Personal prayer request, I just received a proof
copy from our printer in New Jersey where
our USA office is, of the most unusual
prayer letter that I've ever written.
I've been writing prayer letters for about 28
years, since when I first went to Mexico.
Some of you may not know this story,
but the Bethany bookshop in Mexico City that's
been going for maybe 20 years, was the
first ground level, street level bookshop that was
ever opened in that city, Christian bookshop, and
my wife and I and a few others
opened that shop, store, I think you say
over here, book store, back around 1959, and
that's where my wife and I lived, in
a closet in the back of that store,
when we were first married.
And we wondered what happened to it in
the earthquake, but apparently 36B, Independence Street is
still standing, and so when you pray for
your bookstore ministry in Mexico City, maybe you
can pray for me as well.
But the prayer letter I've just written is
the first prayer letter in 28 years of
O.M.'s history that ever openly mentions anything
about finance.
Can you imagine the traumatic experience of writing
such a letter?
To write such a letter we had to
get complete unity from the senior leadership and
the general council of O.M. worldwide.
The final decisions in O.M. are made
waiting upon God by the whole body of
people we meet once a year, all who
can get there, usually four or five hundred
of us, the other thousand generally can't get
there.
And God gave us unity after hours of
prayer and discussion, really over quite a period
of time, that we should be more open
and honest, and engage in what some missions
call information without solicitation.
For the last couple of years we've been
stating that's what our policy was, but we
weren't really practicing it.
It was almost considered unspiritual in O.M.
to mention money unless you were preaching something
from the Word.
And as I've shared with you already, we
had a lot of confusion.
This prayer letter going out right now is
going to shock a few of our prayer
partners, because it shares openly the tremendous dilemma
that O.M. is in, in this area,
and the fact that the Dulas probably will
not be able to leave on schedule for
Africa.
The African project is the largest single project
in the history of O.M. Involving 15
to 17 nations, almost all of those nations
have been extended, even the government, an official
invitation to us.
Our lineup people are already there, and I
would just really ask you to pray for
this letter that is going out, that somehow
our people, our prayer partners, would not misunderstand,
but they would just really pray and do
whatever God wants them to do.
But we really need to see a breakthrough
as a result of this letter.
Similar letters going out around the world.
I don't know if you've ever read that
leaflet by Keith Green.
I'd be happy to send you one.
I mean, by Melody Green, Keith Green's widow,
called, Unsung Heroes.
I would have thought here at Bethany that
should be required reading, because you have a
lot of behind-the-scene workers.
But that is the most brilliant leaflet I
have ever read about the behind-the-scene
ministry in missionary work.
Many of our people are in the behind
-the-scene ministry.
We have a publishing house, and we have
small printing presses here and there, and we
have all kinds of behind-the-scene activities.
We have headquarters in 35 nations.
All of them have offices.
To get 2,000 summer candidates, we have
to process between 10,000 and 15,000
people.
That takes a lot of people behind the
scenes.
So I recommend that little leaflet.
I think the literature that's being produced by
Last Days Ministry is quite exciting.
You can get their magazine free of charge.
I've just written another article for it called
Why Many Volunteer and Few Go.
I'm actually going to touch on a few
of those points this evening.
That's something really exciting.
I know you're already praying for Youth with
a Mission last night after the meeting and
after my phone call to my board of
directors that I mentioned to you.
I talked at length with Leland Paris, the
director of YWAM in North America, and agreed
to go to their GoFest gathering there in
Texas in July, when they're hoping to gather
thousands and present the challenge of world evangelism.
And that's something perhaps you can be praying
about.
How exciting it is to see what God
is doing through Youth with a Mission.
Just before coming here, I spoke to their
entire British staff, over 250 full-time, just
in Great Britain.
75% of them were from other countries
evangelizing and working in the British Isles.
Very exciting.
Is there anybody that's here for the first
time this evening?
Somehow you're just here for the first time.
Raise your hand.
Welcome.
How many others?
I've only been here last night and tonight.
You're evening people.
You're working all day.
You can't come to these festivals.
All right, quite a few people.
Maybe I should just mention the fact that
between last night and last night, there's been
almost a volcanic eruption on our book table,
and there has appeared a packet of books
that you've never seen anything like it in
the history of bargains.
Ten books, $50 to $70 worth of books
that you can pick up for a $10
post-dated check.
And if the check bounces, you'll probably never
even hear from us, so we wouldn't encourage
that kind of mischief.
Straight Thinking About God.
No Substitute for Persevering.
That brilliant book, How Come It's Taking So
Long to Get Better, a $6 book.
Let's see what else.
Sometimes they change the books in these packs.
Let's just see what else is in here.
ABC of Follow-Up.
Here's a book, How to Give Your Children
Everything They Really Need.
Joy of Growing Older.
That's for Alec.
And here's one by Theodore Epp, The All
-Sufficiency of Christ.
He Went to Be with Jesus in 85.
For Families Only.
A brilliant book.
That's worth $5.
Here's one for the children.
All of these books.
The idea is to try to get book
fever into your over-frozen spiritual blood system.
Because, you know, the way some people go
to a book table, you'd think we were
selling some kind of frozen fungus.
Sort of just look and, you know, touch
and then walk away.
The idea is not just to get another
book for yourself, but books to give away.
Every Christian should be a literature distributor.
I've written a book on that, actually.
You published it in Spanish.
It's one of the most slow-selling books
ever printed.
But it's about how every Christian can be
a literature distributor.
You don't have to necessarily go about it
in the same way I do.
You can be a real low-profile operator.
But you can have a lot of treasure
laid up in heaven by getting involved in
a literature ministry.
I've been around to all these other tables
gathering up everything that's free.
I can't understand how people can put free
things out and have anything left at the
end of the day.
Except the average Christian has as much vision
as a flea on a ski trip.
But I hope that you'll take advantage of
this literature and also the maps and the
books by men like Tozer.
My newest book, which isn't so new now,
I was totally opposed to any Verwer books
because I'm not a writer.
But a publisher in England and an editor
started listening to my tapes and sort of
bent my arm, really, to put some more
of that material into writing and then I
corrected it and put in a lot of
quotes.
The best part of my books are all
the quotes from other people's books.
But if you want a little follow-up
on what I've been sharing, because tomorrow's our
last day, you can either get one of
these cassette albums full of material or you
can get one of my books where I
deal with a lot of other material that
I wish I had time to share with
you here.
I find quite a few people don't understand
Operation Mobilization.
I'm almost tempted to speak about OM.
Maybe I'll pray about that tonight and get
some courage for tomorrow.
So, not that I haven't been told not
to speak about OM.
I haven't been told anything.
But I think it's important to understand that
OM is firstly a long-term, spiritual, revolutionary,
missionary force committed to world evangelism.
It's not a short-term work.
When I launched into this and found co
-workers to launch out with me, there was
no discussion of short-term.
When I found the first Indians who joined
and became full-time workers, it was all
life commitment.
They left high-paying jobs, some of them,
to come into this work.
Short-term with us partly developed because we
needed a way to get people moving out
of OM that we didn't want.
Then we discovered that was really a good
way also to channel people into other missions
because there's all kinds of people.
We felt a very great loyalty to other
missionary agencies.
We have people who have graduated from OM
working with almost every single major mission society
in the world.
We've had 37,000 graduates.
So that's exciting.
But our first burden is still to find
men and women who will become long-term
career missionaries, especially in the Muslim world, communist
world, Hindu world, and wherever else in the
world because we're now working almost in the
entire world.
We even on our ships need longer-term
people.
Our captain has no intention of leaving the
ship unless he gets ill.
He might not even leave then.
And he's a retired man.
First time I ever met him was right
here in Minneapolis.
And I hope that some of you might
take a little extra effort.
I know you may specialize in superficiality.
I hope not.
To figure out what OM is actually doing
because I believe many more of you.
I often say, you know, if a Bethany
person can't get on in OM, I don't
know who can.
There are many similarities.
Only WECC is better in handling Bethany people
and, of course, Bethany missions than Operation Mobilization.
We're third, you see.
So we'd like to get a few more
of you on OM and longer term.
And we hope you'll pray about that and
pick up this little leaflet introducing Operation Mobilization.
OM's four target areas.
There are actually six, but there are four
there.
And some of the other material.
And I believe you will get excited and
get in touch with us for long-term
or short-term.
We also have our short-term program for
us.
We call that two years.
We do have a summer program.
That's a hiccup mini program.
We don't encourage it so much.
But it has been the entrance for many
people into our two-year, five-year, ten
-year, 25-year program.
So we're sort of, you know, a pluralistic
group with a wide range of fishhooks.
And we hope some of you will get
involved.
Here's a new leaflet we just published with
our new policy, How to Be an OM
Partner.
We're looking for people not just to go,
but also to give.
And believe me, we see both of these
ministries clearly in the Word of God.
Hallelujah.
How many of you have had an encouraging,
challenging day?
Raise your hand.
What about the rest of you turkeys?
I don't believe in any discouraging, non-challenging
days.
Just, you know, just share that with you.
There's no extra charge.
Just throw that out.
But really, it's so pathetic when we see
Christians who are not living in the light
of their inheritance, the fullness of grace, the
joy of God, the reality of His presence.
One of my blessings was to visit this
tremendous, whatever you call it, in-depth Whirlpool
Sona workout room.
I tried to bust in there at 1
o'clock.
I discovered that was women's hour.
Fortunately, the door was locked.
So I went and made a phone call,
then went in there at 3 o'clock.
And that's a great place.
I don't like jogging on ice.
I'm not as young as I used to
be and I can just imagine myself slipping
and breaking my nose or something delicate.
So it's great to be able to run
indoors.
And you are very privileged people to have
such a workout room and all that you
have there in terms of exercise facilities.
So that was a part of the blessing
that I had for today.
I also had a 45-minute interview with
this woman who's writing a book on Christian
music.
And if she prints what I said on
the telephone, I found out in the middle
of the conversation I was in the men's
dorm surrounded by Philistines.
And if she prints all that, there'll be
a very unusual book coming out.
Well, let's turn in the Word of God
to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1.
The Gospel of Mark, chapter 1.
Don't forget Operation Feedback is still open.
I don't say things unless I mean them.
Anything you want to say, any prayer requests,
put it on a big piece of paper.
Give it in at the literature table.
Tomorrow night's the best time because you may
get something to say tomorrow.
I've already offered one or two free things,
which is really silly and gives my office
personnel excessive work.
But when I offer something free, like that
leaflet Unsung Heroes, I mean it.
I just find it impossible not to give
away literature.
I've done about 30, 40 letters today.
And in almost every letter I send a
free book or a free leaflet or five
free leaflets.
And it's amazing.
I can sit here.
I'm traveling in the motorhome of an old
friend, a dear friend of mine who's with
me.
And I can sit in that little motorhome
and I can dictate letters and literally talk
to people all over the world through the
miracle of the dictaphone.
A little tiny machine, a little cassette tape.
You know one of the greatest needs of
missionary work?
Women who know how to type or men.
How many of you know how to type
25 words a minute or more?
That's unbelievable.
That just blows my circuits.
You are very gifted, talented, special people.
And I'd be willing to pray with you
personally about coming and typing for me in
England.
And don't believe all this fantasy about British
weather and fog.
We get very little fog anymore.
And we get lovely weather.
The sun comes out occasionally.
And we praise God for people that we've
had from Bethany working with us there in
England.
In England we have a work among Arabs.
We have a work among immigrants.
We're church planting among Muslims in Bradford.
We have work, of course, among the British.
We have a literature ministry.
We have the international headquarters of OM.
Lots going on.
Great Britain.
And a lot more happening in Britain than
you may ever imagine.
Mark chapter 1.
The Lord Jesus walking along the Sea of
Galilee.
Verse 16.
He saw Simon Andrew, his brother, casting a
net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
Interesting.
Jesus said unto them, Come after me, and
I will make you become fishers of men.
And straightway, it's an old English word, straightway,
immediately, they forsook their nets and followed him.
When he had gone a little farther, he
saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John,
his brother, who also were in the boat
mending their nets.
And immediately he called them and they left
their father.
Imagine that.
Left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with
the hired servants.
And they went after him.
Notice over in chapter 2.
Very different kind of character.
Verse 14.
And as he, Jesus, passed by, he saw
Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the
tax office and said unto him, Follow me.
And he arose and followed him.
And it came to pass that as Jesus
was eating in his house, many tax collectors
and sinners sat also together with Jesus and
his disciples, for there were many and they
followed him.
Here we see the Lord Jesus walking among
ordinary men and choosing them for this great
task of being fishers of men.
I so appreciate the opportunity of having a
series of meetings with you.
I can't always do that.
Because one message can bring other messages into
balance.
And I hope some of you will get
tapes of messages you've missed.
And the message I'm sharing this evening needs
to be brought into balance by what I
shared yesterday morning.
Because I made it very clear that laymen
in the factory, in the office, are not
second-class citizens.
And that God is leading different people in
different ways.
But my burden this evening is a burden
concerning the need for full-time fishers of
men in the harvest fields.
And I believe it is biblical that we
have full-time workers.
I know some of the arguments against full
-time workers.
A couple of rather well-known men of
God in this country have been hitting pretty
hard at this lately.
And I understand a little bit of where
they're coming from.
Full-time Christian work has been abused.
There are all kinds of full-time Christian
workers.
But as we think of the work especially
overseas, and then we think of the enormous
backup force that's needed for missions, we realize
we need people just as Jesus needed people
back then, who will leave their nets.
And that is the toughest decision that many
of you will have to make in your
life.
A few of you may have to make,
some of you will have to make a
reverse decision to go back to your nets.
Because of the complexity that's sometimes involved in
getting into longer-term missionary work, especially overseas.
But I want to share with you this
burden that God put on my heart when
I was sailing on the Dulos.
Our larger ship had come back from South
America, 300 on that ship.
And I went with my daughter, wanted to
get some time with her, and we went
through Spain by train and grabbed a ship
in southern Spain and sailed to the Canary
Islands.
And joined the Dulos and then sailed with
the Dulos back to Spain.
Now I had touched on related areas in
other messages, but I never quite gave a
message as strong as the message I gave
during a series I was giving on the
ship.
One of the concepts, one of the 25
concepts behind the ship ministry, was that we
could train people and teach people and have
intensive study while we were at sea going
to the next major evangelistic crusade.
You can never understand the ministry of Lagos
and Dulos unless you've been on those ships.
I was the one that had the original
vision for this ministry and wrote the original
memo.
21 years ago I wrote that memo.
Why we need ocean-going ships in world
evangelism.
And I can say today, and I'm a
very critical person when it comes to my
own movement, no one can devastate OM as
fast as I can.
But in being sometimes critical of the ship
ministry, I can say that it's actually gone
better and has proven to be far more
effective in world evangelism and discipleship training and
carrying out our various goals than I ever
expected.
Anyway, I was traveling on that ship and
I shared this message.
It's simply called, Seven Reasons Why You Should
Go.
Now I was pointing to you, the audience
that was there on the ship.
And this is a message that I felt
was for them.
I didn't give it again for quite a
while until I had a similar audience.
And I feel this is a message that
the Holy Spirit has to prepare people for.
It's not something I give out in a
high school meeting.
I love high school meetings.
It's not a message I give out to
new converts or even in the average local
church.
I might give it out in a very
missionary-minded church where there's been a lot
of preparation.
And I feel you are also the kind
of audience that I can share this message
with, though it's modified each time I give
it.
Seven reasons why you, a student here at
Bethany, should go.
Now I know there are visitors here and
we're going to allow you to listen to
this message.
And we hope you'll also realize that if
you're in fellowship and in part of this
great church, that this message probably fits into
your situation as well.
Now I'm not going to appeal to your
emotion primarily.
Sometimes as missionaries we appeal too much to
people's emotion.
And I want to tell you that on
the mission field we at times already have
too many emotional people.
If we're going to work in the Muslim
world, if we're going to work in the
non-responsive areas, we need a few more
phlegmatics, good Scandinavian background phlegmatics.
Might be some of those here.
Praise God for the glorious occasional Italian or
Spaniard or just mongrel like myself who may
arrive.
Welcome.
Don't feel intimidated by the Norwegian-Scandinavian factor.
There's a great place for you.
We need each other.
But in the work of God, sometimes we
get a little bit too emotional.
And we show our missionary slides and our
missionary horror movies and people are weeping and,
you know, will you go, will you go?
And I tell you, in OM we've had
28 years of sorting out these characters.
And we've sent some of them back home.
Farming is a good place for the emotional
types.
Really, they can get out in the fields
and dance and jump up in the air
and scare the birds that want to eat
the crop away.
And you don't need any scarecrows then.
But on the mission field we need plotters.
William Carey said, give me plotters.
We need people who have committed themselves and
committed their wills to serving God, to sowing
the seed, to following up and to the
missionary work that they have been led into.
Seven reasons.
I want to appeal to your minds.
I want you to think.
I know it's late.
My body is about two in the morning.
So if you feel tired, you can pray
for me.
I want you to think.
Because I think you need to have reasons.
Many of you are already planning to go
to the mission field.
This will just fortify.
This will just perhaps help you have a
greater confirmation that you're going.
I just got a letter from a Dutch
woman in our New Jersey office who was
there on the doulos when I gave this
message.
She was one of the many short-term
people on OM.
It's 70 on doulos.
Respond to the invitation and make a commitment
to career missions.
The next day I gave them a night
to think about it after I shared this
message.
That's in the midst of young people already
in missionary training on OM, on the ship.
So who knows, even here where so many
of you are already moving forward in missions,
there may be some who make a more
final decision this evening about going.
May God strengthen your will.
I would have been wiped out in missions
years ago if God had not strengthened my
will when I was 17, 18, 19.
I love those words in Joshua, be courageous.
I'm not a courageous person by nature.
I'm a coward.
I saw a great book some time ago,
A Handbook for Witnessing for Cowards.
I thought, praise God, they finally got a
book for me.
You know, I'm known as this very aggressive,
evangelistic, Mr. Door to Door.
And the fact is that I do, of
course, engage in evangelism.
And one of the first things I did
when I was saved was started going door
to door in my own town, selling books,
winning people to Christ.
But I never found it easy.
Never found it easy.
To this day, I don't find it easy
to talk to a person about Jesus.
I'd rather curl up and read a book.
I'd rather write a letter.
At least all the people who have written
to me, they seem open.
They're ready to receive.
It's easier for me to preach an evangelistic
meeting to a thousand people or even on
television, and I've done it, than talk to
one person, cold turkey, on a train or
a bus.
And that's one of the reasons in OM
we encourage every OMer to be involved in
face-to-face encounter, eyeball, nose-on-nose,
not quite lip-on-lip evangelism.
Unless they pass out and you need artificial
respiration.
And we've discovered in our work that many
young people who are petrified of door-to
-door work and street work and personal work,
not only learned how to do it, but
they have enjoyed it.
And I have learned how to enjoy all
these forms of evangelism.
But it's often a battle as well.
Seven reasons why you should go.
Who's you?
All of you who are sitting here.
I mean, let's face it, this kind of
meeting isn't popular.
You know, I actually thought we'd have twice
as many people here.
I mean, you know, Ignorant, I don't know
what Bethany is.
I thought people come from all over Minneapolis.
They heard Bethany.
I mean, over in Europe, we feel Bethany
is a very famous, important, significant place, at
least in OM.
So, you know, I've come all the way
from London.
I figure these Minneapolis people ought to be
able to travel across the city.
But there's not many visitors.
I don't know, maybe you don't advertise it.
So I somehow believe those who are here,
this is in God's sovereign purposes.
You know, maybe I'm mixed up.
You can pray for me.
But I believe world missions is really on
the heart of God.
I don't believe there's much going on in
Minneapolis as important as this tonight.
Everybody's talking about these, what are these games
coming up?
The Rose Bowl or some bowl?
Fish Bowl?
What's this?
What game is football games coming up?
Ah, Super Bowl, yeah.
I don't know, I guess it's E.T.
versus Clint Eastwood.
Something big, I know.
To me, next to missions, it's a dull
bore.
It really is.
I used to be absolutely neurotic on sports.
I was a Yankee fan.
I won money every year on the New
York Yankees.
You remember in the 50s?
Some of you weren't around, of course.
But, you know, it really gets a bit
boring, especially watching.
To me, spectatorism in general turns me off.
The whole thing of just sitting.
Now, I know this is part of my
temperament.
I don't want to make you sitters feeling
guilty, even though you're getting calluses on your
bottom.
You know, don't feel bad.
But, you know, I like to be a
doer.
You know, if we're going to have sports,
let's go do it.
You know, let's go play football.
Or let's go skiing.
But just watching.
Now, if that's the way that you get
your relaxation, and that really recharges your batteries,
and it just enables you to get back
to the job and serve Christ better, hallelujah,
go watch the Super Bowl.
Because I believe in relaxation.
Seems that we're a bit excessive at times
in that area.
Seems when it comes to prayer meetings, people
like it short and sweet.
When it comes to sports, they like to
go all the way.
You know, let's watch it right to the
final touchdown, and then they have extra time.
And American television, those of us who live
in Britain are a little spoiled.
The most unbelievable interruptions by the most ridiculous
advertising I have ever seen.
It's a good time to walk out, I
guess, and win someone to Christ.
And then come back.
But I don't know how people handle television
in this country.
So I believe this meeting tonight is important.
I feel bad that more people aren't here.
I'm just being honest.
But we're not going to worry about that,
because we believe it's in God's providence you're
here.
And I believe you're here because God wants
you, many of you, to go.
Can you spell go?
I know spelling's not a big thing in
the States these days.
Go.
Not yet?
Good.
Reminded me of a story someone told me
of years ago when I was here at
Bethany, and I was getting a little bit
hyper.
I'm trying to be a lot more self
-controlled these days.
And I cried out, are we...
It must have been in the context, of
course, of the message on missions.
Are we going to let China go to
hell?
And a little girl, very young, shouted out
from the back of the church, No!
I think she's 16 now.
Talked with her mother.
I think it was her mother yesterday.
Seven reasons why you should go.
Let's get so many names here, just to
get this personal.
How many Davids?
Davids, raise your hand.
You, okay.
Matildas, how many Matildas?
No Matildas.
Marys, raise your hand.
You.
James.
Peters.
Georges.
Any Georges here?
You.
All right, I don't have time to go
through everybody's name.
But I think you got the point.
What are the reasons?
Of course, we know undermining these seven practical
reasons, undermining all of this, is the basic
command of Scripture.
I don't like to go over ABC in
a school like this that is teaching missions.
So I'm not going to go over the
Great Commission.
I'm not going to go over Acts 1
-8.
I take it you already have the ABCs.
You know that Jesus said, Go.
You know that Jesus said, I am the
way, the truth, and the life.
No man cometh to the Father but by
Me.
You know that Acts says there's no other
salvation except in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
So we'll jump on from that foundation and
give some of these practical reasons.
Number one.
Not many ever get as far as you
have already gotten in terms of missionary commitment
and interest.
You may not realize that.
And I will tell you, this is an
unusual institution in present-day American practice and
thinking.
The very fact that most people who come
here are, to some degree, committed to missions.
The very fact that you're not academic neurotics,
which is the order of the day, even
in some of our best Bible colleges.
They have sold out to academics.
The prayer meeting is not attended.
The missionary conferences are poorly attended.
The faculty, oh my land, the faculty of
some of these institutions.
I wouldn't give them a job even, you
know, polishing the end of somebody's shoe in
Operation Mobilization.
Because they have so little vision.
It's professional Christianity in America.
You get a job, you get a salary,
you don't really know what commitment is, much
less forsaking all for the sake of the
gospel, spiritual warfare, and all that we read
about in the Book of Acts.
Forget it.
It's not existent to any great degree in
present-day American evangelicalism.
They may seem like strong words.
I don't say strong words without a lot
of research, 29 years of it.
A.W. Tozer said it already years ago.
We have measured ourselves by ourselves for so
long, we no longer have higher plateaus in
the things of the Spirit.
I had a missions conference in one of
our great Bible colleges.
They brought me all the way from England,
and I will tell you, hardly a single
faculty member even attended.
They are not interested to any great degree.
They are in their own career.
They are basically promoting and practicing selfism.
Selfism is the big thing today.
It's the I-my-me philosophy.
It's what's in it for me, my career,
my salary.
The very fact that people just jump from
church to church, often hinged on higher salaries,
is proof enough.
I could write a book on this subject.
It would be the greatest or one of
the greatest indictments of present day pseudo-Christianity
in America that could ever be written.
The other side of the coin is God
is loving, God is merciful, God is forgiving.
He works with people where they are, and
He does somehow specialize in even using and
working through spiritual babies.
And I believe we are a nation of
spiritual babies.
Spoon-fed spiritual babies that want the blessing
but not the responsibility.
And I believe God has given you an
unusual calling in this school, and in this
whole community.
And God in His sovereignty has brought you
here from many parts of the world.
Met someone today from Brazil.
It's interesting, after meeting him I went back
to my work, and I found the announcement
about a big OM Missions conference going on
in Brazil, I think right now.
God is working in that country.
Not many get as far as you get,
or have already gotten.
Now you may not feel you're very far.
I know some young people who just specialize
in putting themselves down.
You probably don't feel you have any great,
tremendous, overwhelming missionary vision.
In fact, the average Bible school student, who
is committed and who is serious, is often
feeling guilty about his lack of compassion.
Beware of hyper-idealism in the area of
compassion.
You're still a very human being, no matter
how filled with a spirit you are, and
compassion doesn't come lightly, and it does not
come automatically.
It's a daily exercise of faith, to turn
from self, to turn from our own lukewarmness
and our own weakness, to dependence on Christ,
to a work of grace in our hearts,
that gives us compassion and sends us out,
like praying hide in thousands of others whose
footsteps we follow in, to reach the lost.
If you, after the vision you receive, after
the teaching you receive, after the exposure you
receive, even in conferences like this, if you
don't go, who will?
Would you tell me?
Maybe you could write me a note.
Somebody out of Yale University?
Somebody who is making $50,000 a year,
selling vitamins?
Who is going to go?
Now, I believe God is doing a work
on the university campus, and I'd like to
see some of these university students, just as
I did, leave university and come to Bethany.
That's a bit of a radical message.
That wouldn't be too popular in some circles,
I would dare to say.
In Britain, to leave university is considered almost
a mortal sin, by the sort of middle
-class, snobberbia-type Christian person.
Really!
And in this country as well, many people
feel you must get all these academic qualifications
first.
Then, maybe, perhaps, you could, you know, think
of some missionary work.
You probably won't, because, number one, by the
time you finish all that academic pursuit, you'll
be married, and the chances of Little Miss
American Muffet of 1985 going to the mission
field is about as great as E.T.
winning a hockey match.
And so we have a lot of frustrated
people, because they somehow decide they want to
go, but Little Miss Muffet doesn't want to
go, or maybe if Little Miss Muffet wants
to go, Little Mr. Puffet doesn't want to
go, because he's a materialist, and he's got
the all-American dream.
In any way, he's basically so used to
such a soft way of life, and life
in America is generally so soft, just the
thought of enduring hardship on the mission field
is enough to give the person a clear,
unmistakable case of the argues.
It's interesting how few missionaries our seminaries are
producing, and I speak in these places, because
I like to specialize in raising the dead,
but it's really quite pathetic.
And if anybody who hears these tapes, I
get in all kinds of trouble with my
tapes, and if some of you just happen
to send one of these to somebody who's
teaching at seminary, let me just put that
in balance, that there are a few great
seminaries.
Some of them have a great missions program,
but they are rare, and they generally don't
even get support from their own people.
And I was at one of our great
seminaries.
They had a voluntary meeting, a huge seminary.
It was their missions conference, a voluntary meeting.
I didn't know what I was going into.
Hardly anyone came.
Maybe it was my fault.
A dull, boring speaker that they had never
heard of.
Okay.
But I understand that every year it's more
or less the same.
They don't go.
They don't even go to their own missions
conference.
They only have one a year.
It's unbelievable the state of affairs.
I believe God, of course, is calling missionaries
out of many different environments.
This is OM's specialty.
We're a missionary movement for non-missionaries.
We recruit them right out of the bars.
Some of you know Ray May, who we
recruited him.
He was hitchhiking down the road to India.
We picked him up, gave him two weeks
of solid gospel in the back of one
of our trucks, and he ended up getting
saved.
Ended up studying at Bethany, and now he's
one of the pastors of one of the
fastest growing church movements in the British Isles.
Saved and sent.
Praise God for the Marashal.
I think...
Did Bethany ever publish her book many years
ago?
We're trying to get it back into print.
Have you ever heard of the Marashal?
Let's see how your education is going.
How many know who the Marashal is?
That's pretty good.
That's pretty good for a generally ignorant country.
The Marashal was the daughter of General William
Booth.
Have you ever heard of William Booth?
Let's try that one.
Ah, good.
You want to read an upsetting, mind-bending,
foot-trotting book?
Try The General Next to God.
Makes OM seem like some kind of sleepy
time program.
The early days of the Salvation Army.
The General Next to God.
The Marashal was just like her dad.
Outspoken, dynamic, woman evangelist.
I know that doesn't fit into some people's
little theological boxes.
Every time you try to put God in
a theological box, he will surely break out
and you'll probably get a bloody nose in
the process.
But the Marashal launched out, ended up disobeying
her father.
He kicked her out of the Salvation Army.
A little bit of a rigid movement, the
Salvation Army.
Used to be.
So she started her own program and probably
brought tens of thousands to Christ.
One of the greatest preachers of all times.
The Marashal.
Lived to be 70 or 80.
Maybe she visited Bethany.
I don't know.
So God is saving all kinds of people.
I'm at a university gathering this coming weekend
called Mandate 86.
Mainly all university students.
And they've made this known all over the
whole Midwestern area.
A lot of publicity.
Working through InterVarsity.
Working through many groups.
Tremendous planning two years in advance.
Last I heard only 300 people signed up.
They're excited.
But that just shows how hard it is
to get a Christian university student to commit
even one weekend to world missions.
Now I don't like to put all my
eggs in one basket.
So I'm here at Bethany this week.
I'm there with them next week.
I'm at a huge Presbyterian church the week
after that.
Then I'm at one or two other places
the week after that.
But I still have my strong conviction.
That many of the missionary candidates for the
future are going to come from places like
Bethany.
And there are not many places like this.
Prairie Bible Institute is the school.
That has put more missionaries on the field
than any other school so far.
I know Briarcrest.
I was at their missions conference this year
or spiritual life conference preaching missions.
Is somehow catching up with Prairie.
Moody maybe third or fourth.
I don't think anybody's done any studies in
recent years.
And I guess in one way it doesn't
much matter because we're not in competition.
But I know that these schools are finding
it harder to produce men and women for
missions.
I can give you many reasons.
Some are in that article I've written for
last day's magazine.
So my first reason is that not many
get as far as you get.
We're not here to judge others.
But we're here realizing we have an enormous
task.
And somehow we've got to give some more
thought to how it's going to be done.
Number two, the need is so great.
Really it's overwhelming.
There has hardly been a day for 30
years when I have not been intensively conscious
of the need.
I live in these countries.
My whole life has been out trying to
reach these nations with the gospel.
First Mexico, then Spain, Soviet bloc, Western Europe,
North Africa, the Middle East, India.
Now the whole of Asia.
Then the whole of South America.
Just accepted into OM as a field.
Now Africa that we don't feel OM should
begin longer term missionary work in Africa.
We want to support the existing missions there.
And you know as you visit these countries,
and that's one of the values, one of
20 values in short term missionary work, is
to become aware of the need.
You can pray better when you go back
home.
You can recruit better.
You can mobilize others.
You can be an effective chairman of your
missionary committee.
You can be a wiser, more committed pastor.
So much you can do if you've got
a couple of years service out on the
field.
When I got on the plane in Veracruz
a couple of weeks ago, Mexico, on the
same plane were a couple of these Mormons.
They're everywhere.
And they all give two years.
I am amazed at the ignorance among missiologists.
I don't know if you have any missiologists
at Bethany.
That's a high sounding word.
The guys are the heads of the mission
department.
I love to debate and get into scraps
with these characters.
Because a lot that's being taught in some
of these missions departments is eyewash.
It comes out of textbooks.
It comes out of half-truths.
Let some of these men go and live
in these places for 20 years.
Then they would be teaching something different.
But it's not valid to live in one
mission field.
To live in one mission field for 20
years will make you a great missionary, but
often a lopsided professor.
Because you can only judge things on your
subjective experience.
So some of the people who are the
most anti-short-term are people who were
longer-term missionaries.
They get long-term missionary pride.
It's like fungus.
And it burdens me, it bothers me, that
we have a fair number of missiologists taking
fairly heavy pop shots at short-term missionary
work.
And it's sad.
The Mormons have proven that on a two
-year program, they can do an in-depth
work that makes a lot of our church
planting look fairly superficial.
So let's be a little bit careful of
taking pop shots at two-year short-term
missionary programs.
Because the Mormons, with their commitment and their
drive and their perseverance, when they send back
the 25,000 who are on the field
now, replace it with 25,000.
And in OM, every time we send back
600, after their one- or two-year
commitment, we replace it with six or seven
hundred.
And that's gone on for 25 years.
So though I am very aware of weaknesses
in our own fellowship, I also will not
be intimidated by generalizations, even from the most
clever missiologists, with all of their books and
all of their intellectual jargon.
And I wish some of them would be
courageous enough to write me.
None of them ever write to me, hardly.
And say, look, Verwer, you need to get,
you know, get things sorted out.
OM actually has been in church planting from
almost our earliest days.
We've planted 17 churches in France, a few
in Italy, a few in Spain, a few
in Turkey, a few in Bangladesh.
But often people don't take time to find
out what a movement is actually doing.
They just write you off on the basis
of maybe meeting one person who may have
been only in a summer campaign.
A very small part of our work, though
it's big enough, is our summer campaign, preparation
for the longer-term campaigns.
And we have been very conservative in finance
in our summer campaigns.
We don't fly people all over the world
for one or two months.
In fact, to come on an OM summer
campaign in Europe, you'll spend less money than
remaining in the United States and going on
one traditional American vacation.
So I don't accept, and there's been a
strong criticism against summer campaigns on the basis
of it being misuse of missionary money.
This has come from missionaries writing these things.
But our summer campaigns cost less money than
if the young person stays home.
Because I tell you, an OM summer campaign
is fairly rough and fairly tough, and you
don't eat really too much, and you travel
in old vehicles.
Our whole fleet of 400 vehicles costs less
than 30 or 40 new cars driven by
the average large church American pastor.
400 vehicles on the move for God throughout
the entire world.
In fact, some pastors in America pay more
for their house than we paid for the
ship Lagos.
And now we got some pastors with homes
that cost as much as what we paid
for the Dulos.
And that's a 6,000-ton ship that
houses 300 people.
I'm a great believer in research.
And I think a lot of the false
statements that are being made, even by missiologists,
are simply a result of incomplete research.
We get 80% of the truth.
I feel with much that is being said.
But when we fail to get the final
30%, we make statements that are false and
sometimes even harmful to the cause of missions.
Like one missiologist who was also writing about
the church prayer meeting, and he said, any
meeting in your church you have to push.
Like, for example, the prayer meeting, it's better
to drop it.
Thousands of churches across America have dropped their
midweek prayer meeting.
And I've researched that.
It's unbelievable.
The midweek prayer meeting that has been the
backbone of many churches is gone.
Now, if it was replaced with early morning
prayer meetings, nights of prayer, cottage or house
prayer meetings, that would be at least moderately
encouraging.
Though I believe it's good when there are
prayer times for the whole body, not just
groups.
But most house groups are not intercessory meetings.
They're fellowship meetings.
They're relational theology meetings.
They're all kinds of house groups.
I am pro-house group.
I'm pro most of these things if they're
kept in place.
But I believe there needs to be a
protest movement, and I'm part of it, to
bring prayer back into the heart of life
in the church, to bring missions back into
the heart and life of the church.
And I would beg any man who loves
Jesus Christ and disagrees with me, and I've
all asked you for feedback, to please write
me and tell me where I'm wrong.
I've got three or four books.
Nobody ever writes me anything negative about my
books.
I've got about 500 different messages going around
the world on cassette tape.
No one hardly ever writes me anything negative
about that.
And yet I continue to read these magazine
articles, these articles in missionary journals, these critical
statements coming from various places.
And it concerns me, because Satan is using
it to hinder the work of world missions.
Do you think YWAM is some superficial, short
-term thing that is, you know, God's second
best?
And I've even heard missionaries say things that
are less than edifying, like, well, the young
people today don't know the real stickability and
commitment of our generation.
Come on now.
Any of you believe that?
Would you like me to give you a
little, a few home truths about some of
the previous generations that I've researched?
Would you like to talk about adultery and
fornication on the mission field?
Would you like to talk about fighting on
the mission field?
Maybe you'd like to talk about things even
uglier than that.
I don't believe this generation is somehow, you
know, the lost, confused, non-committed jellyfish generation.
We've always had that kind of person.
It's always been a minority who have gone
for commitment and discipleship.
Forsaking all has never had a bandwagon effect.
Have you ever seen a bandwagon forsaking all
effect taking place?
When we were students at Moody and Wheaton
in the early days, we were a little
extreme on these things, and there was a
little bit of a bandwagon, just minor.
There were a few dozen students selling everything
they had.
It upset a lot of people.
I turned my room into a secondhand store.
And the dean of woman or somebody, I
guess she was the dean of the dormitory,
I don't know, she was a policewoman or
something, she was not too excited about this.
And a lot of students were forsaking their
possessions and bringing them to me, and I
would sell them and put the money in
the missions.
But we'd give literature out to those who
bought these possessions, and they got convicted and
brought the possessions back, and we sold them
again.
And we made mistakes.
This spread out to Wheaton College and Roger
Malsted.
The president of Wheaton College resigned, president of
the freshman class, because he protested thousands of
dollars being put into fountains and being put
into this thing and that thing when millions
were without food and the gospel across the
world.
We don't like to be too practical about
our commitment, do we?
What if God told you to go home
and sell an antique?
That's a big thing in America, isn't it?
Antiques.
Christians saving antiques.
What if God told you to sell some
antiques?
How would you handle that?
What if God told you to sell your
stamp collection?
I was a philatelic nutcase from age nine.
I owned a philatelic agency at 15.
I'd buy a stamp at one cent and
sell it for four dollars.
And I tell you, it was a weepy
day when God told me to sell my
stamp collection.
Some of you look nervous.
I met a missionary on the mission field
with a stamp collection worth tens of thousands.
Tens of thousands.
I guess, is he going to take it
to heaven?
Here I am, Jesus!
Twenty-five thousand dollars worth of stamps.
Then we read little statements like when Jesus
said, Sell what you have and get bags
that wax not old.
What is that?
King James poem?
To share in the flannel graph in the
Sunday school?
When are we going to take God's word
and really obey it?
Praise God, the British are an avant-garde,
reckless type.
At least on certain occasions.
And they launched a whole organization in Britain
for selling antiques.
They made more middle-class evangelical fish nervous
than any group in the country.
Probably next to O.M. Weck and a
few other spiritual wildcats.
And British people are bringing their antiques by
the hundreds to the Wellington Missionary Auction Agency.
And they're auctioning them off generally to backslidden
people.
And thousands of dollars or the unsaved are
going into world missions.
By the way, if this tape ever does
get out, I'm in trouble.
But we'll commit that to Jesus.
I'm in trouble because I'm supposed to be
coming more balanced in the mid-years.
Have you heard of all this midlife crisis
business?
Let me just tell you, it is tremendous.
Because spiritual life can be built best in
crisis.
It's not built when you're in a state
of myopia.
Lukewarmness, spiritual drowsiness, drifting downstream.
Spiritual life comes best when we're in crisis.
O.M. is in crisis right now.
It's great.
Every day it's there, hitting you in the
nose.
Every day there's a phone call.
Every day there's a problem.
Every day there's something that causes you to
stay on your toes.
Do you know that expression?
On your toes for Jesus.
Anyway, I've got an outline here in my
Bible.
And I don't want to get away from
it too much, or you'll never get out
of here.
Praise God, I don't have any phone calls
tonight.
The need is so great, I've tried to
get some of you to take this unreached
people's map.
Maybe all of your money is already given
to missions, or you're saving it for the
offering tomorrow.
Praise the Lord.
But it might be a missionary investment to
get one of these unreached people's maps.
And to use it in your home to
share this vision with other people.
Because many people do not realize how many
unreached people's groups there are.
I love to talk to you about the
Kurds, about the Baluch, about the Uyghurs.
How many have heard of the Uyghur people?
You know, I wasn't even going to speak
about the unreached people, because I thought, Bethany,
you're overdosed in all this.
You got people coming through.
And I was sure there's now a tremendous
film strip about the Uyghur people.
And I thought, well, you know, I don't
want to get into my unreached people's thing.
And Weck is already here, and oh, so
many others are already here.
But maybe you need to hear it again.
Maybe a lot of you are new students.
The Uyghur people live in China.
They are Muslims.
As far as I know, you can correct
me, they have no church.
There's no missionary work.
There are millions of these people.
They're in northwest China.
Friend of mine, ex-OMer woman, went there
recently, took some tremendous photographs, and has put
together this challenge of the Uyghur people.
Would you pray for those people?
What about the Tartars, the Tartar people?
They live in the Soviet Union.
How many are praying for the Tartars?
Quite a few millions of them.
There's two of you praying for the Tartars.
That's generally depressing, but I can handle depression.
I face it most days.
You can't help it in my kind of
ministry.
Just looking at some of my audiences can
give me a depression.
Present company excluded, of course.
Why aren't we praying for these people?
What's this all about, the Great Commission?
Is this just some kind of glorified monopoly?
Isn't it amazing?
I just heard on the radio, they now
have a chocolate monopoly game.
You can buy it for $700.
I've never heard of a nation in history
that is engaged in such ridiculous affluence as
the United States.
I have never studied a nation, I'm a
history student, that is engaged in such affluence.
And it has invaded the church.
And I believe some of us need to
write protest letters.
If I lived here and took up real
citizenship here, I would be writing protest letters
every week.
$700 for a monopoly complete game.
You can play everything, houses, all the money,
all of it chocolate.
Of course, the idea is, with this undisciplined
generation of sweet gluttons and candy gobblers, you
know, you're going to have to buy a
new game every month.
Because people will keep eating everything up.
It's amazing.
When we think of the fact that more
money is spent in America on dog food
than on world missions, or than on feeding
the people around the world, much less dog
beauticians, dog taxi services, dog manicure parlors and
beauty parlors, dog hospitals, the dogs in America
are better treated than many, many of the
people of the world.
Now, of course, if it's all unsaved, unregenerate,
humanistic, self-centered, egocentric people who are doing
this, it's no sweat.
If people don't believe anything, I don't expect
anything.
It's consistency.
Glorious consistency.
But when Christians get into all this, it
just blows my mind.
You write to me, you bring me into
balance.
But I find it difficult.
I protest the way we are spending our
money, even as God's people.
The accumulation of trinkets and junk in our
homes.
Homes that are already twice as big as
we need to live in.
Garages that are bigger than the homes that
I have stayed in in many places around
the world.
And because of this, now American missionaries overseas
often feel they have to live in a
home at least somewhat as big as the
home they lived in in the United States.
Otherwise, they will jeopardize their little toddlers who
will be reared in a restrictive environment.
It's unbelievable.
Thousands of unreached people's groups.
Hundreds of millions waiting for the gospel of
Jesus Christ in a world of 4.7
billion souls.
Just this slow, slow growth of number of
missionaries each year.
Now there are a number of cop-outs
in connection with this.
One is that nationals will do the job.
That is cop-out number one for many
Americans.
And let me just say one of the
main principles of OM in our early days,
we've kept this to this day, is that
we support nationals.
We believe nationals are key.
And we feel in our work, let's esteem
the national in his own country as the
key.
Let him go first class, we'll go second
class.
But you know, the nationals in the countries
we're working in, we have permanent work in
about 35 nations.
Some of them, like India, are the biggest
nations in the world.
We're in almost every state in India.
Three hundred workers.
Two-thirds Indian, one-third internationals.
Actually it fluctuates throughout the year.
Our nationals, you know what they're saying to
us?
They're saying, send us more internationals.
The job is so big.
But they are saying, send us the right
kind of people.
I hardly know a nation in the world
where we don't have more missionaries and more
nationals who want OM teams than we are
able to supply.
It's amazing that often movements like OM are
criticized in places like the states because OM
is not known that much in the states.
But in the countries where we are actually
working because we're out there evangelizing, planting churches
and reaching Muslims and reaching Hindus, we have
tremendous acceptance and credibility among most missionary leaders.
There would be a few exceptions.
People that would be hyper-double-barreled fighting
fundamentalists, they're not too happy about OM.
And Triple C, wall-climbing, charismaniacs on the
other spectrum are not overly joyed about Operation
Mobilization.
But most people somewhere in the middle, and
there's quite a range of people in that
area, generally are linked with us in this
great task.
So that second reason is a big one.
The need is so great.
Not many people even hear what you're hearing
tonight, what you've been hearing for many weeks
here.
So you have got to do something about
it.
If you don't go, then you need to
send others.
In many countries there are no nationals.
Did you get that?
There are no nationals because there are no
churches.
If there are no believers, I think you
can grasp this concept, if there are no
believers, there can't be any national workers, right?
There are hardly any full-time nationals in
Turkey because there's only maybe 100 or 200
believers, many of them absolute baby believers, in
the whole nation of Muslim background.
So Turkey is a land where they could
use hundreds of missionaries, many of them would
have to be tent makers.
What are we going to say of Saudi
Arabia?
The leader of our work, most of our
leaders are nationals from that very country.
Our internationals work under our nationals.
The leader of our work in Sudan is
a Sudanese trained on the ship in the
early days.
He has internationals working under him, that's not
easy, but they made an impact in Sudan,
another one of the very needy nations in
the world.
I realize that there are certain obstacles in
being an American missionary.
The rumor is out that American missionaries are
CIA agents, that's a problem in some countries.
Americans sometimes are ugly Americans, that's why you
need training.
That's why often short-term missionary training has
been effective in de-Americanizing people, learning and
teaching them to communicate cross-culturally.
We're very rough on Americans, and I've been
accused of being anti-American, which is ridiculous
because I love my country.
I'm always more relaxed coming back here and
speaking than almost anywhere else in the world.
I'm a poor missionary in many ways.
When you're my kind of temperament, and you
spent the first 18 years of your life
in this country, then it's not easy to
de-Americanize.
And I'll just tell you in many parts
of the world, if you're born again and
you love Jesus and you know something of
humility, being American will not be a problem.
Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.
If you're obnoxious, if you're a know-it
-all, if you're pushy, if you leave your
chewing gum lying around, of course, whatever, you're
not going to be appreciated.
Some of our best workers in our international
fellowship are from the USA.
God is no respecter of persons.
Don't be intimidated by the enormous blunders and
the extremism of our nation, which is exported
overseas through such little tidbits as Rambo and
other films that everybody watches.
I was sitting in a chai shop in
Turkey, and there was J.R. with all
of his wonderful American ways, showing the Turks
just how we do it.
Not exactly a fair picture, is it?
So we need, even as a country, some
good, humble Bethany graduates putting into practice the
Way of the Cross.
That could be the greatest representation, even our
country.
If our government really was into spreading the
vision, they'd probably subsidize Bethany.
But, of course, I don't think they've got
the vision for that, and you probably wouldn't
want it anyway.
They might want something in return.
Number three, I've already got into this, very
few are going.
It may seem like many when you're at
a place like Bethany.
That's like getting upset that too many people
are into baseball when you're camping in the
middle of Yankee Stadium.
You can get a sort of lopsided view.
I will tell you, over in Britain, where
I live, you talk about baseball and people
look at you as if you're some kind
of a weirdo.
They don't know what this is, baseball.
Cricket is our game, jolly good cricket.
We don't speak about striking out, we speak
about sticky wickets.
It took me 15 years to figure out
what that was.
And here at Bethany, you may get the
sense, some of you, that the place is
a missionary nut house.
People are praying all the time about missions,
and missionaries are dropping in and parachuting in
from all over the world looking for recruits.
You know, it can get on your nerves,
really.
Some of you that really prefer things like
hockey and baseball and girls and music and
daydreaming and whatever else you're into, this place
can really make you nervous.
Well, I will tell you, from what I
observe, we're barely keeping up with the death
rate.
And according to Ralph Winter's statistics, 10 or
15 years from now, it's going to be
a bleak picture in regard to American missions.
And we've got to think in terms of
long-term career missions.
It's of concern to many.
Maybe that's why some people take pop shots
at short-term missions when they're getting upset
about the lack of career missionaries.
So that needs prayer.
That means that places like Bethany are going
to have to take some giant steps.
That means it's going to be a continual
battle.
Few are going.
So let's review these.
Not that many get as far as you
get.
The need is so unbelievably great.
Let's beware of the cop-outs.
I didn't go into most of them.
And so few are going.
I don't have all the statistics handy.
And I might just say it's always good
to look at the other side of the
coin and realize that it is a major
answer to prayer that we do have so
many missionaries.
It's a major answer to prayer that there's
now a massive Third World missionary force on
the move.
Though beware of false statistics about the Third
World force.
Most of them are working among their own
people.
They're not working cross-culturally.
Most Koreans are working among Koreans, though they're
listed often as overseas missionaries.
It produces an interesting statistic.
Most Chinese are working among Chinese.
A couple of years ago, a leading missiologist
said there is no need for Chinese people
to work among anybody else except Chinese.
OM came along and said just the opposite.
We're sort of one of God's irritants.
We said Chinese need to break out of
their mold and go cross-culturally.
And now we have Chinese in the Muslim
world.
We have Chinese in many non-Chinese situations.
And that's a miracle because the Chinese prefer
really to fellowship with themselves.
There's enough of them, really, they could take
over the planet and there'd be no problem.
The fourth reason why many of you should
go is because there are endless open doors
for all kinds of people.
What about these typists?
Any motor mechanics here?
Any of you can fix cars?
Raise your hand.
Not many in that area.
How do you keep your cars repaired here?
I guess the ones I've seen, it doesn't
look like you're buying new ones.
Someone gave me a ride in one of
these cars.
You've got these very small cars around here.
This little thing looked like a golf cart
to me.
Went late last night.
It was great.
You know, one of these real friendly guys
wanted to help me out.
Zoom!
And driving down the road, the thing just
stopped.
It's just like a lot of Christians.
The battery was dead.
So I got out and walked.
I saw it this morning.
It's still parked in the same place.
But motor mechanics are greatly needed on the
mission field.
And what about women?
I'm a great believer in women's liberation under
the guidance and the control of the Word
of God and the Holy Spirit.
And I believe we can use women who
know how to repair vehicles.
We have women's teams in India.
Can't mix the men and the women in
India.
It's against the culture.
So the women get their own vehicle.
They're always breaking down.
You get some problems.
Remember down in Spain, a woman wrote in
her report, we are unable to find the
battery in our Volkswagen.
She had this very logical, I wouldn't want
to say women's logic because that wouldn't be
fair, but she had this logical conclusion that
because this Volkswagen didn't have any water, it
was air-cooled, it therefore would not have
any battery, right?
Actually, my wife and I have had considerable
difficulty in this kind of thinking, but we're
still together.
So we can use in God's work women
who can repair, at least some repairs on
their vehicle.
What am I saying?
All kinds of needs.
It's not just preachers and church planters.
Not everybody is going to be a qualified,
gifted church planter.
For every man in frontline church planting, there's
five or ten behind the scenes, right back
to the man teaching English at Bethany, or
running the printing press.
So many needs.
So many open doors.
Even in the communist countries, there's open doors,
even for Americans.
Write to me, I'll be happy to get
some information to you.
Muslim countries that were supposedly closed, we've had
people in those countries for 15, 20 years.
God can open doors.
If the door doesn't open, lose weight, go
through the keyhole.
This is where short-term guerrilla forces, men
go in for two years, lose their visa,
another group takes their place.
You know, one of the advantages working with
Europeans is generally they can learn a language
much quicker.
We have hundreds of men in our work
who know languages.
Hundreds.
Some three, four, five languages.
You know, superficial short-term work.
I remember one of our church planters in
Bangladesh interpreting for me when I was in
Bangladesh recently.
Missionaries had been on the field for years,
couldn't believe it.
He spoke almost impeccable Bengali.
He started as a short-term worker.
He got stuck for life.
God has opened a door.
Let's go.
Let's stop being caught between two opinions.
A double-minded man is unstable in all
of his ways.
If you don't know that by God's grace
you're headed to the mission field, that can
be an enormous hindrance even in your studies,
even in your prayer life.
We need some more people at Bethany that
say, I know by God's grace I'm going.
I'm beginning to move.
So many open doors.
Hindu world, communist world, Muslim world, Europe, Spain,
Italy.
Wide open doors.
Thousands of workers needed.
I just picked up a leaflet.
You ought to invade that wet table.
I took every leaflet almost from the wet
table.
And they have this leaflet, 800 in the
80s, isn't that?
Where's our weck man?
He was sitting right here.
Where did you go?
How many do you want in the 80s,
Mr. Weck?
He's gone to the prayer closet.
Anyway, I think it's 800 workers.
I picked up that leaflet.
I haven't read it yet.
And every mission seems to be looking for
more workers.
I like to do my research.
If you see me talking to Alec, it's
because I'm researching.
And I say, how many more can Bethany
missions take?
And they're open.
They're willing to take more.
So let's get going.
Let's start pushing doors.
You'll never become a missionary if you don't
know how to push doors, kick doors, take
them off the hinges.
If you're the passive type, we got a
lot of passive people in America.
They're sitting back waiting for God's conveyor belt.
Oh, Lord.
Oh, Lord, I do love you, Lord.
I am willing.
We got the willingites.
It's a cult.
The willing.
I am willing, Lord.
I met some of them 20 years later.
I am willing, Lord, willing.
Imagine if we handled marriage like this.
I won't talk about the previous 15 years.
And I was going up to rent a
film at the Moody Institute of Science, and
I saw this chick sitting behind the desk
and blew every circuit in my head, and
I didn't know what to say.
I said, you're probably not going to the
mission field, are you?
I was a bit blunt in those days.
Just a little shy farm girl from Iowa.
You know, she looked at me.
She went, why do you say that?
I said, well, you know, all the girls
going to the mission field are all ugly.
Anyway, a year later we got married.
I did everything to put her off.
I was very extreme.
I told her the first time we ever
met.
It wasn't a date.
It was just a discussion.
And I said, you know, if we start
going together, I just want to tell you,
number one, I won't spend any money.
I don't believe in that.
Because we're already getting our food from the
institute, you know, so we don't spend any
other money.
Number two, if you marry me, probably you
never think nothing will ever happen, but we
might as well talk this out and not
waste any time.
If you marry me, you'll probably end up
being eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.
I told her that.
The first date or meeting that we ever
had.
The third thing I did, I think it
was the second time I ever met her,
was give her a gigantic bag of dirty
laundry just to test brokenness factor.
I'm telling you the truth.
About the fourth date, I took her door
to door to the Spanish people.
She didn't know a word of Spanish.
She was scared stiff, never gone door to
door in her life.
So I took her out door to door.
After that, we studied the book of Acts.
After that, we went to the bus station,
and she sat and prayed for me, and
I went out and witnessed to various people
in the bus station.
We had a few other interesting events.
I remember one sitting by Lake Michigan, and
it was noon.
We should have gone for something to eat,
but I didn't believe in spending any money,
and we weren't anywhere near where we were
supposed to be eating.
Some people came and sat behind us and
started eating their sandwiches.
It was a little park.
And I shot up a quick prayer, a
mercy prayer, because I sensed that maybe it
wasn't right, though I didn't care if I
was eating too much, that maybe I should
give her something to eat.
I was actually completely bananas for her by
then.
I was trying to play it cool, and
I was starting to lose my hair.
But the amazing thing is these people who
were sitting behind put their sandwich bags, after
they were done, in the rubbish, what do
you call the thing, waste basket or whatever
you call it.
And so I, you know, I went over
and reached in, and there were sandwiches and
fruit that was untouched and unwrapped in that
bag, and I provided my fiancée with her
lunch.
Now, you can, I knew I'd wake some
of you sleepy ones up, but you can
see how O.M., and this was the
birth of O.M. all during this, you
can see how O.M. went a little
extreme on the area of faith.
I wouldn't even buy soap.
I got into my own personal name it,
claim it, and would go into, I lived
in the YMCA, there was no room in
the inn at Moody, and they put me
in the YMCA because I arrived in the
middle of the year, and I would go
into the showers claiming soap in the name
of Jesus, because I knew one bar of
soap was equal to 1,000 tracks in
India.
I just lived with how much more money
I could get out to the mission field.
And I always found soap.
A number of times I had to get
it off the floor with my fingernail, but
I always found soap.
But I don't know why, I don't know
why, I don't tell these stories very often,
by the way, I don't know why we
didn't come into a little more balance back
then, because there were a number of very
serious sensitive brothers who tried the same thing,
one especially, I'll never forget him, who went
in there and, you know, he'd taken everything,
you know, he'd generally shower, you know, without
clothes, and he'd taken everything off, and he
was looking and searching on his knees, and
he could not find a piece of soap.
And he came to me brokenhearted that God
was not hearing his prayers.
And he got into a pretty heavy thing
about faith and whether God was real.
Wow.
I don't know why I didn't learn from
that experience.
Some of these stories about George Mueller, Hudson
Taylor, and George Verwer, following way, way, way
behind, limping and struggling, are out of context
and don't always give the total picture.
They make lovely books, little books called Answers
to Prayer.
I'm going to write a book called One
Thousand Verwer Prayers That Have Never Been Answered.
That's right.
So there are endless open doors, even for
the likes of you and I.
Praise God for that.
Let's do something about it.
Number five, there are tremendous resources.
Look at the great story of Campus Crusade
for Christ.
Talk about resources.
They were the greatest releasers of resources for
Christian work that I've ever read about.
You know, I read an article a couple
years ago.
They were on their way to get another
hundred million for missions and for evangelism.
I thought it was a misprint.
You know, a hundred million.
They've gone past that now.
I don't know what hundred million sector they're
on.
I was with Bill Bright recently in Berlin.
I always sort of feel like a little,
you know, a little tiny peewee of faith
when this man goes zooming through with his
hyper-California optimism mixed with the four spiritual
laws and all kinds of other things.
And it was an amazing meeting when he
spoke one night at Expo and I spoke
the next night.
Quite a few Germans were relieved by my
honesty and my struggles.
We're all different.
We don't all have faith for a hundred
million dollars and we don't all have a
hundred or a couple hundred or half a
million prayer partners and businessmen friends and all
the tactics and strategy to see that kind
of money released.
But surely it has proven that there are
resources.
There are resources.
And let's mature in our approach to money.
And let's believe, as some great men of
God have, that the devil has had some
of this money long enough.
And let's face it, we have got a
lot of secondary Christian activities in America.
And I would like to see more of
God's money going into primary activities.
I have this funny feeling that a lot
of Christian things in America don't really need
to take place at all.
Therefore, that money doesn't need to go there.
It could go out to give Bibles to
the unreached people and put thousands of missionaries
on the field.
In fact, most organizations working in America should
at least tithe their money to overseas work
if they're going to be biblical and follow
what Jesus Christ taught and what the apostles
taught.
There are the resources.
I've written an article releasing finance through prayer.
Even in our extreme policy of not making
our financial needs known, of getting into the
silence conspiracy, despite that hindrance, we have seen
God provide for twenty-five or twenty-eight
years in answer to prayer.
And we're talking about tens of millions of
dollars, most of it used overseas in world
evangelism, reaching, as in OM, we have faced
personally, face-to-face, three hundred and fifty
to four hundred million people with the Word
of God.
Prayer.
And I believe now that we've come out
of the silence conspiracy and are a little
more open and honest, we are going to
be able to do much more because we
have been greatly hindered in the past decade
by this policy as a movement that now
is much larger.
There are the resources.
And as we give the widows might, as
we give our loaves and fishes, God multiplies
it.
I never think so much about the big
gifts.
I always work for the small gifts.
In fact, part of our money, about ten
percent of our money, comes from book sales.
When you buy a book from our little
table there, that produces some money to buy
literature in India.
And I know Bethany Press is committed also
to use its profit for world missions.
That's why everybody here should be promoting Bethany
Press.
Get a catalog.
Send it out.
Many of your pastors don't even know about
these good books.
Bethany Press is a well-kept secret in
a number of places because America is divided
into various camps and Bethany is pushed into
a particular camp.
I could tell you a lot of what
people think about Bethany.
I fellowship in a lot of strange circles,
in good circles and bad circles and just
circles.
And a lot of people don't have a
clue about the great books you're producing.
And I believe if you would mobilize your
forces and mobilize in prayer and all get
committed, every Bethany graduate, every Bethany prayer partner,
everybody here today committed to Bethany Press, to
making known these great books, that you could
double your distribution throughout the entire world.
And you've got one of the most fantastic
facilities that you could ever dream of.
But you see, we got this cock-eyed
mentality.
We always think this is somebody else's ministry
over there.
We all need to put our hands on
the plow.
I personally sell books every week.
Maybe I'll go behind the book table tonight.
And I just believe that one of the
ways we're going to mobilize people for missions
is through powerful missionary books.
Don't tiptoe up there and get one copy
of Operation World or one map of the
world.
Where's my Operation World?
But get a number of copies and maybe
send it to your pastor.
Most pastors would never buy that.
But they'd be happy to get a gift.
This is something to me so down to
earth, so practical, so important.
The resources are there.
But it's going to take prayer.
It's going to take mobilization.
It's going to take action.
It's going to take, here's a word I
like to use, sanctified imagination.
Write it down because some of you lack
it.
You desperately lack it.
Your imagination has been asleep for a long
time.
Let's dream dreams.
Let's get visions.
Let's plan plans.
Let's outwit the enemy through spiritual strategy.
Ralph Winter emphasizes a sandlot mission.
Maybe a whole new mission will be born
as a result of this weekend together.
A mission to Mongolia.
A mission to Mauritania.
A mission to somewhere else.
Praise God for the big missions.
But I praise God for the new missions.
Frontiers born by that dear brother Greg Livingston.
He'd like a few of you Bethany people.
You write off to Greg.
He'll sign you up so fast you think
you're on a roller coaster out of control.
Well, it's getting late.
Let me bring this to a close.
Number six.
This is an important reason that's going to
help some of you sleep tonight.
God can easily stop you.
You say, how does that fit in?
Listen, if you don't accept that point, I
don't want to give you the other points.
Because some of you, you're going to catch
this vision.
You're going to move toward the target field.
But it's not God's will.
He's thrilled that you're moving in that direction.
But He knows better than you do.
You've got to go one step at a
time.
He knows the big picture.
He is, in His sovereign purposes, going to
stop you.
I don't think there's going to be any
big stampede, even by Bethany students, to the
mission field.
Even as a result of this extreme message.
Extreme only in the minds of some.
That's why I agree with Keith Green's approach,
though I know it's criticized.
He believed that a lot of people should
just start by faith moving.
And, you know, God can sort it out.
You know, we're into ships and we've discovered
about ships that you can't direct them if
they're not moving.
Have you ever seen a ship along the
harbor, anchored, along the dockside, moving?
Unusual.
To steer a ship, it has to move.
On the basis of what you know, after
prayer, considering God's guidance in your life up
to now, I would beseech many of you,
if possible, to start moving toward the mission
field.
Start writing societies.
Start pushing doors.
Start maybe getting into a one or two
year program.
We find that a one or two year
program with something like OM is a tremendous
time to get a confirmation as to whether
you're really equipped and can be equipped for
longer term career missionary work.
And also, many times through that, you'll be
led into working behind the scenes.
And let me just say, in some ways,
it's harder than ever to become a career
missionary.
There are many complexities to becoming a career
missionary.
You are fortunate because you have, most of
you, a Bethany link.
You could probably get accepted by Bethany.
But many of the young people in Europe
I talk to are not finding it easy
to get into any mission society.
Many people.
The very high support.
That's true also in the states.
The complications, the kind of people they want.
Many missions are overloaded with rules and regulations.
Many of them are steeped into 19th century
philosophy.
And a lot of things are bringing a
great gap between older people and where mission
societies are and where this generation is.
One of the reasons God has raised the
poem is to try to bridge this gap.
And we just want to channel as many
as we can to all these societies.
And we have pushed for changes in these
societies.
And many of them have made changes.
And all the more movements are born, like
Frontiers, that are very, very different in their
approach.
I still believe in both.
God can easily stop us.
Health stops some people.
Tremendous domestic crisis stops some people.
Finance stops people.
You say, why should that be?
How should that be?
I talked about that my first morning.
The mystery factor.
The suffering factor.
Christian work is not what you think it
is factor.
I can't repeat it again tonight.
But it's true.
And if anything I've learned 25 years on
the field and going short term, even before
that.
I went to the field when I was
19.
As I will tell you, becoming a long
term career missionary is rough and tough.
So I don't think we're going to get
too many people there as a result of
tonight.
And the more of you who are in
good health and who think and feel as
you pray, it is a possibility that at
least start pushing and start moving and start
praying, the better the chance that some of
those unreached people are going to be reached
as a result of tonight.
And lastly, number seven.
As you go, others will follow.
You may even be God's decoy.
I went to India, then I got kicked
out of India, refused a visa.
But I've had an endless stream of people
who I have met all over the world
go to India.
And if I don't get some people going
to India as a result of this visit
to Bethany, I'll be a very disappointed person.
I've already met two who are planning to
go with our eastward bound work in India
already before I ever got here.
So they can multiply two or three times
and we'll get a good Bethany force out
in India by 1987 or 88 or whenever.
As you go, others will follow.
You may die on the way.
Really.
Some of our best people have died when
they were in their twenties, usually in automobile
accidents.
I remember when a tornado hit some people
from Bethany.
Did people die in that tornado?
A number of people died.
You've been through the fire here.
Last year you had someone killed out on
the field.
And I tell you, when someone falls into
the ground and dies in missionary service, a
lot of people start popping up.
We think of those martyrs in Ecuador who
gave their lives and the number who traced
their call into missions back to those martyrs
in Ecuador.
As you start going, as you start seriously
moving and praying and you become an unofficial
recruiter or an official recruiter and you start
really becoming a man of action, a doer
of the word instead of just a talker,
other people are going to follow.
This has been our main recruiting method to
take 37,000 people through our program.
It's man to man.
It's prayer groups.
It's sharing.
It's personal discipleship.
God's multiplication method.
It's dynamite.
Are you in it?
Are you armed with missionary literature?
Are you armed with a couple of missionary
slide sets, a few videos or audios?
I will tell you, the potential in this
one church tonight could shake the world for
Jesus Christ and hundreds, hundreds and thousands of
unreached people.
The second part of this message is how
it can be realized.
Number one, prayer.
Number two, intensive study and research.
Number three, discipline.
Number four, winning and mobilizing others, a revolution
of love.
Number five, daring to be disciplined.
And of course, we have to simply say
as Paul, obedience to the whole counsel of
God.
What about it?
Will you let God tonight confirm this next
step in regard to your commitment to world
missions?
Would you put some more spiritual backbone into
your missionary so-called commitment?
Would you say, despite the fact that you're
weak and tomorrow I'm going to be sharing
somewhat about my weaknesses as I share the
confessions of a weak, struggling, fumbling missionary, one
of the most upsetting, mind-bending little testimonies
I ever share, but despite the fact that
you feel you're inadequate and you're weak and
you're not sure you can learn a language
and you don't sleep well and you've got
damaged emotions, somehow you are willing to give
it a try and you're going to start
moving by God's grace.
That's all I can ask.
The Holy Spirit has to do the rest
and I'm not going to give an invitation
tonight because I'm appealing to your will and
I'm appealing to your mind.
I want you to think about this and
I want you to write to me and
give it to me tomorrow.
You go home, you pray, you write to
me.
If you have taken another step as a
result of this weekend in your missionary commitment,
you tell me what that step is.
Then I can pray intelligently for you.
Let's pray.
You've been very, very patient.
Forgive me for going so long.
Let's take a moment of silent prayer.
Search our hearts.
Seven reasons why you, sitting here tonight, need
to go.
Seven basic down-to-earth reasons and a
lot of sub-points thrown in.
Why you should go.
And I pray that you'll make the decision
that you're going.
You're going.
God can stop you.
Providence can stop you.
I failed to mention that the church sometimes
can stop you because this must all be
done in consultation with church leaders who know
you and can counsel you about whether you
really should go or not.
So that also can stop you.
And if they make a mistake, they will
stand before God for that.
Not you.
Just pray your own prayer right now.
Father, you know the need.
The church planters, the teachers, the literature workers.
The mechanics, the typists, the behind-the-scenes
people.
People who will go.
So few are even considering this in America
today.
Some of our greatest churches aren't sending even
a new missionary per year.
Not even one a year.
Most Christian workers in training right now, 90
% at least, are considering only work within
their own country.
Most only within their own denomination in their
own country.
We're a remnant here.
Oh God, you know our hearts.
You brought us here in your providence.
We're not here hunting a degree.
We're not here to impress man.
We're here because we believe in missions.
Yet some of us perhaps have been discouraged
along the way.
We've been intimidated by our own failures instead
of seeing failure as a backdoor to success.
We may have been intimidated by speakers instead
of encouraged.
We may be confused on some issue.
We may be struggling in our own faith
with doubt and unbelief.
Help us to understand, Lord, that doubt and
unbelief can often be a stepping stone to
greater faith.
Because great faith is not made in the
absence of these things, but as we battle
through in your name.
Stand on your promises in the midst of
struggle, doubt and difficulty.
Lord Jesus, we pray, bring a fresh anointing
upon our lives as we seek your face
tonight with our open Bibles and these books
in our dormitories.
Don't give us rest in our beds tonight
until we have settled this matter with you,
that we've heard your voice, whether it's a
call or a kick, whether it's logical guidance
or an emotional sense in the inner being
that this is your way for us.
We want to make an act of the
will and begin to move.
We've heard the trumpet call.
The King of Kings has said, Go!
We want to obey.
We pray this in Jesus Christ, powerful, glorious,
merciful, all-forgiving name.
Amen.