I will stand against the wiles of the
devil, for we wrestle not against flesh and
blood but against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places.
Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of
God, that ye may be able to withstand
in the evil day, and having done all,
to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girded out with
truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness,
and your feet shod with the preparation of
the gospel of peace.
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith
ye shall be able to quench all the
fiery darts of the wicked.
Take the helmet of salvation and the sword
of the Spirit, which is the word of
God, praying always with all prayer and supplication
in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all
perseverance and supplication for all saints.
Now here it speaks very clearly that we're
in a spiritual warfare.
We've heard that many, many times.
And we read about the wiles of the
devil.
Moral sin is different from other sin in
that it so quickly drags the Church of
God into scandal.
We were outspoken on this subject years ago
when you were really considered taboo for saying
the things we said.
Fifteen years ago.
Now, the things have swung and people are
more free to speak about sex.
And so, in some ways, it's a lot
easier.
Though because it is controversial, you'll always have
someone who would prefer you not even mention
these things in public.
Now, if there's anyone in that mentality, I
want to ask you, what are we supposed
to do with our Bibles?
Our Bible, in almost every book, mentions sex
in one way or the other.
All kinds of things.
And it doesn't say that it's a book
not to be read in public.
In fact, they read it out loud to
great congregations of people.
And even the children were present in the
Old Testament.
They read line upon line, line upon line.
Often it was a part of revival, as
when the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt.
Nehezerah, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel.
We must speak out about what the Bible
says.
And we must apply it to our contemporary
situation.
It must not be all some little cloudy
thing that we always talk about in extremely
vague terms.
The Bible is not vague.
The Bible speaks about people who have sex
with animals.
If you call that vague, condemns it in
the book of Leviticus.
The Bible speaks about many, many forms of
perversion.
The Bible tells young men to enjoy the
wife of their youth.
It says that young men should enjoy the
breasts of the wife of their youth.
Hardly puritanical, hardly Victorian.
It's the Victorian false mentality of sex that
has put the Church in its present embarrassment
in front of intellectuals, and that has caused
many people to desert the faith because of
such an unrealistic view in past decades on
the subject of sex, which put us in
the most hypocritical state because there was immorality
and perversion in the Victorian days and in
the Church in those days just as it
is today.
And if you don't think that's true, then
excuse me, but my friend, you are ignorant
of history and of the facts.
Immorality is not new.
Perversion is not new.
These things are as old as Adam and
Eve.
They're as old as Cain and Abel.
They must be frankly spoken with, spoken about.
Now, the Bible says that we have these
wiles of Satan, these tricks, these strategies of
Satan.
It also says in verse 16 that there
are fiery darts of the wicked.
In the Living Letters it says, in every
battle you will need faith as your shield
to stop the fiery arrows aimed at you
by Satan.
Now, oftentimes I've just said that the immorality
is one of Satan's fiery darts.
But this morning I want to elaborate on
that because I'm convinced that there are different
forms of fiery darts.
It's not one dart.
Immorality is not just one dart.
There are many different forms of fiery darts,
many different strategies, many different tricks.
You may be doing very well in one
area and think you're going along okay, and
then a whole completely different range of fiery
darts comes at you.
So I don't think we can just pass
this off and say, may God give us
the victory.
I believe as the Bible elaborates, as the
Bible gives examples, as the Bible describes things
in detail, so we need to be more
specific.
This isn't something to be left vague.
Is that a matter of me coming up
here?
Dear young people, don't commit immorality this year.
The Lord bless you.
That's just about as much as the Church
often gives us, certainly up to a few
years ago, though there are always some beautiful
exceptions.
It's been a shock to some young people
who have come to me to discover incredible
immorality in their own homes.
The last thing our parents want us to
know is that they're immoral.
And yet it has been shattering to young
people who have come to me to discover
that their own father had several women, even
though he was a churchman.
To discover that their own father was hooked
on porno up to the ears, even though
he was over 50.
To discover that your mother is sleeping with
several other men isn't exactly something you want
to discuss.
We'd rather not know.
And the tendency of past decades has been
it's better not to know than to have
reality and honesty.
I want to tell you, if I ever
discovered my parents were immoral, I'd love them
more.
I'd love them more.
Actually, I don't believe we should go around
probing.
You think I'm going around probing.
Look, I got enough headaches without any probing.
It's jumping into my face almost every other
day.
I don't go around looking.
And that's false if you think that that's
so.
Contrary-wise, I believe many of us are
naive.
In every nation, I've now been in 50
nations, in almost every nation, Christian leaders have
told me, now listen, Christian leaders have said
to me, older men, this is our biggest
problem.
Isn't that enough?
To awaken us to the fact that this
is an area where the devil is just
moving like lightning.
Everywhere I go, every country I go in,
immorality, perversion, sin in the work of God.
And so few are willing to say anything
about it.
I've been to the biggest mission conferences in
the world.
Most of them, no one has ever spoken
on the subject.
Christian leaders sitting, a thousand of them in
Asia, in Singapore, we discussed every irrelevancy in
the book.
All kinds of theological arguments, not one person
spoke about impurity in church in Asia, and
everybody knows it's the biggest problem in Asia.
Someone told me recently, half of the leaders
of the Indonesian revival in the early stages,
the men with the big names, who everybody
thought were almost reincarnations of spiritual life, that
almost half of them are falling into the
moral pit.
Immorality, homosexuality, perversion, seduction, you name it.
Now God, by His mercy, up to now
has kept O.M. to a large part
from any of these things.
But I believe it's because we've taken a
stand.
What are some of these fiery thoughts?
Let's give a list, lest I go rambling
all over the place.
The fiery thought of lust.
You don't have to do anything, it all
takes place up here.
Lust.
Linked with lust, fantasy.
You can do it all in your mind.
Technicolor, panavision, sound, stereo.
But it's sin, it's ugly.
It's ugly.
To entertain and play in your mind, go
to bed with girls in your mind, undress
them in your mind.
Jesus said very clearly in Matthew that if
we lust after a girl, we commit immorality
in our heart.
Now, immorality in the heart is not the
same as immorality described in Corinthians, but it
is sin.
I believe there are different degrees of sin.
And I believe some sins far more greatly
affect the whole body and bring scandal and
therefore are more dangerous to the work of
God.
They all may be equally dangerous to you
as far as spiritual communion, but different sins
endanger the work of God.
I hate lust in the mind, but I
have to confess before you that I don't
always win on the first round.
Not in these days.
But the fact that George Fowler may have
a lustful mind once in a while and
not get to victory in the first five
seconds or the first minute, isn't going to
drag this movement into scandal.
But if I decide to live with three
women, it will.
And there are standards for leadership.
And people who are not morally strong and
are not living in victory have no right,
they have no credentials for leading people.
If they stay in God's work in such
a state of weakness, they should at least
be behind the scenes.
That's why I don't believe homosexuals should be
leaders or be allowed to be preachers unless
they really have come into a long-standing
period in which they know they are delivered.
Totally.
Which doesn't happen to too many.
And so we have to understand that.
I believe if we would battle in our
mind and keep the battle limited to our
mind and have short accounts with what we
will think on and what we will feed
our eyes upon, a lot of these other
battles would never take place.
They'd never take place.
The lust of the mind.
The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy.
Old Paul was pretty frank, wasn't he?
I'd love to write a book, What Paul
Says About Sex.
And he wrote to Timothy and he said,
Flee youthful lust.
And when you go out and you see
a pornographic book on the newsstand and there's
a beautiful woman in that book without any
clothing and you begin to lust, that's just
what Paul was talking about.
It's a youthful lust.
Flee it!
And I would recommend that if you're weak
in this area, not even to go into
those places.
There's other ways to get newspapers.
I get most of mine free on the
train people leave them behind.
Get it posted to your house.
I'd rather have, I'd rather pay five pound
a year extra, have the man deliver the
newspaper at your house than you have to
go down to that crummy, dirty little shop
on the corner where all those magazines are
jumping off the rack in order to buy
your newspaper.
Flee youthful lust.
That's what Paul said.
And that's what we must do.
Then there's the fiery dart of false ideas
about sex.
This is one of the most subtle.
The devil is using this little word art
to bring about a whole new form of
pitfall.
That's why we want to get to know
the strategies of the devil.
I don't care what the big people in
the art world say.
I don't care who it is.
Don't tell me that some of this stuff
is art.
And I'll tell you that many of our
artists, many of our great musicians, were the
most twisted, perverted people that ever walked the
earth.
They may have produced works of art, but
as believers, we have to be able to
discern between what they may have been able
to do with their natural powers, and soulish
powers, and what they lived like.
Artists have been known for their freedom in
homosexuality.
Many of the leading artists, leading entertainers, are
blantant, outspoken homosexuals.
Naturally, they want to tell you it's all
art.
And thousands of people queued up in Denmark
and paid money to watch open exhibitions of
the Sex Act.
It is now one of the biggest fads
going around the world.
You can get it as cheap as 50
cents, watch people having sex, and a dollar
or more for perversion, every form of perversion,
openly in front of you.
And in some cases, they allow you to
take your own pictures.
Art!
Watch out for this subtle trick.
This is art.
Because that is not a magic word.
It's not even a spiritual word.
False ideas about sex.
On the other side, you have the fellow
who believes sex is dirty.
The evangelical neurotic who believes it's dirty, who's
trying to figure out how he can manage
to only have sex with his wife once
every two years, so that he can live
the disciplined life.
Though you may smile, I tell you, I've
met people with that kind of a twist.
They thought the only time they should have
sex with their wife is really, you know,
go anymore, and it's better to have sex
than to burn.
It's a little twist on that scripture.
Sex is beautiful.
We've read again and again in OM conferences
that verse in Hebrews that marriage is honorable
and the bed is undefiled.
It's obvious that sex is given of God.
It's man's creative power.
When it's used according to God's program, it
is a beautiful thing.
It's nothing to be ashamed of.
It is a private thing.
I don't believe we should go flamboyantly talking
about our sex life and all these things.
We may do it in personal counseling.
But I do believe there's a danger on
both sides for people in OM.
We've had girls hung up.
They thought we had a case of a
girl who thought that you could get pregnant
from being kissed.
We've had cases of girls who thought that
petting was equivalent to adultery.
It's not saying I believe in petting.
We'll maybe mention that later.
But there are a lot of false ideas.
We must be reoriented.
Our minds must be revolutionized.
You have even married couples where women feel,
well, this brings out the animal instinct in
my husband.
When there's sex, he's so different.
And they get the idea that's wrong.
But that's a creative power that God has
given to man.
And of course he will be different than
he would be if he were giving tracks
out in the street.
What kind of a thing do you expect?
But I believe it's wrong that false ideas
develop because of this.
Of course, men should be loving and kind
and disciplined in this area of sex.
Women should not be forced.
And that works vice versa.
And this isn't easy to work out in
marriage.
It's something that engaged couples should talk about,
what they believe, read about.
There are many good books now.
Praise God for them.
People of past generations haven't had near the
teaching and the training that we have.
But praise God for sex.
A beautiful thing.
Without it, none of you would be here
today.
None of you.
False ideas about sex.
Thirdly, the fiery dart of premarital sex.
David Berg, the leader of the children of
God, alias Moses, says there is no such
thing as premarital sex.
Once I go to bed with a girl,
she's with my wife.
She's my wife.
There's a number of problems in that.
What if you've already been to bed with
five others?
Which one is your wife?
What if you decide after you bed with
this girl that really she's not the one
for you?
Then what do you do?
Do you go for divorce?
No, you've never been officially married.
How are you going to get a divorce?
Very complicated.
I believe the word is clear.
I've given you verses on this before.
Maybe we can look at 1 Corinthians 7
just for a moment.
1 Corinthians chapter 7.
Notice verse 2.
to avoid fornication, let every man have his
own wife.
Let every man have his own wife.
Let every woman have her own husband.
Then it goes on.
Let the husband render unto the wife due
benevolence and likewise also the wife unto her
husband.
The wife also hath not power of her
own body but the husband and likewise also
the husband hath not power of his own
body but the wife.
What a fantastic verse that is.
Showing the power of the wife over the
man in the area of sex.
And yet the same time the power of
the man over the wife.
This is an area where we exercise tremendous
power.
And that's why it needs to be controlled.
It needs to be understood.
But verse 5 says defraud ye not one
another except it be with consent for a
time.
In other words don't stop having sex.
For many of you five years after marriage
maybe later on having sex will be a
discipline.
You won't want it anymore but maybe your
partner will.
Many a man is cracked up.
Many a man has gone into immorality because
he wanted sex.
He needed sex but his wife refused.
Of course when people get very older for
health reasons and other reasons they come to
a mutual agreement that there's no longer need
for this or some other problem that's different.
Most of you got many years to go
yet.
But I can tell you recently I met
one of the most happy sexually adjusted men
I've ever known.
He's a great preacher.
He's a man of God.
He's pushing towards 75 and he has the
most beautiful sex life of anybody I've ever
had a personal encounter with.
Don't think sex ends at 40.
Who can understand the way of a man
with a maid?
That's what the writer of Proverbs has said.
Of course everybody's different and some people go
through a period in which no longer even
men they have any desire whatsoever for sex
and if their wife fully agrees to this
fine.
If they don't agree they've got a problem
and this is an area where there must
be discipline because some of the worst immorality
is about is with those men over 40
and over 50 years of age.
The men who keep the porno business going
are mostly all over 30.
Did you know that?
Long after they can't get anything sensible from
their wife they go into perversion.
That's why it's so important for you girls
to have a beautiful and a proper view
about sex to consider it a privilege when
you're married to minister to your own husband
in this way to love him in this
way to submit in this way to meet
his needs no matter how dedicated he is
how loud he is how disciplined he is
in most cases he will need you in
this area as much as any other area.
So the Bible says don't stop having sex
except certain times to give yourself to fasting
and prayer.
Let Satan tempt you.
I believe this book is practical.
I'm so fed up with all this super
-spirituality that leaves the practical nitty-gritty basic
teaching of the Bible out of the picture.
False ideas about the sufficiency of Christ.
Certainly if we know the sufficiency of Christ
we don't need sex.
Jesus is my all Jesus is my everything
wait a minute that's taking one scripture and
contradicting another.
God looked at man and he said he
shouldn't be alone so he gave him a
woman he didn't give him a Bible verse
gave him a woman and I believe that
certain spiritual people get into the greatest problem
in this area.
Now there are eunuchs for the sake of
God and if God gives you that calling
keeps you single praise him he will give
you special grace but please don't get this
fishy idea that because you're turning 30 that
you're now a eunuch automatically for Christ's sake.
Premarital sex is condemned in the Bible it's
considered fornication.
You must not go into the Old Testament
for your teachings about sex.
That is deadly.
God allowed certain things because of the hardness
of the heart.
This revelation was progressive to some degree in
terms of God's full standard and we must
go to the New Testament we must go
to the teachings of Jesus.
We will see things in the Old Testament
beautiful things good things we should study them
yes amen but we must have them compared
scripture with scripture that's how we study the
Bible to get the full picture which is
given to us by Jesus Christ and by
the apostles.
A leader must be the husband of one
wife.
The fiery dot of extramarital sex that is
definitely more of a problem than premarital sex.
It's just staggering staggering staggering what's happening in
this area among Christians among Christians I would
warn you in the name of Jesus don't
think that married couples in OM could not
fall into this.
Do not think that leader where you're working
could not fall into sin with you though
he's a married man.
Watch out for your relationships.
Watch out some missions will not even let
single girls live with married couples anymore.
Did you know that?
They won't allow it.
Too many times the married man in the
house fell in love with a single girl.
The Bible says beware of the fiery dots.
This is one of them.
Don't think because he's a spiritual man and
he's got good sermons and he's so nice
and he seems so committed.
That's why we have a policy in OM
of the open door that basically we don't
want secretaries working with their boss behind a
closed door.
We're not afraid of it.
We're not trying to pretend that we're the
perfect little movement.
Nothing ever happens.
We're all so spiritual.
We're all so spirit filled.
We're all so dynamic.
We're all so busy in the work of
God.
Take heed lest ye fall the word of
God says.
You may feel you're very strong in this
area and we have this teaching in OM
to avoid the appearance of evil and most
of the time it isn't that the leader
doesn't trust you.
I have a tremendous trust in people in
this area.
God has given me the grace to believe
the best otherwise I'd crack up in conferences
like this.
But I believe we should avoid the appearance
of evil.
You will not find me driving around in
a car with another single girl alone.
I've had it happen the other day.
The secretary was going to pick me up
in a railway station and it was all
arranged and I couldn't do much about it.
All right, I cast her on the law
and I don't become a neurotic but basically
I stay out of cars along with women.
Billy Graham has the same practice.
He won't go anywhere without his wife or
another man.
Okay, he's more famous.
He's got these lewd magazines trying to get
pictures of him with other women.
You're not so famous.
You may feel you don't have a problem.
All right.
This isn't a policy.
It's not a fixed rule in O.M.
But we tend in this direction.
We feel it's wise especially for our leaders
who the devil is trying to attack because
rumors are about Europe that O.M., I
think they've been cut down lately but years
ago that this is one big immoral party.
Mixed teams, some people with their old-fashioned
mentality believe that a mixed team means teams
having sex together.
Rumors are about that we all bed in
in factories together.
People believe this stuff.
What do you think they think of our
little ship?
You get some people you just see a
little smile on their face.
Oh, this ship is very nice, isn't it?
What are all these cabins here?
And we've had some people wouldn't understand on
this ship why we have the rule that
we don't expect single fellows to be in
a cabin of a married woman without the
husband there.
Avoiding appearance of evil.
Realizing one of the biggest areas of sexual
breakdown is with married people.
There are women everywhere who haven't had decent
time of proper sex with their husband for
weeks.
They're subtle, they're ready to fall and I've
known of so many cases and the same
is true with men.
When people get lonely their minds begin to
go.
And they'll do anything for any love.
Many women don't particularly even want sex.
They just want friendship.
They just want someone who will appreciate them.
Someone who will talk with them more than
their negligent husband.
And so, one thing adds to another and
happens.
Oh, may God show us.
May God show us.
Then there's the fiery dart of homosexuality.
We've had this policy that people with homosexual
problems because it is to some degrees a
medical problem should walk in the light with
us about it.
How can we help people in this area
if we don't even know they have a
problem?
It will not be made public.
It's kept in confidence.
But I think we need a bath of
reality in this area.
Some girls think they're homosexuals and in fact
they are not.
But they never had enough counseling to know.
We're all mixed.
Our hormones are mixed a little bit.
And a girl who may have slight tendencies
can easily be brought back to a normal
position.
But if she refuses to share it, she
bottlenecks it, it gets worse and worse.
Girls are much slower to share their homosexual
problems than men.
I'm not interested in you sharing it with
me.
You can go to one of our girl
leaders.
You can go to my wife.
You can go to Pauline.
You can go to some leader.
Pauline was sharing with me one or two
cases.
She doesn't mention names.
I don't know who they are.
I'm not interested in knowing what girls have
this problem, unless they feel I need to
know.
I am interested in the men.
Most Christian works, if they found out you
were homosexual, out.
Just like that.
So why do you think OM is asking
too much to at least have this thing
shared with us?
Now, if you're not living in victory, we
will have to ask you to leave.
I believe there's a great difference between a
person with latent homosexual problem, who's living in
victory, who's claiming the victory.
He wants deliverance.
Maybe deliverance has come.
Maybe the work of grace is not complete.
Maybe a deep psychological problem.
There's a difference between that person and the
man who is practicing homosexuality.
If there's anyone here practicing homosexuality, I believe
you are out of God's will.
I believe you are in sin.
And I believe judgment will come on you.
And you have a chance of completely marring
this movement.
It cannot be tolerated.
We are very open.
We are very fair.
We're willing to pray with you.
We're willing to believe the victory.
You will not be asked to leave.
But this double life cannot be tolerated in
God's work.
There are certain kinds of jobs I don't
believe homosexuals, even without problems, should be doing.
Some people don't know how to deal with
homosexuals.
Love.
But if it's a girl and you're a
girl, it's love at a distance.
Firmness.
You must understand that a homosexual person, in
their terms, fall completely madly in love just
as a man does with a woman.
All over Birmingham, all over London, men are
living with men.
They're in love with each other.
They have honeymoons.
They have marriages.
A vicar recently performed a marriage of homosexuals.
And that's a new thing with pastors.
A lot of the liberals feel that we
should marry the homosexuals.
And I don't think it was a vicar.
I think it was a priest in the
States.
One of the more well-known denominations.
Why not let them have their time?
They love one another.
So in the church, two men holding hands,
putting the ring one finger on the other.
I now pronounce you man and wife.
This is the church.
You ask why we don't speak up.
The world is not silent.
The liberals are not silent.
The devil is not silent.
The church goes around, oh well, oh well,
you know, we must not discuss these things.
They hardly ever happen in the churches.
This is isolated cases.
Isolated cases.
I'll tell you what's isolated.
You know what's isolated?
Men in our generation who are morally pure,
morally clean, through and through.
He's the isolated man.
When he gets to 50.
You may be pure now, but what about
when you're 50?
What about when you've been through some rough
years of marriage?
Maybe your wife was sick in the hospital.
The doctor said, no sex for you for
two years.
Ah, that will be a good test to
see how morally straight you can walk.
Don't go blowing your moral trumpet when you're
19, when you're 20.
You wait until you run to the end
of the race.
Then you blow your trumpet.
Hallelujah!
I've made it.
I wish I had more time to speak
about this.
You can ask your questions.
We are considered in some places too strict.
Praise God for that reputation.
Hallelujah!
How in the world did a group of
young people like us ever manage to get
that glorious, wonderful, beautiful reputation?
Too strict.
Praise His name for that.
Let's have a toast that all of us
may be considered too strict the rest of
our days.
Because with the way people think, you will
either be considered too strict or immoral.
With the way they think in the outside
world, there is no middle ground.
You're either too strict, you're old-fashioned, too
disciplined, fuddy-duddy, ooty-booty, or you're immoral.
May God give us a balance.
But even as we find that balance, we'll
probably be classified as right-wingers.
This is one area I don't want to
go left.
Then there's the fiery dart of deception.
Men who are living with several women absolutely
convinced it's of God.
There are such men everywhere today.
I can't give you names, but I have
the names.
They believe they're of God, they're prophets of
God.
Because they're prophets of God, He has given
them special help.
After all, how can a prophet of God
have one woman?
He has many needs.
So their minds twist.
And again and again, Christian leaders have defended
from the Bible many wives.
Now, some of you are living in Christian
communities.
They're good for a one- or two
-year program.
They're not very good for the long, long
run.
There can be exceptions.
Extremely disciplined, revived people can do it.
But many communities, especially, have fallen into impurity.
Here's what happens.
I've not only thought this, but I've also
read it.
In the community, the single men easily find
a wife.
Because they can go outside the community and
get a girl, bring her in.
They are at advantage, right?
Every girl here knows the man has got
the better deal on this.
That's why you're all trying to do the
same thing.
But you better watch out for trying to
do the men's job.
But the girl in the community, she can't
go romping out and finding someone from the
outside.
She has to find someone within the community.
The men within the community see her.
They see her in the raw in a
sense, her problems and battles because she's in
the community.
Plus, any interest in her will bring major
gossip, major discussion.
So he goes outside the community.
What about the girl?
She stays single.
And the male leader in the community sympathizes
with this girl and decides to at least
comfort her.
And that easily leads one thing to another.
Especially for single girls, there should be teams.
They shouldn't generally stay in the same place
too long.
And in some cases, a year out of
the community and in some cases, a year
out of OM will give God a greater
opportunity to show them who they should marry.
I believe it's only fair.
Everybody's different.
OM is different because we're so mobile.
Very few people are in the same community
for a long time so we don't have
much problem.
We've had very little problem in this.
There are many advantages of community life but
immorality is a plague in many communities.
Personally, one of the strong points for living
alone is less temptations in this area.
And of course, every man and woman knows
the situation.
A married couple that are strong, that are
having a strong and beautiful sex life, that
they just really aren't going on like a
house on fire, are in a stronger position
than a couple who's having all kinds of
battles.
And the wife already knows the fellow is
weak.
Maybe he's already had one fall.
And so, we need to be careful.
Deception is dangerous.
The Bible says the heart is deceitful and
desperately wicked.
Desperately wicked.
I can be deceived.
That's why I want to have other brothers
around me exhorting me.
Challenging me.
If I see one of my leaders, I
ain't one of you pretty girls.
He's a married man.
Boy, he's gonna have me on his doorstep.
And I say, well, praise the Lord, brother.
I noticed that you noticed a new girl
just flew in.
What do you think of her?
Well, you know.
And, I believe we are a brother's keeper.
And I praise God for a lot of
people keeping their eye on me.
Because though I've done so well these past
years, my marriage is going like a blaze.
I feel like I just got married yesterday.
Everything is tremendous.
And there's no woman anywhere in the whole
world that can match my wife.
Still, I don't trust myself.
It's deception.
And I've seen too many strong men fall.
This is why I prefer the dictaphone generally
to the secretary sitting on the end of
the desk with her mini-skirt.
You have no idea of all the immorality
between bosses and secretaries.
I could write an encyclopedia.
First volume on that.
People say, Oh, don't be silly.
It doesn't happen in Christian work.
Oh, it doesn't happen in Christian work.
I can name six leaders who all married
their secretaries.
Another one just went.
I know two just went in the last
three months.
I saw Bill Bright in Dallas.
First thing, we were talking together.
He had announced in the meeting he had
to cancel a couple of speakers for Dallas.
They'd fallen into impurity before they got there.
Watch out for your relationships with those who
work close with you.
Talk it out if necessary.
And, of course, believe the best in the
process.
Deception.
So much in the church.
Plaguing the church.
Dividing the church.
One man told me in the country he
was laboring in, he didn't know one single
church that did not have a major moral
scandal in the past ten years.
We've seen Christian leaders in India chopped up
one after another.
Wherever there's a man, there's a woman helping.
I know some youth groups that have been
knocked out of one city after another.
One city after another.
Impurity.
Just two more fiery darts.
The fiery dart of gossip.
This is something we must watch.
Don't talk about what you're not sure of.
Guard your tongue.
Believe the best.
That girl that he was walking with, probably
may have been his sister.
May God give us a balance between minding
our own business and being our brother's keeper.
It's a thin line, but you can find
it if you want to.
However, we're going to stop gossip by avoiding
the appearance of evil, which I've already mentioned
to you.
Avoiding the appearance of evil.
1 Thessalonians chapter 3.
And the last fiery dart, the fiery dart
of immodesty.
Now, every country is different.
It's difficult to know where modesty begins in
terms of the length of the skirt.
The skirt is only one problem.
You can be immodest with your eyes, playing
with your eyes, luring men.
I believe a loose living evangelical girl is
playing the role of a whore.
And I believe we have had women in
OM with whorish ways.
Flirting, fooling around, loose living.
And I've interviewed many men.
I took a survey on how many men
were stumbled by the extremely short skirts that
many girls were wearing.
It was an international group of men, including
Englishmen, the strong types.
Ninety-eight percent were stumbled by the skirts.
And I believe that we've got to be
revolutionary in this area of modesty.
I believe that we've got to seek God.
I can't dictate very much to you.
Each country will be sharing what their policy
is for the length of the skirt.
Certainly, it's around the knee somewhere.
I'm not interested in getting involved in arguments.
I believe the bigger problem often times is
the rebellion of our own hearts.
On the other hand, it is difficult.
The biggest stumbling block to some girls are
other girls.
The ones more upset about short skirts are
other girls.
They have kept the rule.
They have followed the policy, dressed modestly, followed
the instructions, and then others wave aside.
They're not interested.
And they stumble these girls as well as
men.
As I mentioned, the skirt is only one
problem.
The way we sit, the way we go
up and down stairs, the use of the
eyes.
We as men are warned in the book
of Proverbs in more than 15 places to
watch out for the whore or the prostitute.
They're everywhere.
There's more prostitutes in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and
Rotterdam than there are missionaries in the whole
world.
And if you don't think that men ever
fall in sin with such people, then you
don't know men.
I don't want to be a stumbling block.
And I wish people would walk in the
light with me if there's anything that I'm
doing, any way that I'm dressing.
And men, you can be immodestly dressed.
These tremendously tight trousers.
Many of our bathing suits should be thrown
into the fire.
Absolutely shocking.
I don't even want to go to many
beaches.
Just immoral demonstrations of man's carnality and Sodom
-like clothing.
Nobody wants to speak against we all pretend
everything is well.
Thousands and tens of thousands of illegitimate babies
are born, including also in our Bible schools.
Nobody wants to say anything.
We're in a war.
Satan has subtle, tricky strategies.
He wants to get that nice little evangelical
girl.
She's so sincere.
She loves Jesus.
She wants to sing for Jesus.
We had it here in Birmingham.
Somebody ordered this group to come in and
sing in our meeting.
I've never seen anything so subtle in my
life.
That girl's skirt was at least eight inches
above her knees.
Her dress was made the skirt appear modest
because to me most men have far more
battles from this area up than down.
And she sang the gospel.
And when she sang she wiggled and I
don't want to do it.
Incredible!
Praise God.
Half the O.M. girls got up and
walked out of the meeting.
It's good that there's a few girls left
to know how to blush.
Praise God there's such girls left.
I know a group that had sessions here
in Britain how to use sex to communicate
the gospel.
How to use sex to communicate the gospel.
Send the girls out for fishing.
They come up to fellows in the street.
Even put their arms around them.
There's cases now of girls in the street
witnessing gospel buttons.
Put their arms about fellows.
Jesus loves you.
Woo!
Boy!
That's nice.
Come with me.
Let's go.
If you don't think any of them end
up in bed at night then you don't
know young people.
You don't know the society you're living in.
You're an ostrich.
That's the first half of my message and
all my time is gone.
I'll just give you this as a list.
Maybe I'll preach it sometime.
The shield of faith to stop these things.
Eight points.
Because we have the shield of faith we
can stop the fiery darts.
There are others I don't have time to
mention.
Here they are.
First of all, claim God's forgiveness.
Claim God's forgiveness.
Two, walk in the light.
Be honest.
Three, combat deception in every form.
Read some of the tremendous books on this
subject.
Seek counseling.
I repeat, seek counseling.
Get answers to some of your questions.
Four, be ready to accept reaping and discipline.
Some of you have sinned in this area
already.
You may reap something in the days to
come.
We see that in the Bible with the
story of Amnon.
Read that story of Amnon in 2 Samuel
13.
You will reap many times.
That's why it's so foolish for the sake
of a few minutes of pleasure to sell
your soul.
The devil says he makes men into a
piece of bread.
I think we've got sex way too elevated.
We think it's much greater than it is,
even in marriage.
It's only one-fifth, maybe one-sixth of
the joys in the reality of marriage.
Many a good marriage has gone out even
without sex because of medical problems.
We have the idea this is it.
Many young people today of the modern types
go into drugs because they've tried sex.
It's left them stale.
Once you do it again and again and
again it becomes stale.
You don't want it.
Then you try drugs and then you try
or you try perversion.
Why do you think many people get into
perversion?
Harming their bodies.
All kinds of things.
Transvestinism.
And masturbation.
And masochism.
And all these things because they've discovered that
just sex, sex, sex out of God's plan
leads a man dry.
It destroys.
It eats away.
Sears the conscience and can ruin the mind.
There may be a reaping and by faith
we have to accept it.
Don't ever desert the faith because you fall
in this area.
That's the greatest mistake you can make.
God is ready to pick you up.
He's ready to use you.
He's ready to cleanse you.
He's ready to give you a bigger shield
that you may win the battles.
Five, to believe God and His Word not
the devil and feelings.
Sometimes you feel like a locomotive going downhill
with no brakes.
You've got to have it.
You've got to have that magazine.
You've got to do it.
You can't stop and you're just going.
Oh, the man who learns how to put
on the brakes.
The man who learns not to trust those
feelings.
One thing you can do at that time
is immediately find someone to talk to.
Phone someone.
Say, Brother, I'm under attack.
Sister, I'm under attack.
I'm going downhill.
My brakes are broken.
Come over and see me.
We have agreements among us, some of us.
We're ready on call at any time if
the brakes fail.
We'll come with new brakes.
And let us know what's happening.
Don't trust ourselves walking in the light not
listening to feelings.
The devil's lies.
The devil says, Ah, don't worry.
Just once.
You can be forgiven.
God is grace.
God loves you.
Don't worry about it.
You may be able to be forgiven, but
you may reap a harvest.
You may ruin your ministry.
You may ruin that person's life.
You may bring a baby into the world.
Don't talk about cheap forgiveness.
Lie of the devil.
There's no such thing as cheap forgiveness.
It costs Jesus Christ His precious blood.
It's not cheap.
It never will be cheap.
When you go into the sin of adultery,
you slap Jesus in the face.
You spit on Him.
You kick Him.
You mock Him.
We need more holy hate for sin.
More love for purity.
Jesus Christ was tempted in all points, including
this area.
In many women, He probably could have snapped
His fingers and had it.
False theologians teach that He did.
Other theologians teach that Jesus was homosexual.
It's a lie.
Lie of the devil.
We know He was pure.
We know He was born of a virgin.
And we know that He Himself never committed
any form of sin because He was never
married.
And if He was married, He would have
had a perfect marriage.
But there was no perfect woman, so He
never got married.
Six, to approach His promises or appropriate His
promises.
The Bible is filled with promises that can
help us in this area.
We must appropriate them.
We must claim them.
That's where faith works.
Our goals, our regulations, our policies, our convictions
will not work if it's not backed by
faith.
Faith is the victory that overcomes the world.
Seven, to practice little disciplines.
That's very important.
Lots of exercise.
Use up that creative energy.
Hard work.
Exercise.
Burn it out.
Run it out.
Don't let it all get bottled up, especially
as a single man.
Food.
The right kind of food.
Proper diet.
Fasting.
The discipline of fasting is the biggest practice
in my single life.
I fasted five times as much as a
single man as I do today.
I think it saved me.
Memorizing the Word.
Letting it cleanse you.
Letting it build you up.
My mind, where it used to be filled
with evil thoughts, now mainly gets Bible verses.
Either that or problems of the work.
Getting active.
There's nothing wrong with being active.
Being passive is ten times worse than being
active.
Jesus was active.
Paul was active.
Every man of God was active.
Don't react from the sin of activism to
not being active.
You need to be busy.
You need to be active.
It's hard for the devil to catch a
man who's running.
You get passive.
Just let your mind open a bit.
Relax too much.
These next two weeks when you leave this
conference, you better have an active program.
If it's prayer and waiting on God, make
it an active prayer.
I recommend the mountains, not the streets of
London.
It's hard to fall and sin in the
mountains.
Exercise.
Going two by two.
Don't go alone unless you absolutely have to.
Two by two.
What a valuable practice.
We don't have a fixed rule.
It is our prayer that we may be
mature enough to go two by two.
That is our prayer.
And eight, to exhort one another.
Oh, we don't like to exhort anybody in
this area.
We're cowards.
We are causing our brethren to stumble because
we won't speak.
And if your leader goes down the tube,
it may be your fault.
Not doing the job you were supposed to
be doing in a loving, broken, humble way,
esteeming him as better than yourself.
These are fiery darts.
Let's take a stand.
Let's believe God for the victory.
Some people say, I never had any problems
in this till I came on OM.
Probably not because you came on OM.
It's probably because you are exposed to more
people.
You're growing up whether you're in OM or
out of OM.
Don't blame OM for things that would happen
to your life whether you were in or
out of OM this year.
You're going into new stages of growth.
You're going to face new problems whether you're
in or out of Operation Mobilization.
You say, I haven't been exposed to these
things before.
It's better to be exposed now, here, under
the Spirit and the Word than to be
exposed reading pornography or seeing films.
The places we go do speak of what's
running in our minds.
Do speak of what's in our minds.
Let's pray.
Father, You know our hearts.
How easily we're deceived.
How blind we can be.
Forgive us, Lord, for lack of discipline in
this area.
Forgive us, Lord, for not taking a stand
against the evil one.
We believe that You can give the victory.
Cleanse hearts and lives.
Cleanse marriages that we may be pure and
clean.
Disciplined.
Filled with the Spirit.
Realists in the glory of Jesus.
That pure and perfect one who won every
battle in His name.
Amen.