And so I chose the nicest restaurant I
could, and with, you know, real nice white
tablecloths and things, and I said to him,
go bring your brother, tell him we asked
him to tea.
And I took a fat uncle with me,
and this fat uncle had been a police
sergeant.
That was where he started to take drugs,
by the way.
And then he was living with us.
And so I'm sitting there with fat uncle,
and in comes my friend with his very
thin street cleaver brother.
And he comes in, and he's really slimy.
You know, he's got sores all over him,
just like Job, you know.
And he came in, and he looked at
me, and he looked at the fat uncle,
and he pointed at the fat uncle, and
he said, you!
And the fat uncle pointed at him and
said, you!
And it turned out they'd been in prison
together.
And so up comes this thin one, and
he says, why are you so fat?
And the fat one says, Jesus.
And the thin one says, okay, I'll take
him.
So we prayed over the teapot.
And so we came to Christ, that's how.
And tongues over the teapot too.
By the way, it's really easy then.
Much harder if you make it two-step.
And much harder.
So then I said to Lao Leung, his
name was Lao Leung, how many convictions have
you got?
He said, 78.
And next time it'll be 79.
There was one more.
He got arrested that day for something he
hadn't done.
It was always happening.
50% of his cases were framed.
But after that, he came to live with
us.
He's such a sweet man.
I love him very much.
But he had very long toenails.
For several years, he still had toenails.
They're about three inches long.
And so, you know, he's got this new
heart, but he's got these old toes.
And so I said, ask the brothers, you
know, ask him why he's got these toenails.
And he said, I've got to have toenails
like that because I've got to gouge people
when they steal things in the night.
Well, that's logical.
I mean, if you sleep on the streets,
you need to gouge people in the night,
you know.
So he still had long toenails and he
wouldn't cut them.
You see, he didn't trust our brothers.
Because all our brothers come from the same
backgrounds.
Why should he trust them?
You know, he's got a history of mistrust.
And I often thought of him.
And I thought, your toenails show.
Mine don't.
Or at least I think they don't.
Not much difference between us.
And later he got sick and got cancer.
But when we worshipped, he was always the
first to stand.
And he used to jog around the neighboring
basketball court every morning.
He always stood.
And he would come to see me and
he said, the doctors have no hope for
me.
But he said, I'm putting all my trust
in my Jesus.
And then he came and he told me,
you know, sometimes at night, I can't sleep.
And he said, Jesus comes into my room.
And we sit and I tell him all
about you.
And I never had anybody that prayed for
me like that.
You know, he can't even read the Bible.
He can't read a songbook.
But he spent all his remaining days talking
to Jesus about me.
Then he died.
And I very much miss him.
He was one that they say is not.
He was despised.
He was kicked.
He needed to gouge.
He spent half his life being arrested for
things he hadn't done.
But I think Jesus allowed him to go
quick because he loved him so much.
He's chosen the despised things to nullify the
things that are.
He has chosen the things that are not
to nullify the things that are.
There was a lady who was a prostitute
when she was raped when she was 17
by her boyfriend.
Her mother had committed suicide.
Her father was sleeping with her aunt.
Her aunt was sleeping with another lady.
Her father was sleeping with every combination you
can think of she saw through a keyhole.
And then she was thrown out of the
family.
She became a prostitute.
She spent 50 years as a prostitute.
Imagine still working when you're 60 something.
And she ended up in the walled city
which is the lowest.
You know, don't get paid much there.
And she didn't exist.
She didn't have an identity card.
So she wasn't anyone you see.
And two of the prostitutes in the brothel
with her were murdered.
One of them was pregnant and wouldn't sleep
with a man.
So they put a pipe down her, a
water and filled her up.
And this poor lady, her name was Elfride,
she was so afraid this would happen to
her.
She used to pull me when I walked
down the streets and she used to say,
oh please, oh please, let me live in
your house.
Because she heard that we had all these
people.
But how can you put somebody who's been
a prostitute for 50 years, how could you
put them in with all these gangsters who
are coming off drugs, you know?
I didn't know any Christians who are willing
to share their homes with just converted prostitutes.
There aren't many.
And the churches don't take them.
Who does?
I used to try very hard not to
pass her by in case she became a
Christian.
Now I know that's shocking.
But you see, I thought if she became
a Christian, I couldn't leave her there.
I mean, could I?
Except I couldn't resist it one day.
So we found her a little room.
It was about five foot long and two
and a half feet wide.
But she's very small.
And we prayed with her.
At that time, she hadn't eaten for a
long time.
Her payment for her services was three injections
in her back daily.
Heroin injections because she'd used up all the
veins in her arms and legs.
And she slowly got healed.
I mean, slowly.
I wondered about inner healing, you know.
Every time we worshipped, she cried.
I mean, we prayed about everything we could
think of for a couple of years.
And then I thought, God, how long does
this have to take?
If we really have to go through every
awful thing she's been through, it'll take forever.
How long?
I don't know.
I don't really have an answer about how
long.
Except I suppose it's as long as it
hurts.
And then one day, we took her to
another old people's home.
It was run by some nuns.
And she looked at them and she said,
this is awful.
They don't love them here like I was
loved.
People don't help them.
They don't wash them.
So she started to go.
It was mainly that that healed her.
It was interesting.
She used to go and wash their hair.
She used to go and take them vegetables.
And she used to go and pray with
them.
She couldn't read either.
But she had received very much.
She gave very much.
Later on, she got married.
Sort of in bridal white.
It was quite funny.
Of course, she didn't quite get it spiritually
though.
Because later on, there was another lady that
got married.
Now, Elfrida had been 60 something when she
got married in bridal white.
And this other lady was 50 something.
And she said to Elfrida, can I borrow
your dress?
And Elfrida said, yes.
And then she came to me and she
said, I said yes.
But of course she can't.
She'd been married before.
I was really nice though.
She had all her life again.
You know, she sort of behaved like a
teenager on her wedding day.
Hmm.
Ah, well.
Anyway, she's in heaven now.
This is our funny lot.
Four in the eyes of the world.
But hasn't God chosen those who are four
in the eyes of the world to be
rich in faith?
And to inherit the kingdom he promised to
those who love him?
When Jesus announced, this bird of the Lord
is upon me.
Because he has anointed me.
The first thing he was anointed for was
to preach good news to the poor.
This is the power of the Holy Spirit
is first to preach good news to the
poor.
I don't know if you know any longer
what poor and rich is.
If you'll go for the poor, they don't
need training in evangelism.
It's very easy for them to share what
they have.
I've told you about my friend.
One description of evangelism is one poor man
telling another poor man where to find bread.
And Gong-Yun may share his story tomorrow.
He's the tall one.
He was the one we had most of
the problem getting in here.
Because, you know, he looks real nice.
But it's a pretty bad lot of records
he's got there.
But since he's come to Christ, he's led
30 of his family members to Jesus.
And the family members do pretty well too.
You see, he's so full of hope now.
He doesn't need training to preach the gospel.
They just go share.
In fact, usually it's the other way around.
People come and say, what have you got?
Or what's happened to you?
They can see so quickly.
And I used to wonder when I walked
down the wall through these streets, and you
could see in a tin shack, you could
see these guys who are 14 and their
girlfriends are prostituting themselves when they're 14 in
order to get enough money to support their
habit.
And I used to look at, you could
see a hundred at a time in these
drug dens.
And I used to think, God, this is
not fair.
Why?
Am I born in a quite nice house
with a quite nice family?
There's no question of whether I go to
school or not.
And we even have a garden.
Why are they born here?
You know, they haven't even really had a
choice, let alone made a bad one.
And this is, why?
How can, God, why?
And I used to wonder.
I got the answer.
We're nearly through, but you could look this
up.
This is in Psalm 102.
It's a great Psalm.
It's a Psalm about those in distress who
cannot sleep and cannot eat and who are
lonely.
Verse 13, you will arise and have compassion.
The appointed time has come.
Verse 17, he will respond to the prayer
of the destitute.
He will not despise their plea.
And this is the great one.
Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise
the Lord.
The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on
high.
From heaven he viewed the earth to hear
the groans of the prisoners and to release
those condemned to death.
So the name of the Lord will be
declared in Zion and his praise in Jerusalem
when the peoples and the kingdoms assemble to
worship the Lord.
What happens when the poor cry out is
the Lord hears them.
And when he hears them, he sends someone,
because it always happens like this.
Whenever a destitute man cries out, the Lord
puts an answering answer in someone else's heart.
This is how it works.
He sends them.
And so these poor people, because of their
destitution, because of their shame, because of their
poverty, because of their degradation, because of their
hunger, they cried out.
And the Lord heard them.
And they met him.
And they were set free.
And they became so famous that people not
yet born would hear the gospel through them.
Then you see, everything is the other way
around.
Then you see, the rich say, I came
to Christ because of this poor man.
And this is what's happened in Hong Kong.
In our church, we have the destitute and
the very well off.
Not many in the middle.
There's a pretty hard middle class, actually.
Problem with middle classes, they're trying to go
up.
But we have a factory owner who's a
very top factory owner in Hong Kong.
And he's been a Christian for years.
And, you know, he had a proper Bible
study every week with proper businessmen, you know,
and it was all well conducted.
And the wife made cakes and things.
And he came to see us.
And he and his wife actually said, we
wish we had been drug addicts.
Because we don't love the Lord like your
boys.
They were jealous.
You see, many, many top people in Hong
Kong have come to know Christ.
Because when you're a top person, and you
see the riches that the poor have found
in him, then you know you're poor.
And that's how it works.
We don't go for the rich, but they
come in by themselves.
That's the spinoff.
When people say to me, what about the
rich?
Well, that's fine if you're called to them.
But we call to the poor and the
rich come in by themselves, realizing their poverty.
It's the great spinoff.
And so I find grossly unfairly, if you
will waste your life on one poor man,
whether he comes to Christ or not, this
is what we did for years and years
and years in the wall city.
The ministry goes backwards.
We can't count our numbers.
People who testify in church one day get
arrested the next week.
We have five people living in our house.
The next week, they all run away.
At the end of a year, what have
you got to show?
Nothing.
Repeatedly, it's like this.
And if you will work with the poor,
I bless you to know it will be
like this.
Everyone else will count their results.
And you just got a broken heart.
Well, if so, well done.
You're getting on all right.
But a very odd thing happened.
For most of my life, it's gone backwards.
Couldn't count.
And the ones that you look upon and
you say, he'd make a good future leader.
Even he goes back.
And then somewhere in the middle of it
all, I don't know quite how it worked,
but you know, sort of roundabout, roundabout after
20 years or so, sort of something turned
round.
Or did it?
I don't know.
But people stayed and then more stayed and
then more stayed.
And what we can visibly count now are
thousands.
But I don't think God counts like that.
And they tore the World City down a
couple of years ago.
And before they tore the World City down,
nearly every newsreel, National Geographic and Canada and
Australia and all kinds of people, they all
came to make films of World City.
Not Christians, non-Christians.
And they all came to make films of
World City because it was an interesting place.
And we were in them all.
You see, we don't have to put out
our publicity material.
They do it.
And they do it real good.
Because they film what they see.
And in the middle of the World City,
this room, which we used to meet in
with all the drug addicts from all over
Hong Kong, it got full of people who
came in to say, OK, where's Jesus?
And we worshipped twice a week in the
rooms full of glory.
And these reporters and these photographers used to
come in.
And the Holy Spirit used to stop them
at the entrance.
They just didn't know what they were seeing.
And people are always saying to me, Oh,
I saw your video in Canada or something.
I have no idea what they're talking about
because I've not seen any of them.
But I get letters from people who say,
I was watching in Australia your video.
I don't know what they saw.
But and while I was watching, I began
to speak in tongues and I came off
drugs.
And this, I've got many letters like this.
And I think, that's really nice.
But you know, nothing to do with me.
But somehow I got in on it.
That's how it happens.
You see, if you minister to one little
man, Christ becomes very famous a long way
off.
And the great thing about this is, it
doesn't go on a tally sheet as Jackie
Pullinger Ministries Inc.
It's the Kingdom of God.
It's not counted to me.
It's His Kingdom.
It's not my ministry growing.
I do it anyway.
But it's great that there's a sort of
unfair increase.
But that's how it happened.
And maybe tomorrow, I won't have time now.
Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you another real unfair
story.
You know, about how a whole prison in
England came to the Lord.
Because somebody read a story about us in
Hong Kong.
And I think, oh, that's really great.
But you know, nothing to do with me.
But somehow we were in it.
That's what will happen if you love one
poor man, like Jesus loved you.
That's it.
So it's the other way around.
Those who were poor are the chosen ones.
And God, even though I don't believe it
was His plan, may have allowed it to
be so, that they were poor and destitute,
so that they can call on Him.
And our brothers often say, we feel really
sorry for the rich people in Hong Kong,
living in proper houses, with cars and things.
Because we were so desperate, we had to
turn to Christ.
And those poor rich people may never know
that.
Do you see why?
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they
shall inherit the earth.
Would you stand please?
Most of the people in the world who've
not yet heard about Jesus are physically poor.
Now I think it's very unlikely that you're
going to help those poor prostitutes in Thailand.
There are only 10, by the way.
And they only do it because their village
is hungry, and because their mothers sent them
to do it.
There are thousands of them, actually hundreds of
thousands.
I think it's very unlikely you'll go to
them, unless you'll go here first, somehow.
I can tell you about the slaves in
India.
They're slaves, they're five, five years old.
Even without hearing the gospel, people are dying
of hunger.
It's not an option for us.
The majority of those who have yet to
hear the gospel are physically hungry.
So I don't want to just spiritualize poverty.
It's hard to believe that we know the
love of Christ, Christians, when a third of
the world is at poverty level, and a
quarter of the world is destitute.
It's not an option.
And I can promise you, such fun, if
you'll go for the poor.
And huge fruit in heaven.
I don't know how much you'll see down
here.
But we'll reach the world quicker this way
than any other.
And the fame of his heart and the
sweetness of his fragrance will go a very
long way.
I don't really mind if you sing, let
his glory fall in church.
David knows what I mean about the song,
and he agrees.
But I think his glory will fall if
you'll go out with nothing, except a broken
heart and some precious seed.
And I suppose we've all got that.
So do you want to go?
Well, actually, before we came, we knew that
most people here were ready.
I don't know about the captain.
I don't mean Mike.
But it's possible.
In fact, I think a rather large majority
of you are ready.
Happily ready, actually.
Possible you're waiting for someone to organize the
ship.
That might be what you're waiting for.
But I think you've got to get ready
to go anyway.
Don't wait for the movement to start.
And if you're young, you've got the rest
of your life.
What better way to spend it than on
him?
Night one, we're going to bless you to
die.
Anyone want that?
Okay, please walk forward.
No, if you're willing to die, that's all.
That means, that means.
And it will be a struggle from time
to time.
And then you'll know it was nothing.
And then it'll be a struggle again.
And then you'll know it was nothing.
And then it'll be a struggle again.
And sometimes it'll be like sweating blood.