Okay, now they're all on drugs still.
One hundred percent of the time they will
answer this way.
Jesus sold everything he had and we are
the treasure.
Which of course is theologically correct in case
you thought you could buy Christ.
But you've never heard it that way around,
have you?
Because a man taught it to you.
They hear from the Spirit of God and
they know that he bought us.
They know that.
Then another time we were doing the resurrection
appearances of Jesus.
And there was this man who'd come to
know Jesus on a Wednesday.
And the awful thing is when they've come
to know Christ, they bring their friends.
And that's terrible.
I mean, it is.
You might not think it was awful, but
you know, it means we've got to find
more places for them to sleep.
Because we can't leave them outside.
So he bought his friend.
So this one of them has been a
Christian three days.
And the second one's been a Christian half
an hour.
And we were doing the resurrection of an
appearance of Jesus when he appeared to his
disciples in the room.
Well, they've read the thing out.
And then I said, OK, how did he
get into the room?
Well, one of them looked there and he
said, Oh, he didn't get in through the
door.
It's locked.
He got in through the wall.
I said, OK, how did he get in
through the wall?
Well, the half an hour one said, he's
a ghost.
And the three day one says, no, he's
not a ghost.
On Wednesday we did that he's got flesh
and bones.
OK, how'd he get in through the wall?
Well, we've got, by the way, about 80
addicts who've come to Christ, all waiting to
come and live with us.
And they're all on the edge of their
seats.
How'd he get in through the wall if
he's got a body?
Well, the three day one thought for a
bit and then he said, Fatlick!
Which means he's got magic power.
I said, OK.
Did he always have Fatlick?
Did he always have this magic power?
And he said, yeah, he always had it.
But before he died he never used it
on himself.
And I said, do we get Fatlick?
He said, yeah.
We get it when we believe in Jesus.
He says, for now it happens in our
hearts.
Later it'll happen in our body.
Well, I think that's quite good for three
days.
But he didn't get it from theological school.
In fact, I don't think he'd been to
school probably for more than two years in
his whole life.
It's a different wisdom.
It's God's secret wisdom which is revealed to
those who may be foolish men to confound
the wise.
God has chosen the weak things of the
world to shame the strong.
I walked down the street one day and
met the big gang leader and he I'd
been in Hong Kong that time I guess
about eight years and some of his former
gang members had come to Christ and he
couldn't understand it.
He couldn't understand why he used to control
about 20,000 people.
And he said to me, look, I'd really
like to give you some money.
I see you've got this miserable little room.
And it was a miserable room.
It was sort of eight feet by twelve,
just big enough for a ping pong table.
But it was filled with God's glory.
I'm so glad nobody gave us the bigger
one.
Now I am.
He looked at it and you see it
was everything that was wrong.
He said, you ought to be having a
big room which is properly painted, with proper
chairs and all I can see you've got
is this miserable place.
I'll give you money.
And I said to him, I don't want
your money.
I want you.
He couldn't understand how he had all this
power.
And I had nothing.
This is God's way you see, for me
anyway, of winning the world.
People think it's the other way around.
That somehow if you've got more money, you
could have a better ministry.
Well, we use money occasionally, but not instead
of the heart.
And God in his mercy chose to use
the fact that we hadn't got anything to
preach the gospel to the big gangster.
That's how he came to Christ.
Naturally, we couldn't compete with him.
But we had something which was confounding.
God's chosen the lowly things of the world
to nullify the things that are.
Once there was a young man who lived
with us.
And every time he would go on a
holiday, he took drugs again.
Now, when we live with drug addicts, I
learned many things.
I used to be quite judgmental.
I would think, how could somebody who knows
Christ hit someone the next day?
Or how could they steal something again?
Or how could they stick a needle in
their arm a week after knowing Jesus?
That didn't last very long.
I didn't think like that very long.
Because, you see, I started to look at
myself and I noticed that there were many
things in me which hadn't changed.
It was just that with them it shows.
And this guy, every time he took a
holiday, took heroin.
And every time he came back, he lied.
And I knew he lied.
Apart from that, he was fine!
He lived with us and he loved worshipping
and he was very good at prophesying.
It's just that he took heroin every holiday.
And I thought, well, I don't think I
can lock him up forever, you know.
I mean, I have to let him go
sometime.
And we tried everything.
We did Bible study.
And that didn't work.
We did long prayer.
That didn't work.
I just couldn't get to the bottom of
it.
And so one day a friend was with
us and we were persevering to try and
find out what it was.
And he had a picture of some water.
And I said to this guy, does this
mean anything to you?
And he said, yes.
When I was young, my father told us
not to go swimming in a reservoir.
But I went with my younger brother and
by mistake my younger brother fell in.
And he didn't come up for ages.
And finally he came up and I got
him out of the water and I told
my younger brother, don't tell Daddy.
Don't tell Daddy.
But he went home and he told my
father.
And my father beat me very badly.
And then he put me out of the
door.
The doors in Hong Kong have iron gates
against robbers.
And he banged on the door.
And he said, let me in, let me
in, let me in.
And he was never allowed to live at
home again.
And once a month he was allowed to
eat at home because his mother was a
servant in a westerner's house.
And he was allowed to come for a
meal.
But he was not allowed to stay at
home again.
And what had happened was that as he
went out being severely rejected, that this great
hurt in him meant that a spirit of
loneliness came and dwelt in him.
Which meant that later, even though he came
to know Christ, every time he went out
on a holiday, the spirit said to him,
you're out again.
This is what you must do to make
yourself feel better.
You must take drugs.
So, that was very good because once we
knew what it was, we addressed the spirit.
And it was very satisfactory.
You know, it was one of those real
good quick ones.
He went into the waste paper basket and
that was good.
And then we had a picture of a
light shining on his family.
And we believed that he would lead his
family to Christ.
And so it was very distressing when we
heard two days later that his father had
died in Canada.
The whole family had emigrated without him.
They left him behind when he was in
prison.
And he came out to find they'd gone.
So, we managed to get him a special
visa for Canada to attend the funeral.
And I told him what to do.
I said that you mustn't take part in
the Buddhist funeral.
This is how you must act with your
family.
And two weeks later, he came back off
the plane.
And I said, well, how was the funeral?
And he said, it wasn't a Buddhist funeral.
He said his father was in a nursing
home.
And the day before he died, he suddenly
said, I must have a pastor.
I must have a pastor.
And the pastor came to see him.
And he said to the pastor, I want
to receive Jesus and be baptized.
And that was exactly the moment that our
man, after he had been delivered of the
spirit, was praying for his father and saying,
Father, I forgive you.
And after that, he did bring his whole
family to Christ.
And he came back to Hong Kong.
because he's only had a little education.
And this is what he did.
He got himself a pair of glasses.
He doesn't need to wear glasses, you know.
He just thought they looked smart.
And so he wore these glasses.
And he got himself a briefcase.
There's nothing in it.
And he would go to court.
And because we're always having to go to
court.
And mostly what we do in court is
pray.
We pray for the people in court.
And so he began to be our representative.
These three guys I've brought with me, they
spend half their life in court for other
people and in prisons.
They all work with our new addict.
And he used to speak for us.
He used to speak to the judge.
And then after a bit, all the probation
officers started calling him and saying, We'd like
to talk about our client.
And can we have your advice?
And he was asked to address probation officers
and to train the officers.
This guy's done two years of school.
And I went to visit someone in a
hospital once.
And the social worker came up.
And he looked at me.
And I was just wearing jeans and things
and he didn't bother to talk to me.
And he looked at this guy and he
said, Mr. Kwan, I'd like to ask your
advice.
And I laughed.
I thought that's great.
You know, this stupid Hong Kong education system
would mean that if this guy wanted to
go back to the beginning, he would have
to go to, he would have to do
12 more years of school before he could
even get into a college which would qualify
him for another college which would qualify him
to be a probation officer.
And I thought, that's just like God, isn't
it?
You know, he's chosen the foolish.
And in his own way, he will lift
up a man so that the government come
to him for advice.
It's the way it works in the kingdom.
He's chosen the lowly things of the world
to nullify the things that are.
He's chosen the despised things to nullify the
things that are.
This is my favorite man coming up.
There was a young man once who came
to me and he said, Miss Poon, I've
got this brother who's slipping in the streets.
And I've tried to preach the gospel to
him, but he won't listen.
And I said, what do you mean?
Preach the gospel.
And he said, I read the Bible to
him in the streets.
And I said to him, how rude you
are.
That's awful of you to do that.
Why should he listen to you reading the
Bible to him in the streets?
You live in a house and he doesn't.
And you don't even let him know where
you live.
And he can't read anyway.
We'll ask him to tea.