In the middle of January 1971, whilst the
OM motor vessel Logos was in Rotterdam undergoing
work for certification of seaworthiness, George Verwer went
to Cape and Ray Bible School to speak
to the whole school at the invitation of
Mr. L.
A.
T.
Van Dooren, the principal of the school.
This is a recording of what he said.
I don't believe it's by coincidence I'm here
tonight.
It's very difficult to leave the ship.
I've hardly ever been away on a Thursday.
I'm usually there always at least Monday through
Friday or speaking in the Netherlands where I
can get back to the ship in the
morning.
So I don't believe that I'm here by
coincidence and I feel that somehow God has
his hands upon this school and I like
to move where I believe God is moving
because I'm only one person and without the
Lord Jesus I can do nothing.
If I go into places that aren't prepared,
I can pour out my heart, I can
stand on my head, nothing will happen.
And I've just about done that.
But when I come to a place where
I believe the Lord is working, where I
know there are men more spirit-filled than
I, ministering the Word of God, I believe
that he is going to do something.
I believe that tonight may be one of
the greatest turning points in your whole life.
I don't say that because I'm anything, but
I say that because first of all I
believe most of us need a turning point.
Most of us, I'm convinced, are drifting in
the wrong direction.
We may have a lot in our heads
and we may be gathering even more in
these days, but somehow I believe we've missed
real New Testament, revolutionary, dynamic Christianity.
Now words don't mean much.
You can take my words and you can
throw them out the window, but what we
have seen God do now for 14 years,
a movement that most people didn't think would
go more than a few weeks, is proof
that these principles of the Word of God
work.
Some of the people who have been the
most skeptical about O.M., many Americans I
think of especially, because we don't have any
big show in America, we don't have any
organization in America, just two or three people.
That's why many Americans have never even heard
of it.
And Americans like show, they like beautiful buildings,
just go visit the Vatican of Wheaton and
you'll see.
And so people have become critical and we've
been accused of being fly-by-night, I've
been accused of being anti-American and not
appreciating the Nixon administration and all kinds of
other things.
But some of these people who have been
the most critical somehow landed up in a
meeting like this and ended up some of
the strongest people we have in the work
today.
There are Americans in this work and there
are British, almost an equal number of those
two nations, and they're outnumbered by the other
nations, which is very, very encouraging to me.
And they've worked together.
I don't know if you've got any anti,
or not anti, I don't know if you've
got any English-American problems here in this
school, but all as I know, I don't
know how 20 British can live in a
Bible school in Britain in the midst of
60 Americans.
And to be a minority in your own
country is an unusual situation.
But maybe it'll teach you some humility, because
whether you're British or American, you can always
use some of that.
But I believe, with all my heart, that
as Americans, we can work together with people
from other countries.
But it will never happen unless we change
our course.
It will never happen unless we experience a
revolution.
It will never happen unless we come to
grips with real, biblical, New Testament Christianity, as
opposed to American evangelicalism.
And it's not just myself who thinks this
way.
Many men, like Tozer, for example, have really
studied this situation, or like Leonard Ravenhill, have
seen that this is true.
You and I have been brainwashed.
We've been doped.
We've been injected with just as much pseudo
-Christianity to keep us from the real thing.
And though we may be saved, uh, most
of us, when we're just reared in this
environment, know very little of this kind of
spiritual revolution.
And it really is a tremendous situation.
It really is.
It's not just true in the United States.
It's true in many other countries as well.
The verse I want us to think on
tonight and begin our thinking on is Acts
chapter 17, just one verse, verse 6.
When they found him not, they drew Jason
and certain brethren unto the rulers of the
city, crying, These that have turned the world
upside down are come hither also.
These that have turned the world upside down.
Now, this was a simple description of the
Apostle Paul and his team.
He worked on a team.
He wasn't just alone, like we so often
do today.
One missionary couple, just out of Bible school,
boom, send them off to Bongo Longo in
the middle of some country, and there they
are with their Bible school notes, and they're
going to shake heathendom for Jesus Christ.
And we wonder why hundreds of them bounce
back with nervous breakdowns and why at least
one-third of all new recruits, especially from
the States, drop out after the first term
on the mission.
The Apostle Paul was fairly strong in the
faith, but he worked on a team.
He got together and he worked with others,
and they turned the world upside down.
What have you turned upside down?
And I believe that Christianity, real Christianity, is
a revolution.
It's a spiritual revolution.
It's a revolution of love.
I've titled this little book that I put
into print, and I believe that somehow this
is what we've missed.
We've missed this whole revolution of love.
What love can do when it begins to
move through our lives.
What love can do when we begin to
allow it to have full sway.
The love of Christ.
The power of Christ.
Now, when I come to a school like
this, and I think of all the Bible
teaching you have, and I would probably agree
with probably almost everything you've heard from this
school.
I mean, I don't know everyone who's spoken
to you.
I'm sure there's somebody I'd probably disagree with,
but I know the message of Ian Thomas.
We've circulated his books in multitude of languages
all over the world, and Brother of Endurance
books as well, and I know what the
school stands for.
I believe this message.
I believe this message that you heard last
night, but I'm also convinced of this, that
many of us are so deep in the
fog of unreality that we'll hear a thousand
messages, and we never will change.
That's right.
It'll take something more than saying, yes, Lord,
I want that.
Something more than, yes, this is it.
Lord Jesus, I give myself to you.
Lord Jesus, I believe I'm crucified with you.
It's you and me.
I can't do anything.
Now do it, or any other prayer you
may practice, whether it's an OM prayer, a
caponry prayer, or whatever prayer you may be
taught.
It's easy to pick up the lingo.
Quite another thing to pick up the light,
and I'm convinced that because many of us
are trapped in the fog, we cannot understand
spiritual truth.
We cannot really take in spiritual truth.
Also, I believe too many of us want
to get everything of Jesus without letting anything
go of ourselves.
Now whether you want to accept it or
not, there's plenty of emphasis in the Bible
on the negative.
I love to be positive.
I believe it's only Christ in me who
can live this life, but I also must
face the reality of strong verses that say,
for example, if any man come after me,
let him deny himself, take up the cross,
and follow me.
Or an even more difficult verse like Luke
14 33, except you forsake all that you
have, you cannot be my disciple, even if
you go to Bible school.
And we're living in a day in which
most Christians want all the blessing and none
of the responsibility.
It doesn't work.
We have a Christianity in the book of
Acts, and in this Bible, that's hot.
We read about men like Elijah standing on
Mount Carmel, and when he prayed, he didn't
get handed a bucket of ice cubes.
Fire fell.
And in the book of Hebrews, it says,
our God is a consuming fire.
And when you and I become spiritual revolutionaries,
when we really begin to live the way
this book talks about, we will be ignited,
and we will become anointed, and we will
become a hot, sharp, burning, revolutionary instrument in
the hands of God.
And that is not the abnormal life, that's
the normal life.
Operation Mobilization is a very ordinary movement.
I, myself, am a very ordinary person, at
a low IQ, had a pile of problems,
I wasn't some great person before I knew
Christ, nor after.
In fact, OM is not a one-man
show.
I may have the biggest mouth, maybe that's
why God's using me, I don't know.
But this movement has moved because God has
raised up now about 70 men of responsibility.
And without them, I would be nothing, and
we together, without the Lord, we would all
be nothing.
But so often today, we become evangelical hero
-worshippers.
This often just leads us to a deeper
road of frustration.
We all want to be like so-and
-so, we read some biography, oh Lord, if
I could only be like Hudson Taylor, Lord,
why am I such a worm and a
wretch?
You'll never use me, Lord.
I think a majority of the people that
I have faced, they have accepted Christ in
some way, but they've never accepted themselves.
They've never accepted themselves.
I had quite a few write me after
my meeting here last year, and they said,
thank you, George, some of them by mistake
calling Mr. Verwer, don't make the same mistake.
Thank you very much for telling me to
accept myself.
I realized when I was done that I
never have really done that.
And this is so true.
Some of you know the ministry that Bill
Gothard has had in America, just showing young
people some of these basic issues about themselves
and the Word of God, that we must
accept ourselves.
We must realize that God is going to
work through us as we are.
He's not going to turn you into me.
You can be very happy for that.
He's not going to take you, a little
quiet, a shy girl, and sort of make
you the biggest loud mouth in Caponry.
Nor is he going to take the more
talkative one who you wish you could turn
off and make her a little quiet, silent,
whispering miss.
No.
He is going to take you as you
are.
He's going to mold you and conform you
to Jesus Christ and make you a revolutionary
as you are.
He'll take your loudness and he'll use it.
Oh, he'll tame it.
He'll break you.
He'll do all kinds of things to get
you to learn how to be still.
But basically, your temperament will be the same.
Read that book.
You can get a copy.
Write to me.
I'll send you one.
Spirit-filled temperament.
Oh, how key that little message is.
Because too many of us are running around
wishing we were her, wishing we were him.
And we look in the mirror and say,
oh, what happened when they gave out the
faces?
So on one hand, we're trying to serve
the Lord.
We're trying to be disciples.
We're trying to be instruments in the Lord's
hands, and yet we haven't even taken this
basic step of accepting ourselves with our particular
weaknesses.
Turn with me to one of the greatest
verses in the whole of the Bible, 2
Corinthians.
2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 9 and 10.
He said unto me, My grace is sufficient
for thee, for my strength is made perfect
in weakness.
Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in
my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me.
Most gladly, will I glory in my infirmities,
that the power of Christ may rest upon
me.
That's accepting yourself, accepting your weaknesses.
It doesn't mean you don't do anything about
it, but it means that basically you rest.
You rest in who you are.
The Bible talks in Hebrews 4 about a
rest of faith.
I believe this is a very real thing.
Some people enter it by crisis, other people
enter it by process.
No matter what way you enter it, it's
got to be a daily thing.
But I believe there is a place where
we as Christians operate and live our Christian
life in the rest.
We have ceased from our own works.
It's very clear, and I feel that many
of us are uptight, as they say over
in the States.
Believe me, I don't know what they say
anymore.
I get all mixed up.
I live with so many Englishmen and Americans.
I'm completely confused of who's using lifts and
who's using an elevator and where it's a
boot and what's what.
But anyway, you'll understand if it comes out
wrong.
But I believe, and many of us are
uptight and we're trying so hard, we've never
really entered this place of the rest.
And one of the reasons is we aren't
at rest without ourselves.
I used to be so anxious about myself.
Now I was skinny, you can see that.
People are always coming to me, oh George,
why don't you eat more?
And I'm sure I've scared many a man,
especially with a big appetite, away from operation
mobilization.
But I had trouble accepting myself.
I remember one time looking in a magazine,
I didn't know the Lord at this time,
but I know Christians that have the same
problem.
These problems don't all disappear.
We make our little decision for Christ.
And sometimes I'm afraid it is too little
a decision.
Instead of a revolution, it's merely some kind
of a decision.
And it scares me and I wonder if
some people who do this really know Christ.
But anyway, I remember seeing a magazine article
and there's a picture of a girl and
a rather skinny chap sitting next to her
on the beach.
And it was advertising some muscle building, weight
gaining apparatus that you could get for who
knows how much money.
And as I saw this picture, I had
a lot of interest in girls, like 99
.9 all American boys.
And so I saw this little picture and
as it had the next picture next to
the first one, a big strong football type
captain of the team comes along and he
hits this little wormy type and boom, knocked
him away and he walked away with that
bird.
I mean the girl.
I mean the chick.
Forgive me, I'm very confused.
Anyway, I was really shaken up by that.
So I immediately wrote in for this kit
and it wasn't funny at all.
And so there I was in my living
room, my house there in New Jersey where
I was born, doing my exercises and stretching
these things.
I could barely even move them, much less
keep going back and forth.
And after months, I think I gained about
a pound.
And I was more frustrated than ever.
And I always felt so inferior.
You know, a majority of people that I
counted, I counted a lot of people, feel
inferior.
And some of us, I was outgoing then
and I could put on a big show.
I went to all the dances.
I was the only freshman at the senior
prom and all this.
But I was inferior the whole time.
I had not accepted myself.
I was inferior to even all these girls
that I dated.
And I was being torn up by this.
And when I became a follower of Jesus
Christ, March 5th, 1955 in Madison Square Garden,
Billy Graham was preaching.
I found a whole new revolutionary way of
life.
I found that God loved me.
I found that he accepted me.
All 124 pounds, no more, no less.
I found that he would use me.
I found that he wasn't out to crush
my temperament or to punish me or to
show me up each day for the wretch
I was.
But he loved me and he just wanted
to work through me through his Holy Spirit.
And this kind of revolutionary Christianity does work
and it will pull us free from many
of our hang-ups, many of the things
that are trapping us and keeping us from
being effective for Jesus Christ.
This is the revolution I'm talking about.
Perhaps you thought that I thought the revolution
is running down the street with an armful
of tracks or sailing off to Indonesia in
a ship, standing on the masthead with a
loudspeaker preaching to the seagull on something else.
But believe me, the real revolution must begin
in your own heart.
You must understand this.
This is why I believe in Bible school,
why I believe in training programs.
Anything along this line gives us time to
stop, to think, to get our own lives
in order.
The revolution begins here, in your own heart.
You know, many, many, many people will never
come into this because they're caught in the
fog.
I just quickly want to share with you
some of the fog that I've seen people
trapped in.
I believe that to know victory, repentance is
involved.
Repentance is involved.
And I believe there's too little emphasis today
on repentance, on really turning from sin, turning
from the things that we know are not
right.
So many young people are living a double
life, again, because they're trapped in the fog.
You wouldn't believe this, but I've had Bible
school students, one from a big Bible school
in America, come to me and tell me
that all his years in Bible school, he
was with prostitutes and immoral people every weekend.
You may say, well, that's not a very
nice thing to say here at a Bible
school.
Well, I doubt if that kind of thing
is happening up here, but anything can happen.
Anything can happen.
And the double life has no respect of
persons.
And I have met people, I knew a
young man in Bible school in Britain, who
every weekend or every other weekend hitchhiked into
London and lived and dwelled in the bottom
of the worst pit that you can find
in the Soho, and continued as a leader
in his Bible school.
This is where we as young people, if
I can consider myself still somewhat near your
age bracket, are very, very clever.
We can fool our parents, we can fool
our teachers, we can fool our very roommates.
We can have porno stashed away in Bible
school, no one will ever know it.
We can be feeding our minds on things
that we know are taboo and keep everybody
deceived.
The double life, and I would not say
that tonight if I hadn't known dozens, dozens
who've come to me and told me they
were gripped with the double life while they
were at Bible school.
And it was tearing them apart.
And when they got home on the weekends
or they got away from the Christian environment
and the Christian pressures, the truth they had
in their hearts and their heads didn't hold
up.
And it all went down.
It happens on OM.
I know people who've come back from OM,
and the moment they stepped back to England,
they went back into sin in one form
or the other.
Now you don't need to go to the
Soho, you don't need to do some vile
thing to be living the double life.
The greatest cause perhaps of the double life
is pride.
And we can, we can just uh, uh,
sort of sophisticate our sin.
Where before we gossip, now we share prayer
requests rather freely about other people.
And uh, there's a way of, of bringing
sort of a, an evangelical aroma to our
own flesh, to our own irritabilities and pride
and, and envy, all the envy that gets
around us as Christians.
The jealousy of others who may be being
used to the Lord more than we are.
Someone else is asked to testify and you're
left out and, and resentment or envy comes
into the heart.
One psychiatrist, a Christian psychiatrist in India wrote
me.
He said, I believe, George, 80% of
people's problems come from bitterness and resent in
their hearts.
How true this is.
I wonder if there's some of us here,
if we searched our heart, we know we've
got bitterness or resentment against someone.
Many today have it against their parents.
Maybe you're here because of some subtle form
of resentment or bitterness against your parents.
You've never forgiven them for something.
Maybe you're from a broken home and you've
never forgiven your father, or you've never forgiven
your mother, or you've never forgiven a brother,
or you've never forgiven another Christian.
And though you've got the words and the
talk, deep down there's, there's a gangrene of
resentment and bitterness that'll eat you apart the
rest of your life if you don't let
the blood of Christ and the love of
Christ and the forgiveness of Christ cleanse it
and free you from it.
This is revolutionary, but this is where the
revolution must begin.
Some people don't like you to speak about
sin.
I don't know how you can read the
Bible and not speak about sin.
On almost every page in the Bible, sin
is spoken about, and it's described, it's compared
with leprosy, and I believe that too many
of us are playing around with various forms
of sin.
And one of the very reasons we can't
come free from it is we don't hate
it enough.
We don't hate it enough.
And we get trapped in what I call
evangelical fog.
What is some of this fog?
You know, we had a lot of fog
in England today.
Planes aren't landing, and in fact, my plane
was canceled this morning because of fog in
Southend, so I flew across into Gatwick.
But, uh, there's a lot of fog in
our own lives.
Let me quickly give you some of the,
the fog, and I've seen people trapped in,
so trapped in that all the sermons in
the world and all the messages couldn't bring
them out.
First of all, there's this fog of materialism.
We refuse today to pay attention to the
teachings of Jesus about material things.
We're almost totally blind to this, and we
just don't want to face up to the
fact that we have been blinded by our
love for material things, and we have surrounded
ourselves, and we are living in the most
cushy society.
And believe me, these, these, uh, this love
for material things will not go out easily.
It will take a tremendous struggle.
Tozer said this, there can be no doubt
that the possessive clinging to things is one
of the most harmful habits in life, because
it is so natural.
It is rarely recognized for the evil that
it is, but its outworkings are tragic.
This ancient curse will not go out painlessly.
The tough old miser within us will not
lie down and die obedient to our command.
He must be torn out, torn out of
our heart like a plant from the soil.
He must be extracted in agony and blood
like a tooth from the jaw.
He must be expelled from our soul by
violence as Christ expelled the money changers from
the temple.
I want to tell you to come free
from the love of material things will take
a revolution.
The rich young ruler was faced with this
revolution.
He had scored very high on many other
points, and Jesus said, go and sell all
that you have.
We Americans and many British and Europeans as
well represent the rich young rulers of the
world.
Whether you know it or not, the poverty
age or the poverty bracket in America, three
thousand dollars, when you get over that puts
you in the rich young ruler class as
far as the rest of the world is
concerned.
And the things we take as as necessities
in America are considered luxury, total luxuries and
eighty percent of the rest of the world.
And this is why in many cases, American
missionaries, some Europeans as well, have been totally
ineffective.
They could not understand why this national didn't
get on with it.
They could not understand the tension of the
problems.
One little look and anybody with half a
screw would know what's wrong.
But somehow we won't learn.
And materialism has just overwhelmed us.
John comes along and he says, love not
the world, neither the things that are in
the world.
If any man loves the world, the love
of the father is not in him.
What do we do with that verse?
And what about first John three sixteen?
Oh, we love John three sixteen.
That's our favorite verse, isn't it?
We all know that one.
Sure.
We want to get to heaven.
What about first John three sixteen?
In this, we perceive the love of God
in that he laid down his life for
us.
So we ought to lay down our lives
for the brethren.
And then verse seventeen, he that has this
world's good and is his brother in need,
we've seen some tonight, and opens not his
heart of compassion, how dwelleth the love of
God in him.
I want to tell you, this is so
revolutionary, so hot, it makes a Marxist look
like he's going backward on a conveyor belt.
Right?
And I have seen communists, when I presented
this revolutionary gospel, just admit that this was
more revolutionary.
And yet, somehow, most of us are found
drifting in our own materialistic society.
Most of us in this room will be
happy to settle down somewhere, someday in America,
in a nice home with a nice car,
several cars now, you're poverty stricken if you
don't have more than one car, and all
the other things.
And that's only a minor part of it,
because, you know, it's not the things around
you.
And I never judge people for the things
they have, because God looks at the heart.
God looks at the heart.
And you may be very poor.
You may be very, very poor.
You may be living in a shack in
the middle of Arizona.
But, uh, I hope there's no one from
Arizona tonight.
It's a great state, actually.
But, uh, you can have just as much
love for material things.
Many of our Indian brothers find this the
greatest battle in their life.
They have nothing.
Have nothing.
And yet, this is the number one battle
in their life.
And I believe many of us are trapped
in this fog.
And this is why evangelical Christianity becomes totally
hypocritical.
And I say this.
American Christians and British Christians, we can go
and hear messages about the deeper life, and
we can hear wonderful truths, and we can
say we believe them.
But until those truths hit us and turn
us upside down in our relationship to the
material world, and begin to make us unselfish
and loving and sacrificial, then we only say
by our lives that in reality, communism is
more dynamic.
In reality, the false cults without the Holy
Spirit have more power.
So we're saying ultimately the devil's more powerful
than Jesus, which I can't believe.
We see right now 20,000 Mormons on
the march in Europe.
Most Christians don't even like to talk about
this subject.
20,000 Mormons on a two-year program,
more of them in Europe than all the
missionary societies of all of North America put
together.
And they now want 100,000 people in
Britain, these Mormons sweeping across Britain, 100,000
converts.
They preach perhaps the toughest message you can
declare in this country, you've got to forsake
tea drinking, you become a Mormon.
You want to preach that in Britain?
I don't know how they do it.
Perseverance, discipline, dedication, and some kind of phony
love that they copied off Dale Carnegie or
Joseph Smith.
Oh may God open our eyes.
We cannot continue as we are.
The little trickle that's coming out of our
churches to the mission people.
Eric Fife, one of the leaders of Urbana
three years ago, said we have a greater
missionary interest than ever before, and less candidates
per number of Christians.
And the missionary situation in Britain is becoming
more hopeless by the month.
Many can't even get their support, even though
it's only a small amount each month.
It's incredible.
And I believe this demands a revolution.
I believe we've got to come out of
this fog of materialism.
Secondly, many of us are caught in the
fog of impurity.
I wish I could speak all night on
this.
This is, this is the big hook.
Billy Graham says of our country that we
have become a generation of sex gluttons.
Stronger than anything I ever dare say.
But it's true.
And a high percentage of us know that
this is the big battle.
And so many Christians for 10 minutes of
pleasure have thrown away a lifetime of spiritual
reality.
And it would be worth coming here tonight
if the only thing you get into your
heart is the desire to stay pure by
the power of God.
And you can.
I, as most Americans, had to some degree
a problem in this area.
I lived for dates.
I lived for, for this way.
And though I, I never committed immorality because
by the mercy of God I was saved
17.
Uh, it wouldn't have been very long.
It was all in my mind.
So it might as well been there in
some ways, in any case, because the standard
of Jesus is very clear.
And yet because this revolutionary Christianity became a
part of my life through the word, through
the prayers of others, through denying self, taking
up the cross and following him through a
whole host of truth.
It's not any one truth.
Why is it that so often in the
church we get one little favorite set of
truths and we ride it and ride it
and ride it until we fall off the
horse and then discover that there are a
few other truths in the Bible.
Really, there's so much truth in this book
that no one person has ever got a
corner on all.
And this is why I believe we can
learn so much from each other.
This is why I like to read a
complete cross-section of books and get under
the ministry of a cross-section of people.
Because God has so many wonderful truths to
teach us, so many revolutionary truths.
But I believe with all my heart we
neglect God's teaching about sex.
I speak to many evangelical young people who
believe sex is dirty.
Where do we get this idea that sex
is dirty?
And yet so many are hung up and
having problems and I can tell you just
have no idea what happens on the mission
field.
You have no idea the amount of homosexuality
and lesbianism there is on the mission field.
Of course it's just a few, but it's
there.
And it's there because we refuse to face
issues in our training program.
I had a young man launch his mission
field in Asia and every woman on the
field of the first four were all proven
to be lesbians, had to be thrown out.
What kind of ungodliness can we ever dream
of on the mission field?
Why?
Because most girls when they were young and
when they were in Bible school never were
even taught anything about this.
Maybe had a slight problem, completely repressed it,
made it worse.
When if they had shared it and got
some counsel they could have been completely free
and I've seen people come free from every
sex problem there is.
And the same of course is true in
other areas whether it's perversion or just lust
or whatever it is.
And so many are caught in this fire
and they're being torn apart and they'll never
serve Christ effectively and they'll end up bringing
disgrace to the work of God as is
constantly, constantly happening.
Now is the hour to get desperate about
this.
Not when you're 40.
If you don't get concerned now about getting
out of this fog, you probably won't win
many battles when you're 40.
Roy Hesschen once told me when I was
talking to him about this problem, he said,
George if you think it's a problem among
young people, he said in my counseling all
over the world I've discovered it's a greater
problem among those who are married and who
are in their 40s.
So many foolish young people think that if
they get married they'll solve this problem.
They get married and they get into it
worse because the devil has no border and
the marriage border doesn't stop them either.
The answer to this problem is a revolution
of love, a revolution of discipline.
The answer to this problem is the cross
and repentance.
It's living in the light with one another.
I know people who've been delivered from these
problems simply through opening their heart, linking up
with one other person of their own sex
and praying together that the Lord will take
them through.
Many of you know you'll never get through
alone.
If you're honest man, you know it because
you team up with someone else, you pray
together, you share in battles together, pray for
one another as it says after you confess
your faults in James and you'll go through.
And I would get out of Operation Mobilization
if it wasn't for the victories I've seen
in a majority if almost all the people
when they've been with us and when they've
been moving out in this one.
God can take you out of that fog
of impurity and he can keep you out.
If you do fall he can pull you
out again.
That's the wonderful thing.
If you're finding a lot of battles in
this area or any other area, you may
not come out without a few falls in
the process.
But if you understand the grace of God,
the forgiveness of God, the love of Christ,
and realize that when you fall you don't
swim in the puddle, you get up and
get clean, then you will soon find that
that grace heals the wound.
You know we're all wounded.
Don't be amazed when you see inconsistencies in
others.
Be astonished when you see any consistency.
We're all wounded.
The devil has marred the whole earth and
he's marred you and I.
And people don't get out of all this
the day they're born again.
Watchman Nee in his book, Release of the
Spirit, which I recommend you read, I think
it's on that table, says it takes 5,
10, 15, 20 years for God to bring
a man even to, in a sense, some
degree of spiritual maturity.
It's not going to happen seven months at
Caponry, nor two years on O.F. It's
a lifetime of yielding your members unto righteousness,
of reckoning yourselves as dead, realizing, yeah, you
are dead.
But you know, unless you face the issue,
you have trouble taking it to the cross.
Many of us try to go to the
cross and go to the Lord and experience
a new degree of reality without first facing
up to the areas where the devil has
control.
We love to repent over sin vaguely.
Oh Lord, I am a sinner.
But oh, to confess anything, even to one
other person specifically, is very difficult.
Oh may God bring some of us out
of this fog of impurity.
And I just testify personally in thanks to
the Lord Jesus for delivering me from the
lusts of the flesh.
For 15, 16 years, five of it single,
and the battle was as hot.
Someone who started dating at nine years of
age and went with 32 different girls between
then and 16, which those of you in
America know is not unusual.
And then all of a sudden I start
to read these principles in the Word of
God and start to see God's demands.
I thought I'd never do it.
But in His power, in His strength, you
can live free from the fog of impurity.
And I believe there are some of you
that want that because you know without it
there's no hope.
Then there's the fog of emotional problems.
This is big.
This seemingly is almost as big as this
other one though.
This fog of impurity leads many people down
the tunnel of emotional problems.
I want to tell you, you cannot play
with the sins of the flesh without it
affecting your mind.
Especially if you've been reared in an evangelical
home.
Some of you, your parents have put such
a standard in front of you, every time
you look at it you get ill.
You've been so overdosed with Bible verses since
you've been little that you get a psychological
reaction when you walk into a church.
And I know many evangelicals rebelling from their
parents, overthrowing the faith.
I know many Christian leaders whose sons are
completely deserted the faith, whose daughters are hippies
and taking drugs.
Praise the Lord, we've seen some of these
hippies and drug takers come back to Jesus
and come to Jesus in these days.
We've got several been on drugs on this
ship.
One has been five years working on the
deck.
No, he's in the engine room now.
Five years on drugs.
An American bumped into one of our teams
and another team in Iran and now he's
going on for Christ.
Jesus is the solution to the drug problem.
He's the solution to the wandering problem.
And I believe there's tremendous potential in this
wandering generation.
They've already seen through some of the things
most evangelicals can't see through.
They're tired of just playing the game.
They're tired of thinking that Christianity is mainly
a short haircut, a nice tie and a
clean shirt.
No, those things may be convenient at certain
times.
That's not Christianity.
And I praise the Lord for what God's
doing among these Christian freaks, these Christian hippies.
And we've seen some of them in our
work and they're soul winners.
They're soul winners.
And we need to be careful looking down
our nose like the Pharisees, because you know,
Christianity does not consist in what you wear,
does not consist in your haircut.
A man came up to me in Holland,
smoking a cigarette, actually.
I haven't got quite the victory over that
over there.
He said, long hairs of the devil.
Look at this Bible verse.
It took me into Corinthians.
And he said, look at this.
It says you can't have long hair.
But what he didn't realize that long hair
in that day was down here.
And short hair, as far as I can
study, was around here.
And in any case, I don't believe that
Christianity consists in outward things.
Two men went into a Billy Graham meeting.
You perhaps heard the story in Minneapolis.
Big Congress, two long haired fellows went out
and sat in the front.
And two straight ushers came down and removed
us from the meeting.
Billy Graham said, the two men that looked
the most like Jesus Christ have been taken
out of the meeting.
When they're brought back, I'll start to preach.
Now, in most countries where we work in
these days, it isn't convenient to have long
hair, but to tell a man he has
to get a haircut to find reality in
Christ is sort of putting the cart before
the horse.
But so it has always been with so
many of us in the church.
Little trivialities we major on and the majors,
love, righteousness, purity, godliness, godliness, we minor on.
So true.
And this is why many are rejecting it.
This is why so many evangelical young people
are throwing it over.
Praise the Lord for some of them who
have come back through sometimes a little more
revolutionary message.
I believe that God wants to deliver us
from the fog of emotional problems.
I don't believe it's going to be a
shortcut for some who are scarred or wounded,
but I believe the rest of faith, the
sufficiency of Christ can do it.
My own wife was marred by emotional problems,
migraine headaches, backaches, heart murmur.
Because her father was killed in the war,
her second father hated her, and she never
had love.
You know, we all need love.
Whether he's a communist behind the Iron Curtain
or an American or an Englishman, we need
love.
We don't get that love, things don't go
right in our minds.
And this is what's happened with so many
people in this unloving society.
They haven't had the love.
Maybe some of you are like that, never
really had love from your parents.
Maybe you sit here tonight among a hundred
people and feel like a lonely island in
the middle of nowhere.
I want to tell you, that is enough
to make someone eventually crack up.
But you know, when you realize these great
truths that Jesus loves you with an everlasting
love, the rest of faith, and the sufficiency
of Christ, something's going to happen.
It's happened to my wife.
She read a book that spoke about the
obstetrics of the new birth.
She read a book that showed that these
things were mainly emotionally induced.
Even physical sicknesses can have their original cause
in an emotional upset.
Read that book, None of These Diseases, and
you'll see what I mean.
And so she had all these things, she
was taking all kinds of pills, and nothing
was happening.
And actually, I met her through going to
rent a Moody Science film.
She was in charge of the films.
I won't get into that story, but we
got to know each other.
We fell in love and wanted to get
married, but I saw that she was completely
being worn away by these physical illnesses.
I didn't understand it.
Only through counseling and through reading, I came
to see that this was mainly a spiritual
issue.
And in her own room after weeks of
battling, you know, God will allow us to
go through almost anything to bring us to
that place where we realize He's enough.
It's not Jesus plus this, not Jesus plus
service, Jesus plus O.M., Jesus plus a
husband.
That's what it was for her.
She always said, Lord, I'll go anywhere.
I'll go to the mission field.
Just give me a good husband.
I'll go anywhere, Lord.
And she was all knotted up because she
thought I was going to leave, and the
fact of the matter, I was, because I
was scared to death.
All these headaches and all this money it
was going to cost.
And in her own room.
My grandfather's from Scotland.
And, you know, this is what happens when
you get cooped up in a Bible school.
You laugh at anything.
You need more physical exercise.
Anyway, there in her own room, she realized
that Jesus Christ was enough.
And it wasn't Jesus plus George.
And she just surrendered herself to the Lord
and just said, Lord, my life is yours.
I love you.
And she believed.
You know, it's faith brings the victory, isn't
it?
You can hear all the messages, but as
it says in Hebrews, if you don't mix
the word heard with faith, it's a no
avail.
And she mixed it with faith that night.
She slept very well.
And when she woke up, she was completely
healed.
I've lived with her in the most difficult
circumstances for 11 years.
And those things have never been back.
You know, you can't go to the mission
field today unless you have a wife who's
going to stick with you.
Unless you have a wife who knows how
to stand the trials and the testings.
And it wouldn't be any good for me
to be a great preacher and love to
go to New Guinea and work in India
if I didn't have a wife who could
stand the test.
And you know, there's many a young man
that wants to serve Christ.
But where are the women, especially in this
day, who can stand the pressures and the
tests and the trials?
The hope is the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
Well, I believe I've taken enough time.
I just close with this.
This appeal to become a revolutionist.
This appeal for you to determine once and
for all with all your mind that you're
going to become a revolutionist.
You're going to refuse to drift any further.
You're going to refuse to stay in the
fog.
You're going to believe with every inch of
faith in you tonight that God is going
to take you out of that fog and
make you a revolutionist.
You're going to believe that the message you've
heard here week after week, even last night,
will become reality by faith, by daily denying
self, taking up the cross and following Him.
You know, you can have a crisis, but
any crisis that's not followed by a process
will soon be an abscess.
And a lot of people have that in
Britain and America today.
They tell me about the great blessing they
got five years ago.
What about tonight?
What about today?
What did you get from Jesus this morning?
Unless you learn to daily take up the
cross, to daily enter afresh into the revolution
and out of the fog, to daily believe
God to break that dichotomy, that double life.
Unless you're ready for daily combat, daily communion,
daily repentance, and for daily Jesus.
Forget it.
You'll never be a revolutionist.
Oh, you'll be a religionist.
You'll be an evangelical.
You'll be a good church goer.
Oh, you'll sing in the choir.
You may even come on OM, but you'll
never do what they did in Act 17.
They turned the world upside down.
Come out of the fog and let Christ
make you a revolutionist.
He knows your weaknesses.
He works in different ranks with different people.
He knows any particular psychological problem that you
have.
He accepts you as much when you're down
as when you're up.
And with that grace, that forgiveness, nothing can
stop us.
Let us pray.
I don't like invitations.
It's harder for me to give a five
minute invitation and preach for 50 minutes.
But I know, especially under an academic, and
in an academic situation, you can forget what
you've heard here in 10 minutes.
If you meet your girlfriend out there, one
look at her and you can forget everything.
Or maybe you've got some studies, or maybe
you've got this or that.
And I just cannot come here tonight without
giving some of you the chance to make
a decision, a commit.
It's only the beginning.
I have no spiritual pet pills tonight.
And I believe that some of you that
want to make a whole fresh beginning in
your Christian life, you want to mix what
you've heard tonight and other nights with faith.
And I believe one of the best ways
to do that is to cause you or
ask you to take some physical step.
And I did this last year, I think
maybe for the first time here.
And I saw more results from my last
year's visit than any of all previous visits.
And I believe that some of you that
want to make a decision tonight, and your
decision is to be a spiritual revolutionist, to
come out of the fog and into the
light of forgiveness, of grace, of acceptance of
yourself, and believing that God will use you
as a sharp dynamic instrument, regardless of your
hang-ups, your problems, your weaknesses.
So I'm convinced, I'm not going to take
much time, I'm not going to ask you
to come for, but I'm convinced that this
little invitation is of Him.
And I want you, if you will pray
that prayer with all your heart, God make
me a revolutionist.
I want to come out of the fog,
I turn from sin, from what's ever hindering
me, from running the race, and I believe
God is going to make me a revolutionist
if it takes 60 years.
We've got one man on our ship who
wants to come more than anyone else, he's
77 years of age.
You know it's worth 77 years if it
takes that long.
But you've got to begin, and I believe
there's some of you that want to begin.
And so I'm going to give you that
opportunity, if you'll pray that prayer, Lord take
me out of the fog, out of the
double life if that's your situation, into the
light of spiritual revolution, of biblical dynamic militant
Christianity.
If you'll pray that prayer with all your
heart, and I'd like you to just stand
quietly right where you are, and I want
to have a prayer of commitment and believe
God's Spirit will fill you and take you
out of the fog and into the light.
During this appeal quite a large number stood
up, and after the main meeting was over,
George Burwer spoke to those who stood up
as follows.
I'd like to say just a few things
that I believe will be a real help.
First of all, you're going to be attacked.
The Bible says that we have an enemy
like a roaring lion.
He doesn't care about those who are just
sitting around.
He doesn't care about the non-revolutionists.
Someone just wrote me from India, and they
were telling about Napoleon and how he had
a couple of tests he gave to his
enemies to see if they were harmful or
not.
And the non-revolutionists, he knew they were
no problem, so he didn't bother with them.
He threw all his efforts against these potential
revolutionists.
And the devil is not worried about the
non-revolutionists.
They aren't going to upset anybody, turn anything
upside down, knock down any of his castles.
They aren't even going to build a sandpile.
But once you say, well, Lord, I'm going
to be a revolutionist, I'm going to be
a world changer, I'm going to see lives
changed upside down, I'm going to determine that
any cost of my life is going to
get turned upside down.
Then the devil decides, well, this isn't too
good.
So he has a little special meeting.
Alan Redpath once said on a tape, has
he preached here yet?
I have mercy on you.
He's a great force in my own life.
I was a student at Moody when he
was a pastor at Moody Church.
He knocked me out so many times, I
thought sometimes I'd never get up.
I still listen to his tapes.
He said in one of his tapes, I
think he was preaching in Edinburgh, that Satan
has a number of demons that he can
send out against any one Christian that's really
beginning to move.
So realize that.
Very important.
Secondly, realize that there will be failures.
Anybody who makes any kind of commitment, at
least in my meetings, I guarantee failure.
I guarantee failure.
I had a girl really encouraged once, and
she made a commitment at a meeting, and
she came to my after meeting.
She wrote me months later, she said, you're
the first preacher that preached and gave an
invitation, because she'd gone through many.
And actually, it all worked.
You promised me failure, and that's what I've
had.
What should I do?
You see, God loves failures, and sinners.
I'm still a failure.
I had to go to a brother yesterday
and confess and repent that I had said
something that wasn't the way Jesus would have
said it.
And God broke me and gave us a
fresh unity.
There'll be failures.
And as you come to the cross with
your failures, there's forgiveness.
You know what happens to so many people
that make a big commitment.
They set up an image, structure, a standard.
For a while, they keep it.
They're sort of running on the emotional veal
of that meeting.
Sooner or later, the crunch comes, down they
go, then they get discouraged, depressed, disillusioned, throw
it over and say it doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
I've met many people who've done it.
Reality includes dryness, failure, depression, discouragement, the work.
That's reality.
But it also includes knowing what to do
with those things.
The girl who knows reality isn't the girl
who never gets depressed.
The boy who knows reality isn't the boy
who never gets discouraged or whose mind never
drifts off to something that isn't pleasing to
Christ.
But he knows what to do.
That's why the Christian's real.
The man in a false position of holiness,
and believe me, there's no end to the
group.
In India, started a group on super sanctification.
The final test of sanctification was for a
girl to undress in their presence.
And the whole movement went wild.
All the leaders were having women strip in
their presence, and they fell into sin, and
the whole thing went down in a sewer.
And that happens.
I can tell you right in this country,
things that happen I wouldn't even describe in
a public meeting.
And I believe it's deadly.
This whole area where we think we're going
to get perfect, we're going to, you know,
we're going to be way up here.
It's deadly.
I know it's not, uh, it's not him.
Sure there's victory, but victory includes knowing what
to do when you fall.
Our burden is not to fall.
It's clear in John.
Very, very, very clear.
Where the Lord tells us not to sin.
My little children need things right unto you
that you sin not.
Good.
That's what we're talking about tonight.
But if you sin, you have an advocate
with the Father Jesus the righteous.
So reality includes living in victory.
And most of the time we are in
victory.
We are rejoicing.
But because the tremendous battle within us, the
lust of the, uh, the spirit lust is
against the flesh, whatever way you want to
describe it, we do fail the Lord.
We do sin.
It's not an action in mind.
It's not in commission, in omission.
And a lot depends on your standard.
My standard is Jesus, and that knocks me
out daily.
And so reality isn't just living on some
great standard, but it's knowing what to do
when you sin and how to bounce back.
That's the reality.
The realist, he's got problems, he's got battles,
he's got struggles within, without, but he knows
what to do.
He knows how to appropriate the grace of
God.
You must understand that.
If you understand that, you'll never get discouraged.
I've hardly been discouraged in 15 years, not
more than a few minutes, sometimes a few
hours, because I don't, I don't accept discouragement
any more than the immorality.
It's all from the pit.
But when I feel that discouragement coming on
and maybe getting a time of discouragement or,
or somewhat of a depression, I don't remain
there.
I've learned how to get out of it.
Appropriating the word, praising the Lord, fellowshipping with
someone else, sharing, all kinds of ways, not
any one way.
And realizing that it's truly Christ and that
he can, I can do all things through
Christ, who strengthens me, the word of God
says.
So try to understand that.
There will be failures.
Reality involves that.
Takes time to make a man of God,
but knowing what to do when you fall.
And if you learn that secret, nothing's going
to stop you.
It's just fantastic.
Thirdly, you must get into this book in
a new way.
Don't study it any more.
Devour it.
Meditate, feed, memorize.
Until the word is memorized and down in
the subconscious, it's doing you little good.
Eighty percent of our problems are in the
subconscious.
That's why we do things we don't want
to do.
We don't do things we should do.
And our battles are down there.
I wish I had a few hours to
talk about that.
But the Bible says the word will make
you clean.
Now you are clean through the word.
I don't understand it.
But it does work.
The greatest thing that's cut off, I would
say at this point, ninety-five percent of
all my lustful thinking.
So now when things tend to want to
jump into my mind, instead there's verses.
There's praise.
There's images of the Lord Jesus and the
way he lived, which I get from the
word, not looking at Solomon's head of Christ.
And so unless you're willing to get really
serious about this book, forget it.
A man once told the story of someone
going down with a wicker basket and trying
to get water out of the lake.
Of course, every time he picked the water
up, it all went out of the wicker
basket.
The man said, well, that's like my memory.
But you know, at least every time he
did it, the wicker basket was cleaner.
So you may not be able to remember
everything so well.
But each time you let the word go
into your mind and into your heart, it
will clean you.
How can a young man cleanse his way?
Take heed according to the word.
I have hid thy word in my heart,
Lord, that I may not sin against thee.
Get into this book like never before.
Memorize it.
And linked to this, you can take it
the next thing at any cost.
Learn to appropriate the promises.
Not one, not two, but the hundreds of
promises.
Like 1 Corinthians 15, 58.
Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work
of the Lord, knowing that your labor is
not in vain in the Lord.
Or Philippians 1, 6.
Having this confidence, he which has begun a
good work in you will continue it until
the day of Jesus Christ.