Heavenly Father, we thank you, praise you for
tonight.
You may be a little tired.
You are with us.
We praise you that faith is the victory,
the victory that overcomes the world.
We ask, Lord, that you fill our hearts
with faith tonight.
We pray in Jesus' name as we look
into your word, as we look at this
work in the past year, the positives, the
negatives.
You show us your plan and your will.
We give you the glory in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I'm kind of in a great privilege to
be able to speak to you tonight.
I don't know if you realize how few
opportunities I have to speak to the very
leaders who I'm supposed to be helping to
lead.
I'm very conscious, of course, that I haven't,
the majority of you, or many of you,
haven't helped very much, probably hindered in some
cases.
But I have had some struggle in my
heart at times because it really has bothered
me, or whatever word you want to use,
when men have been leaders in the work,
have misunderstood or not understood what I really
believe, what I really want, what I really
think is the burden and vision of the
work.
As I have known it from those first
days.
And one of the reasons I like the
ship is I feel that people who come
on the ship get, in most cases, not
every case, a balanced view of what I
really believe true spiritual life is, and the
vision and the message of the work.
And, of course, in all these things there
are the negatives and the positives.
But I felt that I should take this
opportunity to speak.
I don't speak much at these conferences in
terms of a message.
But I feel that I should at least
share tonight something with you.
Where are we going?
You know, what are our aims?
Well, I'm an unpredictable person, as you well
know.
And I probably frightened a few people last
night, people who don't know me very well,
don't understand that I am a person that
does not bottle in and refuses to bottle
in my feelings, my emotions, my convictions.
Generally, I only pour them out on one
or two.
Last night, a few more were in on
this.
The struggle.
I found in my life that the victories
don't come without struggles, without doubts, without fears,
without seemingly all hell releasing itself upon you.
And as I said in the prayer meeting
last night, and tried to reaffirm today, despite
doubts, despite fears, despite questions, despite even the
desire at times, a strong desire to be
the leader of the one who destroys the
structure of O.M., and lets each one
of you get out where you are.
I certainly have no intentions of getting off
this ship any more than I expect Captain
Padgett to get off in the middle of
the Indian Ocean.
Such a transition would take time.
Such a transition would take the unity of
other men of God.
Who am I to make a go or
self-styled decision?
I'm built with a price.
I may have whims, fancies, desires, dreams, and
any decision I make must be in the
unity of the brethren.
And I have to be able to persuade
McCrassy and Marley and a few others, even
my wife, plus older men, and we do
have older men.
The board of directors in New Jersey, the
board of directors in Manchester, all these people
are amalgamous.
And what I expressed last night and a
little bit today is just the fact that
I am not finding it easy, and that
your actions and reactions do affect me.
I'm not a little lonely iceberg floating out
in the middle of nowhere, but I'm a
part of you.
And I know just as my actions affect
you.
And if my actions in these two days
have been of some negative difficulty, please forgive
me.
I think the long-run experience after we
finish this conference will be healthy.
And I think an OM conference is a
battleground.
It's a time of carrying the cost.
It's a time of being extremely brutal with
ourselves, being willing to face up to incredible
weakness and error, and then falling at the
feet of Jesus and believing that he will
carry us up.
Your confidence must not be in me.
I know it isn't, but I give the
warning anyway.
Your confidence must be that the Lord can
hold me.
Anytime you see me tottering, if you really
want to keep me going, just go into
prayer and fasting.
The devil can't really resist that.
And I know that many of you have
been praying for me.
I have no guarantee what other incredible things
the devil may throw at me in the
days to come.
Nor am I in one minute saying that
some of these things that I say or
feel are all just sort of tricks of
the devil.
So I just want to, first of all,
confirm to you that since none of you
have gone along very well with my suggestions
about other leaders, and since we don't seem
to have an alternative at this present moment,
that I certainly don't want to step out
or even aside at this stage.
I believe that we must go into this
year's program 100%.
100%.
I could never expect you to do it,
because I'm not going to do it.
Nor is her father.
So I am expecting you to do it.
If you stay on past this conference, and
most of you are already committed, I believe
it should be 100%.
Next June, you're entitled to make other decisions.
The challenging thing for me tonight is that
Brother George Miley has assured me very, very
much, not under pressure, that he is in
this thing long-term.
He even used the little word, life.
Now we can have our one-year commitments.
I asked him, of course, what his life
was, and we'll be discussing that later on.
But if the work of O.M. is
going to go on, a work of this
size, a work of this kind of flush,
this kind of impetus, this kind of radicalism,
it's got to have some die-hards.
You know that term?
It's got to have some people who say,
look, this is my brand of Christianity.
This is what I want.
That's not saying you can't leave, because God
needs you at any time.
But I have to be free.
We're all free, no matter what we say.
But believe me, it's foolish to plan grand
programs and schemes if we don't have a
method.
We don't have a method.
This movement is made up of method.
And that's very, very important.
So by God's grace, I'm committed to you.
My burden for you, first of all, is
to serve.
Do not think for a minute I'm interested
in being any kind of a dictator.
I'm not complaining much about my lack of
authority.
There's little need there.
I mean, it would be good once in
a while to hear about some of these
plans before they go up into space.
But that is not my concern.
I want to serve.
I chose originally this word coordinator many years
ago because I thought it would represent the
word serve.
Maybe we need to scrap that word.
We have scrapped it an idiot.
Except for Ray and Alfie, everyone else is
called a leader.
We have no other coordinator than them.
Because we found people putting status on the
word coordinator.
Just as George Marley said last night, how
sickening from the sight of God to put
status on the word coordinator, as if there
were a difference between a leader and a
coordinator or a prayer warrior.
It's crazy.
So maybe we can make some changes.
But of course, human beings, being what they
are, just changing names, doesn't really help.
So I want to be committed to you
in that I want to serve.
I want to serve.
Please feel free to write me and tell
me how I can serve your field.
I have visited almost every field in O
.M. almost every year since its beginning, with
a few exceptions.
I don't think I can continue to do
that anymore.
Dale is going to visit some of the
fields in that place this year to recruit,
to encourage, to help.
And it's just not possible, humanly speaking, with
family and everything else, to be everywhere every
year.
But I want to know how can I
serve you.
Basically, I determined my year program of what
you requested me, with limitations, especially very much
bending around my need to keep my family
as a top priority.
Second, I want to serve as your leader
by preaching.
And I believe, and I hope you understand
this guy has called me to preach.
I have a message.
I have a burden from the Lord.
And every time I preach, I'm happier.
Probably the problem yesterday was I hadn't preached.
Preached all that.
Discussions, committees, arguments, all this just, you know,
surrounds me to some degree.
But to preach to unload the burden, even
if it be on ten people, is something
very important to me.
They all said, woe is me if I
preach now.
And once you have sent God's anointing upon
you as a preacher, I'm not saying I
have much anointing, but I have some.
Otherwise I couldn't preach.
A man who preaches without anointing is a
fool, wasting both his time and those sitting
in the pew.
I'm not talking about testifying.
I'm not talking about showing slides.
I am talking about preaching the holy message
of God.
But I believe that God wants me to
preach.
And people have been complaining, a few, that
they heard I was going to take a
holiday in August, part of August, but I
didn't do it.
I was preaching every night, twice a day.
That was a holiday.
A holiday, to me, is doing what you
want to do most of all.
Now, another thing I wanted to do was
be with my family.
That means much to me.
And I went mountain climbing with my son,
just to keep the record straight.
We went fishing in the rain with the
president of our board of directors, Val Greve.
And we went cliff climbing and almost got
ourselves killed.
And we did a lot of other things.
But when union came around, the real joy
was there, to preach, to see people recommit
their lives, to see books throughout our sales
work.
We finished with 1,100 pounds or something,
and we ran out of supplies, and a
lot of other things.
So, I want to serve you through preaching.
I believe that through preaching, God will call
forth recruits, and you all need recruits.
I believe through preaching, God will call forth
prayer warriors, and we need prayer warriors.
I believe through preaching, souls will be saved.
Many meetings that I've preached on in discipleship,
people got saved.
How did Alexander Sandler get saved, who was
doing so much for God?
I thought he was saved through a book.
He told me he was saved through one
of my sermons, which was for believers.
And so, I hope I can serve you
in this way.
I want to serve you through intercession.
My burden is the ministry of intercession.
My greatest day last month was a time
of two days, a day and a half,
of fasting, of intercession.
I have pictures of 1,500 people who
I believe God is working in.
Most of you, I have your pictures.
I don't pray for these nearly as much,
and I realize it can become a ritual,
so sometimes I don't even bring them with
me.
But I believe that the potential of the
ministry of intercession is one of the greatest
thrills of leadership, tough for God, and corresponding
with people in about 150 countries, half of
them nonbelievers, not much, maybe some of them
one letter a year.
But to take their prayer letters and to
intercede, to pray, to believe that God is
going to work, and then to get letters
back that God has worked is a tremendous
thing.
And I believe every leader, and all of
us here, need to make sure that we're
pressing on in our ministry of intercession.
A key in all you're doing in this
is, what do you do when there's no
arranged prayer meeting that week?
You know, you're on the road.
Now, I know what I like to do.
And I've done it, and I've said, well,
Lord, this is your week for me to
be free from a night of prayer.
Because nights of prayer don't appeal to me.
I'm a man who loves sleep.
And nights of prayer don't appeal to me.
Plus, I always feel a little lousy when
it's this.
But God has shown me that when there's
no night of prayer organized, I organize one.
Maybe not every week.
And if I feel I can't pray alone
through the night, which I can't do.
No, I mean, I go through alone through
the night.
I've tried.
Or I pray all day.
And I recommend this to you.
I've done it before, but some of you
are new.
Take days alone with God in prayer.
And if possible, fasting.
And it will be an enormous help to
you.
So I want to serve you through the
ministry of intercession.
Do not be afraid to write what the
real issues are in your country.
You hinder me by not writing.
Because I find out anyway.
When I find out anyway, I get the
wrong twists.
I get it through someone who may not
be so keen on your field.
And so he tells it.
A little upside.
But if I get it from you, I
get a more balanced picture.
I told George Miley on the phone, George
Miley likes to minister to me through giving
me the positive.
Because he knows that sometimes I don't always
handle the negative as good as I should.
And I told him on the phone some
time ago, Look, Miley, stop just throwing out
all the positive things.
Whenever you talk to him on the phone,
Please Lord, everything is wonderful, fantastic.
And it's quite funny, really.
Especially when I'm in one of my low
moods.
At the other end of the phone.
But he's been giving me more of the
negatives.
And others on the ship have also been
sending very, very negative letters.
A few cases.
Which really helps the ministry of intercession.
I want to serve you through that.
The ministry of intercession.
You realize this is my introduction.
I want to serve you through staying involved
in evangelism.
I believe that it's more important that I
stay involved in evangelism than some of you.
I know there's some of you who feel
that you're, of course, much, much different temperament
and different gift.
And you have a different way of approaching
your evangelism.
And I don't judge you for that.
I say always keep open.
Always be ready to grow.
Always be ready to change.
And I will as well.
But I want to evangelize.
I want to win souls.
I want to preach evangelistic messages.
I want to write unsaved people.
I want to see people converted.
And I know George has this same vision.
He was just sharing with me how much
it is meant to him to be an
evangelistic preacher.
I have a mini-dose, a small amount
of evangelistic gift when I preach evangelistically people
orphaned or saved.
And I want to do this.
Though more than that, I want to be
in the streets giving out thanks.
And I want to be out in the
streets banging on the doors.
And I don't get near enough.
I'm ashamed of the time I've spent on
the doors lately.
Of course, in India we get more used
to streetwalking.
I've become more of a streetwalker.
And public places, maybe.
But I want to serve you through that.
It may sound strange.
But I believe it's important.
I believe that even now I may be
going through some trials and struggles because I've
been in conferences.
Conferences are one of the hardest things for
my makeup.
Now, one of the things I do, except
for the coordinator's weekend, every weekend I'm out
in some evangelism preaching, reaching people.
The only time is when I have to
cut that and come into this coordinator's office.
Except I will preach tomorrow night.
But I try to remain spiritually sharp, keen.
I must be reaching people.
And I must be talking to unchained people.
People with real problems.
You know, some of you share your problems.
You have some problems.
And I tell you, when you compare you
people with unchained people that I've dealt with,
you look like injuries.
Really.
And when you get depressed with your team,
and you feel your team's not doing so
well, it may be that you have not
been getting enough time for real, raw, unsaved
people.
Really.
Because when you get really involved with those
kind of people, trying to pull them through
drugs or drunkenness or just immorality, your team
will suddenly look quite nice.
Not all of them.
Some of your team will have deep problems.
Well, I'll leave that.
There's other ways I want to serve you,
Pat.
The last way is through trying to hang
on to the organizational side of the work.
Some people have said, well, just step out
of the organization and be spiritual.
That is not my makeup.
I can do that if I leave it
like that.
I'm willing to do that, as you well
know.
But as long as I'm in something like
this, in which so much of the organization
was my own creation, my own burden that
meant as much to me as preaching a
sermon.
I'm a book fanatic.
You can't take books out of my life.
I'm a book fanatic.
I'm a book extremist.
Most of you know that I'm not satisfied
with the way we go about our book
distribution in most cases.
But there's been a lot of encouragement this
year.
I feel we lack vision in this.
We lack initiative.
We lack so much in this area of
literature.
But what I do see is very encouraging.
I was telling Jerry that it would be
good to send a few people out to
see this thing finally.
Incredible thing.
And I think that this kind of initiative,
this kind of thing is very encouraging.
And I want to, by God's grace, stay
involved in literature.
I want to see more and more and
more projects coming off the press.
I believe that we have to push in
to at least another 20 or 30 more
languages in the next couple of years.
We don't have to do much.
I'm not talking about O.M. going to
another country.
Just a little catalyst.
Sometimes it just takes one letter.
That's all, one letter.
I've got more publishing projects going through just
one little letter.
A few sample books.
You'd be amazed.
And it's very, very encouraging.
So I want to serve you through organization.
I realize I've got my own style.
I'm still a learner.
I have many failures.
But I believe that in a work like
this, in the complicated 20th century in which
we live in, not many spiritual leaders will
be able to be totally free from organization.
Some will.
Not many.
Not in 1974.
The world is too complicated.
You go out.
You preach a spiritual message.
Forty people come up to you after the
meeting.
You ever had that?
More frustrating than preaching.
When I preached in Urbana to 9,000
people, I had 100 people around me.
What do you do?
Excuse me.
I don't talk to people after the meeting.
It gets too complicated.
Excuse me.
Push your way.
No.
You take names.
You take addresses.
You've got to organize that.
You've got to produce a list.
You've got to send them books.
I get two letters every day from people
who read Come, Live, Die.
Books now got over 100,000 copies.
All over the world.
I know the answer more personally.
I tried that.
Dropped it two months ago.
Sent them a duplicated letter with a note
on the bottom.
Sometimes they don't get anything.
But I believe that those of us in
spiritual ministry must be willing for some organization
because organization is follow-up.
To me, organization is people.
The great burden of the letters on my
desk, which gets greatly neglected this weekend more
than any other weekend of the year, is
not paper to me.
It's not paper at all.
People.
People are important.
When I go away from my wife, I
write her letters.
When you go away from your wife, you
better write letters.
When you go away from a convert, when
you go away from a spiritual son, a
spiritual daughter, you should write them.
And I think that's very, very important.
I want to serve you and the church
through the little I can do in that
area.
Now moving on to the main source or
main bulk of what I want to say.
What are the positive and negatives of OM
-74?
You may be surprised by this.
Do not think.
And I hope you don't misunderstand when I
jump from the negative to the positive very
quickly.
Don't you ever do that?
Is there anybody here that never jumps from
the negative to the positive quick, or the
positive to the negative?
Boy, you praise God.
You've got an unusual gift.
Maybe you haven't lived long enough.
As I read the newspapers, it's all negative.
Hits me.
On the edge.
People suffering.
Murder.
I was stunned.
I was stunned the other day.
I was reading an article that in the
United States, you know what's increasing now?
The sport of pitting dogs.
They get dogs and they teach them to
fight.
And they watch these dogs rip each other's
guts out.
And they gamble and they bet.
Now that's negative.
I read that and it hits me.
And I know I can't dwell on that
until I flip over to the positive.
If you understand that, you'll understand me better.
There's a negative.
There's a positive.
And they're running along, and it's a constant
struggle.
To me, it's equated to the verse in
Galatians that says, The flesh lusteth against the
spirit, and the two are contrary, one to
another.
To me, all of life is at war.
Everything in this earth has an enemy.
Every positive has a negative.
And the struggle, there's war for going out.
The Moody Science films show this.
I love those films.
Boy, they've been a great factor in my
life.
Especially when I went to rent one and
found Drina behind the fence.
That's how we met.
But that's got a positive and a negative
as well.
She's the positive factor and I'm the negative.
But as we look back over 1974, being
as objective as we can in the light
of God's word, in the light of the
history of missions, in the light of the
present day mission situation, that must be kept
in order.
And I stay very much plugged in to
the missionary situation of our day as much
as I can.
I had a thrilling time with Christian leaders
in Los Alamos.
It was a great experience.
It almost blew my mind.
Positive and negative.
It hit me like, you know, every five
minutes I went out at home.
There's so many negative things about such congresses.
But the positive thing, the positive thing was
the people.
People that God is working in.
And I was really blessed, fellowshiping with Lauren
Cunningham, the head of YWAM.
I was greatly blessed in fellowshiping with Jack
McAllister, a man I have never been able
to understand.
He and I are so different in so
many ways and so similar in other ways.
And he and I sat down and had
our hearts finally linked.
You see, he switched me off ten years
ago because I was in California and I
was going to see him first and then
Bill Brighton.
And he just chopped up Bill Brighton.
I couldn't believe it.
He was really anti-Bill Brighton those days.
He told me, don't waste your time seeing
him.
That was before Bill Brighton was really in
order.
Head of Campus Crusade.
They both lived around the flock of each
other.
Things since then that got united.
That really frightened me.
Plus, when I talked to him, I didn't
get any words in edgewise.
When he told me I had 60%
overhead in his organization, I just, I just
collapsed.
But over the years, I've seen how God
is so great, so sovereign, and I've seen
and used those Every Home Crusade people out
in India.
So I wrote him a letter after many
years of silence.
When you ever get the silent situation with
somebody, you write the letter.
Don't wait for them to write you.
So I wrote him and I said, look,
praise God, Jack, for this work you're doing
in India.
He wrote me back and said something.
He said he read the discipleship manual and
thought it was a real thing.
And we met in Los Alamos.
And I tell you, I was encouraged.
Meeting this man, I don't agree with it,
but I admired him.
And it broadened me.
And I think most of you want me
to stay a little broad, huh?
Because if I don't stay a little broad,
some of you may find yourself on the
end of that foot.
That's being too blunt.
Of course, I probably couldn't kick anybody out
of the way if I tried, but I
may try and somebody would get hurt.
The reason I think that OM has a
broad spectrum of people we're willing to work
with is because, to some degree, God has
broken into my head, a stubborn head, about
this.
Well, I never dreamed, of course, that anything
would ever happen in terms of money.
That didn't even enter my head, it jumped
in the couch.
Because I know they're up to their necks
with a budget.
Boy, they have a budget.
Somehow, they are tithing now to Operation Mobilization.
We've had three checks for $4,000 each
from Dear Uncle Jack out in California.
Well, I don't know what meaning that's supposed
to have.
But, I praise God.
As you know, last year, Youth with a
Mission sent us two checks for $3,000
or $4,000 each.
In the midst of their crisis, they lost
$50,000 on their ship.
And it's been God breaking me, but enabling
me to accept these other groups.
I always had, to some degree, with many
wrestlers, that I have been able to somehow
also, to some degree, accept OM.
Like the struggles that I expressed to you
in the depth of my heart last night.
And in saying this, I would say that
OM, 1974, has been a phenomenal year in
this world.
And anybody who comes discouraged, apart from a
few attacks from the enemy they have, have
to see what God has done this year.
You need to re-read your Bible.
God has answered prayer.
The prayers we prayed last year, over in
Barron Baptist, one of the funniest little conference
centers we've ever had, have been answered.
And we should be praising.
Some of you, all you do is come
to the Cornelius Conference, and you catch me
in this environment.
I happened to preach two nights before I
got here, very strongly on the subject of
joy and rejoicing.
I believe as strong in that as I
believe in weak with those that weak.
I preached on that a few days before
that, where Paul said he was in great
heaviness and continual sorrow.
And where he says in Corinthians that we
are sorrowful.
He had always rejoiced.
I was in great sorrow last night for
various reasons, but by God's grace I came
through to rejoice.
And you will have these experiences.
Great sorrow.
You see some of your faithful men that
have a tomb.
You see some of your programs blown into
the sky.
You see some of your dreams collapse.
Every man of God has had that experience.
And Brother Pump expressed that very, very well.
So I believe 1974 has been a tremendous
year.
It's been a year of many answers to
prayer.
I wrote a memo a year ago through
Greg's encouragement.
I get you, Miss Hemp.
But I wrote a memo through his encouragement,
after so many of my negative memos.
You know, shape up, discipline yourself, get up,
all these things.
I don't believe for a minute.
You know that if you listen to my
tapes.
I don't know if any of you listen
to my tapes.
Some still are.
But I don't believe that's true spirituality.
I say 100% amen to what George
said.
I do know that I miscommunicate.
But if I get carried away on literature
evangelism, and the only time you ever heard
me preach was on literature evangelism, have you
go out of there thinking that I'm screwing.
So 1974 has been a tremendous year.
I am very, very encouraged.
I have tremendous struggles through certain areas.
So let's be specific.
First of all, the ship has encouraged me
beyond words.
And I can speak more objectively about the
ship, because I'm no longer the leader.
How can you speak about that when you're
leading?
People will think you're egocentric.
Of course, most of you already know I
have that problem.
So I can speak anyway.
I want to tell you, if you can't
get stirred up about that ship, if that
doesn't excite you, probably even to some degree
at times more than your own field, because
it is the most unusual thing certainly God
has brought our way.
That's not pitting it or putting it against
your field.
And I just told George Milan that I
am not in favor of this deck extension.
I'm not in favor of a lot of
these things until the rest of the work
around the world is more reinforced, financially, manpower,
and everything else.
Then we'll think about extending the next.
Now, I can change my mind next week,
because this guy is an influential person, and
look who he's married to, and two against
one.
Plus he's got his whole crew down my
neck.
But of course, you're probably on my side
to some degree.
I believe, and this is a separate message,
I haven't got time for it, the work
in Turkey must be reinforced.
We must be committed to Turkey ten times
more than the extension of the decks of
the ship or the second ship.
And George Miley says amen.
Please say amen.
Thank you.
If you think he's a yes man, you're
really confused.
But the work in Turkey must be reinforced.
We've got to go into these universities, Yale,
Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Doolittle, whatever university, we've got
to get some men to go to Turkey.
How many of you will pledge yourself to
that?
You don't need to pray about it, just
raise your hand.
How many will pledge themselves to put Turkey
a little bit more in the forefront this
year?
Those who can't raise your hand, you can
write to me.
I love to get letters from you guys.
You can pray about that.
There's a lot we can do to reinforce
Turkey, but the first thing is prayer.
Everywhere we go, we must give the challenge
of Turkey.
Everywhere we go, we must get this film
strip on Turkey.
People who produce the film strip, they want
to do 20 copies.
This is the kind of winky dink, mishy
mouse vision we have in this work.
You can't produce 20 copies of anything for
Operation Mobilization.
Not even a tissue to blow noses, because
there's 900 people, and many of them have
colds.
So let's show the Turkey film strip.
Let's put Turkey on the map.
Linked with that, the whole Muslim world must
become the central main focus of the movement.
Now to keep that in balance, in no
way am I chopping at anybody here.
I am absolutely fanatically sold out on the
work in France.
Let's get the record straight.
Rumors finished.
The only reason I don't go to France
more, I don't speak French, I have an
inferiority complex, and they don't need me.
Maybe once a year at the France Museum
I can give a message, so they know
I'm still in favor of the political movement.
But I believe fanatically in the work of
France, it was the first country I ever
went in.
I stood in the streets of Paris and
almost got hooked by a prostitute.
That's the truth.
But instead I gave her a track, and
I just thank God for that day.
The first one that ever walked up to
me and took my arm.
You don't have that every day, not where
I came from.
My wife, of course, was praying.
I'm also very, very convinced at this stage
about the work in Belgium.
I believe Belgium is a strategic little place.
This place is as paving, as lawns, it's
as much a desert of need as many
other countries where since the ship has visited.
Now, Miley needs to listen to this, because
your vision for Europe has digged a little
bit, hasn't it?
You could have just told me.
Asia, Asia.
Now, basically, I agree.
I have the advantage of going to all
these places, and every place I go to
just gets into my bloodstream.
But I believe we have got to continue
this thrust in Belgium.
Case and wrong is more radical in some
ways than case.
They're very cooperative.
Last year we had a big argument about
how many people they should have, and they
know that I believe we should watch the
numbers.
I don't believe the impact is in direct
proportion to the numbers, especially the long-term
people.
But I'm for that effort.
I'm very much convinced about the work in
Spain.
Daniel Gonzales told us today in a private
meeting he feels the work is now five
times better than it ever has when he
was taught in the O.M. straightjacket.
Now, I can almost grab onto that, and
I want to peel everything off in that
way.
But as I've thought about that objectively, it's
not easy to be objective, and my temperament
is the hardest.
You know that.
That's why you're praying for me.
But I believe objectively every field is different.
Every field is different.
Because so much depends on the man.
There's no other Daniel Gonzales in this room.
Not one.
There's no other Giovanni de Finis in this
room.
And so this very much depends on you.
So I was willing to see France go
off and be on its own if that's
what they want.
They came to me, or Mike came to
me.
They want that.
They feel they need the O.M. structure.
They need the impetus.
I don't know what they need.
They can tell us that.
But they want the structure.
John Corrida came to me today.
He's a little bit shaken by a few
things I've said.
He seems to also want this O.M.
structure.
Now, some of you leaders want this O
.M. structure.
If you want the Zobington Finance Office, the
recruiting program, the literature, the impetus, the slides,
the films, the funnel that channels men all
over the world, then we'll keep it.
It's your decision not mine.
But if you don't want it, you tell
me.
And together we'll take it down.
Piece by piece.
Some countries don't need it.
Others do.
So I just want to say that I
have committed, for a long-term work in
Europe, it was never the policy that the
work in Europe was short-term.
The policy was that the priority is the
Muslim world.
But God showed me, what was it, 11
years ago, that one of the main priorities
in my life was the British Isles.
He showed me that I should be an
immigrant to Britain and that this should become
basically my homeland if possible.
The only problem in that is whether my
children will be able to adapt to that.
It's a tricky little thing for children.
You can't inflict on children.
My children cannot get away with being British.
The children in the school tell them they're
Yankees and they've got them convinced.
They've got a Yankee passport, and so I
can't inflict on them.
Otherwise I probably may even have a British
passport by now.
Not because I don't like America.
I love the United States.
The more problems America has, the more I
love it.
I always liked the problems.
I have more burden for the states now
that were in such a mess than I
was when we really thought we were the
muscle flexors of the world.
That made me ill.
Now that we've shown that we're like the
whole rest of the nations, with real needs,
I love my country.
And if you vote me to go back
to work in the New Jersey office, I'll
go.
I'll go.
Maybe that's the best place for me.
I'd be out of your hair more and
perhaps that's a good place for me to
think about going.
But we'll leave that for another message.
But with this in mind, with this in
mind, our commitment must be the Muslim world.
So I don't ask, and I understand my
brother Ron George, he's a Peter right through
the middle, impetuous, clear the cupboards, woo everybody.
He doesn't really mean that.
Talk to him privately.
But he's got a point.
Let's have a few men.
Let's be a little more discerning.
Let's be looking around for potential Turkish addicts,
potential Arab world addicts.
And let's keep the Muslim world in focus.
Prayer is of course the number one.
Men, as God enabled.
We don't want your work to cave in.
I will not let the work in Britain
cave in for the sake of the Muslim
world.
Because that would do more harm to the
work in the Muslim world in the long
run.
That's why I'm under the burden of getting
people into these offices.
That's why I can spot secretaries at 200
yards.
That doesn't sound good actually.
But actually I prefer male secretaries.
But we've got to get secretaries.
We've got to get bookkeepers.
We need these people as much as we
need the guerrilla types, you know, the tours,
hiking 1,000 miles with a million tracks
on his back.
I try not to exaggerate.
But we need secretaries.
We need administrators.
Sometimes I wonder if we have anybody in
the work who knows how to answer the
telephone.
You call an Arab office.
Yeah?
So the Muslim world must be the priority.
Linked with that.
And it's always been built on this foundation
of anything, anywhere, anytime.
Now have you ever heard that?
How many have heard it before?
You're all so tired.
Anything, anytime, anywhere.
And so basically there's nothing that is outside
the limits of what we can do.
Nothing.
If it's the will of God.
If it's the will of God, He'll give
us unity.
If God tells us right now, Mongolia has
got to be hit in 1975, then we're
going to hit Mongolia.
This is the gut level of all that.
It's not any little one line.
In the early days, God said, radio, get
radio on the air.
And we got radio on the air in
answer to prayer.
God says bookshops.
We opened bookshops more in Mexico than had
been opened in the previous 25 years.
But later as we prayed, God said, close
the bookshops.
Close them.
If God says Mongolia, it's Mongolia.
We've been praying about China for 16 years.
If God says those trucks stuck in Nepal
looking for a place to be parked should
be driven over that new road into China,
we go.
Don't discuss whether it's OM territory or not.
OM territory is the world.
Every nation, every creature, every child, every adult.
And we must remain this way.
At the same time, every move must be
calculated.
We can be very foolish at this stage.
Through reaching out, we can disintegrate in the
center.
And this is why we need unity.
I don't mind bizarre plans, but I want
to know about them.
Not just because I can then know about
them as a leader.
No, I then want to share with my
few key faithful brothers.
And that depends really on who's around.
I don't have a little set elite.
Years ago somebody said, we're that little elite
group.
Rotan and Livingston.
And then there was this feeling, oh, they're
mainly all Americans.
And then the next guy comes up, we're
anti-American.
Doesn't make sense.
Who's ever around, among you men here and
a few others, let's pray.
Let's seek God.
Let's communicate to the other saints.
Pick up the phone.
See what Grant thinks about it.
Pick up the phone.
See what this brother thinks about it.
And then as we get confirmed in prayer,
we move.
The flexibility, the adaptability, the readiness for anything,
anywhere, at any time is a vital, intricate,
built-in part of this movement.
I believe in the coming years, if the
work is going to advance, this must include
radical things on the home front.
We're getting weak in some of the home
fronts as well.
And all the big radical, wild projects cannot
just be way out there.
Why not some wild schemes in Scandinavia this
year?
Why not some wild, cat fanatical, radical ideas
of how we can get more pragmatic, hard
-hitting, continually running Swedes?
Latour.
I would like 20 like him.
I like that kind of person.
I only discovered him in Beirut this year
when he invited me to go to Leningrad.
We need more Scandinavians.
Let's use initiative.
Let's use imagination.
You know the greatest, weakest link in the
art of discipline?
Not exercises.
Don't think that is an issue.
That is a periphery detail.
It's disciplining our mind.
Our mind.
And as we discipline our minds, we're going
to get new ideas.
We're going to get solutions to problems that
we have not been able to solve in
this Coordinator's Conference, because many times you're going
to get these solutions alone or with one
or two brothers, waiting on God, just pushing
your mind.
Lord, what is it?
What is it?
In fact, I think one of the most
thrilling things in our last year is the
way God has given us solutions to endless,
ticklish, nitty-gritty problems.
It's thrilling.
Some of them just fall out of the
sky.
And I think this is often the way
God works.
And we can learn so much from this.
The discipline of the mind.
And so I believe it's been a very
encouraging year.
I could list specific things for every country,
saying I've already mentioned.
I think the breakthroughs in Belgium are significant
in many, many ways.
The literature.
It's good to see people enthused about literature.
We had more Belgian and Dutch recruits than
in previous years.
They're not easy to get.
You think they're easy?
Then go get them.
In case they'll give you an invitation to
take meetings in Holland.
I'll tell you, I failed in Holland, except
for 1963, and most of those varieties I
got then didn't exactly fit into the O
.M. puzzle.
But really, that's encouraging.
I think, of course, the work in France
has had phenomenal victories.
And what an encouragement to meet men like
Rogers.
And Mark, seeing Brother Mark go on year
after year.
This is what encourages a heart.
Frenchmen going on for God.
What more do you want?
You're going to build an Eiffel Tower.
We've already got one of those.
We're building men.
Of course, we need more.
I think the work in Italy is encouraging.
I believe this last three summers will go
down in history.
I believe it's written in history.
Don't despise these mass campaigns.
I tell you, if you despise them, you're
going to get shaken in heaven when people
walk up to you who were saved through
those leaflets, through those correspondence courses.
And I think it's very encouraging.
I hope we also bombard Brother Giovanni with
letters of encouragement this year that he'll think
his name got into the who's who.
Can you believe it?
I just got a letter from the who's
who in the United States.
Can you imagine?
Who's who in the religious world?
That's a big thing.
You get your name in the who's who.
I tell you, when that letter sailed into
the wastebasket, I almost got baptized.
Who's who in the religious world?
What a rush!
What other rush?
That's another message.
We better not get into that.
I only got one chance to speak.
There's so many other encouraging things that if
I believed in writing books, I could get
to my friends.
They're not my friends, but they, I've heard,
will write a book for me.
What are their names?
Cheryl?
These people always writing me books.
I could go and have a tech meeting
with them.
And I would have to write the O
.M. story.
I could only write about what happened this
past year.
And I want to tell you, if we
put that on the book stand with the
right cover, Richard Wormbrock has already pledged to
write the preface.
Richard said to me, look, you're a financial
problem.
Do you want to take care of it?
If you write a book, then I'll write
the introduction.
Then he said, your problems will be solved.
Well, I believe that we should not judge
those who write some of these books.
I believe that we should, in fact, take
many of these books, I'm serious, and distribute
them by the hundreds of thousands.
We're not lacking new books at this present
time.
So there's so many encouraging things, but we
don't know where to start.
I think STL has been one of the
greatest breakthroughs in the long run history of
this work.
I know some of you don't understand STL.
Don't pretend you do.
Jerry probably doesn't understand it either.
Anything that's born of God and that explodes
under the hand of God will never be
fully defined or understood.
Don't try to categorize it.
Don't try to put it into a computer.
The computer will spit it out.
I had a man come to me.
I have more people trying to influence me
to do things than you'll ever know.
I had a man this week.
Oh, I'm trying to get a computer.
On and on he went, trying to talk
to me about Jesus.
Computers!
Only half a million dollars.
Half a million dollars.
Well, maybe someday O.M. will get a
computer, STL perhaps could use one.
But really, God is working through STL.
STL is as much a part of O
.M. as any other part of this work.
And if you don't think that, you do
not know the original vision of the movement.
In fact, the original vision of the movement
was more in that direction.
The later vision, the later vision was the
Crusades, the mobilizing of young people, and all
that kind of thing.
So it's complete foolishness to play one thing
against the other.
Both can go foul.
The Crusade work can go foul.
The STL side can go foul.
But if you and I are going to
stick together, we're going to agree to keep
this structure going, then we've got to accept
all the various aspects of the work.
Dangers, there are plenty.
STL needs personnel.
It's harder to maintain spiritual life in that
kind of environment in some cases.
That makes it more real.
It's also harder to maintain spiritual life working
on the engine room than it is in
some other aspects of the land.
But that engine room has produced some of
the most encouraging spiritual gems I have seen
in this work.
And I believe that we need both kinds
of work.
The vision of this work from the earliest
days, the earliest days, when I stood up
before Moody's students, was to flood the world
with Christian literature.
We never questioned that soul-winning was more
important, but we did know we weren't going
to reach three billion souls through personal evangelism.
Flood the world with literature.
Every possible method.
And I believe that this kind of total
saturation program in the State of England is
vital.
I don't believe we can do this in
every country.
We can do it in seven countries.
And I believe this is where we need
a lot of unity.
No one knows what Jerry has put into
STL.
No one knows what I have put into
it.
Even Jonathan in the Chigwell days.
It has died again and again, and it's
had to be resurrected.
You see it now.
It's full blossom.
And it's still battling.
It's still shaking.
And I'm sure Jerry could share that there's
times when he feels it just can't go
another week because there are a lot of
problems in that kind of work.
And it's a lot easier to get the
men to handle that kind of thing in
England than it is in most of your
countries.
Count the costs.
Know how much you can handle.
We cannot handle that kind of operation in
India.
You cannot.
Convinced it's not God's will in India.
We do a lot of publishing, but it's
catalysts.
It's catalysts.
And we get most of our stuff from
other people we don't have in a wholesale
operation.
A systematic wholesale operation in India.
We know we can't do it.
We've tried a little bit.
So understand that.
I praise God for the work in India.
Maybe I won't get to the negatives tonight.
You've had enough negatives anyway, haven't you?
But I think the work in India is
very, very encouraging.
God has given us Indian disciples.
God has given us long-term foreigners.
What an encouragement to talk to people like
Mike Wheat.
People like this just don't want to come
back here.
Boy, they're just committed.
John Brown from Northern Ireland.
Committed.
Mike Wakely.
And many, many others.
Who God has done a deep work in
their lives.
And I'll be friends with every man that
meets him.
Is there a meeting going to go on
here?
Oh, sure.
By the time of the meeting, they'll have
it in here.
But don't be knocked over by the problems
we're facing in India.
God is not dead in India.
Personally, I believe that every Ireland leader must
learn to feast on the studied fact of
problems.
This is why, though I've been hit many
times, I bounce back because I live on
problems.
I live on problems.
And I believe that this work in India
is going to go on.
And even if I gave the oil leadership
to someone else, or if we re-altered
it to have independent operations, all these are
possibilities.
Why not be open to anything?
It doesn't hurt to think about these things.
It never hurt anybody to think.
And I believe long after that, I will
be committed to this work.
These brothers are my life.
Some of them are my spiritual children.
I led them to Jesus Christ.
How can I abandon them?
I can only do that by backsliding.
When you find me abandoning my spiritual children,
you will be able to look me in
my face.
And I know one will do it, Homer
Paine.
Praise God, he's brought you in his work.
I'm afraid to speak out.
You'll be able to look me in the
eye and say, you have backslidden.
You'll be able to come as Nathan, for
thou art the man.
May God give you the courage.
That's why Dale Rotheim needs to stay in
this work.
And for no other reason, he needs to
stay in the work to be the Nathan
the day that George Burrough slips away.
And Rotheim has got the courage, and he's
got whatever else it takes to come and
point me right in the nose.
Thou art the man.
There's quite a few others I'm going to
do as well.
I'm committed to that work in India.
Nepal and Bangladesh.
Please, pray that God will give us this
man for Nepal.
Twelve million souls.
I will go up there and lead the
work.
It may be God's will for me to
stay out of George Miley's hair.
Not that he's in any way complaining.
God has developed such love, he can even
absorb me four or five months a year
in a ship.
Boy, that's supernatural power.
You can be sure, you can imagine what
it is to live with me.
Some of you have tried it.
But it may be God's will, again, to
push me up into Nepal.
Looks like the India Conference is going to
be in Nepal.
I don't know.
But I believe God wants to shape Nepal.
You know how many Nepalis were at the
World Congress on evangelism?
One.
One or two.
And it was that Nepali at the World
Congress who begged me a year ago, whatever
you do, brother George, don't take oil out
of Nepal.
We need you.
You've helped the churches.
You've been a catalyst.
You've been a stimulant.
They said the same thing in Israel.
I've been thrilled with the work in Israel.
I feel, many of us know I have
a lack of vision for Israel because we,
of course, are Arab fanatics first.
We're the Arab first and the Jew second.
Of course, everybody working in the Arab world,
and that includes those of us on the
ship, if they say to you, what do
you do in Israel?
We say, what?
We've never heard of the place.
That's the way you have to be in
the Arab world.
Is that right, brother John?
Yes.
But praise God.
Praise God for what he did in Israel
this year.
Will everybody here write David Zion on a
letter?
Don't mention RM.
Don't talk about Jews coming to Jesus.
Just write him a gentle letter.
You're really praising God for the tour program
there and the blessings.
But he needs encouragement.
He's the only coordinator.
He's now the coordinator of all of Israel
who is not here apart from the, well,
there are a few others, far, you know,
distant places.
And I believe God wants to do something
there.
This year.
We don't really have the team leader man
yet this year.
Well, I don't know if any people ever
get thrown out of other parts because we
would like to have a team reaching Arabs.
In Israel, Arabs are Arabs.
If you find an Arab on the moon
when you go up there, are you going
to say, I evangelize here?
It must be reached.
I believe along this line, and this is
a whole separate burden that I haven't got
time to share, we must believe God for
a team in London.
If you want to encourage me to stay
with you, which you don't have to do
because I'm staying, give me a team in
London.
This city is hung on my heart for
12 years.
I love this city.
I love her people.
I love her underground.
I love British Rail.
I love Parliament.
I love Big Ben.
I've wept over London.
I have no team in London.
Unless I count Brabant.
They just moved that into Greater London.
There are 150,000 Turks.
There are hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis.
There are over a million Arabs.
I don't know if that's London or England.
It doesn't matter.
There are hundreds of thousands from all over
the world I stood in front of the
square giving out tracts.
I had two hours giving out tracts in
20 languages.
Unlimited scope for personal evangelism.
If all I want is to only do
personal work, we can all come to London.
The whole work, worldwide, we can all come
to London and we'd never reach it.
But because we're interested in mass evangelism, church
planting, motivating the church, kicking the church, stimulating
the pastor, then the other vision, of course
we've got to go all over the world.
But let's pray for a team for London.
Larry Smith is open to the idea.
Because that can also reinforce the existing work
in that he can take meetings, he can
meet Joe Blow who flies into the airport,
and he can do a lot of other
things.
So to reinforce, we need a London recruiter.
We have barely scratched London University.
I have never made a breakthrough in London
University.
I've had much fruit in Oxford, much fruit
in Cambridge.
I have about seven university meetings in the
next month.
Just opened up the way for three more
in Scotland.
Pray they come through.
And I haven't done anything in London University.
The universities are ripe.
They're ripe.
So that's an important thing.
Well, how far do I go?
The ship.
I can only ask to re-read the
prayer letters.
What a phenomenal thing that has happened.
In East Malaysia.
George Marley, I think, has come back here
tiptoeing.
Don't you think so?
He hasn't said anything about the ship.
I think he's afraid, oh, he's trying to
oversell the ship.
He doesn't need to oversell the ship.
Get more recruits out of Asia.
We haven't got that many recruits on the
ship.
But I believe that God has done a
miracle in this area.
I believe it would be a thrilling thing
if the ship could come into the Mediterranean.
I want those men on the ship to
pray this through and get God's mind, because
they're the men that are in it.
It's very encouraging.
I'm very encouraged the way those in the
sanding fields have held the fort.
The giving this year has been phenomenal.
We right now are in a crisis, but
basically it's been one of the best years
yet.
Now we could do better because we've still
been holding the belt in some places.
But I tell you the giving is phenomenal.
When that 20,000 pounds came in last
October from a Chinaman in Mexico City, I
can tell you I could have danced with
Jesus or with Campbell.
But praise God for this money he's bringing
in.
Praise is mean every day, even if it
is every day.
God's bringing in the funds.
Negative things, more positive, I don't want to
take any more time.
I've already mentioned enough.
This conference has emphasized enough negative things.
I think we lack discipline.
Discipline is not true spirituality.
But I would ask you to read Martin
Lloyd-Jones, one of the most perceptive men
in this generation.
And he will tell you that no spiritual
man has ever lacked an emphasis on discipline.
Read Spiritual Depression, Martin Lloyd-Jones.
Boy, he hits.
He hits.
He needs discipline in the mind, the body.
Why do I yearn for you men to
be disciplined men?
Because I know that if you're not disciplined
men, then in your forties some of you
are going to be in the pit.
In your forties and the fifties, maybe in
an unpredictable way, you won't have any money.
Or your wife may not be as attractive,
being very blunt because this is real.
And if you're not a disciplined man, you
may go the way of too many evangelical
leaders.
I don't want to see that happen to
anybody in this room, do you?
So that's why we build now.
You say, now everything's fine.
You're not having much temptation for your wife.
Your relationship is so wonderful.
That's just no problem for you.
Good.
People change.
The devil is clever.