Good evening, brothers and sisters.
It's a wonderful blessing to be here and
to share together with you in this family
conference.
I've received so much help myself here at
this conference over the years, and feel it's
a privilege to be able to share as
well, even this year.
And as you see tonight, we've changed things
around, we're hitting the ground running here.
Usually you have an evening to sort of
snooze and catch up from the day.
I know my wife and I, we drove
down here, took seven hours, and we relaxed
along the way as best we could.
So I'm wearing my wake-up shirt.
Actually, Polo makes this, as you can see.
It's a Lance Lambert line.
It's a special wake-up shirt.
And Lance has one on tonight as well,
as you can see.
His is in green.
And actually, Lance will be sharing most of
the evenings during the week, but they decided
not to go with him tonight because, you
know, with the unstable weather in the past,
we've had electric outages, we've had the tremendous
thunderstorms, just when Lance gets up to speak.
And perhaps even earthquakes.
So they've asked me to sort of more
gently begin the whole process.
Let's turn to the scripture in which we
find these words regarding the summing up of
all things in Christ.
And of course, we know that's in Ephesians
chapter 1.
And let's read the first fourteen verses together,
as actually, grammatically, they're all together in one
great sentence.
Ephesians chapter 1.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the
will of God, and to the saints who
are at Ephesus and who are faithful in
Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in
Christ, just as he chose us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we
would be holy and blameless before him.
In love he predestined us to adoption as
sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to
the kind intention of his will, to the
praise of the glory of his grace, which
he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.
In him we have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the
riches of his grace, which he lavished on
us.
In all wisdom and insight he made known
to us the mystery of his will, according
to his kind intention, which he purposed in
him with a view to an administration suitable
to the fullness of the times, that is,
the summing up of all things in Christ,
things in the heavens and things on the
earth.
In him also we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined, according to his purpose, who
works all things after the counsel of his
will, to the end that we who were
the first to hope in Christ would be
to the praise of his glory.
In him you also, after listening to the
message of truth, the gospel of your salvation,
having also believed, you were sealed in him
with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is
given as a pledge of our inheritance with
a view to the redemption of God's own
possession to the praise of his glory.
Let's just have a word of prayer.
Our Father, we gather together tonight in the
name of your precious Son and of our
Lord Jesus.
We thank you for all the events of
our history that have gathered us to this
moment and realize that your ongoing purpose has
called for this meeting together.
And so we lift our hearts to you,
O Lord, perhaps even in tiredness, in minds
that are tired as well, and ask that
by your Spirit you would quicken our mortal
bodies and give us a hunger for Christ
that would overcome our physical fatigue and that
you would give us to recount together the
fullness and the summing up that is found
in him.
Lord, we ask for the help of the
Holy Spirit, without which all we can do
is share words tonight.
But you can move us beyond words into
a realm of reality by your Spirit, into
the very presence of our Lord.
We thank you for his presence here tonight.
We pray in everybody's life it would be
known as we're together in this place.
We just thank you for this time.
We set it apart for your purposes.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus
we pray.
Amen.
Now tonight I realize it's the first of
the messages and people have been coming, traveling,
perhaps some of you.
So we won't take a full time, I
hope.
I hope to be a little more brief.
I actually have some audiovisuals to perhaps help
the drooping eyes and this shirt.
I'm hoping it will be useful.
Anything we can.
Because we come into something that's described as
a mystery revealed.
Something having to do with the fullness of
time.
A summing up of all things of Christ,
both of things in heaven and things on
earth.
Paul is speaking from a mature heart.
He's speaking from a great spiritual experience.
As most of you know when he wrote
this letter to the Ephesians he was at
the mature age of having had several years
of preparation and then a number of years
of ministry and now in jail, in prison,
the bondservant of the Lord.
And I'm sure without him realizing it, he
was in the process of fulfilling his most
fruitful time of ministry.
Now I have no doubt that even though
he was in prison, his prayers and his
wrestling for the Ephesians and the Colossians and
the Corinthians and the others was affecting greatly
the life of the Lord in the midst
of those dear saints.
He carried these saints on his heart.
He prayed for them often.
And there as he languished in jail, I'm
not sure how much he realized the value
of those letters he was writing.
But they have become our treasure and a
way for us to come to know something
of Christ and all of his size and
wonder and fullness.
How magnificent a Christ Paul was apprehending.
Talking about the fullness of Christ.
What I don't know if you're aware of
this, but until he wrote these two sister
letters, Ephesians and Colossians, he hadn't used this
word fullness before.
It's possible and I believe true because it's
true with all of us as Christians that
as we go on with the Lord and
grow in the Lord, we grow in our
understanding of his greatness.
And Paul was in this mature time in
his life finding spiritual words to interpret spiritual
intuition that he's had for a long time.
I don't know when he first began to
use this word fullness, nor do I know
when he began to use this term summing
up of all things in Christ.
But here is the first time we have
it on record.
And as you know as well, he mentions
fullness in the book of Colossians.
But even though he's just using these words
now, late in his ministry if you want
to say that, the wonderful thing about the
reality in Christ is from the very first
Paul experienced the fullness of Christ.
And from the very first, from the very
moment on the road to Damascus that he
met the Lord, he saw in a flash
something that now for the rest of his
life he was finding words to express.
Those matters of fullness.
Why he saw that there in that blazing
light on the road.
He saw something of the dimensions of Christ.
Can you imagine the Shekinah glory of heaven
hitting you there on the road?
I mean he had just a sense in
his spirit of the immense person he was
dealing with, this divine person.
And then of course when he heard his
name was Jesus, well Jesus exploded from that
human being he was persecuting into this tremendous
Lord who was speaking with a voice from
heaven.
I mean just the largeness of it you
could just imagine.
And even from that moment of his arrest
on the road to Damascus, he himself was
already in the process of being gathered up
into Christ, summed up into Christ.
I often tell the young people that from
the moment you get saved, the Lord puts
a big funnel over your head.
Now that big funnel comes down and you
think you have a lot of room to
move.
I can move to the left, I can
move to the right, I can go here,
I can go there.
But as you move up in Christ it
gets narrower that way, it gets narrower that
way and you find yourself being drawn up
under the Lordship of Christ.
You see this is in part what this
word summing up means.
This is the second time Paul uses this
word, summing up all things in Christ.
Let's look at the first time just so
you can see another context.
It's in Romans chapter 13 where he uses
this word and you see it in verse
9 and it makes sense as soon as
you hear this.
He's speaking about the law and he says
in Romans 13 9, for this you shall
not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you
shall not steal, you shall not covet, and
if there is any other commandment, it is
summed up, that's the word, the same Greek
word.
It is summed up in this saying, you
shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Well now there it's used in a very
simple way.
He's saying that all those commandments given in
those ten commandments could be summed up with
this one word, love your neighbor as yourself.
But we know from the Greek that this
word summing up actually means heading up.
And so some translations actually put it that
way.
The heading up of all things in Christ.
And immediately that gives you some sense of
the intent of Paul because as you see
as he carries on with this idea of
headship at the end of chapter 1 and
speaks about Christ being head of his church,
you see this implied.
And also in Ephesians 4 when he talks
about the church coming to maturity, growing up
in all things into the head.
This is this very same process that we
have used here in the term summing up.
There's a tremendous process going on.
And yet you know, here's the just amazing
thing.
A believer can be a Christian only six
months and yet be very much a partaker
of this gathering process.
It's a matter of your heart.
It's a matter of your will.
It's a matter of your yieldedness.
And you know, even though a brand new
Christian, just not very far along, but yet
fully partaking to the degree that you're able
of fullness.
So we have a strange paradox, isn't it,
in the Christian life.
We have some old Christians who have been
Christians for a long time like me who
may not be full at all, nor really
be in the gathering process.
And then you find some brand new Christians
just hardly still wet behind the ears.
They've just been baptized and they're just growing.
But you know what?
They're in the gathering process.
Then you can see the Lord kind of
drawing them.
And you can see them experiencing the fullness
to the degree that they're able to understand.
So you see, these are very dynamic things.
Although Paul is using these phrases to express
something he is seeing at the most mature
time in his Christian experience.
He's finally found the words.
Ah, I can almost see him in that
jail saying, ah, that's the word.
That's how I describe what God is doing.
It's a summing up of all things in
Christ.
Ah, I got the word.
You see, Paul had to find those words.
Have you ever had an experience with the
Lord that you just couldn't quite explain for
a while?
But he gives you the words with time.
He gives you the understanding.
And yet, right from the very beginning of
Paul's life, there was a fullness in Paul.
I don't have to argue the case.
I know you would agree that right from
the moment Paul was captured and made a
bond slave of Jesus, he was full of
them.
He was full of himself, too, you know,
at the beginning.
But he was full of the Lord.
Oh, he gossiped the gospel and preached and
witnessed everybody and got in trouble everywhere he
went.
He was experiencing a fullness.
And we want to look at that a
little bit in these days, what that means.
And also, there he was feeling like he
was far behind his brethren because of his
late capture.
And yet, we can see the Lord funneling
him up under his headship, giving him to
understand things which eyes have never seen and
ears have never heard, had never entered into
the heart of man.
And yet, the Spirit was revealing them to
Paul.
And Paul was in a process of being
gathered.
I hope you can see that simple picture
of being gathered.
Body, soul, and spirit gathered under the Lord.
Now, you see that this gathering has many
dimensions to it.
So I'm just going to try to present
a gathering Christ tonight, really.
And then our brother Stephen is going to
share on the need for this recovery.
Because, you know, that which is of fullness
and that which is being gathered can lose
its way.
Saints lose their way.
They get distracted with things.
Assemblies get distracted with things.
We'll look at an example in the most
simple way tonight in this introduction.
But we can get distracted from fullness, though
we think we're experiencing fullness.
And we can find ourselves resisting being gathered
up, even though we're living busy lives as
Christians.
So we need to understand a little bit
of this.
But Paul, for certain, was experiencing this fullness.
And he was experiencing this summing up process,
which he says that in the fullness of
times, and now that's where our brother Lance
will be sharing.
Because this verse is talking about something that
will happen in the fullness of times when
all things are summed up under Christ.
You know, since the cross, the cross was
the great moment when the electromagnet was turned
on and everything is now being sucked up
under the headship of Christ.
That's another example I use with young people.
I tell them, you know, you've been magnetized.
You're an iron filing.
And he goes, and you're being drawn.
You're being irresistibly drawn.
And in the end, every knee will bow
and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord.
Things in heaven, things on earth, things under
the earth.
There is going to be a heading up
that is complete in the fullness of times.
But isn't it wonderful?
And I just ask you at the start,
are you part of that gathering process going
on?
Do you feel yourself being gathered into something?
You know, as you go up in that
funnel, you also get squeezed together with other
brothers and sisters.
Now, of course, you and I will have
to look at this some more too as
we go along.
But this matter of fullness does not have
to do with me being filled up.
Thank you, preacher, very much.
You filled up my gas tank.
And I go on my way a full
Christian.
Well, you can't have corporate fullness without individual
fullness.
But this fullness that is talked about here
in Ephesians is a corporate fullness.
There's something that has to happen, not just
with you, but with you and I together.
That is a fullness that the Lord is
looking for.
And again, isn't that amazing?
People can gather together in a new way
and be assembled together, just 11 people and
sense fullness.
And yet, on the other hand, you can
have 2,000 people and the church not
be full at all of his presence and
of all that this fullness means.
So you see, we're dealing with two very
dynamic words here, fullness and the summing up.
And it should lead us to ask ourselves,
are we being gathered by the Lord?
Now you see, part of this things being
summed up is this whole process of being
gathered up.
You remember how the Lord said that I,
if I be lifted up will draw all
men unto me.
Now we know from the record, we'll look
at this the next time I share, Lord
willing, from the very beginning of time, God's
been gathering together a people, gathering together history,
gathering together a revelation of himself, gathering people
into this revelation, gathering people into covenants with
himself, gathering up judgments.
He's been gathering and gathering.
But at the cross, this gathering was intensified.
The electromagnet was turned on and there was
a gathering not only of Jews, but there
was a gathering of Gentiles as well.
The far reaching range of this drawing and
gathering could be seen to the ends of
the earth by the gospel.
This gathering is going on today, but it's
a spiritual gathering as well.
And when we look at this first sentence,
and mind you that which we read there,
those are just one sentence, and just about
the longest sentence in the whole Bible.
I don't think there's a longer sentence.
You know, Paul just couldn't stop.
And in Greek he didn't have commas, so
he just went on and on and on
and on and on because he was expressing
a full thought with Christ at the very
center of the thought.
Now can't you almost feel yourself getting drawn
by the Lord Jesus as you see these
wonderful aspects, these wonderful dimensions of the Christian
life that are mentioned in passing in these
verses.
But the point is that we're to be
drawn to Christ.
Now, the thing that I think probably we
don't see at first, but we need to
see, is that when we're talking about things
being gathered unto Christ, the first and most
simple vision that I see of it is
this, that Christ is the stackpole around which
everything is collected.
Now, a stackpole, what is a stackpole?
Well, I wish I could say, well being
a farmer, but I'm not a farmer, but
a stackpole was used in the old days
of farming because here's what they did.
Before they had combines that could make a
bale of hay and tie it up and
throw it out, people used to have to
go and make bales of hay.
Well, now how do you do it?
Well, now if you cut down the hay
in the field, you know, with a nice
size like this and you cut it all
down, now it's just laying out in the
field.
Now, how are you going to gather it
up?
I know, let's make a pile.
So you take pitchforks and you start making
a pile.
Now you can throw it over here and
you throw it over here, but you never
make a pile.
It just spreads out bigger and bigger and
bigger and bigger.
It never piles up.
And then one day, perhaps somebody by accident,
I don't know, but I suppose necessity was
the mother of invention, somebody came up with
it.
Or maybe somebody by mistake started throwing hay
up against a pitchfork that was already stabbed
in the ground.
But they said, hey, looky here.
Why, when you throw hay up against that
pole, it starts to stack up.
So they started throwing the hay up on
the pole and the thing would stack up
like this.
They'd get a whole bunch and they'd tie
it up and they'd take the pole out
of the middle.
But you see, without that pole, it never
stacks.
It just lays flat and it's kind of
horizontal.
It's hard to make a bale like that.
And Christ is the stack pole of our
whole Christian life.
Now with that in mind, let's go back
into this Ephesians chapter one and I'll try
to explain what I mean.
Our temptation sometimes is to make the aspects
of our Christian life the stack pole instead
of Christ as the stack pole around which
everything coheres.
So let's just see as an example.
Well, now in verse three, we've got blessings.
Oh, blessings.
I'm so thankful for blessings.
We should make a stack pole of blessings,
don't you think?
This is the church of the stack pole
of blessings.
If you come here, you're going to be
blessed.
It's all blessings in Christ.
Now you have to throw the blessings up
against the stack pole if they're going to
be all together in your life, you see.
Or in verse four, you've been elected.
You've been chosen in him before the foundation
of the world.
Now talk about being gathered.
You were gathered before you were stuffed.
Think about that.
Now here's a God who chose you before
you were born.
Now maybe we should stand right here for
a while and think about this whole matter
of our election and predestination and all, but
no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We're chosen to be before him.
Ah, you see, that's when election really makes
all the sense in the world, you see.
Oh, but verse five, we've been predestined to
the adoption of sons.
Oh, it's sonship.
That's what we need to talk about.
Sonship.
Let's stack it up around sonship.
That's where we're going.
We're going for the sonship thing.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
It's not sonship.
It's sonship together with him.
Or how about, oh, there's so many things
here.
In verse seven, our redemption.
Now, brothers and sisters, you know, back many
centuries ago, when I was a young minister,
I worked as a pastor in a church,
and this was our stackpole, the redemption stackpole.
Well, it was.
We preached the gospel, and people got saved,
and we didn't know what to do with
them except throw them up against the redemption
pole and talk about the redemption.
It's a wonderful thing, isn't it?
Our redemption is wonderful.
But you see, it's only if we stay
with any one of these aspects, we don't
come to fullness.
Because what Paul is seeing in the middle
of this whole thing is Christ.
It's a redemption through Christ.
It's our sonship with Christ.
It's our being chosen in him.
It's everything.
It's Christ that's the center, you see.
And all of these things become marvelous in
the light of that.
Or how about this there in verse nine,
making known to us the mystery of his
will.
Oh, maybe you like a good mystery.
And maybe you like this mysterious wisdom and
the thoughts of revelation and all of these
marvelous things talked about in verse nine.
And even this matter of the summing up,
it's all a marvelous revelation.
Let's study more revelation.
Let's get revelation.
Let's sit around in a room until we
receive revelation.
But you see, if you get too revelation
conscious and not Christ conscious, you're going to
get a crazy revelation eventually.
Oh, and verse 11, we've obtained an inheritance.
Now, we should definitely talk about that.
Or how about in verse 13, we were
sealed with the Holy Spirit.
Oh no, there's a stack pole.
But no, no, no, no.
You see, all of these things take on
their proportion.
These things all thrown against Christ, as it
were.
This is what it talks about, the summing
up of Christ.
Look at all these dimensions.
Look how all these things point to Christ.
All these things reveal the kind intention of
our God's purpose and will for us.
So when we come to look at fullness
and when we come to look at summing
up, we need to see Christ in his
fullness and what he's doing with the cross.
Now, the Lord is gathering in these days.
He's gathered us together for this time.
He's doing a great work of gathering in
these days.
Are you aware of it?
I cheat.
I have to confess, I cheat because, actually
not of my own will almost, but I
got talked into going to Russia a couple
of years ago.
And ever since then, I've been cheating.
It's because I get to go to Russia
and see some amazing things.
And then I come back like a spy
and report on them.
Our God is doing a great work of
gathering.
And actually, what I would like to do
tonight, in a very simple way, just taking
Christ as this matter of the Spirit being
sent out now.
You know, the Spirit is out in the
highways and the hedges and is compelling people
to come in.
The Spirit right now is gathering people unto
Christ in an amazing proportion, perhaps more than
you realize.
And I want to share with you a
little bit of good news tonight, if I
could.
Now, I went to some very stodgy technical
books to discover this good news, but it's
about our God, the Lord of the Harvest.
He is gathering in a mighty, mighty way.
We should glorify our God.
He has never stopped sending out faithful servants
of the gospel and gathering people to Himself.
There's a great work going on.
So, I want to share some of this
good news with you tonight.
Now, you know, do you know what evangelicals
at the theological level are talking about today?
I'm talking about at their schools.
Now, I'm talking about Gordon Conwell's seminary up
in Boston, the Dallas Theological Seminary, or the
wonderful seminary there outside Chicago.
What are the evangelicals talking about at Fuller
Seminary these days?
Surprisingly, not the megachurch, which has caught the
fancy of a lot of pastors, of course,
but it's not the megachurch.
Nor are they talking about the role of
women in ministry and these kinds of things.
There is a buzz about one thing, what
God is doing in this gathering process.
Now, I want to show you this.
So, now we're ready for, I just have
a few overheads.
As I said, I'll try to keep you
occupied with audio visuals here just for a
second.
Now, just so you, when I give you
the statistics and things, just so you don't
think I just made them up or went
to some sort of a Christian comic book,
I just want to give you the sources.
Now, can you, okay, so I made this
too big, okay.
I used two major sources to gather the
information, and actually the first one there, which
is called the World Christian Encyclopedia, it's a
$350 book that you can get.
It's this thick.
It's a very technical, expertly done collation of
figures, facts, and statistics of global evangelism around
the world.
It has not only Christian statistics, but the
statistics of other world religions and how fast
they're growing, people, groups, countries.
It's an amazing, amazing book.
And by the way, being used by missiologists
all over the country today as a basis
for understanding what's going on.
It's thrown everybody into confusion.
When this book came out in 2001, it
threw people off.
And then also the International Bulletin of Missionary
Research comes out of Gordon Conwell Seminary, where
they have a special division called something like
the Resources for Global Evangelism in the World,
evangelization, global evangelization, something like that in Gordon
Conwell.
And so I got statistics from these things.
Now, I hope this encourages you or perhaps
even amazes you, but something's been going on
from 1970 to 2000.
The Lord of the Harvest mega-gathering from
1970 to 2000.
Now, most of you have been alive since
1970, right?
Now, we got junior high kids.
No, you weren't.
But many of you have been around for
that long.
Do you know what's been going on while
you've been sleeping in Sleepy Hollow?
Well, let's just take a look.
Okay, let's get to the first chart.
And you might have to move it around
just a little bit, because in order to
see everything, I think, okay, you can almost
see that.
Now, here's some statistics, just so you get
an idea of what's going on today.
The world population has grown from 1970 to
2000 from 3.6 to 6 billion people,
or 64% in 30 years, or 2
% per annum.
Okay?
This is the growth rate of the world
population.
The world population.
Okay.
Catholics and Orthodox have grown from 804 million
to 1.26 billion, or they've grown 56%.
They haven't kept up with the birth rate.
That's not good.
Usually, in evangelism, you count your own kids.
The Protestants and Anglicans together have grown from
some 258 million to 422 million, or 63%,
just about at the birth rate.
Okay?
The Evangelicals and Independents have grown from 1970
to 2000 from 98 million to 225 million,
a 130% increase, or 4% per
annum.
The Pentecostals and Charismatics have grown from 72
million to 527 million, or 631% in
those 30 years, or 21% per annum.
Now, what the missiologists have done, feeling it's
unfair, because it's hard to categorize somebody, I
say, are they an Evangelical, a Charismatic, a
Neo-Charismatic, which is only the phrase, or
the old-line Pentecostals?
Because a lot of the old Pentecostals are
actually out of the big growth curve.
But the Neo-Pentecostals, the Neo-Charismatics, and
the Charis—well, anyway, it's a long story.
So they've come up with a catchphrase term,
Great Commission Christians, meaning people who take seriously
this matter of going out with the gospel
and gathering people in with the gospel of
salvation.
And that includes the Evangelicals and Independents and
the Pentecostal Charismatics.
Okay?
That's all that bottom one is.
It's the addition of the top two just
above it.
Okay?
You understand what I'm saying?
Okay.
We've got 170 million in 1970 to 752
million in the year 2000 for a 342
% increase, or 11% per atom.
The world is becoming more and more Christian,
percentage-wise, because of this global mega-gathering
by our faithful God.
Now, that's an amazing thing.
Okay, now let's look at some other interesting
statistics that also come out in this study.
I'll just throw them out to you so
you can see.
And all we're trying to see is the
dimensions of what God is doing that have
been tabulated, and the half has not been
told.
In 1970, Western Evangelicals outnumbered non-Westerns two
to one.
In the year 2000, non-Westerns outnumber the
Western Evangelicals four to one.
When they have an Evangelical convention, as they
had in Lausanne to discuss global evangelism, it
was filled with people from India, Asia, Africa,
South America.
The bishops of the denominations are from Africa
and other places, because that's where God is
doing an amazing, amazing thing.
Another fact, since 2000, more missionaries are now
being sent out from non-Western nations than
Western nations.
Did you know that?
Now, Western nations spend the most by 20
times for missions work, and their results don't
touch what the mission work going out from
other countries is doing.
But that's why they're so concerned.
That's why missiologists are concerned by all these
statistics.
6,000 Christians will be added to the
kingdom of God by the time I finish
this message.
Pentecost, 3,000 people were saved.
3,000 are saved every half hour right
now in this world.
There is a harvest going on of mega
proportions.
The five nations with the highest per capita
growth by counting baptisms, Bhutan, Mali, Mongolia, Nepal,
and Saudi Arabia.
Now, this does not mean these are the
fastest growing, nor does it mean these are
the ones that have the most baptisms, but
this is more an indication of where the
present harvest is beginning to be seen.
You understand?
If you have a per capita of 26
Saudi Arabians, and 12 get baptized, you've just,
per capita, you've had an amazing thing.
But this is a statistic which is making
them wonder and in amazement what God's doing
even in Muslim countries.
More evangelicals now attend church in Latin America
than Catholics.
Now, can you believe that?
I mean, we're talking Mexico and South America.
Of course, the population of Catholics, combined with
the population of evangelical, of Great Commission Christians,
is more than the population of the countries.
Now, that's because Catholics don't take you off
the roll.
But on any given Sunday throughout Latin America,
there's been such a defection and such a
moving, and so many people saved, that the
evangelicals more attend than the Catholics.
And last year, 171,000 Christians were martyred.
It started in the 1970s when 340,000
were martyred.
And we know that's all about China, it's
all about Nepal, it's all about some places.
Now it's just down to 171,000 Christians
a year being martyred for their faith, being
martyred for their faith.
Then the last little page has to do
with how these evangelical seminaries and everything are
trying to interpret what's going on in these
days.
This mega-gathering is just throwing everybody off.
We don't know what to do, what's going
on.
So here's just some things that they're noticing.
The most rapid growth segment is in non
-established churches.
That's throwing them off.
That means these are unaffiliated indigenous assemblies with
non-professional ministries meeting in houses or rented
buildings.
This is what the evangelical missiologists have found
out by counting beans.
This is not a wacko study.
They're saying, wait a minute, we're pouring all
this money into missions.
And what God has done in the last
30 years is raise up a rapidly growing
gathering of people that aren't aligned with any
denomination.
We don't get it.
What are we doing wrong?
You see what I'm saying?
This is the thinking.
The Great Commission Christians now outnumber traditional and
denominational Christians.
They now outnumber them.
And the continued defections from the older churches
into these new frameworks is redefining 21st century
Christianity.
20th century Christianity was all about what denomination
you were in.
21st century Christianity is not about that anymore.
Now it's also caused, I didn't put it
down, but it's caused a tremendous shakeup within
the denominations.
Some of the churches turning and really examining
themselves and repenting and getting down to the
business of being part of the gathering.
Others are slowly melting away and will not
be around with much significance much longer.
The figures of global evangelism for this period
are conservative because of the unofficial and isolated
nature of the groups involved.
The half has not been told.
You see, as an example, for most of
you, some of you know about Chinese figures,
their figure here is 71 million as of
the year 2000.
Some people say there's 135 million.
But you see, this is just those that
they could count the beans.
And it doesn't even include any evangelistic crusades.
Billy Graham's crusades have been over 120 million,
just as an example, not to mention other
crusades that have been going on and go
on right now throughout the third world.
They don't even count those numbers.
Neither did they count radio and TV, which
is claimed to reach over 40 million.
And I just put the internet in there
because that's not even a category yet.
And yet is one of the most significant
means of outreach across the world right now.
Neither does it include the Jesus movie, where
15 million people have reportedly confessed Christ after
seeing the movie.
Now, brothers, now sisters, what can we glean
from all of these things?
Okay, well, now let me just tell you
what I think.
Number one, I don't know about these statistics.
I'm sure they're not as accurate as they
could be, but they weigh on the conservative
side.
And so I would say this.
If we use these statistics as statistics are
used in the book of Acts, I'm sure
it wasn't 3,000 people who were saved
on the day of Pentecost.
It was about maybe 3,012.
But statistics were used in the book of
Acts to show the mighty working of a
resurrected Lord who was gathering people through the
gospel.
And I think if we have eyes to
see and ears to hear what's been going
on as recorded in a feeble manner, this
is a sign to us that God is
moving in amazing ways.
He's a miracle working God.
He's a gathering gospel guy.
He is a God of Jesus Christ who's
bringing people to himself.
People we don't even know about are being
gathered right now at this hour.
6,000 people.
Praise God this hour.
And I believe that.
It's hard to get a hold of, especially
if you live in a dead zone like
I do.
I live in Manhattan.
I live in Greenwich Village.
It's a dead zone.
But around the world, God is moving faithfully.
And that's the first thing.
Do you believe it?
Or do you just want to argue about
statistics?
Whatever the statistics are, God is doing an
amazing thing.
He's gathering something up toward an end.
And we need to praise God for it
and worship him for being a mega gathering
God.
He is the Lord of the harvest.
And he is gathering in people for himself.
Number two, I know there's, I can only
imagine how many problems there are among those
being gathered.
How many conflicting problems there are and conflicting
elements and much that is unknown.
I, but all of that aside, if the
Lord is gathering multitudes even now into his
kingdom, cannot we believe he's also gathering them
into fullness?
Do we only have the word on that?
Because as I said at the start, there's
a sense in which intuitively you can live
in a fullness, even though you don't understand
what that word means.
Even though Paul never put that word yet
in one of his letters until he came
to Ephesians and Colossians, but he's been living
in it.
And do we think that our God, the
God of the harvest is going to gather
people and then gather them and put them
in some kind of Guantanamo Bay?
Surely he's got greater purposes and desires to
gather people in a fullness, you see.
And I think we need to be aware
of that.
Also, looking at the world, looking at the
church around the world, we also have to
acknowledge that some of these aspects we were
reading here, you know, redemption, Holy Spirit things,
the Lord is recovering some of these aspects
within the church around the world.
Now, do you believe that?
All I can say is, in 1964, when
I was saved, I was saved in a
Southern Baptist church.
If they saw what's going on today that
is called worship in present Southern Baptist churches,
they wouldn't have believed it.
We sang nothing but hymns, nothing.
Scripture choruses were unheard of.
But now in New York City, the Southern
Baptists have snuck in, calling themselves under some
other name.
I forget what it is, Horizons or something
like that.
And you know what?
They're worshiping God.
I mean real worship.
I know that, I'm not talking about necessarily
a worship pep rally, but there's real worship
being recovered around the world.
There's real evangelism and burden evangelism being recovered
around the world.
There's a real sense, a recovery of spiritual
power, the gifts of the Spirit, and not
just used in exhibitionism, but being used under
the control of the Lord.
There's a recovery of intercessory prayer.
Out and beyond us, brothers and sisters, there's
people who are learning how to pray and
lay hold of things that are dramatic and
real and coming from God.
It's a tremendous recovery going on now.
And not to mention aspects of body life.
Oh, how wonderful.
How wonderful our God is working.
But now I come to number four.
Because our God is not gathering people toward
no end.
And it is true that the need for
recovery in the church is grave.
Because many people don't know what they're being
gathered to.
They don't know the who that they're being
gathered to.
And that's why number four, I want to
say, if we read these statistics are right
and have a heart that's willing to be
gathered by God Himself and be exercised about
what God is doing today, then I tell
you, brothers and sisters, we have a great
responsibility as those who have seen something of
fullness and something of Christ as the sum
of all things.
We have a very important part to play
in God in the fullness of time, summing
everything up.
You know, when I get the chance to
go over to Russia and I get to
preach the gospel and I see a whole
mess of people say, that's a wonderful thing.
But I come back with my heart burning
back to the United States because I see
what needs to happen here.
We need to be recovered in this kind
of thing.
We need to be those who are being
gathered as well as gathering people.
We understand some things that people, I go
over to Russia and I just talk to
people and they're saying, wow, oh wow.
Oh, it's not like almost like hippies, heavy
man.
Oh, just talking about such things as fullness
as this summing up of all things.
You see my Russian brethren over there in
Russia, they see this summing up processes, God
gathering in the multitudes and getting them saved.
So when I said to them, you know,
there's another step in on this thing.
And they said, what is that?
I said, you know, it's not just seeing
Christ summing up all things.
It's seeing Christ as the sum of all
things.
And they said, well, what do you mean
by that?
I said, when you see, you know, the
righteousness that we're preaching, I said, you know,
did you ever realize that it's Christ who
is our righteousness?
It's not a thing we have, nor is
our, uh, our power, a thing that we
have, nor is our wisdom, a thing that
we've gained.
But Christ is our wisdom.
And Christ is our righteousness.
And Christ is our power.
And Christ is our gospel.
You see, to understand that Christ is the
sum of all things, puts the capstone on
this summing up process.
And they say to listening, the ears are
bugging out.
The ears are burning.
And then they say, oh, this is wonderful.
We never knew that.
And they immediately start taking Christ as my
life.
Christ is my provision.
And we sit around sometimes and we sing
this song.
Once it was the blessing.
Oh man, I wish I could sing that
in Russian.
They'd be stomping their feet.
Once it was the blessing, now it is
the Lord.
That's a discovery.
For I'm going to be bold and say,
for 80% of the Christians today in
this world, they don't know Christ our life.
They know the Christian life.
That way of life where you live and
behave and do what one is supposed to
do as a Christian.
But to know Christ our life, how many
know that?
But you and I, we know this.
How we need to share the gospel.
How can things come to a fullness if
people don't understand that they're being summed up
right into the life of Christ.
Not just into a pole that they bump
up against.
That's where the stackpole analogy dies.
It's not a pole you're being knocked up
against.
It's a person you're being united with.
And when we talk about fullness, you know,
I don't know, these brothers I work with
in Russia, they're all bigger than me.
Can you believe it?
Usually I'm the big man, you know, these
guys, big guys.
And I talk about fullness and say, fullness
of spirit.
Well, they are full of the spirit, praise
God.
And they manifest it by boldness of preaching
in difficult situations, by standing for the Lord
against the government itself, by doing all kinds
of things and seeing miracles happen.
They are full of their spirit.
But when I share with them about the
fullness of the church, they say, oh, yeah,
yeah, we tell all people they should come
to church.
I don't know.
There's something more.
There's exercising member of an anointed, living, organic,
earthly expression of Christ.
They say, nobody ever told them the church
was a living organism and that fullness is
realized when we're part of this organism that's
vibrant and organic and is sensing a mutuality
and sensing a fullness in everyone's contribution and
all of these kinds of things.
You can't just do that by throwing people
together in a place and say, that's it,
fullness is when everybody goes to church.
No, it's when we enter into something that
Paul calls fullness.
Can you believe that he calls the church
the fullness of him who fills all in
all?
We're going to have to look at that
once more, the fullness of him.
This is a wonderful statement.
Even today, in these last days, we don't
know how much longer things are going.
The gathering process is moving apace.
His last 30 years have been amazing years
and it's been since 1970.
I don't know why 1970 was the starting
point, because if you took the statistics back
to 1960, you wouldn't see much change those
first 10 years.
But 1970, something happened and the Lord's gathering
like crazy.
Millions.
Can you handle it?
You have over 600 million new brothers and
sisters.
Some have gone on to be with the
Lord, gained in this last 30 years.
And yet I tell your brothers and sisters
with all my heart, God is looking for
those who can evangelize with the end in
view.
Oh, that's who you are.
God is looking for people with prophetic ministry
who can explain the mysteries of Christ.
Exactly what we're talking about here.
The mysteries of Christ, this next prophetic understanding.
See, if I say, oh, we need a
prophetic understanding of the word, the Russian brothers
say, ah, we love prophecy, say it the
Lord.
I stereotype how they speak.
But to understand that prophetic ministry is to
understand these mysteries.
And you understand the mysteries.
And we need shepherds and teachers who can
lead God's children to the heart, to the
heart of the Lord.
Isn't this, isn't this a wonderful opportunity?
Imagine the fullness of such, of God's people
that can be led to the heart of
God through the shepherding love of brothers and
sisters.
And the world is looking for assemblies that
are living in the reality of these things
we're talking about.
All four assemblies are really lived in the
fullness where the dynamic is really there, where
they're being gathered up and they're not just
talking and squabbling and all this kind of
divisiveness.
We know the enemy has set against fullness
and we know he has set against the
summing up of all things.
We know he's trying to grab every piece
of our fallen nature to cause divisions, to
cause schisms, to cause us to become irritated
with one another, to present, to prevent that
wonderful fullness that can only be experienced when
we're, we've come from the unity of the
spirit to the unity of the faith and
we've grown into a mature man.
Into the measure of the stature pertaining to
the fullness of Christ.
Oh, this is, this is, this is our
life.
This is what we need to be before
the Lord about.
Oh, how, how saints would respond if they
saw a testimony.
Maybe they would malign you because of the
life we have.
But I do believe the hungry ones could
only respond.
Well, I just want to end with this
sort of challenge then.
Very simple.
Are we in the drawing process or are
we over on the side?
Are we experiencing fullness together as God's people
or is the, when we come together, is
it less than the sum of our parts
individually?
Oh, the Lord wants to do an amazing
work and I have a feeling that as
far as we're concerned, you know, it isn't
a question of how many people you bring
to the Lord, but it's a question of
being part of the gathering.
I, I believe as well as I believe
that the Lord is gathering many people together
and that his desire is to gather them
unto himself into a fullness and to sum
up all things in Christ.
This wonderful mega gatherer wants to gather children
to himself.
I believe that.
I believe God's doing it today and I
also believe that among us, God must shake
us up.
Has to get us out of the, you
know, there's a, there's a flood tide over
there and sometimes we're in a backwater over
here and we need to be in the
flood tide.
I don't know how God gets us there,
but it's by being part of the fullness,
by being part of this gathering process, by
being gathered ourselves into the Lord's fuller purpose
for our lives.
I end with this little example from the
Bible.
You know, this, this spring I've been studying
the book of Genesis and it's been a
real blessing to me.
And I remember that in the story of
Isaac, you know, I, I, I don't know
that much about Isaac.
I mean, I've been studying it.
We don't know much about him, but I
have a feeling he was a bit of
a mystic or let's put it this way.
He wasn't an initiator.
He's a little bit passive, you might say.
And so his dad had to send the
servant out to find him a wife.
You know, I think some of the brothers
here are also that chicken.
They can't find them a wife.
They have to send somebody out, you know,
but whatever.
And, uh, of course, Rebecca came back and
Isaac was very happy.
And, you know, Isaac met her at this,
uh, uh, a beer La Haroi, you know,
this place where Hagar had a revelation of
God, this well, a beer that this well
of revelation of, uh, of seeing God was
the place that Isaac loves.
He loved to live by the well of
revelation, you know?
So he married Rebecca and had his kids.
Most of the time he lived around there,
you know, just living around the well of
revelation.
It's this wonderful place, but God wanted to
bring him into fullness.
And Isaac was just in a backwater.
Do you know where beer La Haroi is?
I mean, it's so far down in the
desert.
That's beyond the desert.
I mean, it's just way down, just down
places.
Even Lance doesn't go.
It's way down.
And, uh, the Lord had to get Isaac
out of there.
And so, you know what he did?
He caused a great famine.
The great famine led him finally toward Egypt
that he got as far as Gerar, which
is in Philistine territory.
And the Lord said, no, no, no, no,
no.
Just sojourn here and I'll be with you.
And it was there in the midst of
opposition and there having to dig his own
wells that he came into a fullness of
all the blessings.
He had, he had all the blessings.
Abraham gave him everything, you know, squint, Jillian
dollars, sheep, camels.
He was already rich.
And you'd think blessing blessed, but until he
dug wells for himself, he didn't live in
the fullness of it.
And he finally got to be a Sheba
and dug that well again.
And then the water spurred up the water
must've been good and beer sheep in those
days, there was a place of blessing.
It was a place of fullness.
It was a place where God really showed
himself again to Isaac.
And he came into a fullness.
And I have a feeling sometimes, you know,
in our life, it's easy for us to
sort of dam up the situation and get
into a little backwater where it's all nice.
Well, may the Lord knock those dams out,
send in the beavers, whatever it takes to
get us to where we can be part
of this gathering.
We can be part of this summing up.
I tell you, it's a, it's an awesome
responsibility.
It's an awesome stewardship and to whom much
has been given much is required.
We cannot just sit passively and neither is
it our role to judge what's going on.
Oh, you don't have to look far, whether
you're go to Russia or wherever you go.
And the Lord seems to be moving in
an amazing way.
You don't have to look far to find
many things to find fault with, but after
all, is that our role would rather we
can bring in something of the Lord and
let them see more of his size and
more of his dimensions and more of his
greatness, more of his fullness and more of
his gathering power.
I, you know, I have to believe that
saints having seen the greater will put away
the lesser, but we begin with ourselves.
You're part of those statistics.
Probably one of those numbers of somebody who
got saved between 1970 and 2000.
Praise God.
Is the Lord still gathering you?
Oh, may the Lord gather us.
We need such recovery from our passivity and
in light of the end times coming in
the fullness of times, he has designed an
administration that is the summing up of all
things in Christ, things in heaven and things
on earth, even in him.
May the Lord help us be part of
this living process.
Let's pray.
Oh Lord, as statistics do not change our
lives, but we know the conviction of the
Holy Spirit can change us in a moment.
Oh, when we know when God moveth, none
can stay his hand.
And when the father draws people, they cannot
be held back.
Lord, we believe in thy great power and
we give you praise and thanks, praise and
humble thanks that it's being seen upon this
earth today.
Oh, praise God.
We give glory to you.
Oh Lord, you are our stack pool.
Oh Lord, you are the one who is
magnetizing us all irresistibly toward yourself.
And father, you have an immutable purpose that
all things be summed up in Christ and
it will not be denied.
And every enemy will be a footstool under
his feet.
Lord, we just come to you.
Oh Lord, grant us in these days to
be part of the fullness.
And part of the gathering.
Oh, that which we experienced even early in
our Christian life.
Lord, if we need to recover that first
love and find that new gathering and find
that new ground.
Oh Lord, we don't want to just rot
away until we die.
Lord, surely there's a purpose for all these
things that you've placed in our hearts, all
these mysteries that you've unveiled, all the beauties
we've seen of our Lord.
Forgive us Lord, when we've taken some lesser
aspect and gone and circled around it.
And all the time your spirit has been
drawing us unto yourself.
Oh, gather us Lord, gather us, gather us
unto thyself.
That we may be part of a heavenly
statistic that cannot be known by men, but
people under the headship gathered up, summed up
in Christ, where Christ is our sum and
our all.
Teach us Lord and may the youngest Christian
here enter into that fullness, into that grand
summation, even in him.
We pray for Christ's sake.
Amen.