Introductory tape for all those coming to the
seminars and training sessions in Kathmandu.
Let's unite our hearts in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank and praise Thee because
You're alive this morning.
You're alive whenever and wherever this tape is
being played.
And we pray, Lord, that You'll help us
to be attentive, help us to listen.
We know, our God, it's harder to be
a good listener many times than a good
speaker.
And we pray, God, that You would just
work according to Your power and teach us,
prepare us for these days together here, that
we may benefit from our time here.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Now, this morning we, I think, finally have
everyone together, or most of you who are
coming to this next seminar.
And I want to speak this morning on
the purposes of the seminar and some of
the goals we have.
I think the word seminar originally came from
the word, it has to do with week.
I know in Spanish it's semana, week.
And in French I think there's a similar
word.
And so seminar refers to a week of
training.
Ours is a little longer than a week.
Between now and when we leave, it's about
ten days.
And some of you have already been going
a few days.
It usually takes us a few days to
get everybody together.
And I believe that God has brought this
training program and this fellowship center into being
in His purposes and His plan.
For many years I have sensed that one
of the greatest needs in the work was
indeed to have more intensive training, to be
able to teach young men not just the
basics, although we have to continually learn the
basics, but also to go on into other
truths of spiritual evolution and of the word
of God.
Of course, each time I go to a
month conference, I have to keep in mind
that there are new recruits.
Usually I'm speaking through interpretation, which literally cuts
the message in half, and many other problems.
And I've just yearned to be able to
take young men who have been with us
for some time and just pour out my
heart in English without any reserve concerning things
that the Lord has taught us.
And I say us because there are many
of us involved in this work over the
years.
Of course, this is one of the main
plans behind the ship.
One of the purposes, the main purposes of
the ship, is to be able to train,
teach, and move toward the target at the
same time.
How terrific it would be if this headquarters
now, in the next ten days, could float
toward Calcutta, or toward Jabalpur, or toward Ahmedabad,
or wherever it may be.
All during that time we're teaching, we're training,
there's no break.
And then, bang, we arrive at the target,
and we just move off within five minutes
out of the door, and there we have
the place we're going to evangelize.
And this is exactly what we're going to
have with the ship.
When that ship is at sea, there'll be
teaching, training, orientation, tapes, language study.
And yet, we'll be moving at the same
time.
The work will not be held back.
And we'll hit our target, come back, continue
our training, hit the next target.
And this will give me an opportunity to
be involved in evangelism, which is so much
on my own heart.
Because I know that God has called me
to evangelism.
And yet, at the same time, be engaged
in this training.
Of course, I've done this to some degree,
even with trucks.
I would take teams around India and all
over the world, wherever I've worked, and teach
and train as we'd move along.
But you can only take, what, ten men,
twelve men, twenty men.
How any leaders can stand to have only
six or seven men on their team, I
don't know.
But George Miley tells me that no leaders
are really happy with more than ten men
on their teams.
Well, I want to tell you, I'm one
that's not content with at least more than
twelve.
Because there's so much to be done, there's
so many men to be trained.
And if each one who's a leader can't
take on a responsibility of twelve, how are
we ever going to teach?
So many in India need training.
So many have made decisions for Christ.
Millions have made decisions for Christ in India.
You go down to Kerala, everybody's made a
decision for Jesus Christ.
And yet, no one has gone in there
and trained them and taught them and grounded
them.
So, really, you don't know whether they're saved
or not.
And there are so many to be taught
and trained.
And, of course, my burden is that what
you learn here, you may be able to
go and teach others also.
Well, on this ship, it won't be a
matter of having twelve people with me, nor
twenty, nor thirty, but a hundred.
If we include the crew, at least at
times.
And, of course, this is going to give
tremendous scope for teaching, for training, for sharing
things that I've never been able to share
for lack of time.
Even at our month conferences, we have guest
speakers, we have this speaker, that speaker.
And sometimes the time that I get is
limited.
So, in some ways, this is a little
seed stage of what's going to be eventually
transplanted to the ship.
And, of course, we know that it's only
going to be by a miracle of God.
And I believe we're only here by a
miracle of God.
Kathmandu is one of the very hardest places
to get visas for.
The Lord has opened the way to get
visas.
And to come here and find this house.
And people talk about it being expensive.
You can come here cheaper and visit me
than if I were in Bombay.
Much cheaper.
Those who are in the Northeast.
And Northeast India represents one-third of all
the evangelistic effort in the entire country of
India.
The Northeast.
And another large segment is the Northwest, which
coming here is about the same distance as
coming to Bombay.
And so, though there are some expenses involved,
they're negligible.
You must realize that when I live in
India and have to go around and visit
all the teams and travel by air, otherwise
I can't make the journey generally, although I've
done it a lot by train as well,
that costs more than running two seminars up
here.
Because, just to get me around the country.
And so the expenses is no more really
than my normal expenses.
And if you realize the fact that I
spend and live on about one-twentieth of
any man who's in my particular position, whatever
that is, I think that you can't think
that this is costing a lot of money.
I think of one particular group I know
of in India.
Sometimes their director will fly all the way
from the United States for a 15-day
visit.
He'll fly jet into India, have 15 days,
and fly back.
And OMers in India don't know anything of
wasting money.
If you think OM wastes money, then you
have not grown up yet.
You're still living in a house that has
no windows.
Because it's true we have some money wasted.
In any warfare there will be wastage of
money.
It's impossible to live without wastage.
The man who tries to live without wastage
generally ends up in a mental institution.
Because you can't live that way.
There has to be wastage.
Wastage oftentimes is a sign of blessing and
prosperity.
Though we don't want to waste unnecessarily.
But we need to realize just how tight
OM does live.
And beware of swinging the pendulum.
I have had some people...
Thomas Samuel takes one airplane flight.
Immediately their hands go up in the air.
They write me a letter.
What's going on?
OM wasting money.
Here's a man that's got a desk full
of letters.
He's got urgent priorities.
He has a family with four children.
For him to get all the way around
India and not use the airplane for even
one hop is wastage.
It's wastage.
If he has to spend two and a
half days traveling from Calcutta to Bangalore, when
he arrives there, one mistake that could be
made because he didn't answer this letter on
time can cost us immediately four times as
much money as an air flight.
Why, the money that we've made due to
mistakes in Bombay...
Well, I just wish we had spent a
few more thousand rupees to be a little
more efficient.
Although basically it was something out of our
hands in terms of deception.
So, it's true.
Kathmandu will cost a little money.
But actually very little.
And when we consider the need to reach
Nepal for Christ, is it not worth spending
a little money to shake this nation for
Jesus Christ?
Ten million people.
More unreached than almost any single part of
India.
Less than 150 Christians.
And as we have the opportunity to come
here and act as a catalyst toward the
work in general here, already God has opened
the door for me to be the main
speaker at the coming all Nepal pastors conference.
And as we go out in the afternoons,
at least once a week, during our seminars
in evangelism, and then also get our educational
book program and Christian book program launched, this
is going to lead to the conversion of
Nepalese.
And of course, this is going to cost
money, but in the long run it's going
to make money.
And Nepal has proven in the past to
be one of the ripest places for the
sale of books.
As you know, Vic and Peter, when they
were up here, channeled down to Bombay more
than 35,000 rupees in three weeks from
sales in Kathmandu and the surrounding areas.
And I hope that as you go back
to your teams, and some people will have
a few groans, you may be able to
communicate.
Unfortunately, some people groan about everything, no matter
what way you turn.
And I think most of us, and I
hope we'll learn a little bit about this
here, cannot realize how impossible it is to
be a leader.
Most people don't realize what a miracle it
is that God has held this movement together
over the years.
So many movements have begun, Christian movements, and
within one year, boom, split apart.
Much less have gone on for almost 10
years, as OM has, more than 10 years
now, from its early stages, without ever having
a major disunity between any of the responsible
people.
And I just think of the fact that
Dale Roton and I have now been working
side by side for almost 12 years.
And every one of those days in 12
years, just unity in the spirit.
And Jonathan and I, about 10 years, and
many others, I don't need to go and
mention names.
And this is one of the secrets.
But this would not happen, and would not
take place, if there wasn't this believing the
best, this brokenness, this trust in one another.
And this is what we need at times
when we don't understand something.
Just like you're asked to come to Kathmandu.
Well, why should I go to Kathmandu?
So many days travel.
What am I going to do there?
We need to evangelize.
We need to, during times like this, look
to the Lord and realize He has a
purpose in this.
And if there's any of you that are
here and you're listening to this tape, you're
not sure why you're here, you think maybe
it's been a long journey for just listening
to some tapes and all the rest, may
God speak to your heart.
I received a terrific tape from George Miley
yesterday.
And George Miley is probably one that esteems
this training program up here higher than anyone.
And it's because George Miley probably has the
greatest or near the greatest amount of insight
into spiritual revolution as anyone down there in
India.
And he knows how essential it is that
young men involved in this work really get
to know what the work is about and
really have these principles and this message in
their life.
And that brings us to perhaps what we
can list as the first purpose of our
time here, our Kathmandu retreat.
It's that we may really know these principles.
That we may really know these principles.
Now, it's easy to presume that we know
what OM teaches.
What George Verwer teaches is what OM teaches.
Not because it's all my teaching.
It isn't.
I learned it from many other people.
But because I act as the voice, the
burden that God put on Dale Roton's heart,
the burden of man-to-man strategy put
out in his little booklet, Christian Strategy, I
set this forth.
Not because that was my original idea.
Nor was it Dale's original idea.
But because this is part of the OM
message and many other phases of what OM
teaches and what OM believes.
And the average young man on OM does
not really know what we teach and what
we believe.
Now, wherever you go, you're expected, especially if
you're in any position of authority or leadership,
you're expected to know that which OM teaches,
that which George Verwer preaches.
My name is now, unfortunately, known all over
the world.
I spoke at the biggest conventions in the
world.
My name's been pulverized and pilferized and picture
flashed on magazines and all kinds of rubbish.
And people are curious.
They're curious.
They want to know, what is this group?
What's their new angle?
What is their heretical teaching?
Do they teach we must forsake our shoes?
What is their little teaching?
When they meet you, they'll probably never meet
me.
Most of these people will never meet me.
When they meet you, they hear that, oh,
you've been with George Verwer.
You're in OM.
Yes, tell us all about it.
Yeah, tell you all about it.
Well, we give out tracts.
We have nights of prayer.
And we believe that we must reach the
whole world with the gospel as quick as
possible.
And we believe that we should live on
the barest essentials.
And they look at you.
By your dress, of course, they see that
you have that doctrine well down.
And in five minutes, you've turned them off.
They don't need to hear George Verwer anymore.
They don't need to read anything about OM.
They've seen you.
They've heard.
After all, you're a leader.
And they're absolutely assured it's a lot of
rubbish.
And you don't think that hasn't happened.
You don't think people have been turned off
because they met some OM leader who didn't
know what it was all about.
And yet he was maybe even leading a
team or something.
And they've heard about this powerful movement.
They've heard about these messages.
Maybe they even heard...
And then their first close contact with it,
they're turned off.
How many people across India have been turned
off?
Many times even people that have been turned
on through a message.
Maybe they did hear me speak.
Have been turned off through a team member.
Someone who was just living it halfway.
Brethren, we need to know these principles.
We need to know what the Holy Spirit
of God has been saying and doing through
this movement for 10 years.
Because all of you are a vital part
of it.
In fact, the amazing thing is that even
the newest person on the team is expected
to have all the answers.
We have Brother Mark here.
He's just been converted and been out on
a team.
You can be sure if someone sees you,
they'll expect you to be a complete authority
on what the work stands for.
And this, of course, is rather difficult.
And so one of the purposes here is
that we may really be sure and also
linked to this that we may test these
things.
The second point, reason why we're here that
we may test these principles.
I don't want you just accepting these things
because you've heard.
You've read it in a manual.
You've read it in a book.
You've heard it on a tape.
At meal times and other times, you will
have the opportunity to ask anything you want.
And when you have your personal interview with
me, you will be able to ask anything
you want.
This is vital.
We don't want people just to take it
all in.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, Saab.
Yes, yes, yes.
No, we want you to ask.
You have a mind.
And we want you to search these things
to see if they're in the scriptures.
If the OM principles are not in the
scriptures, then we cannot follow them.
This has been our manual from the beginning.
We had no other manual.
And we only developed the manual just to
consolidate our thinking.
And I mentioned, I believe, in one of
the other tapes how every spiritual movement has
had its literature.
Don't listen to these people say, now we
don't need any other book but the Bible.
That is the biggest pack of rubbish that
can ever come out of the end of
a man's nose or mouth.
Because every movement has had its literature.
Every movement has had its literature.
And I mentioned something about that on another
tape.
And so God has given us manuals.
He's given us guidelines.
But of course, it's the Word of God
that tests everything.
And as you go through the main orientation
sessions, some Indian brothers have never been through
the main orientation sessions that all the foreigners
go through.
Most of them, two, three, four times before
they ever come out on a year program.
Because every Christmas crusade, every summer crusade, they
have to go through it again.
And you will notice on those main sessions
that we go through the Bible.
Verse after verse.
Never so many verses covered so quickly.
And so you can search the Scriptures to
see if these things are so.
So we want to come here to test
these principles.
So that we can be personally convinced.
And that's very, very, very important.
Because we don't want these things to be
thrown away five days after you leave O
.M. Or even after a few years being
on O.M. It must become a part
of our life.
The third reason we've come here is to
get away and to get alone with the
Lord.
This is so important.
You men are grinding it out week in
and week out.
Evangelism, door, shop to shop, corner to corner.
And you need, at times, to get away.
Get into a different environment and seek the
Lord.
And firstly, above all else, we're here to
seek the Lord.
I'm not listing these things according to importance.
Because if I did, this would be the
first.
To seek the Lord.
And this is not a normal conference in
which you're just going to have messages all
day long.
You will have free periods.
And during those free periods, it's up to
you.
Now, I already noticed this morning.
We had 15 or 20 minutes after breakfast.
But how many of you were really redeeming
that time?
I didn't see many redeeming it.
I saw people wandering around, this and that.
And I don't believe you had that long
of a quiet time before breakfast.
Because some of you were extremely slow.
I can't believe how slow some people are
to wash.
I never spend more than 10 minutes in
any morning with all that I have to
do before I get into God's Word.
Now, you may not be able to cut
it down to 10 minutes.
But there's no reason to take a half
an hour or three quarters an hour between
the time you get out of bed and
the time you get moving for Jesus and
the Word of God.
Because if you're so slow, soon you're just
about getting into the second verse of your
quiet time, somebody calls for breakfast.
And then you go down for breakfast and
you tarry a long time over the breakfast
table.
And then you come out and you have
10 or 15 minutes.
You figure, well, there's nothing I can do
in that.
Pretty soon the first meeting of the day
has started.
You've not been with God.
And then you wonder why you're not fruitful.
You wonder why you don't see all that
God wants you to see in your own
life.
But, you know, I'm not going to run
around this house with a stick.
I'm going to presume that by God's grace
those who come here are mature or want
to be mature.
And you're going to redeem that time.
And you're not going to infringe on another
brother.
If a brother is in that corner and
he's reading the Word of God, you don't
go over and tap him and ask him
some ridiculous question or whether he's got your
mail or some other thing.
Always respect a man when he's with God.
If a man is praying, you bump in,
it's just like going, excuse me, Jesus, I've
got really something more important.
Do you mind going down the road a
bit and you have your talk.
And I have had people extremely impolite interrupting
prayer.
This is a part of our ego drive
that we feel if we have something in
our mind, doesn't matter what the Holy Spirit
wants to communicate, bang, in we go.
And, of course, we're living in a tight
condition.
This means that we're going to have to
respect one another.
If a brother is in this room studying
the Word of God, and this is the
quiet room, you don't barge in the door
and disturb him.
If you have something you must communicate, you
go over to him quietly and speak with
him or you give him a note or
you nod to him to come.
Because this is so important that God be
given priority.
And this is very revolutionary.
Because most of us, we enjoy fellowship far
more with one another.
Well, we call it fellowship.
Many times it's just gab.
I'm guilty.
Don't think that I have arrived in these
points.
It's a continual battle for me.
But we so enjoy being with one another
and fellowshipping and talking and we can spend
hours together.
But do we really enjoy that communion with
God?
And I pray that in the mornings we
might, some of us, get out of here.
I leave here most mornings and walk, speak
to God as I walk.
There's a hill up there.
Down this road on the left there's a
hill.
You can look over the whole city.
There are places you can go.
One of the first things I do is
find a place where I can be alone
with God.
I already have five places in Kathmandu where
I can be alone with God.
And to me, this must be the priority
here in Kathmandu.
Seeking the Lord.
Getting to know Him.
And I want to tell you, if you
experience God up here, it's worth ten times
of all we can ever spend to get
you.
This is the greatest need at OM in
India.
Unless this work goes deep into the heart
and mind of God, it will blow away.
It will blow away.
Unless we have this deep, intimate communion with
God, this fellowship with God, the work will
not last.
And I believe that this is the only
real sign of revival in our day.
There's so many different tangents.
And as you go along, different ones will
come to you.
You've had them already come to you in
India and they say, now look, this is
the answer.
Our particular truth or our particular way of
doing it.
Or this.
You'll get those who come to you.
They've got the church planting vision.
Now this OM is superficial.
You've got to plant churches.
And then you've got those that come over
now.
You need the power vision.
You need a special power.
Just running around OM, you're not operating in
the power.
You've got to get the special power vision.
All kinds of tangents.
Now if you study all this, and I've
studied it for 10 years, you'll find that
all of these things, basically, unless they're really
of God, end in dead ends.
If the Lord is calling a man into
a church planting ministry, then of course, that's
wonderful.
But if he's just moving because somebody's pushing
him, you know what I mean?
They're pushing their little particular truth so he
feels guilty about what he's doing, feel he
must get into a better ministry.
And all over the north of India, we
have guys pretending to plant churches.
Have you seen the churches that are planted?
Some of them you can hardly call churches.
God has to put his hand on a
man for that ministry.
That's an apostolic ministry.
Speaking in one sense.
And the Lord has to put his hand
on him.
How many years did Bakht Singh just sow
the seed and just preach before God finally
put his hand on him and said, now
I'm going to use you to start New
Testament assemblies.
And of course, we want to see God's
power come upon us in any way that
he pleases.
But if I just start seeking that because
of some egocentric drive or because somebody's pushed
some set of doctrines on me, then generally
it'll just end in a foolishness and in
a tangent.
Whereas in God's sovereign power, I wait upon
him.
My heart is open forever he wants.
And he gives me a special anointing for
whatever it may be.
Then it's something that's wonderful.
And from him.
And you'll have different movements and they'll say,
we are the way.
We are the way.
Join us.
We are the way.
Well, I say with all my heart, there
is no such movement.
And I don't believe OM is such a
movement.
I don't say, and I'm never taught, OM
is the way.
Sure, I could do this.
It's a subtle way of gathering people around
you and getting them to be loyal and
getting them to think in one narrow way.
We have some of this in India today.
People get into one little particular set of
doctrines or in their denomination.
Some that don't call it a denomination are
worse than those who admit their denominations.
Their thinking is so narrow that everyone is
not crossing the T on the same space
doesn't know Christ and all kinds of ridiculosities.
But I believe, basically, the same as Tozer
stated when he said this, in this hour
of all but universal darkness, one cheering gleam
appears within the fold of conservative Christianity.
Within this fold, there are to be found
increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are
marked by a growing hunger after God Himself.
They are eager for spiritual realities.
They will not be put off with words,
nor will they be content with correct interpretations
of truth.
They are a thirst for God and they
will not be satisfied till they have drunk
deep at the fountain of living water.
This is the only real harbinger, remnant, remaining
part.
This is the only remaining part of revival
which I have been able to detect anywhere
on the religious horizon.
And the secret in O.M. is not
that we are the movement.
The secret in O.M. is that by
God's mercy and grace there are many in
this movement who as individuals are a thirst
for God.
And you will find even within O.M.,
even within full-time people in O.M.,
people that are so different one from another
that you hardly believe how they got in
the same movement.
You must realize that when someone is slipping
along in O.M., he may even be
a leader.
We don't suddenly turn around and bounce him
out the door.
Some people have said to me, well, how
is he a leader in O.M.? Because
we believe in patience.
Because we believe it takes time to make
a leader.
Because we believe in love.
And love doesn't bounce a leader out the
door because he's made a few mistakes or
his own spiritual life isn't up to par.
We must wait.
We must pray.
We must battle through.
And so we realize that even within O
.M. there's a great variation of spiritual life.
I'm sure there are some people within O
.M. whose spiritual lives score plus ten.
And there are others who are plus ninety.
But you know, we're all flattened before the
cross as sinners, aren't we?
And we can't go around judging one another's
spiritual life.
And the thing that I believe marks the
movement is the fact that there are an
increasing number who are hungry for God.
It's not that we have arrived.
You must not communicate that we are the
group that has arrived.
We are the ones in India with the
truth.
We are the ones with the evangelistic zeal.
We are going to reach the nations for
Jesus Christ.
We have forsaken all.
All this is rubbish.
Anyone who thinks this way has not even
got down yet to A.B.C. of
what O.M. is teaching.
They couldn't have.
We're sinners.
We're a thirst for God.
We're only learning what it is to forsake
all.
And there's a tremendous definition of commitment.
I think you'll come across it on one
of the other tapes.
But it's been a tremendous help to me.
In Miller's book Taste of New Wine he
says this, So the totally committed life or
Christian life is a life of continually committing
oneself and one's problems day by day as
they are slowly revealed to his own consciousness.
Did you get that?
A life of continually committing oneself and one's
problems day by day as they are revealed
from our own consciousness or to our own
consciousness.
In other words, there are many things we
don't even know about.
Things in our life that will only come
to surface through some pressure, through some difficulty,
maybe through some criticism.
And when it comes to the surface, only
then can we commit it to the Lord
and bring it under the blood.
And so we are those who are growing.
We are those who are hungry and thirsty
for God.
And this is what must mark our lives.
And I admit that many times this doesn't
mark my life.
I have to admit many times I'm not
a thirst for God.
I'm not hungry for God.
And at that point, I just repent.
I just come to God.
He knows me.
He loves me.
And I say, Look, I'm not hungry for
you today.
I'm not thirsty for you today.
I don't have any great hunger for the
Word of God today.
Just forgive me, Lord.
You know the wretchedness of my heart.
And you know, I usually discover at that
time it begins to give my hunger because
the hunger for God often comes most at
the foot of the cross as we take
the sinner's place.
And so this is our main purpose in
being here.
To seek God.
It's so easy to get down on our
teams in what I call activism.
We're so busy going from village to village,
from place to place, fixing the truck, moving
the literature, preaching, and somehow, sometimes we get
moving so fast that the Lord Himself is
way behind.
And He's calling out to our teams, Please,
please wait for me.
I want to go with you.
Wait with me for a while.
Terry here.
God says in the Psalms, Be still and
know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
It doesn't say, Be active and know that
I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Spirituality is not measured by how much we
do, how many books we sell, nor how
many souls we win.
Beloved, I know men who are complete reprobate,
living in sin and are winning souls to
Jesus Christ.
Soul winning is no proof of spiritual life.
You'll probably hear me say on one of
the tapes, a man I know in Europe
who after his evangelistic meeting sleeps with a
different prostitute each night.
And he sees many souls come to Christ.
You say, How is that possible?
It's possible because God honors His Word.
And even if a donkey go down the
street and shout out John 3.16 and
a passerby may hear it and be saved.
But I wouldn't want to call that donkey
spiritual.
And there are many ungodly men preaching and
even seeing some souls saved.
Certainly not what God would want to do
through a clean vessel.
Certainly most of them and many of them
will not go on.
But you know, God is so sovereign.
And so, you know, never make as a
basis of spirituality apparent fruit.
Your team could be selling piles of books
and could be as carnal as Joe Blow's
team all sleeping in the chai shop all
day.
And all these outward things are not necessarily
evidences of spiritual life.
The first and primary evidence of spiritual life
is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness,
meekness, temperance.
Against such there is no law.
That man who's going out and committing adultery,
you could hardly say he knew much about
faithfulness, could you?
He's a married man.
You could hardly say he knew much about
gentleness.
You could hardly say he knew much about
purity.
And these will be the marks of the
real Christian.
So it's not the number of souls we
win.
It's not the amount of literature we distribute.
It's not the number of villages we cover.
But it's God.
It's God.
It's God's life flowing through us.
And this takes time.
There's no shortcut to holiness.
God may give you a crisis in your
spiritual life.
We'll be talking about that.
But any crisis that's not followed by a
process will soon become an abscess.
An abscess means a poison.
I want to try to define some terms.
I know some of you don't know all
of these terms.
But an abscess tooth is when you get
a tooth and it aches and a poison
is coming out of it.
That's called an abscess.
And so a crisis not followed by a
process.
What is the process?
Continual brokenness.
Spiritual growth.
Love for God.
Repentance.
God working through us in our daily life.
If we don't have that process it soon
will become an abscess.
I've met many people all over the world
who've never had any great crisis experience in
their life but who have a life filled
with the Holy Spirit and power.
But I've never met anyone who didn't have
the process and had that.
So one comes to some people and doesn't
come to others.
It comes in different ways.
But the process of brokenness, daily revival, repentance,
digging into the Word, meditation, prayer, worship is
absolutely essential for all those who are going
to grow and become spiritual revolutionists.
Next point, why we're here is that you
may have time alone with God.
This is linked in with what I've just
said.
That time from 6.30 in the morning
when you rise up to 9 o'clock
when you're in this room gives you ample
time to seek the Lord.
Every morning minus very few mornings here and
wherever I am I get that time with
God.
And it's one of the most important phases
of my life.
If I have to run off and hide,
if I have to miss the breakfast, I
get that time with God.
It's so absolutely essential.
Billy Graham said if I miss my morning
quiet time I discover my whole day can
go wrong.
If Billy Graham has to say that, what
do some of us need to say?
Maybe it means getting up earlier.
It seems to me those of you who
go to bed so early at 10 o
'clock, it's about the time my children go
to bed.
They shouldn't actually, they're supposed to go to
bed earlier.
It seems to me you could be getting
up at 5.30. Young men between the
age of 20 and 30, unless you have
a particular problem, that's fine if you do,
then get the necessary sleep.
No one can judge anyone about sleep.
Everybody's different.
But most of you should be able to
easily live on 7 hours sleep.
But you know, sometimes it will mean breaking
through the sleep barrier.
Do you think it's easy for me to
stay up late at night?
I tell you about 9 or 10 o
'clock sleep comes on me, just like somebody
pulling a big curtain down over me.
And I just start to wooze.
And sometimes I go to sleep for an
hour and get up and go back to
work.
That's 10 times hard because there's a law
of gravity.
It runs right toward the bed.
But sometimes you have to break through the
sleep barrier to get through to God, that
you may get through the God barrier and
experience fellowship with God.
And so some of you may want to
get up earlier and go out on early
morning prayer.
We won't care if you miss your exercises,
if you're out praying for a few hours
off in the hills.
But oh, may we make this quiet time
absolute priority.
We won't be having as much group prayer
as many OM conferences.
Instead of having, we usually have two or
so hours each day, we'll probably be having
one hour plus our night of prayer.
But we want to make that priority, that
private prayer.
Another reason for coming here is that I
want the privilege, and I hope you counted
a privilege as well, of being able to
live together with you.
I want my life to be an open
book to every OMer.
You'll see me with my family.
You'll see me when I have to bawl
my children out.
You may see me at a time when
I'm irritated.
I hope you would come to me and
say, Brother George, are you in the spirit
at this moment?
That'd be the best thing you could do
to me.
Usually I'll beat you and I'll have repented
already.
But I want my life to be an
open book.
I have nothing to hide.
So many Christian leaders today, they live in
their own little private home and they have
a sign on the door, no admittance, beware
of preacher.
I mean, beware of dog.
But I have nothing to hide.
I'm not perfect.
God knows my hunger for perfection.
God knows my desire to see every area
of my life met by the power of
God and broken.
And you can help me as you exhort
me.
And I want this.
I want you to see that this life
can be lived out when you're married.
It's not a matter of something just for
single young men.
I want you to see some of the
things that are important in the Christian home.
The rearing of the children and all the
rest.
And I hope that this will help you.
And I want to observe you.
And I'm a very honest person.
If I see you doing something, I'll come
to you.
Maybe I'll lose my reputation for kindness, but
I'd rather be honest.
I refuse to engage in what so many
people engage in.
They see something wrong with a brother, they
never speak to him straight, instead eventually they
speak to someone else.
You will not find this true of me.
If I have something against you, if I
see you're doing something, I will come to
you.
And I will speak to you.
And I just hope that we'll realize that
this is a blessing.
One of the reasons that I've grown in
my Christian life is that I've had people
speak to me down through the years.
I've had people come to me, especially in
the early stages of my Christian life, and
bend me and drop me into the ground.
I'll never forget one fellow who came to
me when I was a student at Moody
Bible Institute.
And he took me aside in a room,
he said, you know, he said, I believe
basically you're a phony.
He said, you know, you're unfriendly.
I see you in the corridor and you
don't even say hello to me.
And he criticized me, and I realized that
he was right.
Oh, it's true, he may have exaggerated some
things.
It's a little hard to say hello to
1,000 students in a school, and I
wasn't as conscious of him as he was
of me for some reason.
But I had to repent.
I didn't defend myself.
And some of you have heard Peter Conlon's
testimony.
First time he was in a meeting like
this, he heard me speak.
After the meeting, I said, does anyone disagree
with anything?
Peter Conlon raised his hand.
I said, what do you disagree with?
I disagree with everything, he said.
I looked at him, and he was very
conscious of me after that for some time,
but I wasn't conscious of him that much.
So many people I have around me.
One day he came to me at another
conference, and he just about called me a
phony and said that he didn't believe I
was really living this life, and I was
preaching it.
I didn't have all this love.
I don't remember all he said, but it
was pretty rough.
This was just a few years ago.
I said, you know, you're right.
He couldn't believe it.
And it's from that moment on that Peter
Conlon and I began to knit together.
I said, you know, you're right.
I just asked you to pray for me.
I know I'm not living this life fully
when I'm preaching.
And I've got this problem, and I'm battling
through, and you unite and pray for me.
Of course, he just left there completely undone.
And from that moment on, God has been
knitting our hearts together in a tremendous way.
You don't have to be some kind of
spiritual superman to have your heart knit with
me.
I'm not interested in your spirituality.
My union with people is on the basis
of the fact that we're both sinners, saved
by grace, and we unite together at the
cross.
It's easy to unite with a clever, sharp
fellow, or with this boy who's got a
similar temperament, or this one who's worshipping at
the shrine of your ego.
It's easy to like the fellow who's patting
you on the back and thinks you're a
great leader.
It's another thing to get a union with
someone who disagrees with you.
It's another thing to get a union with
someone who's of a different temperament or a
different background.
And oh, how easy it is on our
team.
All the little Malayalis all get together.
The unsaved, unregenerate people in Kerala can do
that.
And we Gujaratis, we must stick together now.
This is not God's way.
And I know, I weep for some of
the foreign brethren who have still found it
easier to fellowship with other foreigners than with
Indian brothers.
But you must be patient.
As you judge them, how are you doing?
Because it could be that you're enjoying fellowship
just as much or more with people of
your own particular kind, etc.
And this takes a real revolution.
This is one of the purposes for coming
here to Kathmandu that we may see how
ridiculous some of these things are.
And some of the rumors among unsaved people
around India that are believed even by Christians,
like all this kind of people, they're all
that way.
So even if we meet a Christian of
that kind, we're very careful.
And we don't believe that the Holy Spirit
can really work just like so many in
India don't really believe a Muslim is going
to come through for Christ.
And just like some of the Christians when
they meet some of you converted Hindus, they
sort of, their eye twitches just a bit.
And they wonder, you know, who's paying you
or what are you after?
And there's a general distrust, distrust everywhere that
is chilling.
I would rather be deceived and go on
with the ability to be able to trust
and love a man than never be deceived
and be frostbitten by an untrustworthy spirit in
the sense that I can't trust anyone.
And this is deadly.
And may we be able to be open
with one another.
I hope that when we speak together privately,
that you will not hide yourself behind a
little cloak.
I know that some people are afraid of
me, the big bad wolf.
And they come to me and they say,
all is well, all is well, yes, yes.
I say, do you have any problems, any
burdens?
They tell me about some little ridiculous thing
and never get down to the real issue.
And then the same person goes off and
after some months I hear the rumor back,
well, I was up with George Burr, but
I never had any time.
I never had any time with him.
You realize that I'm not able to give
everybody hours and hours.
Most people who come in this house, quite
a few of them end up getting more
time of personal conversation than sometimes I get
with my wife in five days.
Time is valuable, unbelievably valuable.
And I'm pushing now for 18 hours out
of every day to 19 and sometimes 20
and I wish I could squeeze 24 hours
of every day and take a pill instead
of going to bed.
But you can't do it.
We've got a body and it needs sleep,
it needs food.
And so it really does hit me hard
when I give an hour to someone and
I get a rumor back I didn't have
any time.
Because I realize an hour to them may
seem like nothing.
They spent hours just twitching away.
And so we've had an hour together, but
they haven't opened their heart, they haven't shared,
so they've gone away and they missed that
chance because the Lord might have given me
wisdom.
You know, considering being a Christian for 14
years, coordinating this work with 500 people around
the world and all the unbelievable problems we've
gone through for 14 years, the Lord may
have given me a speck of wisdom.
Not mine self, but from himself.
And it could be that that wisdom given
to you could have been a tremendous help,
but you didn't open your heart.
You didn't walk in the light, you were
free.
And you know, this hurts, this hurts.
And recently I had a brother who I
had asked to leave the work and I
told him, I said, you know, one of
the biggest problems is that you never shared
your heart with me.
I said, you deceived me.
And he didn't like that.
And he said, well, you know, I didn't
deceive you.
And he couldn't see how he had deceived
me.
But he had, even though maybe he didn't
know it.
Because he had met with me again and
again and again and he had given me
one impression of himself, which was not a
true impression.
When you give a false impression of yourself,
for instance, you might give an impression that
you're 100% in agreement with all O
.M.'s doctrines, teachings.
Don't think that O.M. doesn't teach doctrine.
I hear this get around, O.M. doesn't
teach doctrine.
It's ridiculous.
What do you think all this is?
Doctrine.
Doctrine means teaching.
We just try to avoid some of the,
we try to avoid making a decision on
some of the extremely hot, controversial doctrines.
None of the major doctrines.
All the major doctrines are taught on O
.M. And you hear some, O.M. doesn't
teach any, doesn't teach the Holy Spirit.
We teach the Holy Spirit.
I preached all messages on the Holy Spirit.
Some of you have heard me preach in
Cary Baptist.
Be filled with the Spirit.
But what we try to avoid is particular
aspects about the teaching of the Spirit that
the Church has never been able to agree
on for hundreds of years.
And if the Church has been blowing apart,
dividing and arguing for a hundred years, does
O.M. think it's going to solve this
particular problem in a one-hour Verwer lecture?
Ridiculous.
But we teach doctrine.
And yet we have some that they read
extremism, they know where we stand, and yet
they're afraid that their reputation may go down.
I have some that they sort of hide
from me the fact that they're Pentecostal backgrounds.
I don't care if you're Pentecostal background.
I don't care what costal background you may
be from.
And some of my best friends are Pentecostal
people.
I'm no respecter of persons.
If you're an extremist who has all kinds
of bazooka ideas, on the basis of those
ideas I might have a word.
But if you're just a normal brother in
Christ who loves Jesus, I don't care whether
you're Methodist, Pescatarian, Episcopalian, whatever else you may
be.
This running around and finding out what a
brother is.
I know some in India.
They find out this brother is a Methodist.
Well, we know the Methodist church.
He might be another Wesley for all you
know.
And you judge him as being dry because
he's a Methodist.
And this is deadly.
This is deadly.
But I have some people that are afraid
to open their heart.
They think I may judge them.
They think I may think less of them.
And this is deadly.
There needs to be an opening of our
hearts.
Especially as we have these times together.
There needs to be a fearlessness in regard
to asking questions.
Some of us are afraid to ask questions
in group because what will so-and-so
think of me?
There's that Danny Smith over there.
He's graduating from Bible school number one in
his class.
If I ask a question, surely he'll think
I'm a dutz.
Why, even the Bible says a fool is
esteemed wise if he keep his mouth shut.
So if I sit here and don't ask
any questions, everyone will think that I'm clever.
Not so.
Because there's other ways to distinguish a fool.
But believe me, we're going to learn by
questions.
This was one of the things that's marked
my life.
I'm so inquisitive.
I spent hours, hours, sitting watching the ants.
Watching the ants.
You say, what kind of activity is that?
There's a verse in the Bible that says,
Go to the ant, thou sluggard.
Consider her ways and be wise.
And if the O.M. teams were working
more like the ants, we wouldn't have any
more literature left.
They wouldn't have any more literature left.
But oh, what I've learned from the ants.
I used to sit in the woods for
hours and watch birds.
What I've learned from the birds.
When a teacher came to my school and
lectured, if he opened up for questions, every
third question came from me.
Sometimes I was told that I was dominating
the scene.
But if anybody's going to open up, I
love to, what you call, pick a man's
brains.
Do you know what it is to pick
a man's brains?
What if we could get Billy Graham in
here for an hour and just ask him
some of his spiritual secrets.
Ask him how he's got through certain situations.
Ask him what he believes on this point.
What if we could get Watchmen here?
What if we could get anybody here who
has proven by their life that they've got
something besides sawdust?
Wouldn't we want to ask them questions?
And when you meet various people, wherever you
go, you need to learn to pick their
brains to ask them and to find out
things.
And as we gather here and listen to
these tapes, we need to jot down things
we don't understand.
We had a good question the other day
at the table.
Someone asked me what I meant by the
relativity of time.
That's a good question.
Half the people would hear me say that
on a tape and never ask a question.
Not that they know anything about the relativity
of time, but they just wouldn't feel that
they'd be able to ask a question.
You know, I'm one of the first ones
to say to people, when I meet people
who are more intelligent than myself, and I
meet them everywhere, I say, look, I don't
understand that.
I don't know.
And I think this is something we need
to face in the streets as well.
If a Hindu comes up and asks us
a difficult question, the simplest thing is to
say, look, I don't know.
I'm just a student.
You think I have all the answers?
And not get ourselves into a verbal trap
and we shout out some verse or we
say something, well, Jesus Christ is the only
way.
And many OMers have their little pat answer
for everything that's asked them because they don't
have the answer.
I would prefer to say, look, I haven't
come across that yet.
And my witnessing, and my witnessing is completely
distinct from 80% of the people I've
ever met on OM.
I just don't go about it the way
they do.
Maybe that's the reason I don't know that
I've seen so much fruit.
But many times when I'm witnessing to a
man, for the first 10, 20 minutes, I
don't hardly mention anything about Jesus.
I don't get in any arguments.
I try to get to know that man.
I try to show him that I'm interested
in him as a person.
And when I meet a Hindu and he's
arguing about something, I try to get him
away from that and say, look, why don't
we just get to know each other as
two people?
We're both created in the image of God.
We can agree on that, can't we?
We're both created in the image of God.
Why don't we just get to know each
other?
Because really, it's not my burden to argue.
And I would avoid all these arguments like
the plague, especially in the street.
You win an argument, you lose your friend.
But you win a man and then there's
a possibility you're going to win him to
Jesus Christ.
I believe there needs to be a total
revolution in our methodology down in India.
This brings to the next point for this
conference is, I believe many things are going
on in the name of OM that are
completely contrary to what we teach and believe.
Completely contrary.
Some of our methodology in evangelism, some of
the ways we approach street preaching, and we're
not seeing the fruit the way we should.
And I believe it's time to examine some
of these things and to see how we
can improve through discussion, through prayer, through interchange
of ideas.
Some of us have been satisfied preaching the
same street message for the last four years.
We really think we're pretty good.
We don't see anybody converted, but at least
we're loud and a lot of people hear
us.
And I believe that if we're not seeing
men come through in our preaching, we need
to rethink.
I believe very much like Dr. Schaeffer.
I have many similarities in belief, although on
two different roads.
He believes in pre-evangelization.
And this means that before you can many
times give a man the gospel, you must
prepare him.
You must prepare him.
You must define your terms.
You must try to understand his situation and
then be able to communicate to his needs.
And he shows how because in the West
now there is so much relativistic thinking, this
is absolutely essential.
When you say Jesus Christ, the average man
listening to you gets a completely different communication
than what you get.
The name Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is
the way, the truth, and the life to
many Hindus is nothing but a nonsense sentence.
It means nothing.
And the same is true now in the
West.
You say Jesus Christ died on the cross
for you and to many intellectuals in the
Western world you have pronounced an edict of
nonsense because they don't know what you mean
by that.
Everything now is becoming symbolic.
We are entering into the age in which
teenagers go into a coffee bar and they
turn on the music.
They're not interested at all in what the
words are.
They're not interested in meaning.
It's what Schaeffer calls the age of communication
above communication.
And now you realize they're making phonograph records
with electronic devices to give off-beat music
that completely confuses the mind, that communicates no
real meaning in relation to Aristotelian logic.
What is Aristotelian logic?
Basically, it's that you have black and white.
You have a situation where this is true
or not true.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for our
sin or he didn't die on the cross
for his sin.
Now many of you who are westernized in
your thinking in India have Aristotelian logic.
This is basically the same logic that's used
in Christianity.
But a majority of Hindus do not have
Aristotelian logic.
They do not have this kind of logic.
It's not a matter with a Hindu of
this or this.
It's not a matter of one or the
other, black or white, no or non-no.
But it's a great flow of completely relativistic
logic in which everything can all be one
and one can all be everything.
And so we come in with our little
parroted phrases, with our little western logic system,
trying to talk to Hindus, all we get
is a great mass of confusion.
And now we in the West are faced
with the same problem because Eastern thinking has
gone West.
A high number of intellectuals are talking the
same way.
It's no longer black or white.
Philosophers in the West no longer believe that
there's an answer.
This is why Jean-Paul Sartre, who some
of you have perhaps heard the name of,
wrote his book No Exit because this is
where philosophy has arrived.
But you know where the West is arriving
now, India was 2,000 years ago to
this point of completely relativistic philosophy.
No answer.
In other words, for many years, philosophers were
trying to find the answer.
You understand me?
They were trying to find a total answer
to the world.
Why are we here?
What are we doing?
Where are we going?
Now philosophy has given up.
They don't believe there is any answer anymore.
And so they say no exit.
The world is like being in a dark
room and you're grappling around looking for the
exit like philosophers have been doing for years
but now we've come to the place we
know there's no exit.
And so this is bringing on a new
era of darkness.
This is bringing on a new era of
lostness.
A new era of total despair.
And some call this now the age of
despair.
Despair means total depression, total discouragement, total uselessness.
And I believe one of the purposes of
this training base up here is to try
to teach something of modern trend.
Something of what we're facing when we talk
to a Hindu in the streets.
Something of what's happening around the world so
that we can learn to communicate.
We do not want to just speak forth
the Gospel.
We want to communicate.
We don't want to just go into a
restaurant, stand on the door and say accept
Jesus Christ and go to heaven, reject Jesus
Christ and go to hell and then go
happily out of the coffee bar feeling we've
declared the Gospel.
There is no basis of Scripture for this.
If we go into that coffee bar as
we go in we want to be sensitive
to the need.
We want to realize these are human beings
created in the image of God, whatever they
may look like.
And we want to have the desire to
communicate.
To get through to them so they understand
what we're saying.
So that for example when we're in the
streets they know that we're not linked with
the politicians in a psalm who are turned
communists or have opened the door for communists.
We're not linked with the Roman Catholic Church
that's run by a money loving Pope.
We're not linked with this particular Protestant church
down the corner whose pastor is a homosexual
or some other crazy thing.
Because in every town they have their image
of Christianity.
Christianity is not new news in India.
Maybe in villages.
Most towns people have some image even if
it's the smallest thing that they've picked up
out of one little line in the newspaper.
Sammy Samayee from Goa beat his wife on
the head with a beer bottle and ran
off and married the daughter of the local
priest.
Maybe that's all they read.
That's the only gospel they've ever had.
And you come into the town we are
followers of Jesus Christ.
And right away what's going to happen?
They're going to wonder when you're going to
take the beer out.
They're going to wonder they're going to wonder
what you're going to do with their daughters.
And you realize this tremendous riot that we
had in Mysore State due to the confusion
we don't know how much of it was
truth it's so confusing.
But basically they were spreading the rumor that
we had come to kidnap their children.
I am absolutely convinced that if we learn
to communicate more we'll have less riots.
Because we'll knock out these false conceptions of
Christianity.
Now unfortunately there's always some this is the
unfortunate thing who won't even listen to reason.
You can't communicate to them.
And they get something into their head.
They start shouting it out to the masses.
The only communication then is transportation.
Is to get out of there.
But if you can get to that man
ahead you see a man in the crowd
who's angry.
You get him.
You as a leader get along with him.
Say look I would love to talk with
you.
I believe that I can learn something from
you.
Can we go over here and have a
cup of tea?
We must learn to infiltrate the troublemakers in
the crowd and get them out.
Get them a cup of tea.
Buy them an ice cream.
Buy them a coconut.
Anything.
Get them out of that crowd.
And talk to them personally.
And I have taken people who are absolutely
angry and I've turned them right around and
they thought this is wonderful that you've come
to our town.
It's one thing going into a place where
they've never heard at all about Jesus Christ.
It's another thing coming into a place where
they've heard all kinds of false things.
We must communicate.
And I hope we'll learn some of this
in these days together and in advanced courses
that I hope to have here.
And when those of you come back next
year if you've been through the first seminar
you'll go into a whole complete advanced series
of tapes that I'm getting and I hope
to have some Dr. Schaeffer tapes that are
properly recorded.
The ones we have now you can hardly
understand.
And really develop this into a program where
we can develop and can this pay off?
Look, if we can go back here 10
% more effective.
Only 10% more effective.
Will this time have been worthwhile?
Of course.
Because this is the problem in India with
our teens.
It's not that we don't have enough men.
We want more, of course.
But we're not being even 50% as
effective as we could be.
And that takes training.
People say, well, look at George Miley how
effective he is in many ways or some
other brother.
But you know how much training George Miley
has had?
How many years of college?
How many years of seminary?
Now he'll be the first one to admit
that that wasn't the answer.
And many like him would wish they had
had their training all over again in a
different way.
But that certainly is better than nothing.
And I'm convinced with all my heart that
one of the great needs in us in
our work is training.
And I'm out to give that training.
I don't believe the Bible colleges can give
it.
They can help.
And I'm not against that.
Bible college helped me.
Especially made me study and other things.
But I believe this revolutionary training can be
given in a place like this.
Bible School would be a good foundation.
Especially for an advanced program in which we
get into Dr. Schaffer.
We get into Billy Graham.
We get into many of these tapes from
all over the world.
And some of these basic principles and teachings.
And really get the kind of training we
need to be effective on a long run
program in India.
And as we're coming toward the end of
the tape another one of our purposes and
I could give another whole tape on this
is leadership.
Training in leadership.
And really getting down to this manual.
Really having question and answer and discussion.
Seeing where we're making our mistakes in leadership.
Learning what it is to be an effective
leader.
Learning our weak points.
And then uniting and this goes for all
of these things.
Uniting together in faith and prayer.
And believing God for the victory.
Since we're at the end of the tape
let us unite even now.
Father we pray that you would give us
a victory in these areas we've talked about
this morning.
And make this time here in Kathmandu really
count for eternity.
For we ask in the name of Jesus
Christ Amen.