If any movement is to go on and
be a powerful force for God, the vision
of the movement must be reborn in each
generation.
What we did in the 60s or 70s
or the 80s will not count for much
in the 90s.
It will help.
We need a good foundation.
And we had people go ahead of us,
like Billy Graham, and others who helped us
in our foundation.
But we've got to plan ahead, think ahead,
pray ahead.
And that's why we plod on with these
youth leadership training programs and many other similar
programs.
Of course, the best program we can get
for you to develop your leadership ability is
to get you into one of our campaigns,
Like Love Europe, where you're sort of forced
into on-the-job training.
A lot of it, of course, will be
servanship.
Being a servant is the key to eventually
being a leader.
A leader is a servant.
If you know Chua Wee Han's book, just
had a letter from him a few moments
ago before I came here.
But if you know his book, it has
a terrific, terrific emphasis on being a servant
leader.
You might refer to it later on.
Let's just pray again.
Lord, I need your help.
I got 24 hours of material on my
heart and an hour to share it.
So we need operation condensation.
We just pray, Lord, I know I'm so
unrealistic and I just need to give what
you want for tonight and then cast everything
else upon you.
Lord, you've shown us it takes years.
It takes years to train up Christian leaders.
But we got to start somewhere.
And maybe for some people tonight is a
start.
Increase our vision, oh Lord.
Teach us what it is to appropriate that
which is our inheritance in your Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Deliver us from playing games with your word,
saying one thing, practicing something else, singing one
thing, practicing something else.
Lord, we would know the reality of consistency
in our walk with yourself.
We thank you that it's possible.
We thank you there's a great army of
witnesses have gone on ahead of us demonstrating
the consistent life.
And we're trusting you and looking to you
as we have this time together.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
I want to look at a number of
scriptures together.
That's the authority, has been the authority for
our fellowship.
I can assure you that we in Operation
Mobilization do not think we're the greatest mission
society of this generation and that we're not
running around patting ourselves on the back for
the great things that we've seen God do.
Because we are very aware of our own
needs.
I'm sure that in the long run it
would be very difficult for the best of
us to probably live up to some of
your expectations.
Especially if you've already developed a sort of
storybook fantasy view of what the Christian life
is all about, which a lot of people
do.
I don't know how it happens, but it
happens.
Billy Graham said life at its best is
filled with sadness.
It's not all blessings, it's not all answers
to prayer, it's not all name it, claim
it, moving mountains for Jesus, flying around spiritually
like some kind of spiritual concord.
There are the heartbreaks, there are the disappointments,
there are the setbacks.
Before the meeting I was talking with a
brother just about Afghanistan.
We have 33 years praying for Afghanistan.
We have not seen significant breakthroughs.
There have been cracks, there have been individuals
saved.
Praise God for every one of them.
But we have not in any way seen
the fulfillment of this vision for Afghanistan, one
of the countries that burned upon my heart
the most.
I want us to start off in our
sharing this evening in the book of Isaiah.
I know I can get stuck there because
it's such a great passage, chapter 6, but
I'm going to try to just share that
and move on to some other passages.
I'm using the New International Translation.
In the year that King Uzziah died, chapter
6, verse 1, I saw the Lord seated
on a throne, high and exalted, and the
train of his robe filled the temple.
Above him were seraphs, each with six wings.
With two wings, they covered their faces.
With two, they covered their feet.
With two, they were flying.
And they were calling to one another, Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
At the sound of their voices, the doorposts
and thresholds shook.
The temple was filled with smoke.
Just imagine this experience.
Woe is me, I cried.
I'm ruined.
I'm a man of unclean lips, and I
live among a people of unclean lips, and
my eyes have seen the King, the Lord
of hosts.
Then one of the seraphs flew to me
with a live coal in his hand, which
he had taken with tongs from the altar.
With it, he touched my mouth and said,
See, this has touched your lips.
Your guilt is taken away.
Your sin is atoned for.
Amazing, way back here in the Old Testament.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, Whom shall I send, and who will
go for us?
And I said, Here am I, send me.
And he said, Go, and tell this people.
Be ever hearing, but never understanding.
Be ever seeing, but never perceiving.
Make the heart of this people calloused.
Make their ears dull, and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes, and
hear with their ears, and understand with their
hearts, and turn and be healed.
And I said, For how long, O Lord?
Many, many, many people have felt the call
of God upon their lives studying this passage
of Scripture.
Many people.
We don't believe it's an accident that we're
here together tonight and this weekend.
Thousands of people are praying for this meeting,
praying for me.
I have at least 100,000 prayer partners.
You want to understand the secret of OM
and the secret of what God has done.
You only have to understand what God does
through prayer.
Prayer is where the action is.
If you're not in a life of prayer,
you're not in the action.
You're in deception.
Doesn't mean God isn't using you.
Doesn't mean you're not a Christian.
Just means you're not in the heart of
the action.
The heart of the action is in the
prayer closet, in the prayer meeting.
The heart of the action is when you
fall at the foot of the cross, realize
how little you can do in yourself, and
begin to believe God for the impossible.
It's a scary thing to think of 100
,000 people suddenly releasing their prayer power in
the direction of the Quinta.
Some of you more emotional types may start
to fly before the meeting is over.
God answers prayer.
When we look at this passage, we first
of all are exhorted, we first of all
catch the vision of God Himself.
And in this first message of this conference,
we want to emphasize God Himself.
We want to urge you to get to
know God.
I'm still on that road.
It's still the greatest goal of my life.
I feel so unspiritual and so far from
God at times, but I take Him at
His word, and I continue to hunger and
thirst for greater reality and fellowship with God.
I read the writings of men like Tozer
and Andrew Murray and a host of other
people who seem to walk so powerfully with
God.
I realize I have a long way to
go.
Have you made God the number one goal
in your life?
It seems to me that so many other
things are crowding for number one.
Money, career, friends, romance, husband, wife.
It's considered the normal way to live, is
to chase after all these things.
Even though we have so many decades and
centuries of history proving that these things do
not satisfy the deep longings of the human
heart.
I'm reading a book by a brilliant sociologist
named Paul Johnson.
I don't know if he's a Christian.
But this man has just in his book
totally exposed the degradation, even of much of
the major philosophy that has guided Europe for
many, many, many years.
By pointing out the lives, the ugly, terrible
and sinful lives of people whose philosophy was
taken in to our universities and many of
our institutions 20, 30, 40, 50 and more
years ago.
The greatest priority for all of us here
in this world should be to know God.
Salvation is the beginning of really knowing God,
though some people may seek God for many
years before they come to know Christ.
We believe out among these unreached people's groups
that are our priority target.
There are people seeking God.
And God is moving upon our hearts to
go to some of these people to give
them the gospel because there's a vacuum in
their hearts because they're seeking God.
And what a wonderful thing it is when
we meet some of them and they quickly
respond to the message, knowing God.
As Isaiah had his experience with God, he
especially, immediately saw God's holiness.
Verse 3.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
Have you got a glimpse yet of the
holiness of God?
I had a terrific problem with pornography as
a young Christian.
I thought I'd never make it.
It seemed so absurd.
It was so embarrassing.
One of the things that helped me get
over that, though I struggled for it just
like an alcoholic, had to be careful of
it all my life.
One of the things that really made the
difference is to come to grips with the
holiness of God and how God hated evil
thoughts and sin.
And yet, at the same time, we'll talk
about that in a few minutes, to capture
the reality of the grace of God, forgiveness
of God, the mercy of God.
You'll probably hear me use the word balance.
I know it's not probably your favorite word.
It's got a bit of a wimpish tone
to it, balance.
But whatever term you use, the fact is,
if you are going to run God's race
long term, and that's what this conference is
about.
It's not soldiering for a summer.
It's surrender for a lifetime.
If you're going to run the race a
long time, you have to find that balance.
So when we talk about the holiness of
God, it's brought into balance as we realize
the mercy of God, the grace of God,
the love of God.
Some people are very loose and sort of
very free.
They think they know something of the grace
of God.
They may be even taking the grace of
God in vain.
That's spoken about in the New Testament.
They need perhaps a greater challenge about the
holiness of God.
But other people that I've met, because of
their emotional background, because of sometimes a wrong
relationship with their own father, that's affected their
thinking.
They don't need another message about the holiness
of God.
They need a message about the mercy of
God and the grace of God, the patience
of God.
There have been Christians that have actually committed
suicide with the wrong view of the holiness
of God.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
After he saw that and got that vision
of the holiness of God, of course, the
obvious next step was that he saw the
sinfulness of himself.
Woe to me, I cried.
Woe is me, I cried.
I'm ruined, for I'm a man of unclean
lips.
I live among a people of unclean lips.
And my eyes have seen the King.
Can you say that?
My eyes have seen the King, the Lord
Almighty.
So he saw the holiness of God.
He saw the wickedness of his own heart.
And then he experienced, we don't have time
to go into detail, the cleansing, the renewing,
an experience of God's mercy.
And one of the seraphs, verse 6, flew
to me with a live coal in his
hand, which he had taken with the tongues
from the altar.
With it he touched my mouth and said,
See, this has touched your lips, your guilt
is taken away, your sin atoned for.
Because of that message, because of Jesus Christ,
as far as I can remember, every single
night for 38 years, I've gone to bed
with a clear conscience and a clear heart.
There were a couple of nights when it
was really difficult.
Many nights where it was really difficult.
But the Bible says the blood of Jesus
Christ cleanses from all sin.
The Bible teaches us in great passages like
1 John 2, verse 1, what to do
with sin.
Our first goal is to sin not.
And if we sin, we have an advocate
with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous.
So we know how to handle sin.
And if you are to be a leader
in God's work, you must know how to
handle sin.
To repent of it, to deal with it,
to grow strong in your battle against it.
And here's a good passage to start with.
He experienced that cleansing.
It's interesting, it speaks about a live coal.
It speaks to me about pain.
With it, He touched my mouth.
Have you ever had a live coal in
your mouth?
I dare to say that would bring quite
a response.
It's amazing the illustrations in the Word of
God about fire.
Has anyone ever walked up to you and
said, Hey, are you on fire for Jesus
Christ?
I'd like to do it tonight.
I've got to get each one of you
in a corner.
First thing I do is ask you if
you're on fire for Jesus Christ.
The next thing I do is ask you
to start to touch any part of my
jacket.
And whatever nation you touch, pray that you
go there.
But I don't think we should get into
that.
It says in the Book of Hebrews, Our
God is a consuming fire.
We remember Elijah when he challenged false prophets
and the fire of God came down.
Our first burden in Operation Mobilization isn't to
get you out in evangelism.
Of course we are committed to that.
Our first burden is to see you experiencing
the reality of God, the grace of God,
the holiness of God.
You can explain it in many different ways.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Speaking about the Holy Spirit, Billy Graham said,
I don't care how you get it, just
get it.
You'll find that's a motto in OM.
It's in OM people from different churches who
are actually fighting over the Holy Spirit come
together to work under the anointing and the
filling of the Holy Spirit to take the
gospel to the ends of the earth.
And we were told 30 years ago it
just would never work.
You're never going to get such a mixed
multitude to work together.
It's all going to be over when I
came here 30 years ago to Britain.
It's going to be all over in one
or two years.
Here we are in the midst of our
30th anniversary.
I hope you'll get a copy of the
booklet published right here at the Quinta.
Because God is faithful.
Because God uses ordinary people.
Because prayer works.
Because God is no respecter of persons.
And because it is possible when people are
experiencing the grace of God, the fullness of
the Lord Jesus and His Holy Spirit, they
can work together even though they be of
different backgrounds, even though they may have different
ways of expressing things.
And whenever we express anything, there will be
some of our own human straw.
Anything you get from me, there will be
some verb or mud factor in it.
Some of you probably feel my accent is
a bit of a mud factor.
30 years in the country, I haven't even
learned a language.
I should be ashamed.
The Word of God in the book of
Revelation says, Be ye hot or be ye
cold.
If you are lukewarm, I'll spew you out
of my mouth.
How many of you have taken that as
your favorite verse?
Nobody.
I've never met anybody who took that one
as their favorite verse.
Not many preachers will even preach on it.
It's the most scary verse in the Bible
in some ways.
Be ye hot.
Can you say that you're on fire for
Jesus Christ tonight?
His love, His grace, fellowship, a knowledge of
Him, His power?
Be ye hot or be ye cold.
Be lukewarm.
Just come back from America.
In America, everybody thinks the big problem is
abortion.
Everybody's going around on the abortion thing.
I agree with a lot of it.
I believe abortion is a terrible problem.
Other people believe the greatest problem is militant
homosexuality.
People with Clinton as president, some people are
just preparing to jump off the cliff with
an umbrella instead of a parachute.
And the people are just going bananas in
the wrong sense.
And there's so many negative things being stated.
And in this country, there's plenty of it
as well.
I don't believe the great enemy is from
without.
I don't believe the great enemy is militant
homosexuality, the abortion clinics, crime, promiscuity.
All those things are factors and serious things
that Christians have to look at.
I believe the enemy is within the church.
Lukewarmness, broken relationships, lack of love, lack of
honesty, integrity, and reality, and all the things
we read about through the whole of the
New Testament.
If the church came into revival and biblical
faith under the lordship of Jesus Christ, it
would impact every single area of society.
I'm not saying we'd suddenly take over the
government and everything would be rosy because that's
not the way it is in this world.
But there would be huge changes on every
level.
There was a famous Methodist pastor years ago
in New York, quite a very dignified man.
It's amazing how Methodism started as a wildcat
operation.
It's got some real similarities to it in
some ways if you study history.
And ended up as such a very, very
well-organized, dignified church.
And this guy was a very famous pastor
in New York City.
And he met another wildcat, a movement that
came out of the Anglicans and the Methodists
many years ago named, you may have heard
of him, General William Booth.
If you want to read a wildcat book,
read The General Next to God.
What an amazing book.
Booth was a little hesitant about this man,
Samuel Logan Bringle, this Methodist pastor.
He wanted to join the Salvation Army.
He finally accepted, put him through an intensive
year of boot camp.
Shining shoes was the big thing they allowed
you to do in the Salvation Army in
those days in the first year.
And other major ministries like cleaning toilets and
sweeping floors.
And if you've never had the privilege of
doing some of those things for Jesus, you
ought to get into it as soon as
possible.
He proved himself as a man of the
Spirit, later won tens of thousands of souls
to Jesus Christ.
He once in his book Resurrection, Life and
Power gave this definition of spiritual fire that
we're talking about.
What is fire?
It is love.
It's faith.
It's hope.
It's passion.
It's purpose and determination.
It's utter devotion.
It's divine discontent with formality.
Ceremonialism, lukewarmness, indifference, sham, noise, parade and spiritual
death.
It's singleness of mind, consecration unto death.
It's God the Holy Ghost burning in and
through a humble, holy, faithful man.
Twenty-nine, thirty years ago, two men sat
in my meetings here in Britain.
One was the son of a very wealthy
businessman, Keith Beckwith.
The other was a young business, up-and
-coming business entrepreneur with the Phillips Corporation.
Caught the vision, left that job.
They made a commitment of their lives radically
to Jesus Christ, like we're talking about tonight.
And within two or three years, they were
in heaven.
It's not a game.
L.E. Maxwell said, world missions is total
war.
What we are going into is a spiritual
equivalent of Sarajevo, a spiritual equivalent of southern
Sudan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Kampuchea, a spiritual equivalent
of what's been going on in Northern Ireland
for decades.
What's been going on in Angola, in Mozambique,
parts of the world that we should all
be concerned about.
Spiritual warfare is real.
And it's not just for a few people
who somehow decide to be missionaries or decide
to be in some kind of special ministry.
Spiritual warfare is for every believer.
There's no option.
You're all in spiritual warfare.
But you have to decide whether you're going
to be knocked all over the place for
the next five or ten years and be
one more spiritual nothing, or whether you're going
to become a soldier of Jesus Christ and
be able to follow in the steps of
men like Booth or Bringle or thousands of
others, praise God, who even from this country
alone have gone out to share the gospel
of Jesus Christ across the world.
What a challenge.
I think I can say with integrity and
honesty in the midst of much struggle that
this whole vision, this whole burden of the
word of God burns upon my heart today
as much as it did 30 years ago
when I first landed in Dover.
Because the word of God is true, because
Jesus Christ lives in us.
And though we are weak, though the old
man perishes, the new man is renewed day
by day.
Fire, tongues off the altar, live coal on
the mouth, and then the purging, the cleansing,
the renewal, and after that the calling and
the response, here am I, send me.
How many of you have already responded to
a call or to guidance?
I like the word guidance better because some
people are looking for an emotional call.
But how many of you?
And if, O.M. people, just for a
moment, some of you are with O.M.,
if you could keep your hands down.
But among our visitors and our young new
trainees, how many of you have already responded
to some kind of strong work of God
in your heart toward world missions?
Would you raise your hand?
Just be honest.
No hands go up.
We'll understand it, but I'd like to know.
How many are more or less already moving
in that direction, even though it may be
in much weakness?
Put your hand up high so I can
see it.
Okay, thank you.
How many of the O.M.ers have
already made such a commitment?
Raise your hand.
Not everybody at O.M. is moving in
that direction.
Thank you.
Because the truth is, at this present time,
there seem to be more people moving toward
the mission field, even though it isn't that
many.
There seem to be more people moving toward
the mission field than we have the prayer
power and the finance power and the sending
power.
That's why I'm pushing this book all the
time, serving as a sender to get them
there.
And we don't want to deceive you in
our challenge to get involved in long-term
missions or short-term, that it's going to
be easy because it's not going to be.
Or that we, if you sign on the
dotted line, we got some program, we just
plug you into it and automatically, a couple
years from now, you know, you're church planting
in Turkey.
No.
In fact, if there's anything I'd like to
say to young candidates in God's work, it's
what Billy Graham said to me when I
was a baby Christian in a message.
It's going to be rough, but it's going
to be tough.
And if you don't develop spiritual fight, spiritual
stickability to handle those disappointments, to handle those
setbacks, to handle those discouragements, you won't make
it.
And that doesn't mean God won't use you.
Praise God for plan B, right?
Some of you are already in plan B.
Praise God for plan C, plan D.
Somebody came up to me and said they
were well on.
What should they do?
I said, praise God for a big alphabet.
The mercy of God, the grace of God.
Study that passage on your own.
Pray about what God is attempting to do
in your own life.
I've often thought that if people who get
exposed to OM, I think of all the
people that we're speaking to all over the
country with all the different things going on,
just a small number, come to this conference.
Many things are going on in the church
this weekend.
It's just one little tiny thing.
And among all the things going on, very
few of them have anything to do with
World Missions.
World Missions is not even in the top
eight things on the checklist in the average
church.
I think we're now down, I think we've
dropped down the last couple of years.
We're just behind the parking lot, the new
parking lot, World Missions.
You may say that's unfair.
I minister to our churches and I love
the local churches for 30 years up and
down this country.
World Missions generally is just token commitment.
And that's why often God has to raise
up people almost outside of the church, as
in my case, saved in a Billy Graham
meeting.
Though I was, from the moment of my
conversion, forced myself to get back involved with
local fellowship and went to a local church
in my community just before I went to
Mexico.
I had a little bit backward.
I was already going.
But I went to the church and I
said, I'm going to Mexico and I want
you people to pray for me.
And they were so merciful.
Many of them signed up on the spot
to pray for me and some of them
have prayed for me for 35.
Acts 13 makes it very, very clear.
And as I go around the country, I'll
be in a nearby local church on Sunday,
well not so near, over in Chester.
I try to again and again emphasize that
the ownership of world evangelism must largely be
in the hands of the local church.
But for the church to have that ownership,
it must be biblical, it must be renewed,
and of course, it's got to have a
world vision.
It's got to have a world vision.
One of the ministries, maybe some of you
should get involved in, is helping us mobilize
the church.
We can't send everybody to the front lines
immediately.
Maybe some people are going to come up
to Bill Drake and go, hey man, what
are you doing here in Britain?
Why aren't you playing that music in outer
Mongolia or Siberia?
That's pretty cool.
But God has raised up Bill Drake to
stir the church.
He's in evangelism as well.
On the continent and other places.
But God has raised up Bill, together with
that evangelistic ministry, to stir the church, to
call young people to radical surrender to Jesus
Christ.
And we hope some of you will catch
a vision for the same thing.
Turn with me now quickly to the New
Testament.
To the book of Acts, Chapter 1.
I wanted to look at Matthew 9, but
we don't have time.
But you probably know the passage.
The harvest is plenteous, the workers are few.
Then what did Jesus say?
Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, he'll
send forth workers.
It's brilliant.
And we'd like you to go from here
with a vision to pray for workers.
I had this thought.
I don't know if it's 100% correct.
It's just a thought from my heart.
That one of the only ways we're going
to see the people we need to see
this summer, because recruiting is not getting any
easier.
And we need these people in Love Europe
not to fulfill our quota, but to reach
men and women with the Gospel in Albania,
in Eastern Europe, in France, all these countries
that are upon our hearts, right here on
this jacket, over my heart.
And the only way I believe it will
happen is what I call operation multiplication.
We've had this conference some years with over
1,000 people.
So if they all came, that would be
1,000 recruits for Love Europe.
That never happened.
But I tell you, a lot of people
have made decisions in these Leaders Weekends.
Here there may be 100 new people.
And so my vision, my hope as I
was thinking about this today was if each
one of you would make a commitment to
be a mobilizer for the Lord and to
somehow spiritually recruit 10 other people.
If 100 people here would catch the vision
to recruit 10.
And it's not really that hard.
I arrived here in February 1962.
I was nobody.
I had opposition.
O.M. was nothing.
And by June I had 90 people.
I'm not asking you to recruit 90.
Because all my life I've been listening to
some of my Leaders.
I have his favorite record when I throw
him a challenge.
I'm not George Verwer.
You know, it's like there's something new.
Well, boy, I haven't heard that before.
Say that again.
You're not George Verwer.
So I'm not asking you to recruit 90.
And I wasn't alone.
There were a little team of us.
We took meetings.
O.M. has phenomenal credibility in Great Britain.
We have so many open doors.
We have so many friends.
We need a few new enemies.
If you meet someone, send me their address.
Because enemies stir things up.
And when they stir things up, other people
get excited.
And especially if they don't like the guy,
then they join us.
Just fight him.
That is not the best way to get
recruits.
And we did get a few in those
early days.
Somewhat along that line.
What a beautiful thing.
A hundred people would go from here to
put into practice what you learn here about
leadership in terms of motivating others, challenging others.
You might give information or some degree of
challenge to 50 or 60 people.
That is not that many in the next
few months.
And maybe of that 50 or 60 you
contacted, 10 would come.
I tell you, that's where it's at.
When you start taking ownership, you start getting
involved.
You go up to a literature table not
to look at what piece of literature you
might like to read.
That's okay.
But you go to a literature table and
we've even got video cassettes now to help
spread the vision.
And you think, what tools are there on
this table that can help me to be
a mobilizer, a shaker and a mover for
the kingdom of God in 1993?
I get excited about this.
I mean, I get too excited to get
some of my wife's nerves.
She said to me some time ago, look,
I want to really be honest with you.
Looking at you makes me feel real tired.
So I'm on the road for about nine
days and I'm giving her a little bit
of a rest.
Acts 1.8, the final words of Jesus
Christ before he ascended into heaven.
Let's look at it.
In the word of God.
Very, very clear.
But you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit comes on you and you will be
my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, and Samaria,
and the ends of the earth.
Now take this.
This is not me.
Don't let me be a hindrance to what
God wants to say.
This is the final instruction of Jesus before
he went to heaven.
And surely the church of Jesus Christ should
take this with great seriousness.
That's what we want you to do.
Now as we look out across the world,
we notice that certain countries have really a
lot of witness.
Britain is one of those countries.
That doesn't mean we don't need to work
here more.
I just visited our work loop on the
way up here in Hell's Zone.
We had a last minute meeting there.
I even gave an invitation.
Quite a few people raised their hand and
asked the Lord to do a new thing
in their lives.
I love these spontaneous meetings.
It saves on stamps, correspondence, and phone calls.
Just zip in.
I want to try it in the palace
someday when I really get bold.
But as we look out across the world,
as we study nation after nation, we realize
that places like Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand,
also Argentina, Kenya, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, I
could add a number of other countries, have
had a lot of the Gospel.
The Church is established.
And if the Church would come alive more
in those countries, they could complete the task
in one sense.
In the other sense, the task is always
ongoing.
Now we want to work in those countries,
but we want to get our priorities right.
And we feel the priority should be places
that have far, far less witness.
Like France, Belgium, just across the channel.
And places that have even less than that.
Because I've been involved in France for some
33 years.
Other countries, as we go just a little
further, the Church doesn't exist.
Can you grab that?
So the next time somebody tries to pressure
you to only consider England, and how dare
you consider leaving England when there's so many
needs here.
We've got people sleeping in the street on
the embankment.
And we've got people without jobs.
And we're constantly hammered about these social needs
in Britain.
So that if you come in the middle
of it, talking about world evangelism and other
nations, you feel almost like some kind of
a traitor.
Only a tiny percentage of all British manpower
and money, only a tiny, tiny percentage, is
at present going into world missions.
And I believe we need some people that
say this isn't right.
This is disobedience to Acts 1A.
This is not God's original intention that some
people hear the Gospel again and again and
again.
Now we're going to have Christian radio.
Soon we're going to have more Christian television.
I'm not saying it's wrong.
But if some are allowed to hear the
Gospel again and again and again, they've got
Bibles in every other shop around the nation,
what can we say of those that have
never had a Bible, never had a Gospel,
never heard the name of Jesus Christ?
And in some cases, a church not even
existing.
I pray, I ask of you, I know
I can't move you through some kind of
an emotional message.
I am not trying to do that.
I'm a naturally emotional person.
But I beg of you to search the
Scriptures and see if these things be so.
Read some of these great books like Priority
One.
Examine the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ
who in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John gave
that great commission not once, not twice, but
three and four times.
Though in John it uses different wording.
This is biblical.
Some great men are known, and I just
received another book on this subject, for showing
how right from the book of Genesis, our
God is a missionary God.
It's not some new thing that suddenly world
missions is important.
Our God is a missionary God.
We even see Abraham leaving everything, terrific wealth,
family, friends, leaving everything and going, not even
hardly knowing where he was going.
That's a little bit like Operation Mobilization, but
a little better organized now and with the
age of the computer, there's a chance that
you might actually get where you're planning to
go.
He shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, the uttermost part of the earth.
You'll find a book on the book table.
It's very old to people who are into
world missions called Operation World, and the new
edition will be out this year.
But it'll be six or seven months, and
it's worth getting that old edition.
I'm sure they're selling it for a bargain.
Don't pay anything more than three pounds for
it.
That's for sure.
Try to get it for a quid.
Write to me.
I'll send it to you free.
But even that old edition of Operation World
contains some of the most important and significant
material that we can pray through if we
are serious about world missions.
Over in the States, a lot of people
are saying, Well, do we really need American
missionaries anymore?
Aren't they a bit expensive?
Now we're beginning to hear that over here.
Do we really need British missionaries?
I mean, the colonial days, that's all over.
We don't want all these British people going
across the world trying to proselytize people and
spread colonialism, waving their little union jacks from
place to place.
First of all, that is not what missionaries
do anymore.
And secondly, I believe, in the light of
6,000 million people in this world, in
the light of the tremendous heritage the British
Church has, and what God has done in
this nation, in the light of a clear
mandate from Scripture, that the need for British
missionaries is as great as it has ever
been.
Let's stop talking about the days when C
.T. Studd launched out with his little army
from Cambridge.
Let's do it again.
And if half of them are Chinese, hallelujah,
it doesn't matter.
And it does seem that the Chinese living
in Britain are one of the groups that
are the most on the move, making some
of the Anglo-Saxons look like they're caught
up in international nail-biting contests.
May God stir us.
May God shake us.
I know sometimes when we talk this way,
people feel, well, this is a little bit
emotional, and we English people, we are very
shy and quiet and laid-back.
Do not press us into something that, you
know, is emotional.
Have you watched them in the cricket match?
Have you watched any football?
Laid-back, quiet English people going about lovely
life in the country.
They go completely wild.
Some of it has produced some of the
ugliest scenes in this nation, like the Hillsborough
disaster.
I believe, when an Englishman or a Welshman
or an Irishman or a Scottish person is
filled with the Holy Spirit, that they will
become dynamic witnesses for Jesus Christ and great,
powerful, godly missionaries.
And I hope you will be among their
ranks.
What are you going to do with your
life?
What are you going to do with your
life?
Do you really think what the world is
feeding you is the answer?
Get a nice job, get a career, and
get that degree.
What for?
So you can get money and pay 30
% of it into the income tax, so
that you can feed your family, and so
that you can have a house and a
nice place to live, so you can be
rested each day to go to the job
in order to get the money to pay
for these things, so you can be rested,
of course, with a few diversions in the
middle of it.
A vicious cycle, which, of course, for most
people ends in hell.
But for Christians who get up into that
cycle, it's a sad state of affairs, because
though they may be saved, the Bible says,
but by fire.
There's little fulfillment, little reality, little sense of
purpose, and the grasp of God is not
upon their heart.
It's not the way to live.
Think I'm acting?
This has burned on my heart since March
5th, 1955.
What an amazing year, 1955.
Most of you weren't doing too much.
And they wanted to produce a really good
film, which we really need to show in
some of the churches, Back to the Future.
What year did they go back to?
1955.
Very important.
Be ye filled with the Holy Spirit.
It doesn't mean you're necessarily going to become
loud like me.
It doesn't mean God is going to become
insensitive to your temperament, your personality, your gifting.
No, no.
Not at all.
Some of the greatest missionaries I know are
actually quite quiet, reserved, more phlegmatic people.
God has a place for everybody.
I hope and pray you'll understand that this
is God's hour.
It really is God's hour.
As the greatest harvest of people to Christ
in the history of the world is taking
place side by side with hundreds of millions
who have never heard.
All we have to have is operation crossover.
These who know the gospel, these who are
converted, crossing over cross-culturally into those unreached
people's groups with Bibles, with videos, with every
kind of evangelism.
And we can reach, I believe, even the
entire world by the year 2000.
And guess what?
A few tens of millions of people across
the world, Christians, are getting excited about just
that.
So some of you that got some great
plan, why not to go out in the
woods and build a new kind of a
tree hut?
Why not postpone that plan until after the
year 2000?
Why not give, when you finish at university,
what God's called you into right now, why
not give at least, at least a few
years to this great task full time?
I'm not saying that's better than remaining here
and fulfilling God's call.
If He's leading you to work in that
secular company down the road, then that to
me is a ministry.
And we never want to put people down
who have that kind of calling upon their
life because we need men in that kind
of ministry for prayer, for impact in society,
for winning people right there, for the local
churches and all that means, and then also
to see the resources going out.
It's interesting how one cult has 40,000
men on a two-year program.
One cult.
And they're all over Britain now.
Could not the British churches give those of
us in short-term missions, I'm talking one
or two years now, could they not give
us 40,000?
Could we not get 40,000 from all
these great churches?
Get 70,000 at spring harvest and that's
only a tiny percentage of the believers in
the nation.
If renewal came, if we would be obedient,
if we would take God's word seriously, we
could easily see 40,000 launched in one
and two-year programs.
Perhaps 100,000 on summer programs which is
only a couple of weeks.
Would you pray about it?
It's been proven by some groups that after
two years overseas they can still go back
and get good jobs, they still go back
and complete more education, and especially in that
one cult I was just referring to, many
of them when they got back within ten
years were multi-millionaires sending their money out
to their false cult along the way.
We need, in O.M. especially, different missions
have different needs, but we need an army
of single men and women.
I know some of you are already married
and there's place for you as well.
But in some of the things we are
attempting to do and the kind of training
we're attempting to give, our preference is young
men and women who are single.
We need 100 single people alone if we're
going to keep the two ships going.
Would you pray?
You don't have to have some kind of
special emotional clunk on the head when the
missionary film is going backwards through your brain
to make this decision.
You need to think, you need to read,
you need to pray, you need to consult
with the leaders of your church, you need
to push some doors and see what God
will do.
He may close the doors.
Because I'm convinced that it's people like you
who come to conferences like this who are
going to be the leaders in the church
in the future.
We've got 35 years now proven that's just
what happens.
You may not feel you're a leader but
as you catch this vision, as you begin
to move, others will follow.
A leader is a pace setter even though
he may be a reluctant pace setter.
I certainly am now.
Maybe I wasn't in my earlier days.
And as you begin to move, as you
capture this vision, as you take ownership of
this biblical message, knowing God and making God
known, others will follow.
And you'll find yourself leading spontaneous prayer groups
in your college or in your place of
business and you'll find people will be knocking
on your door to study the word or
to get counsel or maybe just to pick
up a world map or a book because
they heard you were a missions mobilizer.
It's exciting.
Pray about it.
Push some doors.
Talk to some people.
Write to some people.
You can't always say this these days in
a big meeting but in a little meeting
like this, you can write to me.
I'll read every one of your letters personally
and answer probably most of them personally.
I do have some help in answering the
letters.
This is serious business.
Millions and hundreds of millions have yet to
hear of Jesus and his gospel and you
and I can do something about it.
To me it's just so logical, so sensible
that people like yourself make a commitment to
world missions.
We are making now in O.M. a
major impact among businessmen.
We are seeing God release finance more than
ever in the history of O.M. We've
always been into that.
We are seeing gifts almost every day on
the phone.
I get word of another phenomenal gift.
We also see the widow's mite.
We now have a quarter of a million
at least prayer partners across the world and
we feel now is the time for new
injection of manpower, womanpower.
People like you will help you see that
finance come in.
It won't be easy.
We're not saying that.
But I believe we're beginning to see a
shift in O.M. where our bigger problem
won't firstly be where to find the money.
Our bigger problem will be where to find
the people.
Where to find the people.
Like you.
Young.
Ready to go into the training.
To go God's way.
One hundred percent.
Let us pray.
Let's take a few moments for silent heart
searching and prayer.
Oh Father, it's so hard to believe that
there's so many places with no witness.
So many places.
So many people's groups with no church.
I heard of two more people's groups today
in Iran.
There's no scriptures.
No church.
We thank you God for every organization, every
fellowship, every church you've raised up with a
missionary vision and a spirit of obedience to
do your will and to go your way.
We just praise you and we give you
all the glory.
We thank you that you're touching young lives
like Bill Drake and many others and thrusting
them into things they never dreamed of doing
ten years ago.
We believe, oh God, that somehow by your
grace the whole world can receive the gospel.
Yea, if it be your will even by
the year 2000 which comes upon us fast
and furious.
Help us to search our hearts these days.
Help us to acknowledge Lord Jesus, your lordship
in our lives in every practical level from
the area of romance to the area of
food from the area of money to the
area of study, our home and the future.
And Lord, you have called us not to
preach or present some kind of lopsided message
but somehow as in the steps of the
Apostle Paul to cry out the entire counsel
of your word.
And we know that's going to take time.
So Lord, help us to be patient.
Help me to be patient as we learn
line upon line and principle upon principle from
your holy word.
And Lord, as we go forward as we
see the breakthroughs and as we see the
harvest brought in and churches planted across the
world and hundreds of thousands and millions brought
to a knowledge of yourself, we will give
you all the glory and with bated breath
and expectation we look forward to that day
when we worship you in all the mystery
of eternity and all that means for we
pray in the powerful glorious name of Jesus
Christ, our Savior, our King, the Alpha and
Omega, the Lord of Lords, Amen and Amen.
Thank you.