Let's read a few scriptures together.
I want to start in an interesting place
for this kind of message.
John chapter 13.
This is the last supper which we've just
had.
One of the great burdens I've always had
as someone who often breaks bread and worships
the Lord in this way is that this
message about Jesus Christ taking the towel seems
to be neglected.
And yet it's right there in the same
chapter and it's pretty strong, the emphasis that
Jesus puts.
It's so strong that in America we have
a group called the Grace Brethren who actually
practice foot washing in their meetings.
And when they get up and present their
biblical basis for this, well, it's not so
easy to escape it.
Of course, I know most people spiritualize this
chapter.
I'm not convinced about the Grace Brethren practice,
especially since I found out they all scrub
and wash their feet like mad before they
come to the foot washing service.
But certainly there's a message here and I'll
let you make the application, but I want
to read it.
Verse four, he rises from supper and laid
aside his garments and took a towel and
girded himself.
After that, he poureth water into a basin
and began to wash the disciples' feet and
to wipe them with the towel with which
he was girded.
Then cometh he to Simon Peter and Peter
said unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my
feet?
Jesus answered and said unto him, What I
do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt
know hereafter.
Peter said unto him, Thou shalt never wash
my feet.
Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not,
thou hast no part with me.
Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, not my
feet only, but also my hands and my
head.
Jesus said to him, He that is washed
needeth not except to wash his feet, but
is entirely clean, and ye are clean, but
not all of you.
For he knew who should betray him, therefore
said he, Ye are not all clean.
So after he had washed their feet and
had taken his garment and was seated again,
he said unto them, Know ye what I
have done to you?
Ye call me master and lord, and ye
say, Well, for so I am.
If I then your lord and master have
washed your feet, ye ought to wash one
another's feet.
For I have given you an example that
you should do as I have done to
you.
The Lord led us to name the second
ship Doulas.
I would appreciate your prayers for the ship.
It's a very new venture.
The second ship, it's much bigger.
It's got many more problems.
Had a phone call last night.
We're having 5,000 visitors a day in
Mexico and 4,000 in the evangelistic meetings.
In Veracruz, we will be having a united
rally, a very, very big event together with
Luis Palau.
And we really need your prayers as we
go in to Latin America.
But we named the ship Doulas because we
feel this is the training that young people
need today.
They need to learn to be servants.
I believe one of the reasons we have
many casualties among top Christian leaders is that
they never had real basic training.
I'm amazed how quickly people go to the
top in evangelical circles.
It's just unbelievable.
It's far worse in America than here.
A few years of Bible school, maybe a
little seminary, out he is, pretty soon he's
pastoring a church.
We wonder why a high percentage of these
people get wiped out or don't have fruitful
ministries or their marriages get busted up.
We seem to have drifted away from the
basic man-to-man kind of training that
Jesus Christ himself gave.
And we cannot talk about world evangelism.
We cannot talk about evangelism at all without
talking about discipleship and the discipling of men.
There's a tremendous book written now called Disciples
Are Made Not Born.
And I hope that every one of you
in evangelism is a disciple maker.
To me this is very, very important.
And as we see the style and the
method of Jesus and then the Apostle Paul,
who is constantly working on teams, making disciples,
he had his Timothy and many others.
I think we see the pattern that God
uses to really multiply the church and to
spread the message around the world.
We need to train young men and women
today to be servants, to walk humbly before
God.
We have many men who are elders and
leaders in our churches today.
We wonder why many of them are carnal.
And if you talk to them, you find
they've never been trained.
They've never been discipled.
They just sort of drifted along.
And because of desperation, they were made a
leader in the local church.
Now, I am linked with a local church.
Our movement is not a parachurch movement.
We are involved in church planting around the
world.
That is our main work in Operation Mobilization.
We planted 15 churches in France alone.
We planted churches in Italy, in Spain, and
even in Muslim countries.
We don't go around sort of making, you
know, photographs of our churches and making some
great claim that this is our main work,
in a sense, because we feel just as
important as this work is just our general
work of training men and women.
And we don't want them to stay with
OM.
We want them to join other groups, especially
groups that have this vision for church planting
and for discipling men and for multiplying around
the world.
And it's exciting to see what God is
doing, especially in India and other places, where
in some cases, when they're on OM, it's
mainly evangelism, mass evangelism, street preaching, winning people
to Christ.
But as they graduate, and for an Indian,
generally, it takes us about 10 years to
really make a strong man of integrity.
This idea that we can create disciples in
three years of Bible school is one of
the greatest loads of eyewash that has ever
been dumped on the evangelical church.
It takes 10, 15, 20 years to make
a man of God.
You take a survey and find out how
many Bible school graduates know reality in prayer
and the spiritual warfare.
I want to tell you, you make that
survey, you'll come out with a depression.
We're not teaching young men how to pray.
And we are graduating generation after generation of
spiritual midgets.
And then as someone speaks out, people are
worried that he's negative or he's critical of
the church or he's not understanding.
I say this because I am totally knit
with the church.
I am the arch enemy of people in
Britain who are criticizing the established church.
I read some critical article about this church
recently in a particular magazine, and I had
that man on the phone.
I believe in what was taught here today,
if you have something against a brother, confront
him.
And I phone people all over this country.
That's right.
I was listening to a tape by a
very famous leader in London in which he
cut into established missionary work.
Not OM, we had nothing to do with
it.
He cut into the established missionary societies.
When I was finished listening to that tape,
my heart was burdened.
I knew I had wrong attitude to that
brother.
I repented and I got him on the
phone and I've developed an interesting relationship with
him.
Why are we afraid in the church of
Jesus Christ to confront?
We need to exhort one another.
And I hope you'll get my phone number.
And if you hear something screwy on one
of my tapes, and I can assure you
there are some screwy things on some of
my tapes, you'll get me on the phone
and maybe you can join with me in
helping to get some of these tapes erased.
You can put some of Graham, Graham, Kendrick's
music over the top of them.
I believe that there is a great danger
that slowly we are lowering the standard within
the church of Jesus Christ.
Now, many of us are very burdened for
the dead churches, the liberal churches, and you
get people that they're in an alive church
and they're telling about how wonderful their church
is and how the Lord's blessing and they're
concerned about the dead churches and the liberal
churches.
I want to tell you, my concern is
the live churches, the so-called live churches
who feel that they're doing all right and
they are experiencing the blessing of God and
God is using them.
And yet I feel convinced that often in
our live churches, the standard is not what
it is in the Word of God.
Prayer, witness, love, discipline, repentance, and many other
areas.
And I feel the great hope is among
us as leaders to increase the standard in
our own lives, to see the degree of
reality increase in our own lives.
This is what breaks my heart about my
own nation.
We have many great organizations in America, many
great men of God, but I feel even
among the most live, and I have to
put myself there, that we are falling short,
so short, of what the New Testament outlines
as biblical Christianity.
More and more people are seeing this.
A.W. Tozer saw this.
And that's why in speaking about evangelism, he
said something that I've never forgotten, and I
want to read it to you.
He said, the task of the church is
twofold, to spread Christianity throughout the world and
to make sure that the Christianity she spreads
is the pure New Testament kind.
Christianity will always produce itself after its kind.
A worldly-minded, unspiritual church is sure to
bring forth on other shores a Christianity much
like her own.
Not the naked word only, but the character
of the witness determines the quality of the
convert.
The popular notion that the first obligation of
the church is to spread the gospel to
the uttermost parts of the earth is false.
Her first obligation is to be spiritually worthy
to spread an effete degenerate brand of Christianity
to pagan lands is not to fulfill the
great commission or the commandment of Jesus Christ.
C.S. Lewis said, we have the tendency
to think, but not to act.
We have the tendency to feel, but not
to act.
And if we go on thinking and feeling
without acting, someday we will be unable to
act.
This is what frightens me even about a
conference like this, though I believe in these
conferences, and it's one of the major ministries
of our ship, conferences just like this.
But there's a danger that we've had more
truth, more exposure, more blessing.
What are we going to do with it
when we get in our vehicles and when
we get home, in our families, in our
churches, and in our work?
I believe a subtle form of spiritual schizophrenia
has crept into the church, which on a
spiritual level is more difficult to handle than
schizophrenia among the mentally ill, where people have
double compartments.
They have their spiritual compartment that is obviously
visible in a conference like this and on
Sunday, but then they have their practical life,
what they do with their time, their money,
their education.
Surely we have seen this in the United
States.
It's just unbelievable in our country, beyond words
what has happened, where people can be so
totally schizophrenic and be living in two totally
different worlds in which there is no mixing
whatsoever.
Men have made literally hundreds of thousands.
Some of the wealthiest men in America are
evangelical Christians.
And what are we going to do with
the Sermon on the Mount?
What are we going to do with the
teachings of Jesus Christ?
America certainly doesn't know what to do with
this book, Rich Christians in a Hungry World.
Not that I judge people who have a
little bit of this world's goods, but I
tell you, when they make it through selling
Christian books, when they make it through taking
love offerings, when they make it by skiving
it off the old age pensioners, then I
will speak out and I don't care who
is in the audience, be it the president
himself.
We have rapidly become a nation of hypocrites
and there is a danger that Britain will
follow right behind us.
So don't point any fingers.
I can speak bluntly about my nation, you
speak bluntly about your nation, but I am
scared.
The standard is coming down.
Materialism has so invaded the church.
It's just, we hardly know what to do
anymore, to even talk about it.
And the impurity problem, we know that impurity
is wrong, but don't we see how impurity
and materialism work together?
When these different people have so much money
and so much available to them, of course,
all kinds of other complicated problems naturally come
in.
And so before I try to paint a
little picture of the needs around the world,
it is my plea that we may go
from here with a desire to increase the
standard of life, even among those who feel
they're already alive and who love Christ and
who worship the Lord.
And I believe that has to start personally
with my own life.
I am tremendously aware of inadequacy and I
know that I have to keep repenting.
And my message is a message of grace.
That's why I've written a book called Revolution
of Balance, to keep some of these things
that I sometimes say in balance and in
context.
I think we have to say this because
it's one of the explanations why the world
is not evangelized.
Fifty percent of the people in the world
today are still waiting to hear the gospel
for the first time.
About fifty percent.
This is unbelievable two thousand years since the
Great Commission was given.
This is unbelievable when we consider ten thousand
people, finally nine thousand who gather at Keswick
and now another nine thousand who gather at
Dales, plus an endless host of other conferences
and deeper life conventions that go on throughout
the summer just on these islands.
I believe the Holy Ghost will bring a
holy go.
And personally here in Britain, I'm tired of
so much talk about the Holy Spirit when
I see so little burning apostolic reality in
the lives of people that I have seen
and I have watched for quite a few
years.
The Holy Ghost will bring a holy go.
And I will tell you among the young
people today, there may be a lot of
praising and a lot of guitar strumming and
a lot of halleluying and some people call
it worship.
But I'll tell you worship that does not
lead to spiritual revolution is not much different
than Krishna worship, nor Buddhist worship, nor monism.
It's a kick.
Now, I don't have the discernment to tell
in some meetings in some situations who is
on a religious kick and who is truly
worshiping God.
If you've got that much discernment, I would
love to have your book.
But I'm scared.
I'm scared for an overemphasis on subjectivism, subjective
thinking, feelings.
Who's got the next kick?
I believe it is going to paralyze world
missionary endeavor if we're not careful.
Now, we believe in worship.
We have whole nights of worship and praise.
And we're not against live music and operation
mobilization.
But it's not enough.
It's not enough for us to gather around
the Lord's table and remember again that we're
all saved.
No wonder the people of the world think
we're a bit touched as we go out
reveling that we are saved and have never
spoken to our own neighbors about this salvation
and make little sacrifice of time, sweat, tears,
money, toil to reach the world.
Oh, I know I am a crank.
That was the best introduction I've had in
a long time.
I have been attacked and criticized and smeared
many, many times.
And sometimes it's been my own fault.
But other times it's been because I believe
that what Jesus said he meant.
And he said in Luke 14, 33, except
you forsake all that you have, you cannot
be my disciple.
Now, the moment I say that, I can
hear the echoes.
Oh, yes, but look what happened to the
children of God.
It's true.
They had that message to some degree.
But you see, they didn't have the balance.
They didn't have sound theology.
They didn't have the other things that I
believe many of you already have.
Why did they attract so many young people?
Why are so many young people being let
out of the established church?
Because many today, they just don't see the
reality.
They read in their Bible, our God is
a consuming fire, and they look in vain
for men on fire.
It doesn't have to be loud.
I don't want to be loud, actually.
When I came to England, I was told,
you've got to speak soft, you're going to
offend all the saints.
But I had already listened to Alan Redpath
for two years.
And when I read these books by Andrew
Murray, I used to feel so guilty, and
I thought, Lord, you know my greatest burden
is not world evangelism.
It's certainly not this or that.
It's to be holy.
It's to be gentle.
It's to be meek.
That's still my greatest need.
And for a while, I thought that that
had to do with being quiet.
It was almost as if I was praying,
Lord, help me to be quiet.
Help me to speak with low, nice, holy
tones.
Lord, help me to be quiet.
Then suddenly, I caught myself.
I will tell you, it was a great
day when I accepted myself.
Because I had a lot of, I had
a lot of, I'll get four free books,
I had a lot, but
I had a lot of struggle in really
accepting myself.
If you're the quiet type and you're not
explosive and all that, praise the Lord.
God is not out to annihilate your personality.
God is out to work through it.
But my personality was not like that.
Even, you know, in the meetings during these
days, my feet are moving and, you know,
I want to jump and shout, and I
know this often offends people, because in the
early days of OM, I was much more
free.
I still am quite free.
I used to stand on the chairs and
the tables in the prayer meetings.
People were laying on the floor in the
OM prayer meetings at Moody Bible Institute, weeping.
Others were standing on the chairs praising God.
I mean, these are all good conservative, you
know, straight line Bible churches.
A dean of men peeking through the door
at one in the morning, watching these students.
You can be sure it caused some interesting
repercussions at the Institute.
I had to learn the hard way that
sometimes people just copy you instead of experiencing
reality.
And I think it's wonderful to practice self
-control in worship meetings.
I don't like to do things in worship
meetings that stumble other brothers, or that are
freaky, or cuckoo, or whatever other word you
use.
That's why I like to go out to
the woods and perhaps let off some steam,
or sing, or praise the Lord.
But, oh beloved, I pray that we may
see the need for spiritual revolution, the need
to increase our standard of life.
What are we going to do about this
issue of materialism?
I was about to tell you the main
reason I was considered a crank is because
I sold all my possessions, because I refused
to buy any clothing.
That's now gone on for 20 years.
I never taught that others should live that
way.
It's just a personal thing with me, that
I should trust the Lord for my clothing.
Because I never owned a car, I never
owned a home, and never had an insurance
policy, or a bank account.
And I still live on maybe 2,000
pounds a year, and that's not easy.
Maybe three by now with inflation, with a
family of three.
And we are not living in poverty.
I don't believe in poverty.
I believe God provides.
Forsake all, then God supplies all.
It's firstly, I admit, a heart transition.
It's firstly an act of the will.
And when you get married, it gets more
complicated, because you cannot force your wife.
You have to come to peaceful negotiation.
And it takes compromise, it takes love.
And all the message of forsaking all, which
to me is only one twentieth of the
message of discipleship.
Only one twentieth.
Without love, it's nothing.
But if you and I believe in world
evangelism, I will tell you we are going
to change our lifestyle.
And there are going to go up things
for sale.
When God's Spirit moved in at Wheaton College,
Moody Bible Institute, and other places, among the
poor students, we sold thousands of dollars of
possessions to buy Gospels.
People now criticize us because we're a big
organization.
We've got a computer and a telex machine
and two ships and three hundred vehicles, and
people think O.M. has really changed.
Of course, they haven't looked at that ship.
Gigantic, rust bucket, built in 1914, the oldest
passenger ship in the world.
It's only running because of twenty-five committed
engineers who have left big salaries.
Many of them sold their homes and have
put their own money even to buy the
ship.
There's no big money behind O.M. People
can't believe this movement is basically British based.
They can't believe it.
With the great British drift to America, it
isn't all spiritual reasons.
I mean, you know, we can be honest,
can't we?
I mean, it's easy to get the gift.
And many people in Britain now are looking
to America for the cash.
Some have even moved their whole operation there.
I'm not saying that that's wrong.
I like to just stir people's minds.
I like them just to consider this little
fact that India is one hundred times less
evangelized than America, at least one hundred times.
We have areas where there's no such thing
as an evangelist.
There are no churches.
There are churches in other parts of India,
but they don't move out of those areas
any more than the average Northern Irishman is
going to leave Northern Ireland to evangelize South
End.
And so India just screams and British people
don't even need a visa.
It's getting tougher for British people to get
into America.
They need a visa.
And yet all the English people that go
over to America and very, very few are
going East.
Isn't that interesting?
I'm not criticizing anybody.
Just think.
I believe one of the most important things
we need to do in these days is
think.
I believe too often as Christians, we're led
by emotion.
We're led by our environment.
We're led by various experiences.
I would beg of you to consider some
of the facts.
Let's just think about some of these countries.
Let me just take my little prayer cards
that I like to carry around to redeem
the time and just mention some of these
lands.
These now are cold, harsh facts.
Some of you already know them.
Some don't.
I can say right here, my great burden
isn't recruiting you to the foreign mission field.
That's not my burden.
Because I believe we need men in your
positions in evangelism in Britain with a missionary
worldwide vision, as much as we need missionaries
over there.
Many people who come on OM, we don't
put heavy pressure to become missionaries.
Many of them come back into industry.
They come back.
Some of you are XOMers.
They come back in to be pastors.
My burden isn't whether you're there or here.
That isn't my first burden.
But it's, do you have a vision?
I now have to live in this country
about eight months a year.
That's not easy for me, though I love
Britain very much, because there's so many other
calls over there.
But I have a teenage family, 18, 16,
and 14.
I feel my first priority next to God
himself is my family.
I cancel meetings.
I cancel nations.
I do a lot of things that my
family may be given adequate time.
And yet I have found that I just
love to minister in this country, and I'm
involved in evangelism as well, and Christian unions,
all kinds of meetings.
An incredible meeting just last week of very
interesting people from society at an evening banquet.
Fifty percent of them didn't know the Lord.
We just start talking about the ship.
Then we start talking about fellowship.
Then we start talking about relationship and discipleship.
I love to speak about all the ships
in God's word.
And I find that I can be ministering
here, even preaching the gospel, and yet the
ultimate result always goes over there.
India, the Middle East.
There's always a recruit, a young person sitting
in most meetings, ready to go.
I was speaking at Tent Hall a year
ago.
Young man converted through peace with God.
Scotsman, excellent marine engineer sitting in the meeting.
Babe in Christ.
God touched him.
He's on Dulas in Mexico today, not just
working as an engineer, but being trained by
living with godly men.
Our top chief engineer is one of the
most godly men I've ever worked with.
It's just people just are with him in
the engine room and they know Jesus Christ
is in this man.
It's the only way they can explain the
character.
And I tell you, light speaks louder than
sermons, I believe.
And I find that I can be in
Britain and still feel that I'm involved in
the whole world.
And I'm sure some of you already have
that experience and I believe you can have
it even more.
What you do in Britain affects the whole
world.
There are people that you can see saved
in your meetings and sent even within a
few years.
Isn't that exciting?
Some of our best workers, we led them
to Christ.
Now they're leaders.
And it's just so wonderful and so exciting.
We're here and yet we belong to the
whole world.
We might be laboring in Kent, but we
belong to the whole world.
We've got a world vision.
Let's look at a few of these countries.
Maritania, according to this report, there are no
national believers in the entire nation.
Now, that one fact should just stir us
immediately to put Maritania on our prayer list.
No believers.
Can you imagine London with no believers?
Not one believer in all of London.
Now, I think there are a few there,
foreign community who know the Lord Jesus.
All right, just take yourself and three or
four others and put yourself in London.
Nobody else knows Jesus Christ.
You know, you think your nation is so
pagan.
You know why?
You haven't traveled enough.
I will tell you, this nation is in
no way as pagan as most of the
places I have lived.
It's just, you can't even understand what it
is in some of these countries.
You have nothing to compare it with.
And I believe there is still, and I
find that I love Britain more than most
of the British people that I meet.
I find that I'm also a little more
optimistic though.
I think I know the facts, but I
am convinced still a strong Christian influence in
this country.
And you can write me about that and
I'll be glad to discuss it with you.
There is a strong Christian influence in this
country.
I think some people who talk about how
bad it is now compared to past history,
I would challenge them on what they have
studied at university.
Because I don't think they know past history.
I believe there is still an element.
We're not a Christian nation.
I don't think that's ever existed.
But there's an element.
God has got his hand yet upon this
nation.
God is not finished with this nation.
This is not an hour for total pessimism.
This is an hour for optimism in the
midst of problems, darkness, and struggle to believe
that God has his hand on this nation.
And God has his hand on some of
these government people.
And one of the purposes is that we
may continue to play a vital role in
world missions.
I feel so strongly that the British Christian
with a tremendous heritage, what a heritage we
have in this country.
I've only absorbed, you know, just 5%
British heritage and I can hardly keep my
legs, you know, from moving.
When I think of Bunyan, when I think
of Hudson Taylor, when I think of William
Carey and a host of other men, the
books that we have in the English language
that challenge our hearts day after day.
One of the reasons I love books is
I'm a natural backslider.
I backslide, you know, almost every day.
Fortunately, just for a few minutes, mainly in
the mind.
I have just this natural tendency to go
down.
That's why every day I need to be
filled with the Holy Ghost.
I believe in that message.
Every day I need to be filled with
the Holy Spirit.
I need to turn away from that which
is of the world, that which is of
George Verwer, that which is compromise, and surrender
afresh to the Lord Jesus.
And often it's been A.
W.
Tozer, Murray Machene, Andrew Murray, these men in
my quiet time, and mainly the Word of
God, that just humbled me.
I'm not against crisis experiences.
I think you ought to have a crisis
every day.
It doesn't have to be always the same
emotional proportion.
But I tell you, when I see myself
in my quiet time, and then look at
my Savior, I have to have some kind
of a crisis.
Forgive me if I'm too emotional about it.
But it wouldn't hurt some of us in
this country to be a little more released.
A little more released.
I find many people, and this is a
tangent, I'll just touch it, I find many
people crippled in their Christian life because they've
never learned to be released and to share.
Why are young people going sometimes, even into
extremist groups, that have a heavy emphasis on
relational theology, and maybe go too far in
this?
Why are young people gravitating to some of
those groups?
Because in the present church scene, they're starved!
They want to share with someone.
They want to open up.
They want to be accepted.
They want love.
And they don't find it.
We found in our work, the emphasis on
fellowship, counseling, spending time with people, listening, accepting
them in that time of failure, is as
important as evangelism and hard work.
And you know when you give time to
young people, you listen to them, you struggle
with them, you repent with them and weep
with them, I'll tell you they'll work.
And they'll go and go and accomplish God's
work far more.
Well, let's quickly move on.
I have here Albania.
No known Albanian national believers.
There probably are a few.
Some little work has been done there, but
it's just unbelievable.
Algeria has about 150 believers.
Tunisia, right next door, has a few dozen
believers in the entire nation.
Libya, two or three national believers in the
nation.
And on we could go, in terms of
North Africa.
But there are other places that are more
open, though you can get into North Africa,
and there are other ways that you can
help the work there.
But think, for example, of Spain.
Well, we have a lot of interest.
The whole provinces of Spain were this very,
very little work.
When I first went into Spain in 1960,
the first country I worked in, it was
all closed.
We distributed all our literature secretly through the
post.
About 900,000 pieces.
About 25,000 people wrote for Bible correspondence
courses to a secret address in Portugal.
Within three years of prayer, nights of prayer,
Spaniards praying, not just within OM, the whole
body, that country opened.
By 1964, we had gone into 80%
of the villages of the country.
That's only the beginning.
Now you have to go back and consolidate
and plant churches.
That takes far more men, far more prayer.
That's what we should be doing today.
But we're not.
We're just scratching the surface in Spain, and
yet the Jehovah Witnesses have just passed 30
or 40,000 strong.
Unbelievable rebuke to the Church of Jesus Christ.
There are other European countries.
I think there's only a couple dozen missionaries
in the whole of Greece.
It's a country OM.
Hasn't even worked in.
Just unbelievable situation.
And what do we say of places like
Turkey?
That's one country I want to implant upon
your mind.
Turkey has 38, this card says 40 million
people.
It's been one of the main OM fields,
where we've been involved in church planting, and
we've represented a majority of the missionaries in
Turkey, between OMers and ex-OMers.
Though all the different groups now, and there
are more now, last 10 years, we all
work as one body.
This is a beautiful thing in Turkey.
Have a workers conference, they all come together.
Now that's a lot easier when the work
is small.
And of course already extremist groups have been
born.
They say that in Turkey there are probably,
and I think you know where Turkey is,
probably less than 100 believers from among the
Turkish background people.
I'm not speaking of minority groups, like Koreans
living in Saudi Arabia, praise the Lord.
Greeks living in Turkey are despised by Turks.
Among the real Turks are maybe a hundred.
It's just an unbelievable situation.
The first step isn't to get in your
car and drive to Turkey, though you can
do that.
The first step is prayer.
You know there's a word that constantly God
brings to my mind when I think about
my own work, OM, with all of our
failures and all of our needs.
And when I think of the church, there's
a word that comes to my mind, you
may want to write it down, I call
it sanctified imagination.
And it's my prayer that as we go
away from here desiring to be more committed,
to be more involved, that we would develop
a sanctified imagination.
How can I, right where I am in
Lancashire or in Cumbria or in Northern Scotland,
how can I be more involved?
And as you pray and ask God to
expand your imagination, I believe he'll show you
ways.
Many, many years ago, I got this idea,
I found out many others already had it,
which is often true of an idea you
get, of saving used stamps.
I was a philatelic agent, owned a philatelic
business when I was younger, and I sold
that to print Gospels and get the word
out.
And then I thought of the idea, why
don't we just save all these stamps off
envelopes and sell them for the Gospel's sake?
Some of your groups already do this.
That has released thousands of pounds, thousands of
pounds for world evangelism.
Just one little funny, you know, idea.
And there are so many ways, I believe
there are ways we can be working together
more.
We get ideas, let's get on the phone,
let's find out what we're doing.
I wish I knew more of what you're
doing.
You're all so conservative here, I know you
never want to tell anybody what you're doing,
you know, you got a, brother, do you
have a prayer letter, brother?
Get this prayer letter out of your pocket.
But it would be wonderful to know more
about your ministries, and I'm convinced there are
ways to be working together.
I'm sure some of you could be going
on trips to some of these countries to
minister.
It's not just the great famous evangelists that
can make an impact in India, most of
them never go to India.
We've seen ordinary men go out with a
gift to teach.
Edwin Orton of the Birmingham City Mission went
with us last year.
God mightily used him out there.
And, you know, there's just so much that
could be done, especially when the whole world
is becoming a global village.
Some of you could spend a month in
Turkey.
And there are other countries that are much
closer, and I know many of you already
are.
Of course, I realize that when I'm speaking
to an audience like this.
Sanctified imagination, especially in mobilizing God's people for
prayer.
I'd like to send this article I wrote,
and that, of course, is free, it's only
a pamphlet.
What happened to the prayer meeting?
I yearn to see missionary praying brought back
on the map.
I'm amazed in going to prayer meetings what
people pray about.
The Mickey Mouse vision that we have, I
will tell you, McDonald's hamburger chain has more
vision to reach Britain than the average evangelical
fish living today.
And may we repent, and may we somehow
do something about it.
And it's going to start in prayer.
Brother Brian Gilbert was sharing with me this
One Step Forward program, almost sent me to
the moon.
What a tremendous thing to get churches into
that kind of thing.
Ron Smith, I know, has got something somewhat
like that.
There are so many things that we could
be doing.
Oh, I know, someone says, well, we're afraid
we're all going to become too activistic.
This is the big thing in Britain today,
with evangelical pacifism.
The Lord has led us to sit here
and wait until He moves us out into
evangelism.
You know, there's house groups that teach that?
And some of them have been sitting for
a long time.
And you know what happens when they're sitting?
Immorality, adultery, division, false doctrine, you name it,
and you get it.
When pacifism is there, the devil is right
there to move in.
A Christian is on the move.
I'm against being a workaholic.
I'm against activism in the flesh.
But I think we need to be careful
when we accuse people of being in the
flesh, just because they're a little active.
Because history shows that most of the great
men were slightly active.
And if we just sit back, you know
what happens to many young people on OM
when they come back?
Some of the churches, they get literally pulverized.
They're only with us for a summer.
Of course we cannot thoroughly train them in
one summer.
It's a catalyst.
They get a vision.
They get a burden.
And we tell them, and naturally this is
true, in the coming years you are going
to make mistakes.
They're excited.
They want to do something.
But most of them aren't leaders.
Most are very ordinary people.
They come back to their local church situation,
and everybody's watching, you know, what kind of
cuckoo thing is this guy going to do?
Many people seem to feel almost guilty.
What is he going to tell me to
sell my new Jaguar?
Is he judging me because, you know, I
just bought this 500 pound color television?
People get a little nervous around some of
these OMers.
I don't know why.
You know, if you want to waste your
time watching television for endless hours, I'm not
going to judge you.
You stand before Jesus with your color television.
I'm not against television.
I don't have one.
I'm not against it.
No, seriously, I believe God can use television.
I'd like to see some more Christian programs.
But I'll be quite honest, I haven't got
yet enough discipline to have television in my
home.
Now, you're British.
You're more disciplined by nature.
I just, you know, I love...
My problem wouldn't be the bad programs.
My problem would be the good programs.
And once in a while, I go over
to my friend's house and I watch a
good program.
And that way, for the children, it's a
very special treat.
My children have never complained about not having
television.
They read books avidly, and they're discovering all
kinds of wild things to do, which gets
a bit heavy at times.
But when I think of the destructive force
of television on the church, I just shake.
And the biggest thing is not the evil
programs.
It's wasting time that will never, never get
back.
Beloved, the good has always been the enemy
of the best.
Nothing wrong with sitting down for a short
time, relaxing, and maybe watching the news, maybe
even one program.
I'm not against that.
But people so quickly become slaves to the
pleasure cult, especially in our country.
And I know it's happening here.
Praise God, many young people today are beginning
to rebel against this.
I think these things are important.
I think so often, our message and our
challenge is way up here, and we don't
get down to the nitty-gritty about our
time, our money, and all the rest.
May God just lead us in the way
we should go.
I don't know how many other countries to
mention.
Somalia, a few hundred national believers.
One of the most needy countries in the
world with just a small number of believers.
Bhutan, that's way over in Asia, right there.
It says here there are hardly any believers.
Maybe among the Nepali people there, there might
be about 300.
And then some of the states within India.
Just think of Bihar, 62 million people in
Bihar, almost no missionaries left in Bihar.
In the northern part of Bihar, there are
hardly any believers among the national, the main
Bihari people.
There are quite a few believers among the
tribals in the south.
That area of India is such a great
burden on some of our hearts.
And on we could go, it's just unbelievable.
Uttar Pradesh, another main area within India, has
100 million people.
100 million, double the population of Britain.
Less churches, less churches than south east London.
100 million precious souls.
Now one of the tricks of the devil,
to try to hinder world evangelism, is to
get those working in the home front, like
many of you, sort of get their backs
up against those on the foreign mission field.
It's true, some foreign mission field people, they
overstate things, and in overstating things they sort
of reduce sometimes the work that you're trying
to do.
So you sometimes overreact and say, look, how
can we think about all these countries, Britain's
so pagan, and you give some quote about
some section of your own city, some housing
estate, with no witness, which is probably very
legitimate.
I know the need in Britain is fantastic.
And we are involved in evangelism here.
We hope to throw maybe 20 teams into
Britain and southern Ireland again this summer.
We have 12 men ministering all the time.
I'd like to get more of them here
next year.
But compared with these other places, I don't
even believe it makes sense to compare.
And this is why I'm convinced, though we
may be laboring, preaching, and teaching here, working
for renewal, that the blessing must flow out.
And that we must be praying that the
Lord of the Harvest will send out more
laborers into the harvest.
Could we not be organizing some nights of
prayer for world missions?
Could we not be having missionary prayer meetings
in our own churches, or making at least
25% of the meeting real prayer for
missions?
There are so many things, I'm convinced, we
can do.
It has grieved me that some of the
main evangelists in the world today seldom give
a real missionary challenge.
I don't understand that.
This is a biblical, basic teaching, Acts 1A.
And when it comes to the uttermost parts
of the earth, let's just look at two
scriptures that are not as well known as
Acts 1A, because I think it's so important.
I love to hear Martin Goldsmith on the
biblical basis for missions, and some of you
know his outstanding book, Don't Just Stand There.
And that's one of the things that we
can be doing in Britain, is distributing some
of these great missionary books.
Michael Griffiths, Give Up Your Small Ambitions.
Hudson Taylor, William Carey.
These can be on your book tables in
your meetings.
Isn't it amazing?
Some evangelists will not allow book tables in
their evangelistic meetings, or only their own books,
or their own records.
Oh, what a blessing it is when you
find people who push other people's books and
other people's records.
You know, it doesn't take too much spirituality
to push your own thing.
I'm not saying you shouldn't do that.
I think some people are too much the
other way.
But what a wonderful thing it is to
see people pushing other groups, introducing people to
other movements, other ministries, speaking well and telling
people what a great blessing that other evangelist
was.
I'd love to bring you a whole message
on this subject that God has just torn
through my wicked heart.
The subject of esteeming others better than yourself.
There's a lot of people around Britain preaching
and teaching.
I listen to their I don't agree with.
And I feel they're off balance.
I believe there's compromise.
But I esteem them.
I love them.
I get blessing from them.
And I think this is such an important
thing that's already been emphasized here.
But just look quickly at 2 Corinthians 10,
16.
2 Corinthians 10, verse 16.
To preach the gospel.
Paul is speaking 2,000 years ago.
To preach the gospel in the regions beyond
you and not to boast in another man's
line of things made ready to our hand.
Isn't that an unpleasant little text?
The regions beyond the countries we're talking about.
They're the countries outlined.
Outlined in this little book.
And I believe, especially those of you in
a teaching ministry, and many of you are,
you are under God's instruction to teach the
whole counsel of God.
And that means you've got to teach what
the Bible says about world evangelism.
And it includes verses like this.
And then look very quickly at Romans 15,
20.
Romans 15, verse 20.
Wow.
Yeah.
So I have strived to preach the gospel
not where Christ was named.
Lest I should build upon another man's foundation.
One of the mistakes we make is we're
trying to Christianize Britain instead of evangelize the
world.
All kinds of movements are born that are
basically British centered.
I don't find much biblical basis for this.
Your major emphasis should be Britain.
But if you're going to be biblical, your
work is the world.
Even though your main target may be local.
And we are not called, there's no biblical
basis to think we're called to Christianize Britain.
And it's my view, I'm sure as many
don't agree with me, it's my view that
we may not be on the brink of
a great revival.
I want that.
I pray for that probably as much as
most.
But it may be that we're going to
move the other way into a period of
persecution and suffering, compromise, apostasy.
Read history.
It isn't always revival.
It's just around the corner.
I only throw it out to think, to
pray.
But I believe this, the world is the
field.
And when they have a revival in Indonesia
or Brazil, even though I'm in Britain, I'm
just thrilled.
I would say as an American, Lord, if
you want to bring revival today, and there
can't be one in the United States and
China at the same time, Lord, bring it
to China, even though I'm not Chinese and
I probably won't be in on it, but
I certainly won't be the major speaker.
We're part of the whole body of Christ.
As one member suffers, we all suffer.
That's why I want to know about your
ministry, because if you're suffering, I'm suffering.
And my heart hurts.
And there's been tears many times down my
face.
And I've been prostrate before God about Britain,
about the church, about all the needs of
the church at this time.
But the greater burden is the whole world.
That was the vision and the burden of
the Apostle Paul, and it should be ours
as well.
In these closing moments, I want to share
just something that's heavy on my heart about
some of the other major obstacles to world
evangelization.
And I know the hour is late, but
I just feel this is so important, and
maybe the only reason the Lord sent me
here is just to say these next few
words.
The first obstacle, I believe, is the reducing
or compromise in regard to the inspiration of
Scripture.
This is the Word of God.
I'm not going to take you into the
inerrancy controversy.
I'm probably more British and American on some
of these things.
This is God's Word.
All of it.
Sure, there are things we don't understand.
I listened to Dr. Schaefer about the problems
of the man who doesn't believe the Bible.
I believe there are far more than the
problems for the man who does believe the
Bible.
This is God's inspired Word.
Let's feed on it.
In my surveys in the Christian unions, and
in many churches, less than 50% of
the people have read the Bible through once.
In the Christian unions, less than 20%.
I make them raise their hand and stand
up.
Of course, they're young Christians, many of them.
It's amazing.
It's supposed to be God's Word.
A new book has just come out by
Ralph Shallis for young Christians.
Get it.
It's the only book he's written about going
on.
Here's an Englishman that's been so used to
God in France and North Africa that he
has all his writings in French.
He's unheard of in this country.
You know his brother, Marshall Shallis.
Ralph is slowly dying of cancer.
He's writing, writing, writing.
He's burning out to the end.
And we finally got one of his books
translated from French back into English, even though
he's an Englishman.
Praise God for such missionaries, though he's been
a man almost unknown in this country.
And what a challenge it is to think
of people like that.
And so I'm convinced.
Let's hold fast to the Word of God.
You know, I love people.
I respect people.
I believe God's working in many different funny
ways.
But personally, if they're not clear on their
stand about Scripture, I cannot work with them.
I just cannot.
I may even preach in one of their
conventions.
I preach almost anywhere.
I'll come to collaboration if they don't stand
on inspired Scripture and they start playing around.
You know, the man that just dragged 900
people, perhaps, into hell in Guyana.
You know, one of the first things he
did, he was a pastor, still a pastor
in the Disciples of Christ Church.
One of the first things he did when
he started going astray, he denounced the virgin
birth and then he spit on his Bible.
If you don't think that thing was inspired
by demons, even though I'm incredibly conservative on
that area, then maybe you better read the
story again.
God's Word.
And this is so important.
I believe every Christian should be memorizing God's
Word.
And that's such strength to resist temptation.
It's another message in itself.
Secondly, I believe the great obstacle is unbelief.
Unbelief.
I love to speak in the Brethren Assemblies.
Boy, they're just like sitting ducks when you
come in.
And just talk to them about George Mueller.
Just talk to them about George Mueller, one
of the founders.
Talk to them about Anthony Norris Groves or
Chapman.
Talk to them about these early extremists, these
Brethren cranks who almost turned this nation upside
down.
Mueller at the end of his life with
30,000 answers to prayer.
And I asked them, how many of you
are keeping lists of answers to prayer?
I will tell you, those of you who
are from Brethren Assemblies, we need to go
back to the first principles.
We now have many teachers in the Brethren
Assemblies, but not many fathers.
You know where that's quoted from.
And the Methodists need to go back a
little bit to John Wesley.
And it's amazing the men that founded our
movements, their lifestyle, the way they lived.
What a challenge.
What a heart cry.
C.T. Studd said, let's not be nibblers
of the possible.
I wonder how many of us in our
ministries, really if we're not, we're just nibbling
at the possible, just taking as much as
we can handle with our little human bag
of resources and the money that we can
somehow scrape together from God's frozen people, chosen
people.
Not nibblers of the possible, grabbers of the
impossible.
And that firstly is people.
I'm always scared when people come to the
ship because they get their eye on the
ship.
They don't understand that we spent some of
us who are locked together still, from when
we first met back at college, we've been
struggling, praying, working, nights of prayer, all the
rest of it, and much failure mixed in
for 20 years.
Don't get property first.
It's not outward things first.
Build on men.
Get around you a group of spirit-filled,
committed men.
Let God add the property.
Better to live in a tent with five
spirit-filled men than have the QE2 and
a bunch of carnal, half-cocked Christians.
And yet this is so often the mistake
the church has made.
Property, buildings.
In America, we're neurotic.
We're almost totally neurotic on this point.
Who can build a bigger building?
We had one man to get more people
into the Sunday school.
He parachuted into the parking lot to gather
a crowd, I tell you.
You imagine if an Englishman did that?
I tell you, it would start more than
a Sunday school.
It would bring the birth of a new
cult.
Unbelief.
Unbelief is certainly one of the most paralyzing,
vicious, fiery darts that the enemy uses.
And I want to be honest.
In the last years, unbelief has come at
my soul in the most unsuspecting ways.
And if you've worked for 23 years with
the greatest burden to see revival and renewal
and reality among God's people, and then you
live with them.
I live with my OMers.
And I know their problems and their mistakes.
And I yearn for greater revival and reality
in my own work.
That's always more depressing than seeing it down
the road.
And I tell you, if you were the
main OM leaders, and there's about 200 of
them now around the world, my message would
be stronger and it would bite harder than
what I'm giving you here this morning.
Because we know that we are in desperate
need.
And as a training movement that graduates a
lot of our strongest men, we have to
start over again, over again, and over again.
And it's not easy.
Third obstacle, I believe, is an over-emphasis
on the existential, on the subjective, on emotion.
I feel very strong about this.
I'm an emotional person.
But I feel that probably in my life
the greatest danger would be if I built
on emotion.
We go up, we go down.
One minute we're praising the Lord, next minute
the same tongue we're biting at some brother
or some sister, even after we've preached a
message on it.
And I feel there needs to be a
greater emphasis on dying to self, on discipline,
on plotting.
William Carey said, give me plotters.
Why can't we get more missionaries out of
the present-day evangelical scene?
Thousands have come and are coming to Christ
in Britain.
I know thousands who claim experiences with the
Holy Spirit.
Where are they when it comes to missionary
candidates for tough situations?
We're too soft.
We want the next blessing.
And many people have actually deserted their churches,
good evangelical churches, because they wanted more emotional
feeling.
We mainly are thinking about what I can
get.
I'm going to go to the church where
I can get blessed.
And of course the little churches, and some
of them are screwy and some of them
are good, of the new groups, I'm doing
a whole research.
If I ever wrote it, I don't know
what would happen.
All these people I've had on the end
of the phone.
And I know a lot of what's happening
around this country in many circles.
The splits that are taking place in churches
right now in Britain are phenomenal.
Phenomenal.
And of course, sometimes these little new groups
balance out and they become very good.
So don't despise a new group.
A.W. Tozer said, the greatest need in
the church today is discernment.
We need to try to discern, not make
blanket statements and get to know.
But the enemy so often gets in when
groups put the emphasis on feelings and on
the next blessing.
And we become too subjective.
And we think we can fellowship with everybody
as long as they've got the same feeling.
Not me.
I tell you, listen to what Tozer said
about that.
We've got a book, we know where we're
going and we know our faith is on
God's word.
Let me give you something from a man
named Hodges in a book called Unseen Warfare.
This fervor, speaking of the general fervor of
the early Christian life, not necessarily first love,
don't confuse that.
This fervor is especially characteristic of beginners and
it's drying up, should be welcomed as a
sign that we are getting beyond the first
stage.
I couldn't believe it when I read that.
To try to retain it or to long
for its return in the midst of dryness
is to refuse to grow up.
It is to refuse the cross.
By our steady adherence to God, when the
affections are dried up and nothing is left
but the naked will clinging blindly to him,
the soul is purged of self-regard and
trained in pure love.
I hope you're going in that direction.
So whatever may come upon your soul, depression
or elation, this or that, whatever may come,
you know what it is to set your
eyes on the Savior and to keep going.
Never get out of the train when you're
in a tunnel, someone once told me.
And if you're in a dark hour in
your Christian life, if you're confused, if you're
baffled by problems and temptations, that's not the
time to do something, you know, a bit
off and make some major decision or so
-called get off the train in the middle
of a dark tunnel.
Fourthly, I believe a great obstacle to world
evangelism is materialism, materialism.
Wow, it just swept us off our feet.
And it's interesting, when you talk to someone,
they'll always tell you about another brother who's
more materialistic.
They'll always point out somebody who's got a
newer car and a bigger car or a
bigger house and a bigger television or whatever.
Everybody feels one brother, you know, is more.
So therefore, I'm really not that bad.
Tozer said, we measure ourselves by ourselves for
so long that there are no longer higher
plateaus in the things of the Spirit.
Will you stop measuring yourself with some other
evangelist and put yourself next to Jesus?
And if you have to measure, well, Paul,
we got lots of him.
And I'll tell you, then you'll get on
your knees and search your heart about your
lifestyle and about the use of God's money
and about this subject that C.T. Studd
often talked about called sacrifice.
And he was really a crank.
And I've got a whole page of his
quotations that I've just printed, just happened to
print or get whacked to print a thousand
copies for me, just in case any of
you want any of these bullets from one
of God's guns.
Materialism.
Let's take a stand.
The World Congress on Evangelism.
I was there.
I don't know how that happened.
The World Congress on Evangelism put a statement
in the Lausanne Covenant.
We believe in a simple lifestyle.
I tell you, when I get over in
my home country, which is just a few
weeks a year, you better pray because I'm
in Dallas Seminary in February, Moody Bible Institute,
Asbury College and four other major institutions.
It's very interesting.
You know another thing that Tozer said?
He said if any secular company needed so
much raw material to get so little finished
product as the Church of Jesus Christ, it
would go bankrupt in six months.
I believe God wants men today, not who
will criticize the Church, individual churches or denominations,
but men who will see the need of
the Church.
They'll have the eyesight and the discernment to
see the mess we are in, yet realize
they are part of that mess.
And then through the cross and prayer and
commitment and New Testament living, we'll work from
within for revival and spiritual revolution, world evangelization
and all the rest.
I wish I could talk to you about
the state of the Church in some of
the countries we've been in.
You think it's got its problems here.
You can't believe India.
And I feel this is the fourth obstacle,
and I'm running out of time, the fourth
obstacle I believe is false ecumenicalism.
I don't want to trot on any toes,
I don't know who's all here today, but
I believe many people in this country are
naive, including some of your top leaders.
I really believe it.
They just haven't traveled.
I don't know what they read.
Maybe they read Little Orphan Annie.
I don't know.
Liberalism is a gangrene that has severed the
nerve of missions in a way that will
never be recuperated.
Just come to India and see Christian churches
that are more Hindu, more Hindu than Christian,
and to discover within the Church lying, cheating,
embezzlement, murder, arranged murder.
I will tell you, when the salt has
lost its savor, it is no good.
And when the so-called Church has lost
the Word and the Lord, it is no
good.
This is why in OM, though we've been
criticized, we cannot engage in working on a
cooperative basis with churches where there are men
denying the basics of our faith.
It's not all just, you know, we all
like to be so friendly.
I love these people.
My heart is broken for people.
And individual liberal ministers that I have friendship
with, I have dialogue with them and I
yearn to see them come back.
And I know many of them are there
because of cantankerous and bigoted so-called fundamentalists
on the other side.
And that extreme, the real extreme, is almost
worse than liberalism.
And that extreme has created perhaps more liberals
than will ever be able to count.
But somehow this idea that we're all going
to come together, all these different churches around
the world, whatever label you put on it,
we're all going to work together.
I believe it is a lie from the
pit.
And you've got your feedback paper.
It's a lie from the pit.
I'm not in any way speaking about any
particular group.
I'm not against true ecumenicalism.
All believers in Jesus Christ who have been
washed by the blood of the Lamb are
one body.
But I read in my Bible, if any
man preach another gospel, let him be accursed
When have you last heard a sermon on
that?
In these interesting days in which we live.
I don't find the Christian gospel easy.
I don't find believing in heaven and hell
easy.
I don't find believing that all men are
lost without Christ, including the Muslims and the
Hindus, easy.
It's an endless agony to my soul.
And I doubt how many of us really
believe that, that those men are lost.
But the little I believe is like a
burning fire in my soul that cannot be
put out.
Though I know for 23 years many have
been watching and waiting.
Our God is a consuming fire.
This is His truth.
And this church in Britain today is existing
because men burn on the stake.
And I will not forget them.
And you and I may not have the
privilege of burning on the stake, but we
can burn where we are and be filled
with God's love and stand for the truth
and lay down our lives for the sake
of the gospel.
May God grant it.
I speak as one far behind many of
you in these things.
Maybe just one with a bigger mouth.
What the Lord said, he who hath ears,
let him hear.