Amen.
Let's just pray together.
I don't need that in front of me,
just to put my books on.
Let's remember it's the Lord Jesus that told
us to go into all the world and
preach the gospel.
We're not here doing our own thing.
We're here doing the will of God.
And the people of the world are far
more on God's heart than on our heart.
I've just been on the phone with India.
India is at a crisis moment.
On November 4th, there's a huge gathering of
outcast people.
They're known as the Dalit people in New
Delhi.
There are over 200 million Dalit people.
And many of them want to leave Hinduism.
Quite a few of the intellectuals want to
go into Buddhism, mainly because of human rights.
Not because of religion, but human rights and
human dignity.
And November 4th, just three days from now,
they'll be having this special event in New
Delhi.
And unfortunately, some e-mails, some extreme statement
and some publicity has gone out.
Saying exaggerated things.
And so now the Hindus, the upper class
Hindus, the BJP politicians, they are on the
warpath.
I just had another phone call while I
was sitting here from India.
The government wants to cancel this event.
And we really do need to pray for
India at this time.
It's so amazing because the other biggest event
in the world is right across the border
in Pakistan.
Phenomenal things have been happening in this world
since the 11th of September.
Most thinking people realize the world will never
be the same.
Even in Germany, where you may not be
feeling this so much yet, it will never
be the same.
And these are times when God's people must
respond.
Nobody can really remain neutral in times like
this.
I don't believe it's an accident that we're
here.
And we thank God for each person who's
here.
Let's right now pray for India, Pakistan and
Afghanistan and for what's going on in connection
with the war.
You know, it's a great privilege to have
an hour of worship.
Can you imagine someone like myself, who takes
380 meetings a year, how much time I
spend in worship?
It's a tremendous privilege.
But it's also a huge responsibility.
Because true worship will lead, as it's already
been emphasized by the worship team, it will
lead to change lives.
The thing that has broken my heart, however,
as I visited churches and meetings all over
the world, is that so many who seem
to be learning something about worship, they certainly
love the music, as I do, but surveys
show they don't seem to know much about
biblical intercessory prayer.
Surveys have shown quite a few people don't
even pray for their own friends.
They don't even pray for their own friends
by name.
Well, the Word of God teaches we're not
only to pray for your friends, you're supposed
to be praying for your enemy.
That's a real pain in the neck.
We find that many people don't pray for
the nation.
We find that many Christians don't pray for
the nations of the world.
For 40 plus years I've gone around the
world speaking about Afghanistan.
And I've found very few people who prayed
for that nation until September 11th.
More prayer has gone for Afghanistan in the
last six weeks than perhaps in the previous
six years.
Again, Afghanistan, a land where we've known for
many, many decades, has almost no believers.
We've been praying, many of us, for over
40 years.
We have a number of key German missionaries
working as tent makers there on the border.
Some of them were in the country.
One of those who's arrested, still in prison,
is our brother George from Germany.
So let us pray.
Father, these are moments of challenge.
These are moments of destiny.
We pray for India in this moment of
decision as this phenomenal sort of revolution goes
on among the outcast people.
Lord, Satan is trying to bring chaos.
We know Satan wants to bring confusion and
bloodshed.
And we stand in prayer for this November
4th event.
We pray God for wisdom.
We know the majority of Dalit people will
not be in Delhi as they're scattered all
over the nation and most of them are
poor.
But we would pray for a mighty move
of these outcast people, not just into the
Christian church, but into your arms, O Lord
Jesus Christ.
We realize India has over 1 billion, 1
,000 million, or 1 billion people.
Many, many hundreds of millions have not had
the gospel.
We pray for change in India.
We pray for spiritual revolution in India.
And enable us to pray more effectively for
this country.
130 million Muslims of whom there is very
little, to whom there is very little witness.
And then, Lord, we would pray for Pakistan.
Where so many are signing up to join
the movement of Bin Laden.
Where the fanatic Muslims want to take over
Pakistan and overthrow the present government.
Lord, this is a moment of destiny for
Pakistan.
Again, a land of 130 million people.
Lord, we pray for this country.
We pray for your church.
We pray for that church where 15 believers
were just murdered just a few days ago
in cold blood by fanatics.
We pray that you would use these things
to stir our own hearts.
And then we would pray for Afghanistan.
With all the bombs and all the death
and all the hunger and all the starvation.
We pray that this bombing may stop.
We pray that there may come a solution.
We pray for these terrorists who caused this
to surrender themselves rather than drag all these
other people into the problem.
And Lord, we pray for Tajikistan to the
north.
We thank you for the open door there
and minister to Afghans and Tajiks.
And we're praying for great things in Tajikistan.
And Lord, we would pray for Israel that
is in the center of all these things.
We pray for Prime Minister Blair's visit to
Israel as that's been on the news today
in a major way.
Lord, it looks like the most impossible situation
in the world.
But oh God, nothing is too big for
you.
We're asking for divine intervention in Israel.
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Thank you.
What a privilege to be here.
The only thing I needed to come here
was a little push from the Holy Spirit.
I do not go where people just invite
me to go.
It's not because I'm anybody special.
I take some of the smallest meetings on
planet Earth.
A lot of my meetings are just one
other person.
But I long for the direction and the
reality of the Holy Spirit in my life.
And I've made many mistakes as I look
back.
And I long in the years that are
ahead of me, whether it's one day or
many years, to be absolutely in the center
of God's will and God's plan for my
life.
I've been coming to Germany now for 40
years.
The biggest thing that hinders me coming here
is that I don't speak your beautiful language.
But I learned Spanish.
That almost killed me.
When I first came to Europe, I lived
in Spain.
And I started to learn the Russian language.
And it was 40 years ago this summer
that with my very poor Russian, I headed
for the Soviet Union.
I had this great plan to smuggle the
Word of God and then print the Word
of God with my secret printing press and
evangelize the Russians.
First we went to Yugoslavia.
We thought that's a little easier.
We can get some practice.
We threw New Testaments over people's fences.
But the police caught us and threw us
out of the country.
So then we stayed in Vienna, praying and
preparing our vehicle for Moscow.
We got through Czechoslovakia.
And again in the night we were throwing
Gospels over people's fences into their back garden.
And we thought in a miraculous way we
got into the Soviet Union.
They almost found the Bibles.
But they did not.
But they were watching us.
A little closer than I realized.
And I remember this experience well because it's
one of the many, many failures in my
life.
Some butter had melted on one of the
Gospels of John, a Russian Gospel.
We were only going to send these materials
through the post.
Internally.
We were already in the Soviet Union.
So it would be internal mail which was
not inspected.
So I was typing using my Russian typewriter
and addressing these to some addresses we found
in a bookstore.
We had been doing something similar very successfully
in Spain which was only a semi-closed
country.
But some butter had melted on one of
the Gospels of John.
Well we can't put that in an envelope,
a dirty Gospel.
So my co-worker said, let's flush that
down the toilet.
Let's get rid of that.
Whoa, we cannot flush the Word of God
down the toilet.
Surely that won't be pleasing to God.
So I said, don't worry, leave it to
me.
Tomorrow when we're out in the rural area
and no one is looking, we'll throw that
out.
Someone will later find that.
It'll be safe.
We'll be in heaven with them.
That was a really stupid idea.
But somehow I didn't realize it was a
stupid idea.
And I remember well the next day out
in the countryside I didn't see anybody.
I let that Gospel fly out the window
of the car.
I still can't figure out exactly what happened.
Ten miles down the road or less there
was a major roadblock, KGB, police stopping us.
My heart just sunk.
They took us out of the car and
brought us into this police station.
The policeman had the Gospel of John on
his desk.
He said, you are under arrest.
The next day throughout the whole Soviet Union
in the Pravda newspaper I had major publicity.
This is 1961, the middle of the Cold
War.
Though my father was from the Netherlands I
was American by birth.
This is one year before the Cuban Missile
Crisis.
And they put in their newspapers American spy
arrested in Rovno.
Hey, do I look like a spy?
I didn't even have this global jacket back
in those days.
I was just dressed like an ordinary person.
We had three days of interrogation.
They wanted to give us an all expenses
paid long vacation in Siberia.
Called the Gulag.
But after asking questions and finding more printing
press and Bibles in our car they decided
we were religious fanatics.
That's a little better than being a spy.
And they decided that we should be taken
guarded and taken out of the country.
How many of you have ever heard of
Brother Andrew, God's smuggler?
He's got a book, he's got a comic
book about him, he's got a movie about
him.
I'm Brother George.
God's bungler.
That means the guy who makes the big
mistakes.
God's bungler.
So they took us to the Austrian border
with the help of the Czech police.
And we were pretty humbled through this experience.
So we were praising God because of his
grace.
And they just say that at this time
the work of Operation Mobilization was not called
Operation Mobilization.
It was very small.
We were mainly interested in the Muslim world.
And closed countries like the Soviet Union.
I was only in Spain because Spain at
that time was a closed country.
The name of our small ministry which had
been born in Mexico was called Send the
Light.
And God was to change all that.
And he used this failure to completely change
my life and to change our vision.
I had developed this practice of having days
of prayer.
So after this horrible difficult experience we went
for a day of prayer.
Actually not much more than that.
More than 100 miles from here.
And we were just worshiping.
We were praising God.
We were repenting, troubling me and my stupidity.
And for some reason I climbed in the
mountains I climbed on top of a tree.
I was praising God and thinking about Germany.
And I was thinking about the great military
mobilization that took place in Europe.
This word mobilization stuck in my mind.
Those wars were a revolution of hatred.
And I said to God, can there not
be a revolution of love here in Europe?
Where thousands would mobilize in the name of
Jesus to reach everybody in the world with
the gospel including especially the Soviet Union.
God just gave me on the top of
that tree that day his vision.
To see tens of thousands of Europeans mobilize
in world mission.
And he gave me that word operation, mobilization.
Now I did not always trust myself and
what I thought God was saying to me.
So I went back to Spain and I
asked my co-workers mainly Spaniards to go
with me into the mountains for a whole
weekend to seek the face of God.
And I shared this vision which included reaching
25 million people with the word of God.
In Europe.
And then let the blessing spread to other
parts of the world, especially the Muslim world.
These Spaniards had very little freedom in their
own country.
So I said, well for this first year
you need to come out of Spain and
work in countries where there is more freedom.
And I asked them to be the leaders
of this mobilization.
We had two days in the mountains outside
of Madrid.
We were all so young.
I guess by then I was maybe 22
years old.
I got to Mexico when I was 19.
We made this decision.
Let us mobilize Europe.
Next summer God gave us 200 people.
The next summer God gave us 2,000.
25 million people received the word of God.
And it has continued ever since.
In God's providence before that second summer in
an amazing way I was led just around
this time of the year to go back
to the United States for a very quick
trip, especially to California where I hardly ever
went.
I am from New Jersey, the other side
of the country.
And in God's providence I met Lauren Cunningham.
And Youth with a Mission was just being
born.
It had been born.
And Lauren and his wife joined us that
next summer to be with us to labor
together in the work of the kingdom.
And we had a wonderful time.
And for 40 years in many, many parts
of the world we've had this partnership between
Youth with a Mission and Operation Mobilization.
Both movements in an amazing way were led
separately to get ships.
And sometimes we've had the Mercy ship and
the OM ship in the same port in
the same nation ministering together in the name
of Jesus.
I remember when you first got the castle
I had the privilege of coming here and
being with you.
How I thank God for His hand upon
your ministry and many, many other ministries that
are represented here today.
But here's what I want to say.
Don't be afraid to fail.
Be willing to take some risks.
Be willing to take some steps of faith.
God has not promised us an easy road.
And the Word of God is very clear.
And a lot of people don't pay much
attention to it.
They just get caught up in their favorite
verses.
They get drunk on their favorite new wine.
And they go galloping along.
They forget to read the rest of the
verses.
Because it's not all blessing.
In fact, Jesus said, if any person come
after me, he must deny self, take up
a cross and follow me.
I'm sure you know as we gather here
we are looking for people that will follow
Christ in the regions beyond.
I'm afraid my globe is a little bit
like some of God's people.
It gets filled and then it leaks.
But as we're together during these days we
want to remember places like Afghanistan.
Not because there's a war there.
That, of course, we want to remember.
But because this is one of the most
unreached nations in the world where the church
does not actually exist.
As I've gone up and down Germany these
40 years, always very short visits, I'm afraid.
My German friends always remind me how needy
it is here in Germany.
Look at the need in Berlin.
And I've been to Berlin many times.
Look at the need in Hamburg.
And we know Hamburg is a needy place.
But compared to Afghanistan there is no comparison.
And there are other places.
I wonder if you prayed for these places.
I used to live in Nepal.
And we've seen phenomenal breakthroughs in answer to
prayer in the land of Nepal.
But north of Nepal is Tibet.
There is no functioning church in the whole
of Tibet.
There are almost no workers.
Now it's 2,000 years since Jesus Christ
gave us the command.
What in the world have we been doing?
I wonder if there's anyone here planning to
go to Tibet.
Would you raise your hand?
For Jesus.
Look at that.
For Jesus.
There's another hand.
There's someone back there.
It's a miracle.
I've never seen so many people raise their
hand.
This must be a missions conference.
I want to pray for those people.
Lord, we think of this forgotten land of
Tibet.
We think of these few that are willing
to go there.
Lord, we pray, give them a confirmation of
your guidance in their lives.
Enable them to get the right preparation.
Since they're not giving many visas, especially to
anybody that wants to do mission work, you're
going to have to do a miracle in
the area of visas.
We pray for Tibet.
And we're asking that the situation change there.
That your church be established among all the
peoples of Tibet.
In the name of Jesus.
But of course there are countries much closer.
Much easier to go to.
Where there's almost no workers.
One of those is Libya.
I wonder how many here are praying about
going to Libya.
That's so much closer.
Raise your hand.
You're going to go to Libya for Jesus.
Well, that country, I guess, sort of got
left out.
A lot of these countries, you can't go
marching in with a big Bible and a
big missionary hat.
You have to go as a student.
How many of you are students?
Whoa, a lot of students.
So that's so easy.
You just change and go to Libya as
a student.
You can study terrorism.
Or you could study the language.
The truth is, these countries, the door's not
very open.
But people are getting into these countries.
Some of them go with the oil business.
And some go in other ways.
Some Egyptian believers are going to Libya.
Praise God.
When we talk about world missions today, we're
no longer in the old paradigm.
The old paradigm was Germans and Americans and
British and Swedes going out to Africa, Latin
America and Asia.
That's the old paradigm.
Now, some of that still happens.
But the new paradigm is people are going
from everywhere to everywhere.
The church in Papua New Guinea is sending
people to the Muslim world.
The people of South Africa are going up
here to the 1040 window.
Brazilians are going everywhere in the world.
People from other parts of Latin America, Central
America, the West Indies, they're sending out missionaries
all over the world.
We are living in exciting days.
And as we're in this conference, similar conferences
to this are going all over the world.
Sometimes they're in the church.
I have to leave Saturday morning to preach
Saturday night in a huge church in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin where Stuart Briscoe has been the leader
for many years.
That's a local church, a local church of
a few thousand that every year have a
major missions event and send out workers every
single year.
Then I go over to Taylor University to
speak on Monday morning.
That's a Christian university.
There are many of them in different parts
of the world.
They have a missions conference every year.
And they are incredibly serious about what they're
doing.
When I was in South Africa some time
ago, phenomenal, this is a phenomenal growth of
missions vision in South Africa.
Thousands are planning to go from South Africa
to many different nations of the world and
especially that very needy 10-40 window.
Now most of you know what we're speaking
about when we say the 10-40 window.
But I like to esteem people who may
be new, they may be young in the
things of God.
You may have only got saved last week.
Hallelujah!
The 10-40 window is 10 degrees north
of the equator where my thumb is to
40 degrees where my fingers are.
That's all that means.
10-40 latitude.
And as we go across that zone right
over Middle East, right over Afghanistan, over Pakistan,
over to India, it's called the 10-40
window.
Why are we interested in that?
Because when they did a lot of research
through books like Operation World, especially with the
use of the computer, they realized 90 percent
of the more unreached people of the world
lived in that window.
Only 5 percent, excluding India, only 5 percent
of the missionaries worked in the 10-40
window.
Places like Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, right
across Middle East.
Very few workers.
That's been changing in the last 10 years.
We have a lot to thank God for.
In the land of Turkey, there are now
maybe 200 to 300 workers.
We now have a Turkish church.
Two weeks ago, we finally got a readable,
good Turkish Bible.
The project just finished three weeks ago.
But still, there's 70 million people there.
And all the Turkish believers from among the
Turks, the Muslim Turks, all of them could
sit in this room.
We consider that a miracle.
Because when we started 40 years ago, there
were small numbers of individual believers.
So I share this.
I'll be sharing many, many burdens with you.
I pray you remember some of these things.
I pray you may write some things down
in your prayer diary.
I ask you to pray for Turkey.
To pray for these lands in the 10
-40 window.
There's a German edition of this book, Operation
World.
It's now out of date.
But even the out-of-date edition is
a valuable tool for your prayer ministry.
This is the brand new edition.
This came out two weeks ago after 15
years of work.
It is the most significant book in the
history of the church in this decade.
Unfortunately, because book shops don't have a vision
for missionary books, and because the church in
general doesn't have a great vision for missionary
books, it's very hard to get a copy
of this.
But praise God, you can get it.
You can go fly over to England, and
you can go in a book store, and
they may have a copy.
Somehow you need to get this book, if
you know English.
We hope in one or two years the
German edition will be ready.
It'll cost twice as much, but no doubt
you'll have plenty of Euros by the time
it's published.
There's another book that I recently got my
hands on.
The most incredible book about China that has
ever been written.
How many of you pray for China?
Raise your hand.
Everybody should be praying for China, except us.
Maybe I better give an evangelistic invitation and
get people saved here first.
All saved people should be praying for China.
One out of five people in the world,
or one out of three.
No, one out of five come from China.
This amazing book focuses on the people's groups
of China.
Now there has been great church growth in
China, but only in certain places among certain
people.
So the people who produced this book, they
listed and took pictures of all the other
people, the forgotten people of China.
So you have about 700 pages of photographs
of information about the church when it exists.
Here's a people's group.
The Tanglang people.
It's a Sino-Tibetan group.
They have no scriptures.
They have no Jesus film.
They have no gospel recordings.
They have no Christian broadcasting.
And the number of Christians, there are none.
What does it matter really?
Does it really matter?
As long as you and I are going
to heaven, who gives two flips about Tibetans?
As long as you and I get to
heaven, as long as you and I can
have our wonderful times of praise and worship
and be happy, what does it matter?
That?
People wouldn't easily say that, would they?
That sounds very ugly.
But that's the way we live.
We don't really think much about other people.
And I want to be really honest.
A lot of people I see even serving
Jesus in Christian service, you know.
They get paid for doing Christian service.
And getting very close to such people for
40 some years.
They discovered often the main thing is just
their own ministry.
And it's a very self-centered thing.
Of course, if they're a baby Christian, then
I can understand that.
When we're a baby Christian, we're just taking
our first steps.
Of course, we'll be self-centered, we'll be
very vulnerable in that way.
But as we get into the word of
God, we begin to read this revolutionary book,
the book of Acts.
We begin to read these passages like 1
Corinthians chapter 13.
We see this revolutionary love.
We see people who love to die to
self and live for others.
We find the Holy Spirit moving and they
start selling their possessions.
They start selling their possessions and giving the
money for helping others.
Then we expect people to change.
Of course, it's a long road.
I have not arrived, I can tell you.
I have lots of struggles.
I fail the Lord.
But by God's grace, if I fail, if
I sin, I know what to do.
I know about the grace of God.