Our God and Father, we praise you for
the reality of this hymn that we have
been singing.
We thank you for the privilege of being
together here tonight and ask that your word
may go to our hearts, that we would
not be hearers only, but doers, for we
pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I'm very grateful to God for the opportunity
to be back once again with you.
I will never forget my last visit here.
We especially praise God for the two young
people who you have sent out to the
land of France and for others that are
praying about going.
And I feel very burdened tonight to just
to some degree share a little of what
God is doing in answer to your prayers.
I think it is such an encouraging thing
that God has given you such a vision
for world evangelism in this day when so
few people seem to be able to see
much beyond their own nose.
We just praise God for that.
We have brought our little extra book table.
We didn't bring many books because you have
so many of your own books, but we've
chosen just a few other books that you'll
find in the back.
Look for the big Swede, a young man
from Sweden named Christian, taking care of the
books.
You will want to get some of these
items that we have brought with us from
London.
Someone asked me if I could only choose
one book to have with my Bible.
Suddenly I were in a prison camp and
I only had one book to go with
my Bible.
What book would I choose?
And immediately I said, Spiritual Depression by Dr.
Martin Lloyd-Jones.
Not that I agree with every single line.
I don't agree with that in any book,
not even my own books.
But in the past 50 years, I believe
this is the greatest book put in print
in Great Britain.
And it's a desperately needed emphasis at this
hour.
The title really is misleading.
It is not a book about depression.
It covers that subject.
It's a book about discipline, about dealing with
feelings, about living a life of reality, about
handling most of the major problems, like growing
weary in well-doing and trials and what
happens when you get in God's gymnasium.
Here's 300 pages at a price of 85
pence, and books now of 300 pages are
charging two pounds for.
So I would challenge you to get a
copy of that great book on spiritual depression,
Michael Griffith's book, Give Up Your Small Ambitions.
I am amazed at the low, puny, Mickey
Mouse goals of the average British Christian.
Now I know we Americans, we're known as
loud mouths, and we've got a lot of
ideas that never get carried out.
That's why in OM we've mainly filled the
movement with British people.
But really, really, some of you need to
give up your small ambitions.
And this is a book about that.
And it's a dangerous book to read, because
I'm convinced if some of you read it,
you'll probably end up coming up here to
get hands laid on for Japan or China
or somewhere else.
There's a lot of other books by Roy
Heshin, by A.W. Tozer.
For 10 years we've negotiated to publish this
book by Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
in paperback, originally only available in a very
expensive hardback.
Now it's off the press.
The whole edition is almost sold.
The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer's classic book
on the attributes of God, and it will
be a great challenge and blessing to your
own heart.
You know, I get excited and revived just
looking at the titles of these books.
Just one of my own books.
I never know what to say about my
own books.
They're not very good.
I get a lot of good quotations, however,
from other people's books.
This is one that is actually four messages
that I have put together called A Revolution
of Love and Balance.
When a person commits himself wholly to the
Lord, begins to know the power and the
fullness of the Holy Spirit and the reality
of the Lordship of Christ, then the devil's
next strategy is to get them off balance,
get them to become some kind of a
religious nutcase.
Not in the good sense, like Malcolm, but,
you know, an extremist.
And there is a great difference.
And so, I'd like to present this copy
to Malcolm at this time of A Revolution
of Love and Balance.
Can you come up and receive this as
a gift?
If you don't agree with something in the
book, just write to me and we'll change
it in the next edition.
I'd like you now to open your Bible
to the New Testament to a verse I
know you've all read before, and I tend
not to want to read it because I
know it's too worn out by missionary speakers,
but I want to read it anyway because
I want to look at one part of
this verse that is especially neglected, and that's
Acts chapter 1, verse 8.
I'm really grateful to my wife for being
able to be here tonight.
I've just come back from a month or
three weeks of being away, and my wife
only found out about this meeting.
She was very looking forward to being with
me all day today back in Bromley.
She found out about this meeting a week
or ten days ago and wrote me a
six-page letter about various things.
And she asked me, why in the world
do I book meetings one day after arriving?
Because often you have this jet lag and
your days are nights and your nights are
days.
And she wanted me to see the family
and spend time with the family, which we
did.
I immediately phoned her from New York, a
little family crisis I felt was worth the
expenditure, and told her that really we were
going to be together.
I was counting on her to come with
me.
She's just got out of hospital actually, not
supposed to be roving around too much, but
she's with me, and I know that she,
after seeing this great congregation and this great
church, she knows why I couldn't resist this
meeting.
Family is a big priority, and we're happy
to also have a little rendezvous with our
son from Swansea.
And it's true what our brother said, that
without my faithful wife, I just wouldn't be
going very far.
And I just praise the Lord for her.
Now this text, Acts 1.8. But ye
shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has
come upon you, and you shall be witnesses
unto me, both in Jerusalem and in Judea
and in Samaria and the uttermost part of
the earth.
The uttermost part of the earth.
There are many things I would love to
talk to you about tonight.
I'd like to talk to you about the
Lordship of Christ.
Like to talk to you about the fullness
of the Holy Spirit.
I'd like to talk to you about relationships,
how to relate to people on the subject
of love.
I'd love to talk to you about the
all-sufficiency of Christ.
I'd love to talk to you about so
many different basic subjects of spiritual life.
And when someone comes on OM, they hear
more about those things than they hear about
missions, because we believe that missions and evangelism
grows out of a life that is going
deeper with God and that is understanding God's
way.
But I believe your own pastors and teachers
here in this church can teach you on
those subjects probably better than I can.
And so in my limited time, I want
to talk to you about something that perhaps
I know a little more about.
I want to talk to you about the
uttermost parts of the earth.
Because I have just returned from Nepal just
a few months ago.
I've just returned from Sudan, from Iran, from
Bangladesh, from these regions beyond where there is
so little witness for Jesus Christ.
And I feel that it would be right
to share with you something of what I've
seen, something of the need, something of the
challenge, realizing, of course, that what I say
tonight must be balanced out by other messages,
other revelations, other verses.
Needless to say, it needs to be said,
keeping in mind this important word from the
Lord Jesus Christ himself just before his ascension
into heaven.
Let us look at 2 Corinthians 10, 16.
These are amazing words from the Apostle Paul,
to preach the gospel in the regions beyond
you and not to boast in another man's
line of things made ready to our hands.
Here was one of the goals, no small
goal, with the Apostle Paul.
One great preacher said to me once, the
problem with the average Christian is not failure,
it's low aim, low aim.
We need to aim high.
And Paul said to preach the gospel in
the regions beyond.
That was before the jet plane, huh?
That was even before the O.M. 15
-year-old truck that the Apostle Paul wanted
to preach in the regions beyond.
Then, if you'll look for me, look at
Romans 15, verse 20.
Romans 15, verse 20, Paul
again is speaking, yea, so have I strived
to preach the gospel, not where Christ was
named, lest I should build upon another man's
foundation.
So we see it is very biblical to
think about the regions beyond.
We make a great mistake in the church,
and I know this church is not making
it, but many are making it.
We think a lot about our own personal
blessings.
We think a lot about praising the Lord
and having a wonderful experience with the Lord,
and all that's good, I believe in it.
Sometimes in O.M., when we start a
prayer meeting and we start worshiping and praising
Jesus, it's six hours later before it's finished.
In fact, on the ship, that happens every
week.
Praising the Lord, worshiping the Lord.
But when we do this in spirit and
in truth, it will lead us into having
a vision as the Lord had as he
looked and wept over Jerusalem.
When the Lord Jesus looked at Jerusalem, he
didn't praise, he wept.
There is a time to praise and there
is a time to weep.
Of course, through the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, we're always rejoicing.
We are a strange paradoxical people that can
weep and still know the inner joy of
his presence and his upgirding and undergirding power
in our life.
But in this day in which there's a
great renewed emphasis on praise, perhaps we have
begun to neglect the doctrine of weeping.
Jesus wept, Paul wept, and it's time Christians
wept, especially for the state of the Church
and for the state of the laws.
Both of those things broke the heart of
the Apostle Paul and caused him to weep.
The uttermost parts of the earth are on
the heart of God tonight.
Tribes that can't even listen to a gospel
recording because no one has had the courage
and the discipline to go to that tribe
and to get that language down even into
a few simple messages.
How can it be, since Jesus gave the
commission 2,000 years ago, that we have
failed to do such a relatively simple task?
Think of what men do in the world.
I was just reading this morning about all
these expeditions to the Himalayas over the past
couple of months.
Have you read about that?
Three more men, top mountaineers, all killed.
Japanese expedition, American expedition, New Zealand expedition, most
of them all failures.
Three died trying.
No low Mickey Mouse goals for these mountain
climbers.
No game of words for these tough-minded
agnostics and atheists who do more to conquer
a snow-covered mountain than we do to
conquer a world for Jesus Christ.
It concerns me, I must confess.
Sometimes when I read such things, I have
to recommit my heart to Christ, almost like
reading a missionary biography.
Nepal is a land that's on my heart.
I'm thrilled to hear that you have contact
with a worker there.
A land of 12 million people.
Nobody knows how many Christians.
Optimists say now, because God has been working
in Nepal, there may be 1,000 or
2,000 Christians.
Is that many among 12 million people?
They're scattered across this mountainous country that has
only a few roads in the whole nation.
And this means that if some of these
unreached people are going to be reached, we
need tough, disciplined men who can get a
pack on their back with maybe 60 pounds
of gospel materials or a record player or
records and willing to trudge out 10,000,
15,000 feet.
These people live in the mountains.
Talk about mountaineering for Jesus.
Maybe some of us ought to read Len
Mole's book, Some Like It Tough.
You may say, well, I'm not naturally tough.
I'm a weak type.
Well, I tell you, you're looking at a
weak type.
If I turn sideways, some of you won't
even see me.
We're not talking about human strength.
We're not advertising for men who have taken
the Charles Atlas muscle-building course.
I heard a joke about that just yesterday.
Somebody took this course, they went through it
for six months, and then they wrote back
to Charles Atlas, I finished your course, would
you now please send me the muscles?
But it's not quite like that.
It's not a matter of human strength.
It's knowing God.
It's walking with God.
It's knowing the power of the Holy Spirit.
It's knowing what it is to enter into
the spiritual warfare as described in 2 Corinthians
10, verses 4, 5, and 6.
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal,
but mighty unto God, to the pulling down
of strongholds.
This is the kind of men we need.
This is the kind of women we need.
And it's a challenge.
I wonder if there are some today, some
tonight, who would pray about the land of
Nepal.
Of all the countries I mention in my
tours, I speak about 600 times a year,
I find hardly anyone ever asks me about
Nepal.
It's just too far out.
It sounds too distant.
Nepal.
I mentioned already that we have more people
in India than all of South America and
all of Africa combined, but you've got more
missionaries in Brazil than you do in all
of India.
Brazil is about the size of one Indian
state.
And I believe one of the greatest responsibilities
on the British Church is the land of
India because you don't need visas.
I cannot get back to India.
I got three-month visas, six-month visas
for five years.
Finally, I ran into some red tape, and
they wanted some bribes, which I don't believe
in, and a lot of other complications took
place with evil men, and I was out.
I cannot get a visa back to India.
But as a British person, you don't need
a visa.
You don't need a visa, but you need
a love for Jesus to go out to
that land.
The Mormons have 24,000 men on the
move right now.
They've won 124,000 people in Britain alone
to their false cult of Mormonism, even though
they even preach that you must forsake tea
drinking to become a Mormon.
Can you think of such a message to
preach in the British Isles?
And yet these slippery, well-dressed, well-groomed,
friendly Americans cut British lawns, trim hedges, paint
doors, and they've won 124,000 Britishers to
their false cult of Joseph Smith, who every
historian knows was a second-rate reprobate.
But they believe in short-term work.
We, on the other hand, have been bound
too long to traditional methods of reaching the
world for Christ.
One-third of all of our missionaries are
on furlough.
Most of them have big families.
They have to spend a lot of their
time just surviving on the mission field.
They're battling all kinds of difficult problems, and
one-third of them quit after the first
term on the field.
Now, I'm still in favor of the traditional
missionary, and we're training men and sending them
into almost every major society in the world.
But as I believe in that method, I
believe also we need an army of short
-term people.
When I say short-term, I mean a
year or two.
I'm not talking about an O.M. Summer
Crusade.
That is just a training program.
That isn't even short-term.
That's a mini-crusade, a mini-exposure.
Well, you've got to start somewhere.
We praise God.
Many young people who came on O.M.
for a summer, frightened to death, legs shaking.
They thought they were joining this super-dedicated,
dynamic, on-marching movement, and they found out
that 70% of the people were as
weak and as frightened as they were.
Together, they fell at the foot of the
cross, were filled with the Holy Spirit, and
went on not only to lead souls to
Christ, but to see churches planted, to see
people discipled, and then to see many more
going on for a longer term.
In France alone, 13 churches, new churches, have
been born in the follow-up work of
the O.M. teams.
How easy it is for some people who
don't know what they're talking about to say,
oh, well, young people, what can they do?
This is soulish.
They get that word from watchmany.
They like to pronounce it.
It makes them look spiritual.
This is soulish.
This is youthful zeal.
You cannot believe the criticism we have had
to battle the past 15 years in just
trying to keep going.
People so quickly say things, giving out tracts.
Isn't that superficial?
And we need more theological content.
That sounds good.
We need more theological content.
These young people need to go to seminary
first.
Seminaries have become cemeteries and buried more pastors
than the world could ever count.
Many of our young men are not uneducated.
Many of them graduated from Cambridge and Oxford,
but they spent their summers on O.M.
during their four years at Oxford, so they
didn't come out just another intellectual twit.
And I believe that what we have in
our heads somehow must be transmitted to our
feet into action, or otherwise we become lopsided.
You'd look funny if you walked in here
with a head that big and a body
about as big as mine.
That really would look strange.
And yet this is the way many Christians
are.
Their heads are filled.
They've read more books.
They've listened to more cassettes.
They've gone to more conferences.
They've tried Filey.
They've tried Keswick.
They've tried every different kind of movement you
can think of.
They've got more and more and more truth,
and their heads are getting bigger and bigger
and bigger, and their bodies are about as
thin as a pencil.
They don't have any feet.
The Bible says, Blessed are the feet of
those who preach the gospel.
I was so happy to hear about your
action group.
When is that, tomorrow night?
That's what I would join if I were
here.
What a joy it was just last week,
two weeks ago, banging on doors in the
back streets of Minneapolis among the black people
and some poor white people as well.
If you think everybody in America is rich,
you've obviously never been there.
There's more poor people in America than there
are poor people in Britain, I can assure
you, especially among some of our black friends.
What a joy, what a joy it was
to be out sharing Jesus Christ house to
house and in the streets.
I hope you're a member of that action
group.
I know some churches, they think, well, they're
an action group.
That's for a little odd group of super
spiritual ones or a few extremists who've got
excess energy and zeal or they don't like
television or something else and want to go
out in the evening time and bang on
doors.
I believe every Christian should be a witness.
That's what I see in the book of
Acts.
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
Do you believe in the Holy Ghost?
I'm sure you do.
Well, the Holy Ghost brings a holy go
and if you're not going, you don't know
the Holy Ghost of the book of Acts.
You may know some other spirit and I
wouldn't want to get too near you, but
you don't know the Holy Ghost of the
book of Acts.
And I believe that every Christian is either
evangelizing or fossilizing.
You have to tell because I can't judge
any man, not in this short visit.
My heart is burdened to see book of
Acts reality, not just book of Acts words.
And I believe this will lead us not
only to dynamic witness right here in Bristol
and throughout all of Britain and then throughout
Samaria, that's France, that's Belgium.
Think of little Belgium.
You know you can get in a jet
foil.
Have you heard of the jet foil?
By Tower Bridge you get in this souped
up speed boat.
It takes the British to develop these things.
It's incredible.
Jet foil down the Thames.
Four hours later you pull into Belgium.
No more these silly fairies dilly-dallying around.
Get the jet foil from Tower Bridge.
There it is.
A land of nine million Belgians.
One of the most un-evangelized lands in
the whole world.
More evangelized than any African country south of
the Sahara.
More evangelized than any Central American country, any
South American country.
The land of Belgium.
Do you think you can find workers for
Belgium?
The only thing people think of in Belgium
is some place they got to pass through
to get to Germany or further to do
their skiing in Switzerland.
Belgium is one of those unreached lands.
That's part of our Samaria.
Think of Spain.
My heart is so burdened for Spain.
¿Hay algunos aquí que hablan español?
¿Algunos que pueden hablar español?
Anybody speak Spanish?
Praise the Lord.
Two people.
English are great at languages.
Yes.
They compete with the Americans.
Really.
Some of you could pick up Spanish in
a couple of months.
I just visited my Spanish teacher.
She taught me 20 years ago.
I stopped in her house.
I've been praying for her.
She doesn't know the Lord yet.
But I remember she used to just shake
her head when she thought of my Spanish.
Then I took Spanish at college.
It was just as bad.
I went to Mexico.
And one month I was preaching Spanish.
I've been preaching ever since in the Spanish
language.
You can learn a language.
People always ask me.
We have a question and answer session.
And they tend to think, Oh, we're mainly
just giving out literature.
We don't bother learning the language.
So they always ask this question.
It's sort of a loaded question.
Oh, what do you do about the language?
The answer is simple.
We learn them.
And many young people in OM are bilingual,
trilingual.
We have people who speak four, five, even
six languages.
We had one real dull brother out in
India.
And he was having a lot of difficulty.
We finally put him on the ship.
He was mainly washing dishes.
But he was a beautiful brother and he
loved Jesus.
He learned one language a year for five
years.
So those of you who are a little
bit dull.
Terrific scope.
Why not tackle Spanish and go down to
the land of Spain?
One of the most unreached nations in the
entire world.
35 million people.
There's now complete liberty.
The communists are beginning to move.
They now have freedom in Spain.
It's a whole new day in Spain.
And Spain needs a thousand missionaries right now.
Right now.
Jehovah Witnesses have grown in Spain.
From a few dozens 20 or 30 years
ago.
To 25,000 strong.
And have put their kingdom halls in almost
every major city in the entire nation.
Whereas there are some whole provinces with as
many people as Bristol.
Without a single witness for the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Yes, we've got to reach out to our
Samarias.
And Spain should be included.
But as we move on.
And with these cards we can visualize some
of these places.
As we move on we get to the
regions beyond.
Let me just mention some of the countries
using these cards.
That I consider part of the regions beyond.
I've already mentioned Turkey.
Some of you are writing some of these
things down.
That's good.
That's great.
And if you have any questions you'd like
to ask me.
Please write it down and give it to
me.
Or someone at the literature table at the
end of the meeting.
We have a little OM newspaper.
That you can pick up free.
And there's a big coupon on the back.
You can write any questions or prayer burdens
that you have.
And give it in to us.
But I hope that you'll begin to put
the land of Turkey on your prayer list.
Then there's Tunisia.
The ship was able to visit Tunisia last
year.
What a great time we had.
Sitting in a great concert.
Listening to gospel.
A gospel ministry of music.
With mainly all Muslims in the meeting.
We saw the Lord open the door in
Tunisia.
A land of five and a half million
people.
A land that has just a handful of
national believers.
We think of places like Syria in the
heart of the Middle East.
Again with just a small population of believers.
A land basically closed to missionary work.
But there are many ways to go in
to these countries.
Think of the island of Sri Lanka where
there's so much political difficulty right now.
Sri Lanka has 13 million people.
I was just there a few months ago.
In the whole island of Sri Lanka.
Among 13 million.
There are only two Christian bookshops.
Can you imagine that?
Only two Christian bookshops.
We need literature workers.
Literature is one of God's tools.
The CLC is looking for workers.
We like to channel them into that great
work.
Open bookshops.
What a challenge the land of Sri Lanka
is.
People often ask, they say, Well, you know,
you get any definite results after the ship
goes to a port?
Most people do not understand the ship ministry.
They think it's just for travel.
Or they think it's just for literature distribution.
There are 15 major ministries based on the
ship.
Is your church just for coming to on
Sunday morning?
Of course not.
You have many, many ministries going out from
this church.
Probably 10, 15, maybe more.
All week.
And with this ship, it's similar.
There's the ministry of music that's reaching hundreds
of thousands of people we can't touch in
other methods.
They get on television, they get on radio,
and big concerts.
Even in London we had 1,500 or
something like that at the concert we held.
When the ship was in London.
Then there's the ministry of mass literature distribution.
And we've reached about 16 million people through
that.
Then there's a ministry to the schools.
Teams go out to the schools.
Then there's a ministry to the universities.
Teams go out to the universities.
Then there's the pastors conferences.
We've had pastors and lay leaders conferences.
Then we have women's conferences.
Then we have youth conferences.
So there's the conference ministry.
Then there's the teams that go into the
interior.
They go by vehicle.
We carry our own vehicles.
They go by boat.
We carry our own landing craft.
And that moves up the rivers as it
has been in Africa.
And then there's the ministry of the book
exhibition, including educational books.
And many people come to that who wouldn't
ordinarily come to the ship at all.
They buy only an educational book, a cookbook,
or something like that.
We give them a Christian book free.
We've had 2 million people go up the
gangway of the Lagos to the exhibition.
In fact, in West Africa, where the ship
just visited, touching down in Senegal, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and the Cameroons,
we had 200,000 visitors.
Then we have mass evangelistic rallies.
We have marches of witness through the streets.
We even did that in Liverpool and in
Glasgow and Dublin.
And then we have a lot of open
air ministry, teams going out into the open
air.
Then we have the teams going out door
to door.
Then, in some ways more important than all
that, everybody on the ship is in training.
It is a training ship.
There's the encounter program for new people coming
on the ship.
There's the intensive training program for those young
men who want to be really stretched in
a 15-hour-a-day, mind-bending, and
sometimes back-breaking, physical, spiritual, and mental training
program that some people are now calling intensive
torture.
There are many different programs all going on
at once.
And when the ship is at sea, they're
into the Word of God.
And we have gifted Bible teachers who come
to the ship and get us into God's
Word.
In Africa alone, there have been some 3
,000 professions of faith in the last four
months.
Now, we're well aware many of these are
not conversions.
Sometimes we don't even give an invitation.
People are so responsive in West Africa.
But maybe that gives you a little idea.
And when I was in Sri Lanka recently,
I was following up.
Well, what happened when the ship was there?
I found out about a Methodist pastor.
He was a Marxist.
Many Methodists.
They make very good Marxists when they get
away from Jesus.
Some of them never got to Jesus.
And this Methodist Marxist came to the ship,
and someone met him, talked to him, and
they led this man to Christ.
And this Marxist has been converted and is
now preaching the Gospel in his church.
Who can measure what can be done through
that one man?
There was another Anglican.
I never like to pick on the Anglicans.
But I sure appreciated that prayer for the
Anglicans tonight.
I'd like to get a recording of that.
But one Anglican who didn't know Jesus Christ,
never been born again.
He came to the ship, bit of a
skeptic.
And he had surrendered his life to Christ
and has gone back to his church.
He is now one of the leaders in
the small but live evangelical Anglican movement within
Sri Lanka.
And I could keep you here all night.
I know that's what some of you are
worrying about.
Sharing with you what God is doing because,
not because of the ship, not because OM
people are special people, but because He is
a great God who answers prayer.
And we believe that as the ship perhaps
goes into the Sudan again and then back
to India after the Suez Canal, that we
are going to see even greater things.
And we are looking for people who are
willing to become intercessors with us and with
this ministry.
Who will phone in to that number in
London, who will sign up for our prayer
letter, and who will intercede and who will
pray because there are endless problems in operating
this ship.
We need an army of intercessors if we
are going to see this ship continue, much
less see another ship launch.
Lagos is about twice as long as this
church, the length of a football field.
But this second ship will be twice the
size of Lagos.
Lagos handles about 142 people, about 1 to
2,000 tons of cargo.
But we need a bigger ship for these
bigger cities.
We cannot handle the people.
It is chaos.
More than that, we need two ships, whatever
the size might be, because we want to
move into Latin America.
We want to also emphasize the whole Mediterranean
area as well as Africa without in any
way neglecting our main target of Asia.
The only way we can do this is
with a second ship.
In ourselves, we don't want this.
In ourselves, we run the other way.
We already, we feel inadequate.
Already we feel that there's so much to
organize, so much to pray through.
But we are gripped with this great truth
from God's Word that we are to go
into all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature.
And tonight, half the people, half the people
in the world have never once heard the
gospel, at least half.
And the enemy is attacking.
As some of you may have heard in
the last weeks, the Seychelles radio station has
been temporarily closed down.
The Ethiopian big radio station has been permanently
closed down and is now being used to
broadcast Marxist doctrine.
I believe that some of these setbacks are
a result of prayerlessness in the church.
Praise God for those prayer cells on Tuesday
night.
I believe that's one of the most important
functions in your church and the prayer meeting
when you have it here.
I am so convinced about this.
Last weekend I was speaking in a little
church in Iowa, about one-third this size,
one-fourth this size.
And I found out, I didn't realize it,
as I was hammering home about prayer and
the need for a prayer meeting and missionary
prayer, I found out that they had stopped
having prayer meetings two years ago.
No one came.
Bible-believing church, believe all the doctrines, no
prayer meeting.
The pastor was so touched by this past
weekend, so burdened that he stood once again
before his congregation and he said, we've got
to start a prayer meeting again.
And we're meeting here on Wednesday night at
7.30 or 8 o'clock.
And I phoned him.
I was in New York on Thursday night
just before coming here on Friday.
And I phoned him and I said, it
was fear and trembling.
I said, did anybody come to the prayer
meeting?
And he almost came through the telephone, praising
God, 50 people had come out to pray.
And that church has been put back on
target in their prayer life, at least to
some degree.
Just a brief study of the book of
Acts will show us the importance of prayer.
Acts 1.14, they were all together praying.
Acts 4.31, when they prayed, the place
was shaken where they were gathered together.
They were filled with the Holy Spirit.
And they went forth and spoke the word
of God with boldness.
George Muller, by the end of his life,
had 30,000 answers to prayer.
I had a meeting some time ago here
in Bristol and I had this little book
with me, George Muller of Bristol.
And I just figured, you know, of course
I'm a bit ignorant, naive and all the
rest, but I just figured everybody in Bristol
had read George Muller of Bristol in Germany
and Switzerland and in the United States.
Tens of thousands of this book gets sold.
This is the main way people know Bristol.
George Muller.
Many people.
So I took a survey in Bristol of
how many have not yet read this classic
George Muller of Bristol.
How many have not read it?
Raise your hand.
Look at that.
I know illiteracy is on the increase everywhere.
But you may want to get a copy.
Whether you agree with everything he teaches or
not, that's not the main point.
Here's a man of faith.
Here's a man who is going strong like
O.J. Smith.
I'm going to preach in his church in
a couple of weeks.
Over there in Toronto.
I'm looking forward to it.
I'm looking forward to standing next to this
man 80 years of age who's still going
on for God and for missions.
The end of his life.
30,000 answers to prayer.
We're not all going to agree.
Actually, Oswald J.
Smith doesn't agree with George Muller.
I read something he said against George Muller.
It doesn't bother me.
God's got plenty of room for all kinds
of eccentrics.
How do you think you got in there?
And I believe with all my heart, God
honors faith.
A lot of people, and listen to this
young people, a lot of young people get
confused because they meet someone who they feel
has some error and yet God is using
them.
How can this be?
And it is my conviction, and I feel
very strongly about this, that no movement, no
man on this planet has been ever totally
free of some error or at least some
area of off-balance.
Truth and error travel together.
As long as truth is basically dominating, God
will work.
And so don't be so black and white
in your thinking.
Some of you are not moving for God
because you have some problem in your own
life and you feel, until I get this
problem all resolved, how can I really serve
the Lord?
That's a lie of the devil.
I would have to resign right now.
You think all my problems are resolved?
Invite me back again, I'll give you my
really strong message, my 10 major difficulties in
Christian living.
I was preaching in a big church in
Chicago six months ago on my way to
Mexico.
They were all getting ready for one of
these very hot missionary messages, dedication, commitment to
the uttermost parts, whatever the cost.
They spread the word around that I'm some
kind of a pied piper and I come
in and young people go off, never come
back, which isn't true.
Many do come back.
And I was in this church and I
just didn't have any burden to speak about
missions or to speak about dedication.
I just opened my heart and I shared
seven or eight of the problems I was
having after 22 years of living for Christ.
Some of my failures, some of the struggle
I have in the area of lust at
times, with all these magazines literally jumping out
the walls at you.
Some of the problems I have with patients
as I try to manage my little home
with my lovely wife and three interesting energetic
children.
And some of the failures I've had in
trying to help to lead OM and in
trying to become more Christ-like.
And sometimes I become so depressed when I
think of the areas in which I'm not
like Jesus Christ I just never want to
even put my head out of the water
again.
But then I go back to God's Word,
forgiveness, grace, love, the indwelling Spirit.
And I remember those words of Tozer again
and again that have ministered to me.
God knows all about us and loves us
still.
It's not a matter of waiting until you're
some perfect little super-sanctified Christian before you
can be used of God.
We have an extraordinary God that uses ordinary
people and He wants to use you more
than you've ever dreamed.
He has a plan for your life.
He has some purposes for your life that
perhaps you haven't even touched on yet.
Maybe it will include the regions beyond.
Sri Lanka.
Many of the parts of India, if not
all of India, have to be considered the
regions beyond.
Think for a minute about Uttar Pradesh.
When I say Uttar Pradesh, how many know
what I'm talking about?
Uttar Pradesh.
Does it ring a bell?
Any bell?
Uttar Pradesh.
U-P.
Yeah.
I know Hindi very well.
But most of you don't know.
But Uttar Pradesh is a state in India.
And it is a state of a hundred
million people, double the population of the British
Isles.
How can it be?
We don't even know what it is, where
it is, what does the name mean?
Here is an area of the world forgotten,
neglected, as far as the preaching of the
Gospel.
There are some beautiful Christians there.
Our work in India is 75% Indian.
In fact, we have Indians now leading other
parts of our work in other parts of
the world.
But most of the Indian Christians can be
found within three or four states.
Even great works like Bhakt Singh, it's limited
to just three or four states in any
size.
He has no assembly in Rajasthan.
30 million people.
Nothing in Punjab.
Almost nothing in U.P. Uttar Pradesh.
Next to Uttar Pradesh is Bihar.
Bihar is not as big as Uttar Pradesh.
It has only 70 million.
We are talking about tens of millions of
people who have never had as much of
the Gospel as you have on that one
poster, where it says, Jesus said, I am
the bread of life.
We had a man push through the crowd
in Bihar.
He heard the name of Jesus Christ, as
we do a lot of open-air preaching.
And he heard the name of Jesus, and
he said, I want some.
And he pushed his way through the crowd.
He thought that Jesus Christ was a new
soap, and he wanted to get some, if
there was any less.
Yes, they know about Coca-Cola.
They know that America put a man on
the moon.
They don't know that God put His Son
on the earth.
I believe this demands serious thinking.
If the Gospel is good at all, if
it is good for people in Bristol, if
it is good for you, and I believe
you know it's good because Christ has changed
your life.
And if He hasn't, I hope you'll do
something about it tonight.
But if the Gospel is good at all,
it is good for all.
Maybe you've heard that many times, but are
you acting on the basis of it?
The regions beyond, so many other countries that
you can pray over as you go through
these cards.
Somalia, with only a few hundred national believers.
Senegal, with only 200 believers.
Saudi Arabia, with no believers.
The Persian Gulf states, many different countries, very
few believers.
Niger, with 200 believers.
Mongolia, with no known believers.
Mauritania, no known believers.
Mali, one believer out of every 250,000
people.
Libya, with just about two or three believers.
And on we could go.
It seems impossible.
I believe this is a priority.
I believe this is why God has brought
me here tonight to ask you to begin
to consider the commands of Jesus.
You don't have to worry about my words.
But the commands of Jesus concerning the regions
beyond, concerning the uttermost parts of the earth.
For it was 2,000 years ago that
he gave us this promise and he gave
us this word.
Sure, for many modern Christians, it is an
unpleasant aspect of the Christian faith.
There is an increasing amount of universalism being
taught today.
Even among evangelicals.
Well, all these people will eventually be saved
anyway.
Do you mean that Jesus Christ, God's Son,
gave his life on a cross when there
was some other way that men and women
could be saved?
If there was another way, God would have
found it without having his Son butchered and
slaughtered and beaten.
And he suffered more before he got on
the cross than when he was there.
That is my view.
They beat him and they smote him until
his face was blood and red and they
put that crown on his head.
He was suffering in agony the whole time.
The nails, that was just the final touch.
You believe all this that we remember each
week in our communion service took place when
really there was some other way God could
have done it?
He's a great God of love.
Just wave the magic wand of heaven and
all men could be saved.
Hitler and Mussolini and the Apostle Paul and
all the rest, all in one big happy
family.
No, sure we'd like to believe that.
I'm not one of these persons that finds
Christianity exactly intellectually easy having studied under agnostics
and communists in Mexico University and other places.
But I am convinced that we are on
shaky ground, very shaky ground biblically if we
get away from that truth that Jesus said,
I am the way, the truth and the
life.
Eternity, of course, belongs to God and there
are many things I do not understand and
do not believe I should probe into but
the clear commands of scripture are there.
There is no other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved.
There is no other salvation.
And though intellectually we may not feel this
is very sophisticated, God has a different way
of measuring.
And if you and I believe that men
were lost, we'd never be the same again.
Many, many, many times I have wanted to
quit.
Do you ever get tempted to quit the
Christian life?
Do you ever get tempted to throw the
whole thing in?
It all seems like a bad dream to
some of us who have intellectual questions from
time to time.
Maybe some of you never have that problem.
Your faith is very simple.
It may be very simple or it may
be untested.
You go out and stand in the streets
of a Muslim country and preach the gospel
for seven years and you might find some
new intellectual problems coming into your mind.
But I believe the Word of God is
true.
Men are lost and I believe the hour
has come to mobilize.
I know that when I speak automatically some
people will be turned off.
They'll be switched off.
Some by the American accent.
Some by the...
my voice is too loud.
Some by the strength of my conviction and
the feeling that this is too much.
This is too much for them to handle.
I want to tell you it's too much
for me to handle.
But God can handle it.
And if somehow this challenge and this burden
somehow switches you off I can only pray
let God switch you on.
Go to God's Word.
Go to the book of Acts.
Go to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Take some of these books like this one.
Give up your small ambitions.
This is a scholastic and intellectual approach to
these great problems.
We can't fit all of this in to
a one hour message.
But as you read, as you search the
Scriptures just as Malcolm had seen this so
you will see it that missions is the
priority task of the church.
And I would say there's not one evangelical
church in 20 in Britain today that has
the vision that God has given some of
the leaders here.
Not one in 20.
And I've been preaching in this country that
I've adapted as my homeland for 17 or
16 years.
Lost the vision of missions.
We're caught up with other things.
We want new church buildings.
We want this.
We want that.
We've lost the vision of the regions beyond.
We've forgotten what great men like O.J.
Smith have said to us.
We feel it's more important to ecumenicalize and
fossilize and have some kind of church union
which is a grotesque monster right from the
pit of hell.
Then obey the great commission of Jesus Christ
and evangelize the world.
Oh may God give us men of vision
out of this meeting tonight.
Women of vision.
Men of action.
Women of action.
C.S. Lewis said we have the tendency
to think but not to act.
We have the tendency to feel but not
to act.
Maybe even tonight there are some who are
thinking and some who are feeling.
What about the action?
For many it costs too much.
A great man of God said we're unable
to transmit ideas and emotion into action because
the sacrifice that it will take costs too
much.
And I believe, I believe that's the greatest
mistake you can make in your Christian life.
It's the mistake of the rich young ruler.
You hear the call of God, the command
of God, the will of God because he
loves us and he woos us to himself
and yet we begin to count the cost
and we turn away having loved this present
world.
I would ask of you in the name
of the Lord Jesus to consider the claims
of Scripture.
Not allow any further token commitment to God
or to God's work but make it a
total commitment.
Not everyone is going to go.
I believe many, many more could go short
term.
I really believe that.
Professional people.
We've had an announcement tonight for secretaries.
In our work we need 30 secretaries right
now or we have to postpone the second
ship at least two more years.
We can more easily get people to work
on the ship than we can get secretaries
in our office in Manchester or Bromley or
Bombay or Brussels.
We need mechanics.
We got vehicles broken down.
Hard to get them fixed.
No mechanics who want to give their time
and their tools to God.
We need bookkeepers.
People are willing to add up for Jesus.
A lot of people are willing to add
up to buy their color television.
We need people who are willing to add
up for Jesus to print another million tracks
and to handle the gifts.
For a movement like OM most of them
come in between one pound and ten pounds.
And you think a movement of this size
doesn't need an army of bookkeepers to keep
that kind of thing going.
All kinds of people are needed.
And I believe God wants to be very
specific with some tonight.
The evangelicals specialize in being vague.
In other things we're very definite.
In the area of food we're very definite.
We don't want a plague of vague shadows
when we go to breakfast or we have
tea or supper.
We're very specific when it comes to food.
We're very specific when it comes to an
automobile and petrol.
You're not going to put water in the
tank or anything you feel led to give.
You want petrol the right kind.
In so many areas we're very specific.
When it comes to our girlfriend we get
rather specific.
But when it comes to some of the
claims of Jesus Christ about evangelism, about prayer,
about dying to self, about taking up the
cross, about enduring hardship, we become incredibly vague.
It's all some kind of a cloud floating
up here that we sort of sing about
on Sunday.
And so we go in and out of
our churches singing onward Christian soldiers and we're
no more marching on to war than a
group of turtles, tortoises on retreat.
May God have mercy on us.
May we repent.
May we repent and come back to the
cross and say to Jesus, I'll go.
If it's Bristol, if it's Bombay, if it's
England or if it's Africa, I'll go where
you want me to go.
I'll do what you want me to do.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, You know all about us.
You know how we can defend ourselves and
how we can give our excuses.
And Lord, we just cry out together.
Have mercy on us that we may obey
You, that we may do Your will.
We pray, Oh God, hide the speaker, hide
my old loud voice behind the cross and
may we see Jesus tonight and obey Him
in prayer, in witness, in going, in giving,
in being, in doing.
Deliver us from the game of words that
we may be men and women of action.
We may know the reality of living very
close to You.
For we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.