Maybe I should just say a little word
about myself, about OM, because most of you
are new to the ministry that I'm involved
in, a ministry that has most of its
roots in Europe and India, and now almost
completely international, with Korea as one of our
main sending fields, Brazil another one, Argentina another
one, a movement somehow raised up by God
to be on the cutting edge of the
internationalization of missions.
World missions today is not largely an Anglo
-Saxon project, but we're seeing literally tens of
thousands of people from so-called third world
countries, a term I reject, involved in cross
-cultural communication, and somehow in God's purpose he
raised up a unique mission fellowship, OM, to
be ready to handle these young people on
an equal basis with anybody from any other
country, regardless of their financial status, a complex
challenge to say the least.
But now there are 2,000 of us
full-time, we're no longer, we never were,
only a short-term work, though we're known
for that, because of the effective short-term
training about 50,000 people have had with
OM.
But our main thrust has been the evangelization
of the Muslim world.
We now have 250, one of the largest
agencies, working among Muslims, Pakistan, Bangladesh, church planting,
100 million Muslims of India.
Can you imagine 100 million Muslims in India?
There is no church among that 100 million.
They're a minority group.
How many southern states do you have to
put together to get a hundred million?
There's no church.
There are a few individual believers among that
hundred million.
So our first thrust through about 15 different
methods of evangelism is the Muslim world.
Our second thrust has been the communist world,
where we've been laboring in Eastern Europe in
a ministry of renewal and prayer and literature
and all kinds of other things for the
last quarter of a century.
It's impossible to express how joyful and overwhelmed
we are with what God is doing in
Eastern Europe right now.
Just come from speaking at Mission 90, the
largest missions conference in Europe, we had 400
there from Eastern Europe.
I had the scary privilege of leading the
prayer night from 11 at night to 1
in the morning.
You would think they'd go home after that,
but instead they all went into the book
exhibition to buy copies of Operation World and
other books.
So in a sense, Operation Mobilization has come
of age and it's taken its place as
partners with so many other great mission societies.
Perhaps I'm going to say some strong things
on the basis of now 30 years on
the mission field, though I went before that
33 years ago as a student of 19
down to Mexico in a short term summer
effort, which became one of the birthplaces of
short-term missionary work.
There's a terrific amount of misunderstanding about short
-term work, and sadly enough, even among men
of considerable stature, I would have thought intellectually.
But I think just being in this country
and not doing their homework properly, they have
come up with some very untrue and false
conclusions about short-term work.
I know now most missionary leaders on the
field, not theoretical people back in school, but
people on the field believe that short-term
work is one of God's gifts to this
generation, this unique global village in which we
now live.
And the word from the Word of God
that especially was on my heart and may
help me maintain balance in my presentation tonight,
is that word in Philippians that says, esteeming
others better than yourself.
And I just think of how we're so
divided in America, and there's so many different
causes.
We all know of the abortion cause, which
is such an important thing for every Christian
to be thinking and praying about, doing something
about.
But I must confess, when I meet some
of these heavy abortion people, that they seem
to have almost zero interest in the fact
that souls are going to hell.
These little babies that die in their mother's
wombs, I don't believe they go to hell.
Maybe that disagrees with your theology.
But a soul in India, in China, the
hundred million Muslims, when they go out into
eternity, they go to hell.
Otherwise, schools like this have no purpose in
all this.
Just a con, Billy Graham, conned me in.
I was going, I was minding my own
business.
I was doing fine at 16.
I had three businesses.
I had money.
I had women.
I was happy.
And one of these Bible believers came into
my life, a little Bible-believing lady who
believed in hell, prayed for me that I
would get saved.
I didn't even know what that meant.
Then she prayed that I'd become a missionary
of all the audacity.
She didn't even tell me about it.
Then she sent me a gospel of John
through the mail, and I read that, and
it broke my heart.
And then I went to that fire and
brimstone preacher, Billy Graham, who called me to
repent, believe on Jesus Christ.
And I did.
By God's mercy, I was saved.
And within hours, I began sharing my faith,
and I've never stopped a single day ever
since.
And as I studied the word of God,
and actually almost overthrew the Christian faith completely
because of intellectual doubts, I became convinced that
the Bible was true.
I became convinced that Jesus was the way,
the truth, and the life, that there was
such a place as hell, and that all
Christians should be involved in rescuing the perishing
and caring for the dying.
Not so popular in our day in which
universalism is one of the fastest-growing theological
tidbits among the intellectual eggheads in our institutions.
I have wanted not only to reject, I'm
being very honest, I've not only wanted to
reject the doctrine of hell, I must be
quite honest, I have wanted to reject Christianity.
I am not a natural Christian.
I find a lot of Christians are a
real pain in the neck, and don't get
on with them very easily.
I try to be more optimistic, develop a
little prayer when I feel this pain.
Thank you, Jesus, that I'm not a giraffe.
And in fact, to be also honest, the
Holy Spirit in my heart, when I repent,
has given me a great love for God's
people.
But if men are not lost, if Muslims
are going to get there through Muhammad, if
Hindus are going to get there through their
thousands of gods, then I don't know what
all the fuss is about.
I don't know what we're having missions conferences
about, and why we have to risk lives.
I have 20 of my friends dead in
the cause of world missions.
One of them murdered on the doorstep in
Istanbul, others in motor accidents.
Our latest has totally disappeared, John Tarswell.
Three months, no trace, no body, no nothing.
I have to talk every other day or
so, a little less now, with his wife,
and try to encourage her and explain that
we're still searching, we're still looking.
She's just given birth to another son.
And I think of the men who died
among the Alka Indians, when I think of
what men like C.T. Studriss, when he
went into Africa, already a museum of diseases.
I think if they're not lost, if they're
all going to end up in heaven, what
is the purpose of this?
Is this some kind of a spiritual Boy
Scout adventure?
Or is this just something so that more
people can be employed?
After all, there are people that have a
gift to teach the Bible, and if somebody
doesn't start a Bible college, how will they
get a job?
Men are lost.
I have never lost that conviction, though I've
struggled many times with it, on any day
in these thirty-some years.
I come with a great burden to see
everybody in the world given the gospel.
And I feel, though I didn't sort of
lead the way, I feel the concept of
the Year 2000 movement is basically a good
one.
I'm always a little reluctant to join some
of these things.
I've now asked to be on the Council
of References for the Year 2000 movement.
You may not even know what that is,
but a group of Christian leaders met in
Singapore.
I didn't go, couldn't afford the airfare, but
they met in Singapore, and they got all
excited, and they submitted their various plans to
evangelize the whole world by the Year 2000.
Ralph Winter, of course, was there.
What a one-arrow, amazing, eccentric character.
Many, many people have submitted their various strategies
and plans toward the Year 2000 in Operation
Mobilization.
We have been trying to do that.
We're so diverse.
Each one of our countries, we're permanently in
about 40, 50 countries, have their own strategy
and their own vision.
It's hard for us to put it all
together.
But our European leaders came up with a
program called Love Europe, and so that's part
of that.
And I'm excited about that.
But just going back for a minute, as
I think of all these different causes we
have in America, abortion, which is good, and
especially when you get to Bible college, you
feel hit by many directions, all little groups,
little lobby groups.
One is saying that the key to everything
is revival, and you get groups playing away
and battling away for revival.
I've watched such groups for 33 years.
It's been one of the most depressing things
in my whole ministry, because in most cases
it's never come, at least the way they've
been praying for it.
And a lot of the people who are
weeping and crying and fasting and praying for
the kind of revival that people are dreaming
is going to come are all dead, and
it never happened.
Now, I'm not against that kind of praying.
If it's in balance and if it's tucked
in with a whole counsel of God, I'm
still doing it.
I was just at Asbury College.
They had a revival in 1970.
They're still talking about the revival in 1970.
There is some fruit from that revival, but
basically that's history.
That's history.
That's 1970.
This, for any of you who are little
latecomers, is 1990.
And the truth is, and this is going
to be one of the main thrusts of
my message, this message is going to blow
every little homiletical idea you've ever had, so
just relax.
Some of you already look very tense.
If you don't get it all, you can
listen to the tape.
You can even search for backward masking.
Now I've lost track of that particular thrust.
Let's get back to the esteeming others better
than yourself.
The fact that we have all these different
emphases.
Another one is expository preaching.
Has that one come yet?
That all of our problems are because we
don't expound properly the Word of God.
If we expound properly the Word of God,
everybody's going to be mature.
We're all going to take care of all
the other problems in the world.
Now, don't misunderstand.
I believe in expository preaching.
Occasionally I do it myself.
And I esteem, I mean, Stephen Olford, tremendous.
He's over the top, like me in some
areas, but he's a great preacher.
John Stott, one of my favorites.
But many expository preachers, especially those who are
just copying the great expositors, are utterly, utterly
boring.
Then of course, somebody gets really uptight and
says, well, if it's the Word of God,
it's never boring.
And we all feel miserable because some of
us, in fact, find church generally rather boring
and are so fed up with meetings that
we would never go to another one again
unless it were required at 10 in the
morning.
So the church today is moving in many,
many, many directions.
Even in missionary work, we have at least
50 major controversies among missionaries.
I must confess in counseling, pastoring, and working
with missionaries over the years, that they are
some of the most stubborn, impossible, bullheaded, obnoxious
people I have ever met.
I always feel like giving them Dale Carnegie's
book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
I can just imagine some of you who
read Seduction of Christianity by a hunter, or
a man named Hunt, that even mentioning that
book would be dangerous.
You probably now think I'm a New Ager.
That's another big thing.
That sort of competes with Amway.
There must be a hundred, there must be
a hundred different directions that people are going
with.
And you come into Bible college, and they're
all there lurking.
They either have displays, or cameras, or they
sort of meet you at the door, and
they've got a leaflet, or a free t
-shirt, trying to get you to go in
one particular direction.
And tonight it's George Brewer.
What direction do you think he's trying to
get you to go to?
Some have even come because they thought if
they came here tonight, they'd end up in
the Muslim world, and that's the last thing
they want to do.
Because they all, this little guy who once
had an interest in the Muslim world, married
little silly Sally, who is not going to
the Muslim world.
She's already told the Holy Spirit she's not
going to the Muslim world.
She's already purchased I'm not going to a
Muslim world t-shirt, and he is just
gonna bring his whole marriage into difficulty if
he comes here tonight and gets a challenge
for the Muslim world.
Or maybe a challenge to the communist world.
That's not so bad now that the curtain
is sort of melting, but we don't really
know what's going to happen next.
But I want to surprise you.
My great burden tonight, more than anything else,
is not to get you into one of
these causes.
I believe they all have a degree of
legitimacy, and I believe the key in our
mega mega super world-class kind of pluralism
that we've created in our unique society with
all of our different churches and 22,000
denominations, I believe the key is love.
And love will involve listening to people, and
love will involve the fruit of the Spirit,
and love will deliver us from judgmentalism, so
that we're always going around putting other Christians
down.
You're not doing enough for abortion.
You should be laying out in front of
the clinics, even though you're way overweight and
the police won't be able to remove you.
Or you shouldn't be just giving your testimony.
You should shut up until you're an expository
preacher.
Or you should be attending all the concerts
of prayer, because if you're not praying, you're
straying, which is true.
And we want to see you.
We need to learn to love one another.
We need to learn to esteem one another.
I think of how many people have rejected
certain Christian leaders, certain Christian movements, on the
basis of hearsay.
Let me give you an example.
I have a book here called C.T.
Stud.
I was a student at Moody Bible Institute.
I was a young student.
I read this at college before I went
to Moody.
And when I went to Moody, I brought
up with somebody the subject of WAC, World
Evangelization Crusade.
And all I could get was negative reports.
I thought, this group must be really off
the wall, WAC.
And I never saw this book anywhere at
Moody Bible Institute.
Fortunately, I had it before I got there.
But I decided not to reject WAC.
I had the fortunate position of always being
a bit stubborn, a bit radical.
And if someone wants to get me positive
about something, all I have to do is
say something negative about it, especially if I
don't like their face.
Of course, I always repent of that.
But in the last 29, 30 years since
I graduated, I actually did graduate from Moody.
I just took their missions conference.
They gave me another copy.
It's quite an amazing meeting.
It was the final meeting of six meetings.
And the president of Moody, I had thrown
my tie in the first meeting.
I won't do that tonight.
And he said, I'm going to give you
this copy of your diploma, but you must
promise not to throw it at the audience.
I said, I will promise if you will
take off that tie.
And the president of Moody, most of the
students thought it was actually painted there.
Took off his necktie and revival almost came.
But in the past 30 years, in going
around the world, researching and reading and looking
and interviewing and loving, I've come to consider
the World Evangelization Crusade, one of the greatest
missionary works I could ever, ever bump into.
It competes with my favorite China Inland Mission,
OMF.
They both really born out of Great Britain.
Both had unique influences of the day and
age in which the mission was born.
So often we make evaluations on the basis
of hearsay.
So often we only have half the picture
or a third of the picture.
And this creates disunity.
This creates confusion.
And my plea tonight, and I just hope
this sets the pace for your missions conference,
your world missions week, to esteem others better
than yourself.
Now you have a lot of people in
America now who feel that they need to
get into Christian education in America.
Sometimes I haven't even opened my mouth with
someone because I know I represent foreign missions
to some degree, and they're telling me automatically
why they're staying in America.
And they describe America as such a pagan
place that to leave it would be really
to be a traitor.
I remember speaking at Trinity Divinity College once,
and a fellow jumped up at lunch in
a question-answer session, and he said, it
was amazing, he said, why are you missionaries
taking all the cream overseas and leaving us
here in America with just, I forget what
he said, we're left behind.
Well, if we've got all the cream on
the mission field, some of it's gone sour,
but I think he was a little bit
over the top.
Because only a tiny percentage, only a tiny
percentage of people out of all of our
colleges and universities and Christian institutions, a higher
percentage from here than most places, go to
the mission field.
Let us understand that.
You can get a wrong idea here.
How many of you, for example, are praying
about seriously moving toward overseas service?
Raise your hand.
Okay, that's 80%.
Does that give us a picture of the
situation in the United States?
No, that would be a ridiculously foolish conclusion.
I could take surveys in other meetings, and
only a few hands would go up.
The fact of the matter is, at the
end of the day, only a tiny percentage
are going overseas.
Many who actually raise their hand in meetings
like this who say they are going, never
get there or never stay, because it is
complicated, society is complicated, the financing of mission
work is one of the most complicated things
I've ever studied, and the key is that
we need one another.
I wish that tonight I had all those
sitting here who are absolutely convinced that they're
not going to the mission field.
That's the group I want to speak to
more and more.
I wish I had here tonight 200 businessmen
from Columbia, South Carolina.
I spoke to a few in the churches
I spoke at yesterday, because unless we see
a grassroots movement in the churches, among businessmen,
among those who have the resources, among those
who own all this land, in all of
America, then a high percentage of those who
want to go will never go or they
will never stay.
One of the leading missiologists in the nation
just wrote me a letter and said in
the 90s he believes the greatest problem will
be the financing of those who want to
go to the mission field.
Yet we know that all of these other
various emphases and various movements also have tremendous
demands on our finance, and these things that
are all around us, taking care of drug
addicts, which I believe, working against abortion, which
I believe in, having good contextualized spontaneous churches
that can reach pagan Americans, which I also
believe in, all of these things consume hundreds
of millions of dollars.
Hundreds of millions of dollars.
We have a million people, I believe somewhere
near a million people in America who are
in some kind of Christian employment or Christian
work.
It's incredible, huge amount of money to keep
all of these different things going.
And something in me says somehow they should
keep going, except those things that are cults
or false doctrine or heresy.
And therefore the only way I can see
world evangelization taking place between now and the
year 2000 and beyond is if we band
together and the person who remains at home,
who's convinced that he should stay at home,
becomes a world Christian.
Now if you want to become a missionary,
if you are really serious about this thing,
not just playing games or somehow following in
some kind of missionary fog, then you are
going to read that little book, How to
Win Friends and Influence People.
You know where I got the idea to
push that book?
Columbia Bible College.
Thirty some years ago a man taught here.
Was anybody here when Arthur Glasser taught here?
Praise God, Arthur Glasser.
Many of his students at Columbia Bible College,
in one of his classes, read How to
Win Friends and Influence People and put scripture
references to some of these things that Dale
Carnegie sort of distorted and used for a
more human approach to winning people.
It's a brilliant book.
Many a marriage has been saved by that
book.
So you can start that again 30 years
later.
I don't have any copies.
You'll have to order them from your bookstore.
You've got a fine bookstore.
What am I saying?
You have to learn to win people.
I want you, each one of you thinking
about the mission field, to target 25 businessmen
in the next six months.
I want you to learn how to win
people.
I want you to win some of the
people here on the campus who are a
little bit anti-missionary.
You actually make them a little nervous.
They're not going to go to your missionary
prayer meeting.
They feel God's leading them to stay here.
They're going to be a pastor, or they're
going to be a Christian educator, or they're
going to work among drug addicts, or work
among youth, or plant churches in Columbia.
That's the greatest need, more churches in Columbia,
South Carolina.
And you need to not put them off
as I do, but you need to win
them.
You need to esteem them.
Next time you get real angry about something
you see, you let love cover.
We're going to talk about a book by
that title in a little while.
You need to repent of your wrong attitude,
repent of any superiority feeling, any missionary pride,
any prayer meeting pride, any verbal messages pride,
any other subtle forms of arrogance, and just
love them, and win them.
I have a couple of friends, even from
my high school, that somehow, somehow despite all
of my outspoken arrogance, they know I love
them.
The last time I sat down and had
lunch with one of them, he gave me
$7,000.
I had lunch with another one, he gave
me $5,000.
Now when's the last time you sat down
and had lunch and somebody gave you $7
,000?
Don't go to this cafeteria.
You go downtown.
You better go to the Holiday Inn.
The lack of teaching, listen, 30 years I
learned this a hard way, and I'll debate
any missiologist anywhere in the country on this
subject.
The lack of teaching about support raising, about
winning friends, about mobilizing God's people, about finding
the resources, is hindering world evangelism as much
as anything I can think of apart from
just unadulterated lack of love and lack of
faith or materialism, the real biggies.
And I pray that as you think about
the field and you get this vision and
you want to go, you will make friends.
I was listening to this on the Word
of God this morning.
I jogged down to the river early this
morning.
It's a wonderful walk.
You jog along the pipeline wondering if it's
going to explode as you go.
But I was listening to this scripture today
about how often the people of the world
are wiser than the people of life.
You know that scripture?
We need to come together.
We need to esteem one another so that
we can say to this brother who feels
he's led to stay here, well, if that's
what God's leading you to do, that's tremendous.
I want to pray for you.
Let's exchange names and addresses.
I'll pray for your ministry.
You pray for my ministry.
I sense God is leading me to Capuchin.
I sense God is leading me to India.
Let's correspond.
Let's become partners.
You're going to remain here.
I'm going to go there.
No more one-upmanship.
No more we full-time Christian workers are
God's elite.
This poor turkey working down for IBM or
this poor guy working down here in the
local gas station.
He's second-class.
We don't say that, but we infer it.
We over magnify in America so-called full
-time Christian work.
My opinion after 30 years is that many
laymen are more committed to Jesus Christ than
full-time Christian workers.
In fact, I think a lot of full
-time workers are a bit lazy, including some
in operation, mobilization, and one of the privileges
I've had is to ease some of them
out.
And believe it or not, when they got
home, some of them couldn't get a job.
Might be good for you to learn how
to type after all.
Might be good for you to learn a
trade.
Somebody had a bumper sticker on their car.
I follow a Jewish carpenter.
Yes, unless we learn to esteem one another
better than ourself, unless we somehow are willing
to take 1st Corinthians 13 and incorporate it
into the heart of our life and our
ministry, things aren't going to gel.
That revival isn't going to really come, and
that world by the year 2000 isn't going
to be reached.
Now a lot of people talk as if
to reach the world by the year 2000
is really relatively easy.
I always get a kick out of this.
They're usually from California, and the way they
talk is quite humorous.
The British and the Europeans in general can
barely stand even to listen to these people.
You cannot believe how many Europeans are against
some of the things that come out of
this country because of the way that it's
stated.
They mean well, but their brains run a
little, just a little slower than their mouths.
And so then it gets into print and
it comes over to Europe and Europeans think
differently than Americans.
And of course, every country in Europe is
different.
And I know some people that are actually
reacting to some of these statements and they
are convinced it will not happen.
The world will not be evangelized by the
year 2000.
And we're just going to work up a
big load of steam and all get disappointed
in the next 10 years.
Now I'm somewhere in the middle.
I believe it can happen.
A lot depends on definition.
Some are saying world evangelism.
I noticed the movement has now put and
beyond.
They just changed their name.
Isn't that amazing?
I think that was good.
And beyond, for any of you that is
still around the year 2001 and missed the
rapture, and beyond.
Don't quote me on that.
I don't believe we know the times and
the seasons.
So some believe that by the year 2000,
we'll have a church in every people's group.
I think that would be the goal of
quite a few.
And then they add other things, a multiplying
church, an indigenous multiplying church, an indigenous multiplying
church that's able to indigenously multiply.
I have someone, I've worked a lot in
Pakistan, one of my favorite countries.
And I have someone that thought there were
only a few unreached people's groups left in
Pakistan, the Baluch and the Patons and a
few others.
They weren't interested in working among the massive
Muslim Urdu community because they heard there were
some Urdu speaking converts.
I mean, it's completely ridiculous.
The great mass of the people of Pakistan,
even though there are Urdu speaking churches are
unbelievably unreached.
Because those Urdu speaking churches, and Urdu is
not the first language of most people of
Pakistan, they are mainly people from outcast background.
Hardly any of them are from converted Muslim
background.
Therefore they are unable to reach cross-culturally
to their Muslim neighbors.
So in fact, it's not just the Baluch
and the Patons and a few others that
are unreached in Pakistan, hundred million people in
Pakistan.
Most of the people in Pakistan of these
huge Punjabi, Sindhi, other populations are unreached.
Jump over the border and you get to
India.
India has a hundred million Muslims.
Did I mention that already?
Let me mention it again.
Hundred million Muslims, minority group, and as I
already stated, they have no church.
Now our leader of our work in India,
we have 300 full-time people in India,
some of the finest people I've ever met
in my Christian life.
Our executive director is Joseph de Souza.
He went to Lausanne.
That was the next big thing after the
Singapore thing.
People can always criticize these big events, but
my own personal conviction is that in the
light of the task, in the light of
the problems, in the light of all the
factors, these events are needed and are used
of God.
So easy to criticize what we don't really
understand, and especially if it involves big money,
because in fact many Christians, and we had
quite a few of them in OM, are
small-minded little people who are better at
saving pennies than they are at believing God
for the big money that's going to be
needed to evangelize a world of six billion
people.
So the money we spent on Lausanne, I
didn't put much in.
I think I sent a little bit to
prime the pump in the early days.
I got a thank you letter back.
The money we spent on Lausanne, or the
Singapore year 2000 meeting, or the money you're
spending to go through college, or to throw
up a few buildings and teepees and whatever
else you've got around here, this is nothing.
This is small compared to the money we
need to evangelize the whole world.
Do you realize what our goals actually are?
Six billion people.
In 1840, we had one billion in the
whole world.
1840, that's not so long ago.
I know you weren't there, but it's not
so long ago.
One billion people.
Now in the Indian subcontinent alone, where missionaries
are finding it harder and harder to go,
especially India, we have a billion people.
In China, we have more than a billion.
Population explosion, please study it.
It'll depress you, it'll frighten you.
If you're a committed Christian, you'll probably start
screaming reading some of the books, but population
explosion must invade our thinking if we are
to reach the world by the year 2000.
Now, my goals are not quite as high
as some other people, though I'm more than
willing for their goals, and I'm praying for
my unbelief to be delivered and to grow
in faith and all these things I need.
But my goal, and it's hard enough even
having my own goal, which is much less
than what I just talked about, is that
everybody in the world would at least have
the opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ.
Now, that's a lot easier.
That's still impossible, but it's a lot easier
than seeing a church planted in every single
unreached people's group, which basically means an escalation
of what's been going on in missions by
tenfold, by a hundredfold.
I don't know if we could classify it.
But with radio, with technology, with mass mobilization
of the man in the pew, mass mobilization
of students and young people.
Think of the Mormons.
They've got 26,000 on the field, one
little cult.
How many could we, the Church of Jesus
Christ, if there was a major move, could
mobilize?
And those mobilized people will mobilize others when
they return to their own country, some of
them after short-term work, they will leave
behind, as we have seen all over the
world, other people that have come to Jesus
who live in that country.
They can't go anywhere else, but stay there.
So I believe that through prayer, through hard
work, through spreading the vision, through a much
greater effort to release resources, through a revolution
of love, that we can make Jesus Christ
known to every man and woman in the
world by the year 2000.
Whether we say it's evangelized or not, that
doesn't matter so much to me.
I don't think we ever complete evangelizing.
We have to keep re-evangelizing.
I believe together with this work of evangelism,
we must also commit ourselves avidly, militantly, to
renewal and restoration in the Church of Jesus
Christ, that the principles we read about in
the Word of God will be restored.
Prayer as the heart, prayer and worship as
the heart of the Church's activities.
Those are called worship, the missing jewel of
the evangelical Church.
A high percentage of Christians I meet here
in this country, it seems to me they
do not understand worship.
What it is just to worship God.
I want you to pick up a book
if you can from your bookstore.
We have a few there on the back
called Destined for the Throne.
Destined for the Throne.
Billy Graham said something about this that I
thought was very interesting.
If I can find out where he wrote
it, just hang on there and don't run
away.
Dedication to his wife.
There it is.
I have just read the manuscript of Paul
E.
Bilheimer's book, Destined for the Throne, and have
been inspired and challenged by the insights and
fresh interpretation of scripture regarding prayer, praise, and
the Church's place in the world.
Every Christian who feels impelled to find a
deeper dimension of Christian witness should not only
read this book, but study it prayerfully and
apply its principles to his life.
Billy Graham.
Worship is our highest calling.
Whatever else we may be doing, whatever else
we may be crusading for, whatever else we
may be studying, the center of all of
it should be our worship of God, knowing
God, growing in God.
Many writers, including Watchman Nee, have indicated that
God is going to allow a lot of
things to go wrong in your life to
get you to that place where eventually you
can say, God is enough.
Have you ever had that?
God is enough.
I believe revival and restoration within the Church
of biblical Christianity, which to me includes personal
revival, is equally as important as world missions.
I do not believe these things should be
in competition.
This is why I don't believe the first
need for Americans is to run off to
the mission field.
I believe they need to seek guidance from
God.
I believe they should seek counsel from godly
people.
I believe they should discover what their gifts
are.
I believe they should consider also what nationals
can do living in their own country who
already speak the language.
And that's another great controversy that I find
myself right in the middle of, since K
.P. Yohannan dedicated his radical book to me.
And he and I have had some lively
discussions on the subject, because I am strongly
committed to continuing to see Americans going out
as missionaries.
But my plea is that they may be
the right Americans.
They may be godly men and women.
They may be humble men and women.
They may be men and women who are
dependent upon God.
They may be men and women who know
reality in prayer.
No church in the world today that I
know of is going to refuse committed, crucified,
humble godly people, whether they are Americans, Chinese,
French, or Russian.
That is why those days here, these days
here, at Columbia Bible College are incredibly important.
If I were you, I would consider it
a rare privilege to be able to study
in such an institution with such a godly
leader as Robertson McQuilkin, where missions is so
emphasized, where the word of God is so
emphasized, where faith has been a foundation principle
from the earliest days of the college.
That doesn't mean it's perfect and nothing is
perfect.
That doesn't mean there shouldn't be changes for
any college or any institution that does anything
for God, including Operation Mobilization, must be willing
to change.
We must not only move into the 20th
century, we have to move into the 21st
century.
That's very, very, very important.
Yes, we live in perhaps the most significant,
exciting decade of this century.
Is it wrong to say that?
Does that belittle those who have gone on
before us?
No, I think this decade is the most
crucial because it is the decade in which
we can build on all the foundations of
those who went on before us.
We're just part of a team.
We're not boasting because we're in the 90s,
but there's a momentum that has built up.
Think of the growth of Christian radio.
Think of the growth of Christian literature.
No, all of it needs to double and
triple and quadruple.
Think of the growth of the Bible college
movement.
I may eventually go down in history as
the character that spoke in the most Bible
colleges in the world.
I don't know, and I don't think that
will get me anywhere in heaven, might give
me a headache down here.
But the Bible college movement, I've just come
from Prairie, just come from Briarcrest and Moody,
is a phenomenal movement of the Spirit of
God that has released more people into world
missions.
And we have these Bible colleges all over
Britain.
I'm in most of them regularly.
We have them all over Europe.
In fact, you can hardly find a Bible
college in the world and not find an
OMer, somebody who was on an OM campaign
or got converted to Christ through OM.
And because we are a complementary, supplementary movement
to the Bible college movement in terms of
training, they are there.
In fact, sometimes one fourth of the whole
student body in Europe and Asia are made
up of ex-OM people that somehow God
has touched.
We need to come together more.
We need to emphasize love and worship.
We need to realize that God leads different
people in different ways.
Many are going to be led to stay,
but those of you who are led to
stay, you need to esteem those who go.
Pray for them, help them find their money,
just take an interest.
Why don't we take an interest more in
other people?
Why are we so egocentric, each man living
his own world, each person concerned about his
own house?
Sure, there are many beautiful exceptions.
Maybe you're one of them.
I don't want to deliver oranges to Israel
or sell ice cubes to Eskimos, but put
the shoe on if it fits.
Has those who remain at home become caught
up in the task and praise God for
those who already are.
They mobilize prayer, they mobilize finance, and they
can do that while they're carrying on their
same ministry.
One of my close personal friends is Melody
Green.
Do you think Melody has any involvement in
the anti-abortion movement?
One of the leaders, she was one of
our main speakers at Love Europe.
I've only got a few copies left of
Keith Green's biography that I've been selling all
over the country for his music was so
powerful.
And 40 days exactly before he died, we
met, and our hearts were linked together like
we were two brothers that just found each
other.
And I remember sitting with him at night
when he was at the piano.
He didn't play the piano, Keith, he attacked
it.
As he was attacking this piano, he was
writing this song, Jesus commands us to go.
And in his memorial concerts around Europe and
around UK, I was involved in some of
them, in the USA, thousands and thousands volunteered
to go.
So many have fallen by the wayside.
You may come from a church that supports
you, that encourages you, and that's going to
finance you if you go into world missionary
work.
If you come from that kind of church,
before you go to bed tonight, you thank
Jesus.
Because most of the people that I deal
with who want to go to the mission
field, and I'm talking about thousands of people.
We had 7,000 on Love Europe this
summer.
They don't come from that kind of church.
They will not be privileged to go through
three or four years of this kind of
training, especially many Europeans.
But more and more are finding their way.
So eventually, because perhaps they're not stubborn enough
or whatever, they fall by the wayside.
We're losing thousands of recruits because the church
is not on the cutting edge of what
the Spirit of God is saying and doing
in connection with world missions.
So our seminaries need to turn out godly,
committed American pastors to pastor in America, missionary
sending churches.
There's a book on the table this evening
that you've probably never seen.
I don't know if we've sold one copy
yet.
It's called 10 Sending Churches.
But it's a British book about 10 dynamic
sending churches in Britain.
Most Americans have cockeyed ideas about Great Britain.
They think the place is just about falling
off the edge of the earth and degradation
and whatever.
But in fact, there's a section of the
church in Britain that's alive and well.
We'll have 60,000 at spring harvest for
seven days studying the word of God.
A movement sponsored by a number of organizations,
I think mainly Youth for Christ and a
particular magazine in Britain, though some of us,
almost all, are involved in one way or
the other.
We had 1,500 British young people come
on Love Europe.
We have more wanting to be full-time
workers from Britain, long-term missionaries than we
can seemingly possibly find the money for.
Every year we lose British people because getting
churches to support British missionaries once they're married
with children is extremely difficult.
Amazing, isn't it?
We need each other.
And you must not just think in terms
of going to the mission field.
You may have to stay back here a
little while.
You must think of mobilizing a grassroots movement
for missions.
And you've got to aim at the businessmen
as well as the prisoners.
I noticed quite a few go over to
the prison for ministry.
I went out to the peak here and
looked at the prison.
And I think that's one of the greatest
ministries you can get involved in.
And that's very attractive because we love the
poor.
And the N-word today is the poor.
The second N-word today is urban.
And you have people stating things that make
you feel so miserable.
If you're not living in the inner city,
you feel like you're some kind of a
backslidden duck.
But the fact of the matter is that
unless we reach out to the suburbs and
see some of these people saved who are
holding the resources of our nation, unless we
reach out also to the wealthy, including those
who are already Christians, and see a grassroots
movement for missionary work so that the hundreds
of millions, we need hundreds of millions, brothers
and sisters to do the job that Jesus
Christ has come to give us.
Now, there may be someone at this point
that likes to throw a cliché.
Let's throw a cliché.
It's cliché throwing time, right?
God's work done in God's way will never
lack God's supply.
That's a good one.
Bingo!
I threw it around for years.
I made people feel miserable.
Absolutely.
I had a gift making people feel miserable.
People thought in my early days, because I
was so intense, that I was going to
have a nervous breakdown.
I never had a nervous breakdown.
That wasn't my thing.
My thing was giving other people nervous breakdowns,
making people feel miserable by some of my
extremist statements about faith.
And I became in the area of faith
and believing God for money.
For 25 years, I moved to some degree
into a camp that could be compared with
the extremist people who never go to doctors,
who never take medicine, who don't want any
diagnosis of their illness.
One church like that in Indiana had 60
to 70 people dead.
And I thank God for people.
They didn't give up on me.
They knew I was stubborn, but they didn't
give up on me.
They wrote me their little letters.
And I began to see that praying and
trusting God for finance, which I still believe
in with every inch in me, is not
in competition with spreading the vision, sharing the
message, showing the slides, telling people what's going
on, speaking honestly about money and about your
needs, which takes humility.
And I saw in our own work a
spiritual pride come in, because some of our
people said, I don't think I ever said
it, the Lord forgive me if I did,
but some of our people would say, our
money comes in by prayer alone.
The fact is, for 30 years of our
history of 25, prayer was the key factor.
We never talked and shared much about money,
but there were leaks.
There were information leaks, not necessarily on purpose.
Parents would find out that OM was again
100,000 in the red.
People would come to our night of prayer.
Our night of prayer became famous all over
Europe.
We debated whether we should ever talk about
money when there was a visitor in the
meeting.
I decided, look, we've got to be able
to pray for our financial problems.
If there's a visitor in the need, we'll
trust that to the sovereignty of God.
Again and again, the visitors who snuck into
the OM prayer meetings were the people who
went out and wrote the checks.
I want you to become intensely committed to
intercessory prayer and releasing money through prayer.
I've written a booklet, a leaflet about that.
But I want you also to learn how
to communicate the vision, to learn how to
get people on board this great spiritual concord
to reach every nation and every people's group
with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Read some books about resourcing the work of
God.
Read about how some of these great missionaries
do it.
Actually, One Mission Society, the Great China Inland
Mission, were so gifted at this, they created
their own language.
They created their own language.
They wrote phenomenal books about faith.
As people read those books, as people learned
that language, they gave abundantly, one lady, a
million dollars to that great missionary work.
A man's done research on George Muller, another
man known for faith and for prayer, and
they proved that George Muller was one of
the greatest communicators about finance that has ever
walked the face of the earth.
I ought to be able to speak a
little bit about those two men because some
clown introduced me once in a meeting as
the culmination of George Muller and Hudson Taylor
and E.T. It was a great blessing
in my life that I decided to be
myself.
And I am now as committed to seeing
the finance come in as I am committed
to see the workers go out.
And when you have your prayer meetings from
now on, I want you to pray for
finance.
I was at Briarcrest Bible College, and they
have a gift for fundraising up there, and
they raised $80,000 for missions during their
Student Missions Conference.
Eighty grand, the Canadians.
I've been in People's Church a dozen times.
Following the steps of Oswald J.
Smith, I was at his hospital bed when
he was dying shortly before he died.
They've committed $1,200,000 to world missions.
Most of the people have put big money
into missions for the last hundred years have
had the gift of speaking about it, not
just praying about it.
They had the gift of knowing how to
take the offering at the right time, of
knowing how to teach people the Faith Promise
Program, knowing how to teach people about tithing
or about tithing and beyond.
Let's be open.
Let's be honest.
Start writing your own prayer letter.
Mention your own financial needs in that prayer
letter, what you need to get out of
college.
Some of you are in debt up to
your eyeballs.
Don't feel ashamed of that.
The Word of God says the laborer is
worthy of his hire.
You are training to get into God's army.
You are training to be in God's Marine
Corps, and you are worthy of the right
education, and the bills should be paid, and
you are worthy of the salary and the
money it takes for you to go out
and do the job.
Our country's done something very controversial again the
last month, and it was very controversial.
What was that?
Panama.
The other countries didn't like it.
You know what they said in the United
Nations?
They're so influential, the United Nations.
They said, naughty, naughty, naughty.
We went into Panama, and I have to
be careful because my American instincts start to
come out, and I get in trouble when
I get back in Europe.
They already think I'm anti-communist.
That's why I don't wear my red tie
anymore.
But we went into Panama, and I was
reading the other day that we actually used,
to this little invasion of Panama, we actually
used that new bomber.
What was that?
What's that thing called?
Wealth?
Stealth?
Something like that.
We used this new bomber, and of course,
at least most of the people seem to
think it was totally unnecessary.
Really, it's like you going out to hunt
a rabbit, you know, with a machine gun.
I know some Americans do that.
One rabbit sort of comes limping along.
Fact is, that invasion of Panama cost millions
and millions and millions, who knows how many
millions.
Do we think we're going to have an
invasion of every people's group in the world,
an invasion of every nation, without seeing the
millions come in?
And I believe the way God does it,
as we see in the scriptures, is going
to demand sacrifice.
I wish I had another hour.
I don't know how long I'm supposed to
speak.
Nobody had the courage to tell me.
But I'm leaving in the morning.
But I wish I had another hour.
I wish I had another hour to just
speak about some other things that are so
tied into this.
And one of the things that frightens me
the most about the church in America is
the lack of willingness to sacrifice, even in
the smallest way.
How many of us would even sacrifice one
little bit of candy?
Do you buy candy occasionally?
Nothing wrong with that.
Do you buy an occasional Coke in the
machine?
One-armed bandits over there in the student
center?
Just imagine if we would sacrifice just a
little bit.
We're not asking you to become ascetic.
Some of you look intense now.
But if we would even learn a little
bit about sacrifice, and if that vision could
spread, because for you it may be sacrificing
one Coke, and I love Coke, but for
the other man who catches the vision, because
of your life, because as the Spirit of
God works through you, your life is going
to begin to impact people.
Your letters, your writing, your cassette tapes.
You can even make a videotape today.
It's going to impact people.
And the next man who makes a sacrifice,
it's going to be a yacht.
I just had a phone call from Canada.
We're in the midst of opening a major
coordinating base in our work in India, shifting
from Bombay to Hyderabad.
We need some money.
And a prayer partner in Canada just said,
I pledge so many, I don't know, 30,
40 thousand dollars toward this project.
God answers prayer.
But he said, I can't send it at
once.
And then I heard, got to wait till
his yacht gets sold.
Glory, whenever a yacht gets sold from a
believer, there's a big clap in heaven.
For some of you that are rather happy
about that, what about your rowboat?
Even a rowboat sold for Jesus might ring
some bells in heaven.
These words have sort of disappeared from our
Christian vocabulary.
Discipline, sacrifice, enduring hardship, pain, suffering.
And yet until those things are brought back
into the heart of the Christian life, the
heart of our thinking, we will not be
able to produce the kind of men that
can do the job.
I would beg of you to reread the
New Testament with somehow a new set of
lenses so that you would see the kind
of principles we see in the life of
the Apostle Paul, who for the space of
three years ceased not, night and day, to
warn people.
Do you think he had a vision?
Do you think he had a ministry?
Do you think he was intensive?
Night and day with tears.
You know one of the greatest things going
on on this campus?
It's these little prayer concerts.
I arrive here on Saturday night rather late.
I'm sort of doodling around wondering what's what
I'm supposed to do.
Somebody in the house where I'm staying says,
hey, prayer concert, prayer concert!
Let's go!
And we got there.
And there was this little group.
I mean, this is a big institution.
I heard it's somewhere around a thousand people
around here.
I don't know.
That must include teachers.
Maybe that includes pets.
I don't know.
But there was just a mighty small group.
And I would have thought a prayer concert,
why, a missionary-minded, committed soldier of Jesus
Christ, even if he has exams coming, would
gravitate toward a prayer concert, seemingly as a
duck to water.
We want prayer.
This is the heart.
When I was a student at Moody, maybe
I was a freak, but I don't think
I ever missed a single prayer meeting.
We had them every single day in my
entire two and a half years there.
And I didn't really find it enough, so
I created my own nights of prayer.
Got a tremendous problem with the faculty, but
the Holy Ghost moved anyway.
And somehow, a couple of years ago, they
invited me back and made me the alumni
of the year.
Things do change, don't they?
I was just with Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's
son, a bit of a renegade, wasn't exactly
walking for the Lord.
He went to Latourneau, and guess what happened
to Franklin Graham at Latourneau?
Operation Kicko!
Uh-oh!
Billy Graham's son!
Woo!
Bang!
You're out!
Now that he's back with Jesus as the
president of Samaritan's Prayers, guess who they invited
to speak at the Latourneau banquet?
Their ex-student, Franklin Graham.
God's people.
If you can figure them out, please write
me about it.
Brothers and sisters, this burden is so heavy
on my heart that if I don't insert
some humor, I probably will collapse in the
process.
Men are lost.
Radical changes must be made in our lives,
in our approach, in how we use our
time, in how we use our money.
Every area of our life should be radicalized
and revolutionized as we become impassioned with this
burden to obey Jesus Christ, for he said,
if you love me, keep my commandments.
That will often be painful for some of
us who are not naturally very spiritual, but
that's the will of God.
And we want to say, as Jesus Christ,
my meat, my meat is to do the
will of the Father.
I beg of you, consider your lifestyle.
Consider your mentality.
Consider the way you think and pray in
regard to money and the unreached people.
And make decisions this week that will help
bring about the greatest missionary thrust in the
history of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Our God and Father, we thank you for
this opportunity to be together.
With so many who are unable to be
here, we thank you that this somehow, I
believe, is on cassette tape, and we pray
that even this little cassette tape, if it's
your will, will go all over America and
will result in spontaneous prayer, spontaneous commitment of
lives, spontaneous outflow of finance, that we may
see a revolution of love, a revolution of
esteeming others better than ourselves, to band us
together in a new way for world evangelism
and for spiritual renewal and restoration, restoration of
these great principles concerning prayer, concerning love, concerning
evangelism, concerning unity, concerning real commitment and sacrifice,
and all the other great biblical principles that
we see across the pages of the New
Testament.
Grant this, we pray, in Jesus Christ's powerful,
precious, and glorious name.
Amen.
I'd ask of you, as you leave, to
visit our literature table.
It'll only be up for a short time.
This is the end of our three-week
tour, and so we don't have many books,
but I mention this beautiful book on worship
and prayer.
I want to mention another book, which I
referred to by Paul Billheimer, called Love Covers,
the most brilliant book on spiritual and Christian
unity that I have ever read.
It does not challenge us to sacrifice our
doctrine, but shows us how we can have
an amalgamation and a greater unity in the
body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I wanted to read one or two quotes
of what some people have said about this
unusual book.
There's a number of them.
Robert Coleman of Asbury, I hope that this
message is heard and Armand Guesswine, a great
founder of the prayer movement, the book is
full of grand insights.
Dr. J.I. Packer, I applaud its overall
thrust.
It's very true and timely.
Arthur Blessed, one of the most unusual characters
that ever spiritually hit Britain, though he's an
American.
The book is great, just what we need
at this time in the Christian community.
Love Covers.
I'd like to urge you to read the
writings of Roy Heshin.
Calvary Road.
I wanted to talk more about personal revival,
as I touched on corporate revival.
And the problem with some corporate revival is
that the people were unwilling after it to
enter into the ongoing process of personal revival.
This is our privilege in Jesus Christ.
Old Vance Hadner, whose picture is there in
the dining hall, I saw it today.
It spoke to my heart.
He emphasized that we have in Christ Bible.
We have Bible.
Therefore, we would need revival.
Beautiful.
This grew out of the great East African
revival.
You can have this little magazine book for
any donation you want to give, even a
dime.
My own book, Hunger for Reality.
This is the African edition that brought me
17,000 letters from all over the world.
You can have that for a dime or
anything you want to give.
I mentioned the biography of C.T. Studd,
one of the most radical Christian missionary biographies
ever written.
One of the books of Roy Heshin that's
not well known is called Forgotten Factors.
It's an aid to deeper repentance in the
whole area of sexual misbehavior.
Every time I take a series at a
Christian college, the people that come to me
for counseling, and sometimes it's several dozen, often
their struggles are in the area of sexuality.
Here's a brilliant book on that subject.
And lastly, I wanted to mention my own
book so I can get four or five
more messages into your place of resonance.
Just republished with four new chapters, Revolution of
Love, where I talk about the Lordship of
Christ, similar to the message I gave at
Urbana.
I talk about world missions today, spiritual balance
and self-acceptance.
It's a great privilege to have been able
to share this burden with you.
There's a lot of other literature about Operation
Mobilization and Love Europe.
Most of it's free.
We'd love to get involved with more of
you.
We've moved our USA coordinating base from New
York City to Atlanta.
Our literature operation is Waynesboro, Georgia.
We need your prayers, as there are now
2,000 of us, and to be quite
honest, we're overstretched, underfinanced, and cast upon God.
And in the midst of it, we're launching
Lagos II, another ship that will house 150
soldiers of Jesus Christ, and we hope reach
tens of millions of people with the gospel.
We've already got invitations to the Soviet Union,
to Poland, and we hope the ship may
sail in the month of March.
God bless you.
It's a joy to be here.