Well, part of my heart is here in
Bangladesh and it's a joy to be back.
This is about my 25th visit.
I don't know how I missed meeting some
of you wonderful people in my previous visits.
I first came to Bangladesh in 1968, so
I was here before liberation and I was
here part of the time during liberation and
saw things I'll never forget and it's been
a joy to come back.
In our work it's always been our conviction
that the national people who know the language
and the culture can generally do a better
job than us foreigners.
So wherever I've gone, even though I did
learn a language originally when I went to
Mexico and learned Spanish and Spain, I always
tried to work my way out of the
job and go on somewhere else.
So my wife and I have lived in
about 20 different nations.
We love them all but we love some
a little more than others and it's a
great joy to really be here in Bangladesh,
such a young nation, such a nation with
such tremendous possibilities.
I just hope somehow my words will be
an encouragement to you in your own work.
It's also a privilege to have contact with
World Vision again.
When I first became a follower of Christ,
one of the first things I did was
support a World Vision orphan in Korea and
that was a meaningful experience for me as
a young person.
I was only 18.
I still have his picture.
I would listen to Bob Pierce on the
radio and his words would pierce my heart
and I also had the privilege of watching
some of those early films, World Vision films
that were so powerful.
I had the joy later on of getting
to know him as a friend and I'm
just in the midst of reading his biography
right now written by his daughter, a very
deep, meaningful book that God is really using
in some places.
I'm here with my wife though.
She's not here at this moment and I
have this little family letter which will just
help emphasize the human factor because as Christian
leaders we are all so unbelievably human and
so weak and often people get the wrong
idea.
So that's my wife's little epistle and you
can have it if you would like that.
Of course it doesn't cost anything.
We've been involved in promoting literature in Bengali
language for over 20 years.
I have my own book.
Two of my books are in Bengali.
One is called Literature Evangelism, a bit out
of date.
The other is Hunger for Reality.
Both have sold quite a lot of copies
in Bengali.
But two books I especially would like to
recommend.
They're just worth their weight in gold.
It's True Discipleship by William MacDonald now in
30 different languages and Calvary Road.
I know both these men personally.
I've watched their lives.
Roy Heshin lost his wife in a motor
accident when a piece of steel fell off
a truck and crushed her to death.
Yet no bitterness against God, against man, but
only the sweet reality of Jesus Christ living
in his life.
William MacDonald, a man who's never married, puts
into practice the writings of this little book.
And it would be worth coming here just
to mention these two books because you will
be greatly helped, challenged by them.
And the reason I give out this letter,
one of the reasons is it has my
address so that you can write to me.
Many people in the meeting last night made
a recommitment of their life to Christ and
to God and I've been reading their prayer
requests this morning during my prayer time.
It's amazing the burdens and the problems that
people carry with them and how we do
need each other and how we need to
be able to pray for one another.
So if you have a prayer burden, something
you'd like me to pray about, you can
write to me.
If you want to save the English postage,
you can of course give the letter in
the internal system here and somehow through some
friends they'll get the letter to me.
I'll be here until Saturday.
I thought I should begin by reading a
scripture that has been an enormous continual help
to me, found in the book of Galatians.
I just wrote an article that's been published
in some magazines on developing sensitivity in your
public ministry.
I've learned the hard way that often when
we're speaking there's such a wide range of
people and that which is a help to
someone actually is a hindrance to someone else.
That's the risk of being a public speaker.
But I hope that if you disagree with
me on some point, you'll understand that one
of my specialties is compassionate disagreeing.
In fact, my wife and I have a
definite pact in this area that we compassionately
disagree with each other on a number of
points.
So if my wife and I, we just
had 24 years marriage celebration, if we can
disagree and press on, you shouldn't feel bad
if you disagree with me on some areas.
But the book of Galatians, just to start
off our thinking, chapter 6, verse 7.
Be not deceived.
God is not mocked.
God is not fooled.
For whatever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap.
For he that soweth to his flesh shall
of the flesh reap corruption.
But he that soweth to the spirit shall
of the spirit reap life everlasting.
And let us not be weary in well
-doing.
For in due season we shall reap if
we faint not.
I was speaking just a few days ago
at the Afghan border.
We have a work among the refugees.
It's one of our main works in this
part of the world.
There are two and a half million Afghan
refugees.
And I was visiting the camps.
We would appreciate prayer for that work.
We've started a carpet center to teach young
Afghan boys how to make carpets.
Because rather than just giving people more and
more direct handouts, it's such a good thing,
as you already know, to teach them a
trade.
And now we're into solar cookers.
And we're into teaching people how to conserve
fuel, because we have a massive problem of
deforestation there on the Afghan border.
And we're into many other things there, which
isn't our normal work.
Our work generally is training young people in
how to be stable, committed followers of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
But because we've had such a long-term
interest in Afghanistan, we consider this a special
situation, and because of a need there, felt
we should be in relief work.
We'd appreciate prayer for that.
But I had a very unique meeting in
the evening there, when about 15 of these
Afghans came to the meeting.
All of them, of course, followers of the
Islamic faith.
So I had all kinds of people in
this meeting, and found it a very, very
great challenge.
And I've just grown so much to love
the Afghan people.
And as you know, so many, so many
have been killed in the past four years.
The greatest problem in Afghanistan right now is
not among the Afghans who are fighting the
Russians, though there are some Afghans on that
side as well, but the greatest problem is
actually disease.
Enormous amount of disease, killing off many, many
people in Afghanistan right now.
So that's something else you might pray about.
It's a number of areas really out of
control.
Health is a wonderful thing, isn't it?
You never appreciate good health until you lose
it.
We in Britain, though I'm American by birth,
my father's from Holland, I now live in
Britain, and I've been overseas for 24 years.
We in Britain have just lost one of
our greatest Christian leaders, suddenly just stricken down
by cancer, David Watson.
And we're a nation, in a sense, in
mourning, though we know he is with God.
He was able to give his testimony over
the BBC to the entire nation about what
Jesus Christ had done in his life.
Won to Christ as a young student at
Cambridge University.
But I share this particular scripture this morning
because many, many times I have grown weary
of serving God.
I'm not a natural follower of Jesus Christ.
I'm naturally a person of much hatred, much
lust, much foolishness.
And when God found me, I was a
liar, a cheater, an evil person.
Oh, people didn't know that.
In fact, I was a leader in the
church, president of the youth fellowship, awarded the
highest religious award in my country in the
scouting movement, the God in the Country Award.
My mother thought I was such a good
little boy.
But I was already at 16 in the
grip of vice and I was living what
we call in English a double life.
Spiritual schizophrenia.
You've studied psychology, you know about schizophrenia, major
disease in the world today.
Spiritual schizophrenia is a major spiritual disease and
I had it.
Sunday, there I was with my little Christian
plastic smile looking around the church for the
latest Christian girl to arrive as that was
my number one emphasis next to money.
And on Saturday night, on Friday night, I
was a totally different person.
It started as far back as I could
ever remember.
Even at the age of four, I wanted
to fight.
There were people I didn't like.
I took a big black bucket of paint
and went to the house of this young
man that I didn't like because he was
different.
We don't like people who are different and
he didn't like me.
We don't like people who don't like us.
And I had my little gang, my little
group and he had his little group and
we fought.
So I went to his house, I was
only small, and I painted on his big
white house one of the most ugly words
in the English language which I could not
repeat, especially with a tape recorder going, on
the side of his house.
Needless to say, my father was not overly
impressed with my artistic ability.
It's strange, isn't it?
The heart of man.
I've had the joy and the challenge of
living and ministering in 50 different nations, 29
years.
We're all the same.
I've recently been in the Soviet Union again.
We think they're so very different because they're
communists.
They're the same.
I've been in China.
They're the same.
I've lived in India for many years, in
every part of India.
They're the same.
The problem is not nationality.
The problem isn't language.
Of course there are differences, of course.
But underneath, the heart of man is the
same.
And it needs something.
It needs soul surgery.
It needs conversion.
It needs transformation.
It needs revolution.
Use whatever word you want.
There are many in both Bengali and English.
I had, by 16 years of age, really
become a slave to sin.
The Bible says in John's Gospel, he that
commits sin becomes a slave to sin.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that I was not in total
control of my behavior.
I wanted to do certain things that I
knew were right, but often I ended up
doing other things.
I actually wanted to like all people.
Now there are some people, their philosophy is
not to like people.
Actually my philosophy was to like people.
I knew enough of the basic rudiments of
the Christian message to know that I was
to love everybody, but I couldn't do it.
And I had these wrong feelings about people.
And I even once got in a fight
with a woman.
And this was a very difficult experience for
me, because in this fight, out in the
field, surrounded by my school mates, I lost
the fight.
And this was before the birth of the
feminist movement, which I don't know has spread
this part of the world.
I'm sure it has.
It may have even originated here, been transferred
secretly to the Western world.
If you know anything about the culture of
South India, you may know what I'm talking
about.
Now I was not really from a really
Christian family.
We had the name Christian.
Which is really quite funny because my grandfather
was an atheist.
You can be an atheist in some of
our countries and have the name Christian.
Strange world we live in.
And so my grandfather was an atheist.
He didn't believe in God.
And my father was born in the Netherlands.
Small country.
Some way similar to Bangladesh.
The history of Netherlands has a similar history
to Bangladesh.
More people died through cyclones and drowning in
the Netherlands than almost any nation in the
world except perhaps Bangladesh.
If you know the suffering of your country
through cyclone, it's just unbelievable.
It's something none of us should ever forget.
And the Netherlands waged war against the sea
and built the dykes and stopped almost 100
% all destruction from the sea.
I wonder how many people in this country
are committed to doing something about the next
cyclone and the number of people it will
take.
If somebody doesn't come forth with compassion and
concern to stand against that great problem.
Anyway, my father and his father left the
Netherlands looking for freedom.
We do anything to find freedom, don't we?
Freedom is very important.
And I meet people all the time ready
to die for freedom.
We have many Iranians now campaigning in London
where I live for freedom.
There was a different group five years ago.
They were campaigning for freedom.
Now there's another group campaigning for freedom.
What a world we live in.
No wonder the number one philosophy in Europe
today is despair.
Did you know that?
I don't know if you know much about
Europe.
The number one philosophy...
It's not Christianity.
It's despair.
People have given up on everything.
And it's this philosophy of despair.
Despair means no hope, no answer.
It's existentialism.
Don't worry if you don't understand the term.
Most people don't.
It means there's no answers.
Freedom has no meaning anymore.
And so millions have turned to drugs.
We now have the same thing in Pakistan
happening very quickly.
I've just been in Pakistan for over a
month.
And drug addiction in Karachi is epidemic.
And we live in a world where there's
a tremendous cross communication, tremendous mingling of philosophy
and culture and ideology.
We have a banned book in Pakistan called
Among the Brethren by Mr. Naipaul.
A very devastating book about Islam.
It's banned.
Everybody's reading it.
Every major book shop has a copy.
And this book of course leaves Muslims in
despair, angry, confused.
He's written a similar book, Devastating India.
He's written other books.
Wherever he writes, he devastates.
And if you want to be an outstanding
author, you must destroy.
You must devastate.
You must show the folly of all religion,
all culture, all humanity.
I say it's very easy to devastate.
Very difficult to build.
I praise God that you in World Vision
are committed to building.
Not because you're ignorant.
Not because you don't know there are problems.
Not because you don't know that there are
intellectual questions that are not easy to answer.
But because you are a people of hope,
and you're even willing to work together with
people of other nationalities, of other religions, because
you believe there's hope.
There's hope for Bangladesh.
There's hope for the world.
There's hope for these poverty stricken people.
I always like to have a different experience
each morning.
In my quiet time, I believe in visual
quiet times.
I read the Bible, I pray, and then
I go for a walk, and I meet
people.
So this morning I went to the Bihari
camp for my quiet time, and I bought
a piece of bread and ate it for
my quiet time.
You've heard of breaking of bread.
I had my own in the Bihari camp.
These are people.
These are as significant as any American, any
Frenchman, any multi-millionaire, any money squandering, narrow
minded, bigoted Kuwaiti.
These people are important with God.
And the Bible teaches that God is concerned
for the poor.
I praise Allah for your commitment to the
poor of Bangladesh.
This is very, very important.
Let me go back on my story and
tell you how my life was changed from
a selfish businessman.
Oh yes, I was a businessman.
At 16, I owned three businesses.
I could lie, I could cheat, I could
gamble.
And other qualities which are not qualities.
And yet I knew I was wrong.
So much so that when I was gambling,
playing cards, after I won, usually by keeping
an ace up my sleeve as a skinny
man, I could quickly bring out an ace.
I would feel guilty.
And I remember the story of Robin Hood,
who feeling guilty about some of his events,
or maybe he had it in reverse portion,
he went out and helped the poor with
his money.
So after winning in gambling, I would take
my friends down and buy them all cold
drinks and ice cream to soothe the conscience.
Then into my life came a woman.
In every man's life there's a woman.
This one was three times my age.
I don't think she was because now she's
only twice my age.
But it seemed that she was three times
my age when I was 16.
Maybe it works that way.
I think it does actually.
Never very good at mathematics.
And she started to pray for me.
She believed in prayer.
And she prayed for three years for me.
Every year I got worse.
But she believed those words in Galatian.
Let us not be weary in well doing,
for we shall reap if we faint not.
She not only prayed that I would be
converted to the way of truth and to
Jesus Christ, but that I would take the
message of Christ to many parts of the
world.
This was her specific prayer for an unconverted,
very lost, bigoted, narrow minded person.
What a woman of faith.
Faith is a great thing.
Bible says if you have faith there's a
greater mustard seed.
You can say to this mountain remove and
it will be moved.
That is not, of course, a verse given
for contractors and excavators, but it is a
spiritual truth.
And she had prayed for this school that
I was attending for 15 years.
This same prayer.
She sent me part of the New Testament
through the post.
The Gospel of John.
I'm sure you all know the fourth gospel.
Gospel of John.
Now I'm sorry to say that by this
time among other problems I was hooked by
pornography.
Living in Bangladesh I'm not sure, though there
is pornography in Bangladesh, very quietly, very secretly,
I'm not sure if you can grasp the
dimension of this problem in our society.
We have in the western society pornoholics.
You know what an alcoholic is?
A man hooked on alcohol.
We have pornoholics.
They are completely hooked on pornography which leads
them into all forms of sexual perversion and
destroys their soul.
There are so many people in this category
that I could be full time just in
that ministry trying to help these people come
off this literature.
At 16 I'm sorry to say that I
started to distribute this literature in its more
mild form.
I never got into the heavy form.
Thank God I've not even seen much of
it.
It's a terrible thing.
And if you think it was born in
the west, then you might want to take
a trip to some of the caves of
north India because pornography was in India before
the west was even born.
It's as old as the heart of man.
Let us not blame east or west on
our problems.
This is a ridiculous debate that will only
bring further division in our world which many
have described now as a global village.
Sultan Idzin, one of the greatest writers of
our day, said to talk about internal affairs
is really quite foolish.
Quite foolish.
Somehow in the mercy of God this lady
prayed for me and sent me this book
which made a greater impression on my mind
than the evil literature that I was reading.
And then a man came to the city.
I was from a small town but I
was near a city.
And that man was Billy Graham.
In many ways a very ordinary man.
But a man who had been faithful.
Very close friend by the way of Bob
Pierce.
A mutual influence on each other.
Bob Pierce and Billy Graham.
But he came to New York City just
one night and some people were praying for
me and I went to that meeting and
I heard not religion.
Religion had not done very much for me.
I had become very religious.
I had become a religious leader.
You know in my particular state, if you
can follow my story, I'm now born in
the states where my father immigrated to.
The students take over the state government for
one day.
It's sort of a game but we think
it's an important game.
And we all go to the state capitol
and we sit in the chairs of the
parliament feeling very proud.
I was elected as the chaplain.
I ended up getting involved in something less
than the best with the chaplainess.
We call it necking.
I don't know if you have an equivalent
term in Bangladesh.
You can ask somebody for a definition after
the meeting.
The chaplain and the chaplainess within two days
end up in this kind of exercise program.
Of course I found at least in Pakistan
unbelievable exposure to western films.
The largest cinemas in all of planet earth
are in Karachi.
These are like coliseums.
Even at 3.30 in the afternoon you
sometimes cannot get a seat as people have
become worshippers of James Bond and Sylvester Stallone.
And of course probably there are many in
Bangladesh who consider these evil influences and they
probably are.
So you will produce your own films and
have other evil influences.
But it's amazing the influence of the films.
This is why I am a total committed
person to Christian film industry.
We have seen many many people come to
Jesus Christ through gospel films and we are
putting Christian films into about 25 languages at
this present time.
But to make a long story short I
went to that meeting I heard not more
religion.
Do this.
Do that.
Keep this rule.
Bow down here.
Stand up here.
Put this hat on.
Do this.
Drink that.
Go here.
I heard salvation.
I heard that God cared for me.
That he had a personal concern for me.
You see so much of religion is impersonal.
God is way out there totally beyond us.
We are just nothing.
And of course many people especially in our
western society many people are just bound by
religious chains.
The chains of Christian legalism that says I
must have a certain haircut and I must
wear a necktie and I must sit in
a particular way in the church.
And we have created a western form of
Christianity and we have exported this Christianity all
over the world.
So now in Pakistan they tell me I
can't preach in their church unless I put
my necktie on.
This is unbelievable.
One man thought the necktie was a Christian
symbol because Christ died on the cross and
these things can be used to choke people.
Perhaps this was a Christian symbol of death
because there have been people who have hung
themselves on the necktie.
And many people who are reared in these
traditions and they are just superstitions.
We are human beings.
We are all superstitious.
And we mix our religion with superstition.
And we come out with something that is
so far from the simple teaching of Jesus
Christ that if people actually became followers of
Christ and His simple teaching they would not
be welcomed into many of our churches because
our churches have gone so far from the
simplicity of Jesus Christ.
A man who had no place to lay
his head.
A man who had no money.
Have you ever visited the Vatican?
I sat with an atheist across me on
the train.
He was an atheist working for the Vatican.
His job was to invest money in arms,
pornography, anything.
Didn't matter.
He was an atheist.
And they created a dichotomy where they do
not know what's happening.
So they therefore cannot be blamed.
And believe me, believe me, it is important
for us to see the difference between the
simplicity and the beauty and the glory of
Jesus Christ and man-made religion with all
of its often ugliness.
The Iran-Iraq war.
Does this bring any pain to us?
A quarter of a million slaughtered all in
the name of religion.
A quarter of a million people.
What if they were your sons?
What if they were your daughters?
Maybe then it would be more than just
a newspaper clipping or a few minutes watching
television.
We live in a world of pain.
And if we are to be followers of
God and of Jesus, we must endure pain.
Life is pain.
We must somehow take on some of this
pain and then take it to our God
and in intercessory prayer see something accomplished.
And this is very much on my heart.
So that night in that simple meeting, I
was converted to Jesus Christ.
I decided not long after that that I
would not firstly think of myself as a
Christian.
Though do not misunderstand me because I am
completely linked all over the world with the
church.
I love the church.
Even when it's weak.
I've just met with a number of the
bishops in Pakistan.
I love the church.
I know the church is weak.
The church is not a special club for
super saints.
The church is a clinic.
It's a hospital for sinners.
And as long as we face that truth
then there is still hope for us.
And we are as true believers part of
the church.
First of all the church universal.
All believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Even those who don't enter church buildings are
part of the church universal.
It's a beautiful thing.
But I decided that I would think of
myself as a follower of Jesus Christ and
His teaching.
And that the goal of my life would
be to put into practice His teaching.
Now I made some mistakes.
I read Luke 14.33 except you forsake
all that you have you can't be my
disciple.
And so before reading some other verses like
Philippians.
My God will supply all of your needs
according to His riches and glory.
I sold everything I had.
My businesses, my clothing, everything.
And I learned to just live one day
at a time putting into practice what I
felt was the simple lifestyle demonstrated by Jesus
Christ.
I sent all my money to missionary organizations
and charity organizations and to Korean orphans.
I learned later that God works in different
people in different ways.
And though He led me that way I
met other Christian Christ followers who God led
to be businessmen.
So they could give to people sometimes like
me.
And I realized that God's unity comes in
the midst of diversity.
And there are many callings many callings and
that God actually entrusts wealth to some people.
And they have an awesome responsibility.
What to do with that money.
Little did I know when I took these
first steps of faith as a follower of
Jesus Christ that someday there would be a
movement called Operation Mobilization.
And that God would give us 300 vehicles
and two ocean going ships and 1,700
full time workers and 3,000 workers in
the summer and permanent bases of operation and
offices in 35 nations across the world.
If I had known such a thing would
happen I would have surely had a heart
attack or at least run in the other
direction.
Because I wanted simplicity.
I wanted to just disciple a few individuals.
My burden was to disciple only 12 men.
No more.
And God gave me one or two Mexicans
as I went to Mexico and lived among
the poor and learned the Spanish language by
living with the people.
At university my Spanish teacher thought this fellow
has no language ability.
I do not have a very high IQ.
I left university and went to Bible school.
They were not very impressed there either as
most of the time I kept running off
to help the poor and to work among
drunkards and drug addicts and neglected my studies.
But anyway I managed somehow to finish and
get a diploma.
And the teacher of Spanish looked at me
and was very discouraged.
But one month living in a home of
Mexican people I was speaking Spanish and had
been preaching Spanish for 27 years.
Never did I dream that one of our
ships, a bigger ship, three times bigger than
the Lagos that many of you have visited
would have a vital ministry in South America.
So I launched out just wanting to obey
Jesus Christ in simplicity.
And his teaching, his basic teaching is love.
Take love away, there is nothing left.
Nothing left of Christianity whatsoever.
Nothing.
We must remember that.
1 Corinthians 13.
1 John chapter 3 and 4.
Many whole chapters.
Do you know some of our traditions in
our churches are based on one verse?
Some are based on no verses.
No verses.
And we fight over these traditions.
And we have whole chapters.
1 Corinthians 13.
Many other chapters.
Well we don't fight over those chapters.
Because there is nothing to fight over.
And so I had this burden that true
biblical faith in Christ was a revolution of
love.
It was people having their lives changed.
It was not everybody joining the same church.
It was not everybody wearing a necktie.
Right?
It was not everybody praying the same way.
He said we must all pray nearly.
I actually pray better standing.
Recently I had a wonderful prayer time in
a mosque.
Praying like this.
Oh what a beautiful prayer time we had
in that mosque.
And many Muslims are more open to reading
the New Testament than my Christian friends.
That's right.
Muslims who will honor the Holy Injil, the
Word of God, more than Christians.
And some of them have deep personal faith
in Jesus Christ like my friend here.
All over the world I meet with such
people.
Jesus Christ when He came to this world
there were no Christians.
No Christians.
No churches.
Jesus only came for people.
He died on the cross for people.
Not Christians.
For people.
And we must understand this wonderful truth and
see that the true mark of a believer
in Christ is love.
He may choose to worship in his own
house.
Because if he gets rejected by those who
bear the name Christian or laughed at or
suspected of being some kind of a thief
he may for the sake of survival worship
in his own house.
And he may know God in his house
better than I may know Him in the
cathedral.
These cathedrals in any case in many countries
now look very strange.
And there is no biblical basis for them.
They are transplants.
They are leftovers of the great British Raj
which no longer exists.
And yet we treat them as museums of
the Holy Spirit.
It is good that God has a sense
of humor my friends.
And great patience and love or I'm sure
He would be dropping some bombs on some
funny strange buildings in Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and
other places.
I've spoken in all these places.
I also have a sense of humor.
How else can you survive with God's supposedly
chosen people who are so often frozen people
stuck in their traditions frozen by their own
superstitions and unwilling to become God-like Christ
-like lovers of people of the poor and
follow in the simple steps of the master
the man from Galilee who yea was a
carpenter not a banker who operated a saw
not a computer though I dare to say
he could have learned a computer if he
lived in our decade.
Someone might think that this is of course
just a little bit of religious emotion.
When I began to preach this way at
19 of course I was written off by
many church leaders as just being a reincarnation
of youthful zeal.
I so thank God that now I'm in
the middle years.
Any of you in the middle years 35
to 55 you can expand them on either
side depending on what vitamins you take.
I so thank God for these middle years
because nobody says anymore as I've had the
same zeal and the same love every day
for 29 years and the people who worked
with me 27, 28 years ago many of
them are still with me.
They know my life.
I have nothing hidden.
Nothing.
And they know it's not youthful zeal.
It is the Spirit of Christ.
This gambler.
This cheater.
This liar.
This man so hopeless at 16 received the
Spirit of Christ.
Gospel of John chapter 1 verse 12 as
many as receive Him to them He gives.
To them He makes the sons of God
and to them He gives His Holy Spirit
and His power.
And I still cannot understand it because many,
many times I have grown weary.
I get discouraged easily.
I don't sound like that kind of person
do I?
But you see when you hear a person
speak like this you only meet part of
that person.
The one who knows me better is my
wife.
She knows me when I am crying, afraid
to go on in life because it's so
terrifying for me.
I flew from Karachi to Dhaka with 200
men recruited from the villages of Pakistan who
came here during liberation and they did not
know what they were coming.
They did not know they were coming to
kill innocent people.
I sat in that plane.
I wept.
The pain was great as I saw a
nation that I loved.
Pakistan ripped in two.
Not that I mind having two nations but
could it not be done without killing and
raping hundreds of thousands.
The pain is still here and it is
still with many of your people.
That's why we had a holiday two days
ago.
Let us not forget the pain, the suffering
that brought this nation into birth and let
us be willing to continue to suffer pain
to make it a nation in which people
do love one another because it is a
nation of many different kinds of people.
It is a nation of many different varieties.
Every nation is.
And we must love one another.
We must live with one another.
Even if we do not believe in personal
redemption through Jesus Christ as I do, we
can at least believe that love is the
answer.
Every major religion has begun to accept at
least that part of the teaching of Jesus.
Hinduism has accepted it.
Gandhi accepted it.
A man who lived with the New Testament
by his bed.
And many Muslims have also accepted that love
must be the center of all that we
do.
And without that we will continue to have
Iran and Iraq.
Without that even this nation could come apart
again.
Even England could come apart as Ireland has
come apart and has left people wounded and
destroyed and murdered and weeping for over 15
years.
I believe in Jesus Christ but I believe
that He came to give a simple faith.
A simple, beautiful faith in which we love
one another.
We love our enemies.
We love those who persecute us.
We love those who despitefully use us.
And we love one another.
And though I have been discouraged many times,
I have turned to God's Word, to the
Psalms each morning, to verses like Galatians and
I have received the spiritual help to go
on and to continue one day at a
time walking with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Have you ever become discouraged in your marriage?
I'm not a good husband.
I'm a natural divorce case.
If I had five wives I might be
able to handle it.
One secretary, one companion, one cook, one for
traveling.
My wife hates to travel and yet she's
traveling with me 24 years.
But one wife, I have too much energy.
I jog and run several miles just to
burn energy.
My wife is never having enough energy.
She said to me the other day, I'm
getting tired just looking at you.
And in myself, my marriage would have divided
in two ten years ago to the hurt
of my three children.
But because of this book, because God is
God, because Christ's Spirit gives great strength at
that moment of weakness when we feel we
cannot go on, we have not even five
more taka of love, God refills us and
revives us.
We have worked in Turkey for 20 years.
Very little response.
Turkish people are materialist people.
They're selfish people.
Like all of us, they pay lip service
like so many to their own religion.
Ramadan is just, no one likes Ramadan apart
from a few.
Like so many parts of the world, it's
just religious tradition.
The heart of the Turk, as the heart
of the Iranian, as the heart of the
Englishmen and the American and the Russian and
the Chinese men, I have friends among all
these people is a lost, barren heart until
a spirit of love, spirit of Christ comes
in.
Well, that is my testimony.
That is my message.
Perhaps I've said too much.
So it is good now in the remaining
15 minutes to give you the opportunity to
ask a question.
But let us first of all just pray.
God, we thank you that you are real.
If you are living and true, God, you
are one.
There's none other aside from you.
We thank you that you love all people
and that you gave of yourself, not a
son as we think.
For living God, you had no wife, but
you gave of yourself.
And we call him a son.
And he died.
We may have a spirit of love and
peace and joy that our homes may be
places of love and peace, that our nations
may become places of love and peace, that
we may be whole people, healthy people, joyful
people.
Oh God, speak to us at this time
and cause each one of us to make
the right decision with our life.
Bring revival to your church, which bears your
name and so often is caught in tradition,
lukewarmness and superstition.
Revive your church.
Oh God, and cause us to be men
and women of love and compassion, that there
may be words of love alone that come
from our mouths, even when we do not
agree or we do not understand.
We thank you God for this time together
through Jesus Christ, our Messiah, our Lord, our
King.
Amen.
Is there anyone that would like to ask
a question?
Now when I speak, sometimes I speak a
little bit loud and I actually am trying
to speak softer, but my voice has not
developed a medium range.
I have a very low range I can
speak, a high range.
But please don't be afraid to ask a
question because I think it's beautiful to have
dialogue and of course if you're afraid you
can write to me and we can correspond.
I've had 14,000 letters from a result
of this book and I've answered half of
them.
The other half I've got some help to
answer.
They are all mainly friends and they are
reading the Injil and they are considering the
claims of Christ.
There are some of course that have become
followers of Christ without necessarily turning their back
on their own culture and their own people.
Of course Afghanistan within the country is a
fierce nation where many must understand it's not
just Russians killing Afghans.
If the Russians leave, Afghans will kill Afghans.
They are a fierce people.
That doesn't mean they're not a beautiful people.
They need the message of love.
Love is not well known in Afghanistan as
the Russians are learning at this present time.
Amazing country.
I've been there many many times and some
have been martyred for their faith in Christ
in Afghanistan.
I think it is not considered legal among
the Afghans but the present government which is
the Russian amalgamation of some Afghans and Russians
have invited Christian workers to help in their
hospitals.
This is not something that there is any
publicity about and these people are there mainly
with their life and love to demonstrate the
message of Jesus Christ.
Whether technically it is illegal as technically it
is in Nepal I don't actually know to
be honest.
Yes.
But I would be as I tried to
emphasize not enough but I generally do when
I speak.
When after we become followers of Jesus Christ
we are still human vessels and as I
shared when I told about my marriage we
fail.
We fail and we have to continually seek
God's forgiveness.
As I also tried to emphasize the church
is not a place of super saints.
It's a clinic.
It should be for sinners.
That's why it's so terrible.
It's so terrible when in the church we
get proud and we think we're better than
other people.
This is a terrible thing.
We must walk in the church with all
humility and when we talk to people outside
the church we must be honest and when
I witness to people whatever their background I
often start by telling some of my struggles.
I don't present myself as I am a
great follower of Jesus Christ.
You are a sinner.
You repent and come and be like me.
I share from a position of weakness.
This is also the way I lead the
work of OM worldwide.
I lead from a position of weakness.
Now God has given me some strengths as
well but I feel that I am a
servant.
I'm not Generalissimo Bungo Bungo of OM.
I'm God's servant and I'm learning and I'm
serving and I feel that we must be
servants.
Someone else.
You said that the Muslims in some part
of the world they really respect the Holy
Book.
Well we must understand that many Muslims are
taught to respect the Holy Book and once
they accept that as the Holy Book then
they of course respect it and want to
read it.
As you may know we have been very
involved in the distribution and the publication of
the Injil Sharif here in Bangladesh.
I believe this is one of the great
victories for the church.
Let me tell you something that you can
pass on to your Christian leaders.
Some of the Christian leaders here are not
in favor of this.
That all over the world all over the
world the Christian leaders and even Christian scholars
they believe that this is a wonderful and
good thing.
The problem is it is difficult to see
this objectively when you are in this particular
culture and so we are being very subjective
about this new translation.
Now if you don't know the meaning of
objective and subjective you can ask somebody.
But basically subjective means our own emotions, our
own feelings our own situations.
Get involved rather than a scholarly more objective
biblical approach.
We have to understand that all of our
Bibles are translations.
I actually want to produce, this is one
of my unfulfilled dreams a Bengali Injil Sharif
published next to the Greek New Testament.
I read the Koran and of course I
have two Korans.
I have Urdu Arabic and I have English
Arabic.
When they publish the Koran generally always two
languages.
Emphasize original language Arabic.
We also have original language Greek, Hebrew.
We need a Bible.
We have Greek English Bible.
We need Bengali Greek Bible.
In any case all are translations.
So we have to explain that to people.
Our Muslim friends for many years would not
translate the Koran into English or any other
language for many years.
Only Arabic.
They change.
And they have to always explain this is
translation.
So we must be willing to change and
explain this is a new translation.
Because language keeps changing keeps changing.
And I believe this new translation is very
very important for the work of God.
And we must pray because the big argument
is still going on.
Some want to change the cover.
The Christians do not like the cover Injil
Sharif.
They want to say Holy Bible.
The word Bible is not found in the
Bible.
And you see if we change that cover
this will confuse our Muslim friends.
Because they are already thinking this is what
the Christians have done.
They have changed the Injil.
That is a basic teaching.
There are books explaining and answering those questions.
Very good books.
So if we now change the cover again
many people are going to be confused.
So I personally though it is not my
decision.
I have only one little voice.
Sometimes big voice.
I don't think we should change the cover.