I was off the ferry at about 3
.15, coming from Riga, which is a long
ways away.
I put up a map here so that
you can see where Riga is.
There it is.
In Latvia, to get there, we had to
go through Lithuania.
To go through Lithuania, we had to go
through Poland.
And the Polish-Lithuanian borders, and even the
Polish-German border, is complete unbelievable chaos.
As we came through yesterday morning, just at
this time, we crossed into Germany.
There was a five-mile tailback into Poland,
probably from Germany.
But far worse is on the other side,
going from Poland into Lithuania.
There's some political problems.
Some people are waiting three days to get
back.
I think we got across in about eight
or nine hours.
We then tried another border through Belarusia, where
even though we had some funny visas, we
were turned back in the middle of the
night.
I wish you could have all been with
us two mornings ago when we took on
VIP, high-priority role, and managed to talk
our way past dozens and dozens and dozens
of buses.
Others were doing the same.
And get through that border.
It was so desperate, we were thinking of
driving all the way to Tallinn to get
a ferry to Finland.
But I'm very glad that David Babcock was
with us to share the driving with Peter
Dance.
So we're just back from this conference in
Riga.
It was just so exciting.
Over 800 leaders from all over what was
once the Soviet Union, I think greatly dominated
by Russians.
This was organized by the 2000 and Beyond
Movement.
People like Louise Bush, Thomas Wang.
It was a challenge and inspiration to be
with those people.
I must say, however, if I'm really honest,
I'm more nervous now speaking to you this
morning than I was speaking to those 800
people through interpretation.
I was a little nervous there.
They were almost like two programs.
The people of Riga had arranged a program
and Thomas Wang had arranged a program.
And they tried to dovetail the two together.
So I was supposed to lead a two
-hour prayer meeting.
They had four or five major music items.
Solos, bands, orchestras.
I ended up with 25 minutes in which
I was supposed to also speak.
And the Lord just, it was only 25
minutes and they had to go because supper
was waiting for them.
Nothing like a meal to stop an extended
prayer time.
But the Lord really gave grace to share
about India, about Afghanistan, about Somalia and Sudan.
And the leaders thought that was just the
right thing for that meeting because the tendency
is for these people to focus on their
own countries.
And there are lots of problems.
There was a rumor that Latvians were boycotting
this conference.
This is in Latvia, which is not part
of the Commonwealth.
It is a separate nation.
Just the vocabulary you use when you're speaking
is very, very important.
But there was a sense that just to
focus on places like India and the unreached
people there and other countries, some of which
they'd hardly ever heard of, and especially share
about Afghanistan seemed to be very moving.
And we opened to pray, of course, out
loud.
They're not into small group praying yet.
I think many of us in the West
don't realize how conservative the church is in
that part of the world.
Anyway, I'm jumping a little bit ahead of
myself.
My wife said, are you going to devotions?
And said something about Wake Lee.
And I said, no way.
I'm going to take a bath and maybe
go to sleep, but I'm not going up
there.
Having just gotten back and I had Scotland
coming up and Westwatch and meetings in Birmingham.
But as I got in the hot bath,
especially if you haven't washed in four days,
to stimulate the spiritual senses, I just felt
I must share this burden that I have
concerning what was once referred to as the
Soviet Union, which is still, Americans say, a
quarter of a billion people.
I could have done it on Monday morning,
but I just felt this is so burning
on my heart that I should share it
while the fire is the strongest.
Because even in this weekend, there'll be so
many other things I will have to get
wrapped back up into.
And I just sense that it was the
Lord's plan to share it now.
So I jumped in the vehicle and drove
over here to share this burden.
I think it is going to be this
little tape among the top ten historic tapes
that I have shared.
I'm not going to give you history of
how God has used cassette tapes in OM,
but it has been one of the main
methods, if not the main method, to communicate
to the people who are with us in
this work, who have stretched over the whole
world, many of whom now I never even
meet.
They come on OM and they go and
they never meet.
Keep in mind, I can't even get into
places like India, which is next to the
ship's OM's largest field.
I think I need to first of all
say that when I came to Europe, my
vision was the Soviet Union, something I have
not mentioned very much.
Because, I don't know, a number of reasons.
I came to Spain a very, very serious
student of Russian.
This was not some kind of a little
sideline.
I felt that I should challenge others to
go to the Muslim world.
That was still the bigger vision.
That was number one.
But that I myself was not cut out
for the Muslim world and that the place
God wanted me to work was among communists.
Now, all of us who came out of
the fifties in the United States were taught
to hate communism.
I came out of the McCarthy era.
There have been some recent films about that
era that are very, very interesting and worth
watching.
And because I was converted to Jesus Christ
and very, very much convinced about literally obeying
the Bible, loving enemies became a very, very
big thing.
So the more people were uptight about the
Russians, the more I committed myself to the
Russians and declared that these were the people
that I loved.
Now included in that were the Yugoslavians, because
I can even remember sitting at the table
at Moody Bible Institute after the first trip
to Mexico, which was from that other college
I went to before Moody, sharing my burden
for Yugoslavia and actually being laughed at straight
to my face.
And anybody thinking they were going to do
anything in Yugoslavia really wasn't operating on a
full deck.
And before I went into the Soviet Union
in the summer of 1960, we went into
Yugoslavia.
We had a tremendous time distributing there, throwing
New Testaments over the fences and distributing literature
in every possible way.
To my own amazement, one of my fellow
team members who was just with us for
the summer, early in the morning decided to
go in open distribution.
I don't, to this day, know what got
into his head, because there was no way
we were going to get into open distribution.
And within minutes he was arrested.
I was having my quiet time.
And I remember walking back to the car,
the car still loaded with a lot of
literature, and there were the police.
Our Yugoslavian experience and the confiscation of literature
there, combined with a broken windshield, so we
drove back peering through the holes in the
sheet in the rain to Austria, proved to
be interesting enough.
But as we thought of Czechoslovakia and the
Soviet Union ahead of us, I tell you
it was with fear and trembling.
I was rapidly learning how to type the
Cyrillic alphabet.
My Russian was not at advanced stages, and
I would not be able to converse.
But our burden was that I would type
any addresses I could get, and use a
distribution similar to what we had been doing
in Spain.
No open distribution, but through the mail, through
the post.
Roger Molstead, who was with me, was to
do the printing.
We had a little printing press so we
could buy paper and print a gospel tract
and put a scripture thing with it.
I was doing the typing.
We were going officially camping, so supposedly it
was cheap, but in 1960 the camping programs
were not functioning, so they actually put us
in a hotel in Love.
What a blessing to meet a man from
Love there in Riga last week.
What a blessing to share this testimony to
all these people last week.
But to make a long story short, due
to my own stupidity, and I think most
of you have heard that story, I refused
to throw away a Gospel of John that
had some butter on it.
I thought we'll just throw that away when
no one's looking, because we don't want to
waste the Word of God.
And of course a farmer saw me throw
that gospel out.
I didn't see anybody.
He phoned the police, and within miles they
had a very, very, it seemed to me,
large-scale roadblock just for us.
They accused us of being American spies, said
we were going to get all expenses paid,
vacation to Siberia.
This was flashed, major news across the whole
of the Soviet Union.
By the way, ten years later, when their
newspaper was looking for news, they just grabbed
this and put it in again.
Amazing.
Someone came to me ten years later and
said, we just read you were just arrested.
I said, it was ten years ago.
Well, it's news today in the Soviet Union.
Maybe it had a clipping, like my little
hometown paper that people send me.
Ten years ago, this happened.
I have to do some more research if
I ever get the privilege of going back
there, which, by the way, was right near
Chernobyl.
It was coming back from there, the famous
day of prayer that God gave me, and
it was on the top of a tree,
this idea of operationalization.
Previous to that, we were not that interested
in Western Europe, though there was some interest.
It was the Muslim world.
We were only in Spain because it was
under Franco, it was Nazi, and it was
closed.
But our burden was to get out of
those places.
India was not even hardly in our thinking.
In fact, because Buck Singh had spoken at
Moody Bible Institute and given such glowing reports
of India and some other characters, well, India
I blotted clearly out of my thinking.
Anywhere where others were already doing it, we
didn't want to go.
Our places were Afghanistan, Iraq, even before Turkey
in our praying, not in our actions, Turkey,
and then, of course, these communist countries, Albania,
constantly being prayed for in those early OM
prayer meetings, China, of course, Mongolia.
And this change of vision through this failure,
and failure is the backdoor to success, and
failure often does bring at least a temporary
death of the vision so that God can
bring us into focus.
Because as human beings, number one, we easily
stray.
Also, as human beings, in finding God's will,
our humanity is always there, and God allows
us to go down dead-end streets.
God allows us to make mistakes.
I was young, I was immature, I think
I was only 22 at the time, and
God had to teach me a lot of
things.
I can't and won't take time to explain
how the vision for Western Europe was growing
in my thinking.
Arriving in France on the old Queen Elizabeth,
and launching a project in France, visiting people
in Western Europe, reading, having some people from
Britain come down and visit me in Madrid,
and for the first time getting first-hand
information about the Church in Britain.
That visit, and that man's slides, which we
barely got going, the projector broke.
But those slides of Britain, the youth group
that I met in Vienna, when I was
giving out lots of tracts waiting for visas
and permissions to go in the Soviet Union,
the idea, if I could mobilize that youth
group, boy, it would be a lot less
work for two of us, giving out these
thousands of tracts.
All these things culminated in my mind, together
with thoughts about the terrible war, mobilization of
hate, because that's what the war was, and
the thought, could there not be a mobilization
of love?
By Western Europeans, that could bless the Church,
that could evangelize and help evangelize Europe, and
then spread.
The vision was not lost.
It was still very, very strong at that
time for Eastern Europe.
But the idea was to see Western Europeans
do it.
And if you follow O.M.'s history, though
many of the things we've prayed for haven't
yet happened, many things we have prayed for
have happened, we will see how strategic, really,
it was that Europeans, within two years, began
to move into the Soviet Union.
Some of them, like John Heinous, speaking Russian,
a long way from where I was, with
my phrases and Russian tapes.
And that's a bit of history that is
really quite amazing.
In fact, one of the vehicles I sent
into the Soviet Union was a brand new
rented car from London.
I discovered there were unlimited mileage rented cars.
I did some research that they had no
way to know where you took them once
you crossed into the continent.
And so we sent an unlimited mileage rented
car all the way to Moscow.
I think Ron Penny may have been in
that car, but sometimes I get mixed up
who was on what team.
The work began there, and around that time,
Dale Roton seemingly no longer could stay in
Turkey.
And so it just seemed to me, because
the Indian vision was being born in my
heart at that time, that Dale should take
this whole Eastern European thing over.
And he moved from Turkey to Vienna and
pioneered, really, the early days.
And as my method has always been delegation,
I backed away quite a lot from that
vision.
I wasn't blacklisted.
I did from India once haul a suitcase
of books into Tashkent for a very interesting
connection in Moscow, which almost backfired in my
face with a black African.
We did eventually meet him.
We were going to stay overnight.
We gave him the suitcase, got on the
train out of Moscow.
This was in mid-60s, and headed to
Poland, where I had some ministry lined up
there in Poland.
I had the vision of that train of
distributing Christian literature in Russian through the toilets.
I had investigated the toilets, that most of
them were sort of hand things you just
pull, and there was the railway lines.
And so my vision was to distribute tracts
down through the toilet.
This was a long time ago, and to
be honest, I don't know if I ever
did get even one tract flushed out for
the sake of the evangelization of the Soviet
Union.
I only share this because the intensity of
the vision for the Soviet Union that was
so great back then has not been with
me.
Now, that's normal because I'm a human being
and I've just been there.
I was hesitant to go back to the
Soviet Union when the door opened.
I know it's no longer the Soviet Union,
because I felt, well, I've delegated this to
others.
This is not for me to go get
back involved there.
I mean, after all, my initial attempts weren't
so great, so it might be just better
to work through all these existing people based
in Vienna.
I did go to Czechoslovakia last summer, partly
linked with the burden to get back in
that part of the world.
I visited Poland a number of times, ministering
over the years, because Poland has been so
much of a different situation.
And the history of how those early teams
we sent into Poland, when eventually Keith Beckwith
and John Watts were both killed, is an
amazing history.
And some leaders in Poland today trace a
revival in their life and the turnaround in
their life back to those early days when
things were semi-closed in Poland, even though
Dale Roton launched them out in door-to
-door work.
And some of it was quite successful.
Now, it's interesting that this visit to what
was once the Soviet Union was linked also
with the 2000 movement, something that I also
have had an ongoing struggle with.
Though through that struggle, right from the earliest
days, have tried to indicate to the people
in that movement that we are with them.
I think sometimes in my weak, struggling way
of sharing things, I've expressed that I don't
have the faith that some of these people
have.
I don't always understand the way they arrive
at their goals.
I'm sympathetic to some people who are not
happy about certain things in the movement.
But again and again over the past years,
and there are a couple of tapes on
this, I have shared that I feel we
should link in with this thrust, even if
we don't understand it all.
So two main things have happened in this
past week.
We were away just for a week.
By the way, the meeting's in Germany en
route.
And this whole thing was built really around
us having to go to Germany anyway because
that meeting was booked before Riga.
I think they saw it in my itinerary,
and that's why they asked me to come
to Riga.
The meetings there with Daguna, very dear brothers
and sisters, went very well.
I guess there were a thousand young people
there.
Quite a few stood to make commitments.
A number came to us and shared their
Christian work today because similar meetings years ago
they stood and made commitments.
And I find that encouraging, especially since I
struggle about giving open invitations in Germany, partly
because one of the first invitations I ever
gave in Germany 24 years ago, two women
came up to me and accused me of
using the same methods of Aldolf Hitler.
It's always an encouragement when you're just arriving
in Germany for the first time.
I'm trying to learn how to preach there.
But the Holy Spirit, I believe, worked in
those meetings in Daguna.
But two things that have come out of
this in my own heart.
Number one, a deeper commitment to the 2000
Movement.
We've taken some steps to be more aligned.
David Hicks is now on the USA Board.
Not the International Board, but the USA Board.
Working with Louise Bush, Thomas Wang, John Kyle,
a number of others.
I spoke at one of the main opening
meetings in Brazil.
I asked Ralph Winter to be with us
here a week ago this past Tuesday.
I think also that was in God's plan
to have him and his wife over to
our home for just speaking together.
And I feel that the Lord does want
us in OM, in the midst of our
own struggles and our own unique, sometimes, way
of doing things, to do everything we can
to see this come to pass.
If after we've done everything we can to
see the world evangelized by the year 2000,
we know the process will have to continue.
That's why the name of the Movement has
been changed to 2000 and beyond.
If we do everything we can in terms
of prayer and commitment and networking and love
and grace, we have to leave it with
God.
Since so many of our goals in OM
have never been reached anyway, we talk about
Turkey, we talk about Afghanistan, things we have
prayed for, things we have aimed at, though
sometimes our goals have been a bit vague.
Some of our goals in the early days
of the work, we didn't always arrive at
those goals.
And I thank God for the European influence
on OM that is more, if you aim
for the roof, you should hit the roof.
That's better than to aim for the trees
and hit the roof, which is more the
American.
Not all Americans, you realize, in a pluralistic
country.
But there is a very definite, different way
of defining goals, generalizing now between California and
London.
In fact, Dave Babcock went to this huge
meeting, a very, very important meeting in Chicago,
where Gotherd and Bill Bright and a number
of other major leaders from all over the
United States planned this huge strategy in what
was once the Soviet Union Commonwealth of Nations.
And Dave was with me on this trip,
more time than I've ever had with Dave
almost in my life, and we were sharing.
And he could see, as he had quite
a lot of struggles in that meeting, that
he sees things through a European viewpoint, which
is good, but of course it isn't the
only viewpoint.
And our OM approach would be, as we
think of this block of countries, not to
think that it's only going to be the
Americans or certainly only going to be the
Europeans.
The priority is surely that it's going to
be the people from within those countries, the
nationals, but that Europeans and Americans and Australians
and people from many other parts of the
world are also to be involved.
So I see God pushing us to take
some greater steps in connection with the Year
2000 movement.
I think with that, I would beg every
OM leader who hears this work to beware
of cynicism, because someone's got some kind of
huge program and you see holes in it.
Let me just tell you, your cynicism, and
especially negative statements, any kind of pride is
more ugly than the holes in somebody's strategy.
And if there's anything that breaks my heart
in OM, it's arrogance and pride and the
lack of humility.
And when I see it even creeping into
my life, and it does, I can assure
you, I just repent as quickly as possible.
I was rereading in the back of the
bus, again, this little magazine book, Personal Revival
by Stanley Vogt, and I was kicking myself
spiritually, asking, why haven't I pushed this book
more?
And I have a copy of this going
to Jerry Davey who's sitting here, asking him
to see me immediately on this, to do
some research about what languages this is in,
because Calvary Road is a similar book, and
it's in 30 or 40 languages.
This book has just as strong a message
as Calvary Road, a very similar message, and
I don't think it's in many languages at
all.
We have it in the magazine book, and
God has used it.
You might say, why do I bring that,
touch on that issue right at this point?
Because I'm convinced the great need in those
countries, as in so many other countries, is
for people to understand personal revival.
Now, also coming back in the bus, I
read the report from George Barathon about Vladivostok.
All these things dovetailing together in my mind.
I tell you, you get alone for hours
and hours and hours in the back of
this old bus, bouncing, and reading the word
and praying, reading reports, no phone interruptions, no
other interruptions, visions and ideas come.
There are about 19 tapes full of those
ideas that May and Vera will have the
great blessing typing up.
I almost feel like apologizing for that, but
that's part of the vision.
The open door for the Duloths to go
to Vladivostok.
It's amazing.
We've already had one container of books in
Russia being sent to Vladivostok or to the
ships, so they will have them when they
go in.
And one of the things I want to
say at this point is that I have
sinned against the Lord.
Again, there are different kinds of sin.
That might get me in trouble even saying
that with some people.
But I really feel that it's possible to
be filled with the Spirit and be doing
God's will on a day-by-day basis,
which is what I've been doing these past
years, and still be blind, still be blind
about something lacking.
And the blind spot with me has been
the failure to respond with greater zeal, greater
enthusiasm, greater vision, greater action in connection with
this phenomenal new open door.
Several reasons for that.
The financial nightmare, the endless thumping that we
go through because of the lack of money,
which causes me at times, especially with my
Calvinistic streak, to say, Lord, if you want
me to do more in some of these
countries, then you bring in the money.
I've been playing that game with God.
And He's very merciful, fortunately, because I'm not
sure if that game is legitimate.
Now, that's not the same game that accountants
play who have the responsibility to put the
brakes on the movement when they're spending too
much.
That's different.
But with a person like me, a visionary,
a leader, I must be very, very careful
of making decisions purely on the basis of
the economic problems.
Again, I'm not saying that's a factor.
And I believe, in a sense, the brakes
being on me at times is a great
help to this fellowship and to this movement
because there are plenty of other people with
vision.
We made a decision back in Atlanta at
the Area Leaders' Meeting, the only Area Leaders'
Meeting we ever had in Atlanta, to give
our work in Eastern Europe, as it became
two separate fields, freedom to grow more than
the normal 10%.
It was amazing for me to discover from
Dave Babcock that we have over 150 people
in Eastern Europe between those two fields and
growing very, very rapidly.
That statistic alone I don't think is grasped
within OM.
I don't think OM leaders in other countries,
whether it's Brazil or Argentina or New Zealand,
who have the job of presenting the vision
realize how big our work already is in
Eastern Europe.
I don't know how many people who listen
to this tape realize that we have a
functioning team in St. Petersburg.
We can hear about these things, but when
you're so bombarded with information it doesn't always
register.
But when I got to Riga and a
woman walked up to me named Sandra, who's
part of that team in St. Petersburg, somehow
it becomes a little more real.
I was so glad that she came to
be with us at that conference.
Hans Strom also came down.
I was not able to stay for the
whole conference and he came down to put
on a literature seminar, another great privilege.
And of course Dave Babcock was with us
as well.
What am I saying by all this?
Perhaps I'm saying something to myself more than
anyone else, is that I have had to
make a deeper commitment and ask God to
rebirth in me the original vision that I
had for the Russian people and the people
of those surrounding countries.
God has overruled my lack of vision and
action and the fact that I thought it
should mainly only be through the people that
we delegated to that area.
God is merciful concerning our blind spots, but
I cannot continue in the future the way
I have continued in the past.
The fact also that the Lord has taken
from me the huge responsibility I carried for
twenty-some years in connection with India does
free me up to at least consider and
give a little more time to things like
this vast nation.
I'm not planning to launch some George Verwer
vision for that part of the world.
I want to work for the existing people.
I had a tremendous time with Dave Babcock
sharing in the back of the bus as
we drove back through Lithuania and Poland, good
atmosphere.
My main burden is that we could back
our Central European team and our Greater Europe
team more.
I had held up, even a few weeks
ago, they asked me for more money for
literature in Russian.
I think it was for my own book.
Maybe that was the reason I was hesitant.
I wrote some, asked them some hard questions
and Dave Babcock asked me in the back
of the bus why, if I had any
money in special projects, I wasn't willing to
finance more literature for Russia and for the
Russian people and the Ukrainian people and the
other republics and the Baltic states.
I was a little embarrassed by my hesitancy
and I hope that we as a team
through special projects can pray and see a
lot of finance released for literature projects.
A lot of the literature ministry and this
phenomenal literature ministry going on is Bibles and
New Testaments.
There is not a lot of evangelistic literature,
realizing it's a country of a quarter of
a billion people.
There's not a lot of outstanding, hard-hitting
material like Personal Revival by Stanley Volk or
Calvary Road and it is of little value
if we do an edition of a couple
of thousand people when we're talking about hundreds
of thousands of believers.
And I believe the next few months, certainly
the next year, is absolutely crucial.
Most of the churches are not in a
state of revival from all the information I
can understand.
This new freedom that has hit them has
caught them off guard.
They knew how to battle on under persecution.
It's amazing.
Yesterday...
There's so many uncanny things happened on this
trip.
I can fill several tapes.
Some of you may be worried about that.
But when we finally got out of Poland
yesterday I think we were between Lithuania and
Poland.
A Russian truck came through, just about touched
our mirrors.
The driver jumped out and ran up to
our bus and said, Dave Babcock.
He knew Dave Babcock.
He had taken three days to cross the
border and only to be turned back by
the Polish people.
You've got to get out of Lithuania, then
you've got to get in Poland.
Three days to get out of Lithuania, turned
back, Poland lacking one document.
Tremendous tension going on between all these countries
right now in regard to trade.
We thought we had a problem.
But he stopped, he wanted a share, he
wanted a fellowship.
And just off the cuff, Babcock mentions to
me that this man's father had been in
prison for 20 years.
These people have paid a tremendous price to
be where they are today.
But many of them are hurt.
Many of them are confused.
There's tension between Russians and Latvians.
There's complexity because these groups have come in
from countries with prosperity doctrine.
A number of major people from the States
are preaching legalism and extremism.
One guy went on, I understood, from Babcock
in a big meeting in Russia for an
hour about the evils of rock music.
Is this the message that we will bring
from the West?
It scares me silly.
And one of the things that God has
been dealing with me about is that I
am so satisfied at times in taking a
low profile.
I have false ideas about humility.
I'm sure I don't really know that much
about humility.
I don't even understand it.
But I must have some false ideas about
humility.
That, for example, to never advertise my own
ministry tapes that have ministered to hundreds of
thousands of people, never advertise them or put
something in a magazine where my name, much
less my photo, would appear and say, write
in for these tapes.
Perhaps overreacting to the advertising.
Christian advertising in general seems to make me
ill.
Because people so overstate things.
I am extreme, I must confess, in the
area of not wanting to overstate things.
But there is a danger that in OM,
because maybe that has been a strong point,
we don't want to lose that.
We don't want to lose anything that's from
God.
But isn't there danger that we overreact to
boasting, we overreact to overstating, we overreact to
people whose goals we know they'll never reach?
Into the other corner where our profile is
too low, we're unwilling to take steps of
faith because someone has to be a fool
for Christ to do it.
We have, of course, changed and we allow
photographs in leaflets, like the Love Europe leaflet.
We seem to, at times, allow something to
happen for one field of the work, like
Love Europe, but not allow it to happen
for another field.
And it's bound to be.
I don't have a big thing about this,
in one sense.
But there is a danger that we become
sort of schizophrenic, that OM becomes sort of
two organizations.
There's the conservatives, who are all trying to
be so men of integrity and humility, even
though they may in fact be on an
ego trip as much as someone who's got
his picture on the front page of a
magazine.
Now, the other thing that just pushes me
along this line is that, brothers and sisters,
the extremists and teachers of false doctrine are
on the move.
As we are intimidated by our overdue bills,
as we are intimidated by our fear of
growing too big too quickly, which is important,
as we are intimidated by some of our
own mistakes and things that we see in
OM that we don't like, so we become
more and more pushed to want quality and
be skeptical about quantity, we could end up
in a real sort of spiritual schizophrenic position
with people in OM not like-minded, not
of one heart, and the enemy could really
use that.
I don't have all the answers, but I
know the first step I have to take
is a deeper commitment to this original vision
God gave me for this part of the
world, and to join with these people who
have greater faith than me, including my Russian
brothers and sisters, and say, you know, let's
go all the way.
We want everybody in that part of the
world, we see on that huge map, we
want everybody there to hear of the gospel
of Jesus Christ by the year 2000.
We know our part in OM is going
to be small, our work in that part
of the world now, I'm thinking specifically of
the Soviet Union, our work in Romania, our
work in Czechoslovakia and in Hungary, one or
two other places, compared to the size of
the country, compared to what others are doing,
is significant.
Our work in the Soviet Union, and what
was once the Soviet Union and the surrounding
countries, though we've just made this big move
about Central Asia, but if we consider the
numbers of people, our work is very, very
tiny.
Now, the amount of literature going in is
not tiny, but manpower, budget apart from literature,
would be quite small.
So I feel, and I hope some who
hear this tape will join me in this,
that despite the fact that we are stretched,
and we are scared, and we know our
own weaknesses, that we make a commitment to
this great area of the world, and that
we not lose this part of the original
vision.
And that when we're speaking in meetings, and
we're showing slides, or we're talking to individuals,
that we will consider, and I think many
people already do, that this is a major
part of Operation Mobilization's forward thrust in the
coming decade, and especially to the year 2000.
Literature is absolutely crucial right now.
If I had arrived in Europe with my
mentality and my vision, right now, and we
had just had something equivalent to 1962, because
it was the success of 62, 12 vehicles,
25 million pieces of literature in one summer,
that just so overwhelmed me to believe that
O.M. could grow 10 times in one
year, to increase from 200 people to 2
,000 people in the summer in one year,
to increase from 12 vehicles to 120 vehicles
in one year, in order to blanket the
whole of Western Europe, not with tracks, as
it was in 62, but with books, with
Bibles, a slower approach, etc.
If you're able to do this in your
mind, can you picture me arriving at this
period of history, with this fur burning for
the Russian people and the other people's groups
of that part of the world, what would
I be planning for this summer?
Surely I would be planning and praying for
at least 100 trucks.
These are not Volkswagens we had in those
days.
These were trucks that could carry tons of
literature.
I'm not saying we should do this, because
we've got to live in history where we
are.
We don't want to get into fantasy.
But if it were, in a sense, 62,
or 62 could be exchanged with 92, that's
interesting, probably we would be thrusting 2,000
people into the Commonwealth of Nations and the
surrounding countries this summer.
If you examine what we're doing in this
part of the world this summer through Love
Europe, you will realize it is a very,
very minute or small operation, though that doesn't
mean it's not significant.
And in the light of all the other
things, every nation now in Europe, nobody wants
to be left out.
What we are doing in what was once
the Soviet Union is important and is significant,
and many other things are happening all year
round that we need to be more sensitive
to.
Even the thrust of ALOC, that Jerry Davey
is so involved in, I have that leaflet
in front of me, I've been pushing it
a lot lately.
Again, I guess part of what the Holy
Spirit has been attempting to do in my
own heart.
But if you study this leaflet, which is
so fantastic, you will see Polish, Hungarian, Czech,
Slovak, Bulgarian, Romanian, and then you will have
this little note here at the bottom.
Former countries of the USSR, ALOC is researching
possibilities to establish further publishing houses in Russia,
Latvia, Ukraine, and other countries emerging from the
former Soviet Union.
That's what we have so far through this
organization that we are in partnership with and
work through and with.
There's even a picture of Peter Maiden because
of Jerry's low profile.
There's a spot for Jerry's picture, but I
guess you were responsible for the leaflet, no?
So he left his picture out.
You see how we operate.
That's okay, Jerry can keep a low profile,
but big mouth George may not be able
to.
I don't know how many people are going
to hear this cassette tape.
That depends a lot on the people who
listen to it and whether they can get
a vision to make a copy because it's
not copyrighted and share it with others.
But I believe if we are to see
this vision of reaching this part of the
world or any other part of the world
by the year 2000 come to pass, that
the greatest need at this present time is
prayer.
The second greatest need combined always with commitment
in our own lives is finance.
One of the exciting aspects of this vision
is that the people in that part of
the world to some degree are saying to
us, give us the tools and we'll do
the job.
I don't believe the answer is sending thousands
of young, immature trainees into this part of
the world.
There's scope for some of that, especially people
who want to get seriously into the Russian
language or other languages.
Central Asia is very, very distinct from Russia.
I can't cover much about that on this
tape, but I think people know we have
declared Central Asia as a separate field under
Berthiel about to be turned over to another
brother.
I might just say that one of my
burdens as I shared with these people who
were mainly Russians, of course, was the challenge
of the unreached people.
One of the messages that we are going
to be responsible to sharing with our brothers
and sisters in that part of the world
is the message of the unreached people.
Just to give you an example of the
uncanniness of some of the contacts.
I had very little time there, 24 hours.
We had to unload all of this, Charlie
and all this, these things we brought for
people's physical needs.
We had to unload all these books.
We picked up all these Russian books in
Germany.
We didn't know what to do.
The conference was a little bit chaotic.
Should we turn them over to the committee?
I wrestled with this.
I mean, I was terrifically in spiritual warfare
my first morning just before my second message
as we arrived the evening before.
I decided we should put the books out
now, why I'm speaking, sell them at some
kind of price.
Very hard to know what price to put
because a dollar is 130 rubles.
But we filled our diesel tank, and that's
what gave me the right idea, for about
$7.
So what is the buying value?
These people, how are they going to buy
these books?
I decided the smaller books should be the
price of a liter of diesel.
It was a gamble.
We put all the books out, most of
them, a lot of them.
The people just mobbed the table, but they
didn't just grab.
They picked and they chose because 10 rubles
for small books, 20 rubles for bigger books,
it's still money.
So it just seemed to be the right
price.
But what a bonanza.
In fact, such a bonanza, Peter Hanström asked,
please leave Russ back here to help.
And so we left Russ, by the way,
in Riga, and he will be coming back
with Hanström via Sweden.
Just another prayer burden in regard to Riga,
and that is as we get these names
and addresses and contacts that we would have
wisdom as to what the next move is.
Even with the little time I have there,
I met a man from the part of
the Soviet Union north of Finland.
It's not on this map, but you can
see it.
It's not even on that map.
It's basically in Lapland.
I can't pronounce it.
Marmunsk?
Who can pronounce it?
Thanks.
I met a man from there who spoke
fluent English.
I was looking for someone to give this
box of personal Verwer Charlie that I wanted
to get rid of, including various and sunny
things.
He seemed to be the ideal man.
He was telling me about the poor up
there.
And soon I had him link with Sandra.
She then said, we're sending a team up
there in the next few months, and we
have no contacts except one.
This man right on the spot offered them
hospitality.
He also began to share with me about
some of the unreached people in that part
of the world.
It's amazing.
Another leaflet that was in the bus and
things I was sorting through was an old
copy of Pulse, six months old.
The whole thrust of that issue of Pulse
was Siberia.
I could just envisage ourselves turning the bus
around and just heading in that old bus
toward Siberia, but I don't think we'll do
that this summer.
How many of us really pray for Siberia?
I'm sure some do.
But Siberia represents many, many people's groups.
We're not talking about Central Asia now.
We're talking north of Central Asia.
OM has hardly anything there.
Though I've noticed that we keep sending teams
to that funny city called what?
Novosibirsk.
Again, talking to Dave Babcock, I find out
there's 4 million people there.
I was wondering, why do we keep sending
teams?
Dave is journeying up to this city in
the middle of...
Is that actually Siberia?
4 million people in that city.
We already have teams going there a number
of times.
I wonder how many of our prayer partners,
how many of us really know what we
are actually doing in that part of the
world.
I want to commit myself to somehow make
that known, to somehow find the people and
the finance that we need, and to join
hands with all those biblical and grace-awakened
people who want to see that whole area
of the world evangelized, whether they are part
of the AD2000 movement or part of some
other movement I believe another major contribution we
can make in all of this is, and
I touched on it but I want to
just say it again, key books for believers.
Pastors need the right books.
If pastors are going to give the right
preaching and the right teaching, they need the
right book.
I have never seen so many weird books
coming out as in the last 5 years.
I'm just being honest.
I looked at one full publishing catalog yesterday,
and I must confess there were 2 or
3 that were good and I ordered some
and chucked it in the catalog in the
rubbish bin in the back of the bus.
It seems to me if Satan can't keep
us from being zealous and committed and active
for Jesus, then Satan changes his strategy and
tries to get us into extremism.
We need books in the languages of these
people groups that are going to encourage, that
are going to bless, that are going to
be grace awakened, that are going to help
them through the time of transition.
If the churches don't come out of legalism,
go through a transition properly, they will lose
this generation.
They will lose also a lot of the
more zealous activist types who go to congresses
like this, at least some of them, and
they want to get on with the job.
Some of them are going to be ready
to pitch traditions to get on with the
job.
Others, especially if they're reading the wrong books,
are not going to pitch those traditions.
And so what's going to happen?
We're going to see massive disunity in the
church.
It already exists.
We can't boast about our unity in our
countries.
And that's why I'm convinced that Christian literature
for believers and leaders, the right books, well
translated, as well as books written by people
from within the countries, will be strategic in
connection with this vision.
God has given us in his mercy.
If we go back to 1961, when we
first crossed the border and got arrested, God
has given us over 30 years of experience
in this part of the world.
We, of course, also must be ready for
the huge transition.
And I think our people in Vienna so
far are doing pretty well.
And I want to back them, both fields.
I want to mobilize, I hope, at least
a million people who can pray for them,
because prayer mobilization is absolutely basic.
I've been asked to be the chairperson for
some big prayer mobilization of the AD 2000
movement.
I'm not so keen on that, but I
do want to be part of any prayer
mobilization.
Jack McAllister, who follows me in prayer as
much as any man I know, was there
trying to mobilize a billion hours of prayer.
I can't keep up with Jack when he
starts mobilizing hours of prayer but I thank
God there is a prayer movement going on.
And if you read the latest issues of
Mission Frontiers that comes out of the U
.S. Center, or you read other material, you
will see that the brothers and sisters involved
in all of this are very, very much
putting a big emphasis on prayer.
Even though that prayer meeting the first night
that I was asked to lead didn't quite
go the way we would dream, it was
still a significant step for that kind of
conference to say we're going to have, this
was optional by the way, we're going to
have this extended prayer time before we do
anything else including eat supper.
Things that are very common to you and
me, like five hour prayer meetings, small groups,
praying for nations, praying for people's groups, these
things are unheard of in many of these
churches.
And we must not in any way look
down on them because of that.
As they've been going through one set of
experiences in the last 70 years in that
part of the world, we've been going through
other experiences.
Let's stop arguing about who's better.
Let's beware of false humility.
Let's not put them on a pedestal because
some of them have been in prison.
They don't want that.
Let's learn from each other.
Let's share what we have with them.
Let's receive what they have.
Let's take what we've received from the Indians
and the Brazilians and the Japanese and the
Koreans, all these people that are tied in
with our movement and our fellowship and other
fellowships, and let's share that sensitively, carefully, with
this part of the world that has been
locked behind that iron curtain all of these
years.
To me, that's so reasonable, it's so logical,
and though I know there are many, many
problems involved, I believe we should be as
Caleb and Joshua, that's who I preach from,
by the way, in my message on Revival
in Prayer, and let's believe that God will
do this thing.
Let's pray.
God, we thank you for your mercy in
connection with this trip.
Lord, I haven't had much time to mention
just the physical aspects of the trip and
how that old bus, now 30 years old,
just kept running and running 20 hours a
day for a good part of this journey.
Thank you for giving grace to Peter Dance,
to Dave Babcock.
Thank you that Daniel Dance was able to
go with us.
Pray for Russ and his final hours there
in Riga right now as the conference comes
to a close and as follow-up groups
join every national group and now spread out
around that whole part of the world in
order to follow up on local events and
local prayer mobilizations throughout the Commonwealth of Nations
and other nations in that area.
Oh God, we thank you for answers to
prayer.
We know that as we look at that
part of the world and all the unreached
people's groups, the complexities, the obstacles, the huge
rapid growth of cults, the huge push of
the Muslims from the south and in places
that are rapidly becoming Muslim republics that truly
we are faced with one of the greatest
challenges in the history of our entire movement.
We feel weak, we feel inadequate, we feel
overstretched, Satan is trying to intimidate us because
we can't even pay our own bills right
here in our so-called international headquarters.
But Lord, we stand against this intimidation.
We believe that this finance is going to
come in without taking money from special projects
to any great degree which we feel should
be going largely toward literature and toward the
unreached people and toward other unique crisis and
phenomenal open doors in other parts of the
world.
Oh God, we thank you for the teams
there in those eastern European countries and in
what was once the Soviet Union, like that
team in St. Petersburg.
We pray for Dave Babcock, for Terry Jarvis,
we pray for Jerry Davey right here from
our own fellowship who is constantly going there.
Show Lord when he should be going to
Moscow as so much is now centered on
Moscow and that seems at times to be
rather intimidating and frightening.
But Lord, we don't want to miss your
plan.
We don't want to be intimidated by the
unknown.
We don't want to be frightened by our
own weaknesses but we want to somehow stand
in faith as Caleb and Joshua to believe
that you will give us this land, a
land that floweth with milk and honey, spiritually
speaking.
We believe there could be a harvest of
millions.
There could be a harvest of millions of
people involved even in what we do with
this information that we are receiving and this
challenge that we are listening to.
And we pray, oh God, that the church
in that part of the world will experience
not just revival off in the future which
some of them are praying for but personal
revival now, brokenness, the cross, Jesus reigning and
ruling in their lives and that we would
be experiencing the same thing so that in
no way will we miss what you have
for us in our lives, in our family,
in our teams and in our whole worldwide
ministry.
We thank you for the tremendous strategy meetings
we were able to have right here a
few weeks ago, reported so clearly in Roots
and Branches.
And we see what you are putting on
our hearts there, dovetailing with, Lord, what you
have put on my own heart even over
these past days and the hearts of our
brothers and sisters in Central and Eastern Europe.
Lord, you alone can put all this together.
You can give us the grace to battle
through battle through when things are rough and
tough.
You can give us the grace and the
strength to move heavily in this area and
not neglect India and not neglect the Middle
East and not neglect certain parts of Africa
and Latin America.
You can give us that extra mile mentality
that big heartedness, that grace awakenedness so that
this whole worldwide trust can dovetail together under
the anointing and the gifting and the reality
of your Holy Spirit.
We pray this in much inadequacy and much
weakness in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Amen.
...of the Central Asia work.
You can write these people care of any
O.M. office.
They'll forward the letter.
You can also write to me care of
Box 17 Bromley-Kent.
That's George Verwer, Box 17 Bromley-Kent, BR13NR.
I can send more literature.
You can feel free to make copies of
this tape or you can order extra copies.
We'd appreciate your prayers for our tape ministry
and especially Alec Brackett here in the U
.K., John Wright in the U.S.A.,
and also Bill Webster in the audiovisual section
down there, Peachtree Tyrone.