Riding the Roller Coaster.
This is really a talk about trends, present
trends, ups and downs, things happening in the
Church.
And one of the reasons, one of a
number of reasons that this work has gone
forward is our deep partnership with local churches.
Now that is sometimes a complicated partnership.
A man wrote a book on the whole
issue of para-church agencies.
We don't accept that term, but people give.
Groups like Youth for Christ, the Christian Union
Movement, OM, YWAM, Gospel Recordings, even things like
Whitcliffe.
A para-church.
And there's a book called Church and Para
-Church Uneasy Romance.
Quite a challenging book.
Praise God for a high degree of churches
that do fully accept missionary agencies as part
of the Church.
But one of the significant things that's happening
in some of these new churches, and I'm
going to talk about that more in a
little while, is an increased interest in world
missions.
And our burden in this session is not
to bring more disunity by emphasizing the things
that divide, though we will touch on some
things, but to try to emphasize the things
that unite.
Because especially we in mobilization are committed to
an interdenominational forward missionary thrust.
Why do we feel that a worldwide missionary
thrust should be and can be interdenominational?
I have a whole long message on this.
I want to try to just cover it
in five or ten minutes.
Number one, I would say, being interdenominational as
a missionary fellowship, which is what we are
and what many other missions are, is to
acknowledge history.
We want to be, as much as possible,
men and women of integrity who will acknowledge
history.
I believe history shows that God has used
different groups in different ways.
You may be very denominational.
We are not anti-denominational.
We acknowledge that so many of the denominations
have very good roots.
Most denominations today of the older denominations are
split into those who are very faithful to
God's Word and those who would tend to
lay God's Word aside.
When we think of this whole area, we
need to realize that many of the really
outstanding church planting agencies were, in fact, missionary
fellowships.
So God uses different groups, different churches, different
agencies.
We also see how God has used different
methods.
Now there is a tendency for each one
to feel that his method is best.
We have a very strong message today in
the area of evangelism that without signs and
wonders and miracles we're just not going to
really get on with evangelism.
But Billy Graham has chosen a different road.
He never got into what some people describe
as signs, wonders, and miracles.
I was converted through Billy Graham's ministry.
I would have thought that's even a greater
miracle than getting healed.
God uses his Word.
The real author of conversion is the Holy
Spirit.
God uses different evangelists in different ways.
Billy Graham is not John Wimber.
John Wimber isn't John Wesley.
John Wesley wasn't George Whitefield.
Why can't we be a little more open
-minded as to how God works?
Because we live in a complicated world.
We need to organize.
We need to get our act together.
There needs to be some leadership.
The key is that as we go forward,
we go forward together.
That was the title of that conference in
December.
Another point under this acknowledging history is the
simple fact that there is so much truth
in the Word of God and different people
emphasize different truths.
A second point under this that I want
to share is that being interdenominational helps to
build unity, not just with a few.
Some only emphasize unity within their own group
or within their own church or stream.
We need to emphasize that if we're going
to see our local church function, but we
need to emphasize our unity with all believers.
Also, the kind of unity that speaks to
unbelievers in evangelism is when they see Christians
of different backgrounds and different churches or whatever
working together.
An example of this is Turkey.
In the land of Turkey, we don't talk
about OM.
We don't talk about Campus Crusade.
We don't talk about Presbyterian churches or Brethren
churches or new churches or house churches.
We try to just come across to the
people as believers and followers of Jesus Christ.
Do not think for a minute that we
do not reproduce on the mission field the
same divisions we have back here in Britain.
It is one of the toughest missionary problems
we're dealing with.
In fact, there are some fellowships that are
not sending out proper missionaries who learn the
language.
They just send out speakers who speak in
English.
And when they come with special doctrines, homegrown
British doctrines, they split churches and they bring
a lot of confusion at times to the
mission field.
Just to go into a country speaking English
through an interpreter without a knowledge of the
culture, without some training, without the sensitivity comes
with that training is less than best.
It can be done.
It can be a blessing, especially if the
person sticks to the basics.
But once we get into highly controversial things
and we start bringing in things that may
be culturally acceptable in England but not culturally
acceptable in England, in India, we get a
lot of problems.
So we have taken this position of working
interdenominationally in order to have fellowship with a
wide range of believers, in order to have
a united testimony to unbelievers and demonstrate through
love.
Jesus prayed that we would all be one.
We have also realized that in an interdenominational
situation, we are still able to train people
who go back and work with their own
fellowships and churches.
And this is something that we are excited
about in OM.
We don't want to just do our own
thing.
It's true.
We're pretty excited about wanting to get a
lot of you to come for a year
or two on OM.
We have to be honest about that.
But it's not just to become part of
OM's permanent staff.
That is a need.
That is a challenge.
OM is both short-term and long-term.
But it is also to give you training
in cross-cultural communication, in the Word of
God, in the disciplined life, in prayer, in
spiritual balance that will enable you to be
sought, to be a blessing, to eventually be
a leader back in your home church, whether
it's a good old Anglican church in the
corner, or whether it's a little new church
that's just growing up in one of the
housing estates.
So I would say to those of you
who are even quite narrow in your thinking,
a year or two on OM wouldn't kill
you.
You may have to fellowship with someone who
doctrinally you don't agree with, but that is
a good experience because if all of our
conclusions are made only on the basis of
what we read in books, without any personal
experience with these different kinds of Christians, it
is often lopsided.
The alternative is also true if all of
our conclusions are based on our fellowship with
people, which is at least semi-subjective, and
we never study, we never research, we never
read books, then we can go off balance
the other way.
We want to stay as learners, thus building
humility.
We may have a set idea, but we
want to remain open.
We want to keep from dead orthodoxy or
becoming too rigid.
We want to learn how to take the
best that we can from different movements, fellowships,
and denominations.
Another reason for this commitment on our part
is we feel it's the only logical way
to reach the Muslim world.
I hope as many of you as possible
will pick up some of the literature about
Islam.
I don't think you have to look too
far.
You will realize the great commitment we have
to the Muslim world.
We have 450 people in this subcontinent.
A lot of that is among Muslims, over
half of it.
We have 250 more committed to Muslim evangelism
in other parts of the world, including Europe,
even little church planting teams as nearby as
Bradford or Coventry.
And some of you know about the FFA
work.
How can we go to the Muslim world
in disunity, in backbiting, in confusion, in division,
and in extremism?
There is a place for our particular doctrinal
issues.
There's a place for these personal convictions.
But if we are going to evangelize the
world, then some of these smaller, controversial convictions
have to be put in the right priority.
Otherwise, let's forget it.
We're not going to get the world evangelized.
And we are committed, building our theology and
our strategy on the Word of God, we
want an equal commitment to love and to
truth.
I believe a united thrust, an interdenominational thrust,
is also the best way to cope with
liberalism, unbelief.
People are bitter and sour and skeptical and
cynical as they see so much in-house
fighting and so much confusion.
One of the greatest things that concerns me
about Operation Mobilization are the people who we
hurt every year.
Now, if I saw there was some other
way to do this, I would leave Operation
Mobilization and start something else.
But the moment there's a group of people
trying to do something together, there is potential
for hurt.
So if you don't want to be hurt,
I'll give you a little advice.
You're on the wrong planet.
It's so easy to think that you are
the main person being hurt.
Everywhere we go, people are being hurt.
I even hurt my dear wife, who I
love so much and who I've been committed
to for 28 years.
Sometimes the one we love, the one we
are closer to, we are more vulnerable with,
and we hurt.
This is a great burden, and I hope
that somehow, as a result of this weekend,
you can have a more realistic view of
life on planet Earth, a more realistic view
of what it is to get among God's
people.
Someone said God's chosen.
Often they're God's frozen people.
Maybe sometimes you feel that Christians are a
bit of a pain in the neck.
Try to be positive.
Thank the Lord you're not a giraffe.
Now, let me just inject something here that
will just—a little more of something that's very
much on my heart, that is tied into
this subject that I've been asked to speak
on.
This is called the paradoxical commandments of leadership.
Some have criticized our conferences because we call
them leadership conferences, at least a few years
ago.
It's interesting now that the Lausanne Committee and
that great Congress of World Evangelism, a lot
of other missiologists and theologians are saying the
great need right now is training younger leaders.
OM has been one of the few groups
that has said that training must begin when
people are 17, 18, and 19, when possible.
We know that you're not going out of
here, most of you, to be elders of
churches or apostles or pastors, but you need
to realize that there is a leadership vacuum
in the Church of Jesus Christ, and that
in God's work he uses all kinds of
people, including characters like you.
Plus, to just be a father in the
20th century, you need as much leadership skill
as you do to be an elder in
the Church.
We don't want you to go from here
and say, I am now a graduate of
OM's leadership training.
For us, it's a 10-year program, but
it is needed, and the sooner you get
started, the better.
Here's one of the little quotations I've shared
with leaders in our training courses through the
years.
Ten points, I'm going to read them to
you.
Number one, people are illogical, unreasonable, and self
-centered people.
Love them anyway.
Isn't that good?
Number two, if you do good, people will
accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
Three, if you are successful, you win false
friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
Four, the good you do today will be
forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Five, honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
Six, the biggest men with the biggest ideas
can be shot down by the smallest men
with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
That really helps me.
Seven, people favor underdogs, but they follow only
top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
Eight, what you spend years building may be
destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
Nine, people really need help, but may attack
you if you do help them.
Help them anyway.
Ten, give the world the best you have,
and you might get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
Many times God has used that to encourage
me along the road of spiritual combat.
And what are some of the big trends
that we're going to face in the church
today?
First of all, I think we can speak
about the charismatic renewal.
Billy Graham, a man who I was converted
through, has made some very positive statements about
the worldwide charismatic renewal.
I'm sure some of you are only here
today because of what is called the charismatic
renewal, a renewing of emphasis on the gifts
of the Spirit.
I personally believe the greater strength in that
movement was not just the renewed emphasis on
the gifts of the Spirit, but an emphasis
on love.
We talked about that together at this conference
I was at.
Because I will tell you, if your fellowship
has gifts of the Spirit, but you're not
loving people, you're not caring people, you're not
reaching out, you will end up in a
counterproductive situation.
You will end up with a lot of
hurt people, and you will pray and lay
hands on those hurt people, and they will
not be healed.
You will then become discouraged because we now
have literally millions of discouraged charismatics.
That's why God brings in characters like me,
perhaps takes me beyond charisma, to be able
to minister to people who have experienced great
things in the Holy Spirit, and yet are
basically discouraged, maybe even bitter, maybe even having
passed through something like divorce.
I want to say it very, very clearly.
There is no simple one answer to you
running the Christian race all of your life.
You need the whole counsel of God.
Satan, of course, has counterattacked this.
Every time God is working, Satan is counterattacking.
So a lot of people have got into
extremism.
We tried to communicate this in the 60s,
and of course we were still young.
We still didn't understand all that God was
doing.
Some of you have read my old book,
Extremism, which we're revising, and I think we
miscommunicated and gave some people the idea that
we were just negative about everything, because the
basic roots of Operation Mobilization don't come out
of the Charismatic Movement.
We're many years down the road in regard
to the Charismatic Renewal, and so now it
is very divided.
The Catholic Charismatic Renewal split in two.
The American Charismatic Renewal split in a number
of pieces.
The biggest split came later, after the old
line Pentecostal churches were born.
They were born because with their particular methods
of worship, their emphasis on the gifts, the
rest of the Church was not able to
handle that, generally speaking.
They started their own churches.
You need to understand that Pentecostal people in
North America, the United States, and other parts
of the world actually were persecuted.
They actually were persecuted by the Church.
That's why it is so good that today
they have been considered, in most places, in
most nations, there are a few exceptions, as
a main part of the Body of Christ.
That doesn't mean we all agree.
It doesn't mean we all understand.
But it means that at least we know
we're members of the Body of Christ.
In the Evangelical Alliance in Britain that we
belong to, led by Clive Calver, you have
Evangelical churches, you have Charismatic churches, you have
Pentecostal churches and Pentecostal agencies.
The roots of YWAM go back into the
assembly of God.
My roots and the roots of OM go
back into a wide cross-section of Evangelicals,
including some people who are Pentecostal and Charismatic.
The first churches that let me preach with
my terrible Spanish in Mexico were the Pentecostal
churches.
And I just fell in love with those
people.
And it was so great because my Spanish,
they often couldn't understand it, but they were
so excited about Jesus, they kept saying, Amen,
praise the Lord.
I kept getting more and more excited, and
wonderful things took place.
And I've been ministering with Pentecostal churches all
over the world ever since.
But 20 years ago, 25, 30 years ago,
a new movement came in.
That was labeled originally Neo-Pentecostalism, a term
that got dropped, which is good.
I think I may have used it in
my old book.
And then the word Charismatic movement came in.
The great split that came in that movement
was between those that felt they should remain
within their established churches and those that felt
they should come out.
Most of the house fellowships in Great Britain
and new churches can trace their roots back
to that split.
They don't like to, but they know that's
true.
They came out.
The Anglicans perhaps have suffered the most because
because tens of thousands have left Anglican churches
and formed new churches.
People have become bitter, angry, all kinds of
things that have happened.
But I believe in Britain and in some
countries, we are seeing a settling down of
this controversy.
That is a trend I would say we're
facing right now.
I was at this meeting with these men
who are mainly from house fellowships and new
churches, but in that meeting was Michael Harper,
a leader in the Anglican church.
And there have been a few brave people
who have constantly tried to bridge the gap.
David Watson, now with the Lord, was one
of those persons, and I could give you
many more.
Now when we come together in something like
Operation Mobilization, we have young people of a
Charismatic persuasion from new churches sitting next to
a young person of Charismatic persuasion of an
Anglican church who might be sitting next to
someone of strong Evangelical non-Charismatic persuasion from
All Souls Langham Church, Langham Place.
Some of you may be old enough to
know the controversy between John Stott and his
vicar, Michael Harper, a long time ago.
This controversy is still going on.
If you read Christian magazines, I go through
in a very light way, reading heavily certain
articles, about 50 Christian periodicals of various kinds,
you realize this battle is still going on.
It has increased recently with the entrance of
these powerful seminars led by John Wimber and
his teams.
This has resurrected some of the things that
previously had died down a little bit, and
books like Power Evangelism.
And I think we need to understand, especially
a movement like OM, where we're trying to
keep on the middle road, that in some
ways it's not getting any easier.
There are so many voices, there are so
many seminars, there is so much intimidation.
And young Christians, many are confused.
Many Christian unions have gone through heavy division.
In some cases people left the Christian union
and started their own particular group.
Praise God, I know of cases where they
closed that down and went back into the
Christian unions.
We should never be surprised by disunity, controversy,
misunderstandings and confusion.
They had it in the New Testament.
We should never be surprised by disunity, controversy,
misunderstandings and confusion.
They had it in the New Testament.
But I hope that you, by God's grace,
will learn to compassionately disagree with those you
may not agree with, rather than arrogantly, in
a judgmental and critical way, condemn other believers,
or make them into second-class citizens because
maybe they don't speak in tongues.
My experience in Pentecostal churches all over the
world is that at least 25% of
young people reared in Pentecostal churches have never
spoken in tongues, though they have been taught
that all of their life.
And I have had to counsel some very
heavy cases where those people have deep psychological
problems because they feel that they are rejected
by God.
God gives different gifts to different people, and
we cannot allow this second-class citizenship to
come in, especially when those people love the
Lord and they want to serve the Lord.
Quite a few feel they could never be
a missionary because they don't have a full
dose of the Holy Spirit, because they don't
have the same gift that another brother or
sister has.
That has caused more grief and more heartache
than almost anything I can think of.
It's not right.
It's not biblical, and it's not right.
You will find that there are different degrees
of trends and emphasis in every country.
For example, in Great Britain, the charismatic emphasis
is more dominant than most of the nations
I've been in the world.
I would say probably 70% of all
that's really alive and doing anything has probably
been influenced directly or indirectly by the charismatic
movement.
But what about the minority group, the sort
of mainline, born-again, loving Jesus evangelicals, the
kind that go up to the Keswick Convention?
Are we now going to persecute them as
maybe their grandfathers persecuted Charismatics or Pentecostals?
Or are we going to accept that God
works in different people in different ways?
In North America, the live, non-Charismatic churches
still dominate the scene and are sending out
far more missionaries.
Do we want to exclude North America because
they're not Charismatic enough?
My own belief, of course, is that we're
all Charismatic.
Every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit,
and that's the core of the Charisma.
That's where it all comes from.
It's not something you copy.
It's something you catch.
And if we could only realize that, then
people of different backgrounds who have been influenced
by different trends in different books and different
teachings would be able to function together.
Another major trend that you may not be
aware of is the growth of Reformed theology.
I'm sure some of you are influenced by
that, maybe firmly in that camp.
Actually, this is something that some people have
difficulty with in connection with OM because OM
has a deep Calvinistic streak.
That may frighten some of you.
We may have a deep Arminian streak.
Some of you don't even know what that
is.
No problem.
That's why you came to this session.
Don't be afraid of theology.
Don't be afraid of church history.
How many of us understand what's happened in
the Orthodox Church?
Do you know how many Orthodox churches there
are?
When I was in Melbourne, actually staying in
the home of the Archbishop, he was sharing
with me the tension between the different Orthodox
churches—the Greek Orthodox, the Syrian Orthodox, the Russian
Orthodox.
I couldn't believe the number of Orthodox churches
right there in Melbourne, Australia.
It's a movement that we in OM have
not related to very well.
They actually persecute in Greece evangelicals.
Some of you know about the court case
that YWAM was in.
That doesn't mean there are no believers in
those churches.
It doesn't mean there are no open doors.
What about the Coptic Church?
I mention this because sometimes in England we
tend to think the Church consists of this
many groups and this many streams, but it's
much bigger.
Do you know how many denominations there are
according to a very, very big survey?
It covered almost the whole world.
Do you know how many denominations, and if
you want to call them streams, over 22
,000.
You see why characters like me, somehow, I
prefer the interdenominational position.
It's just very difficult to me to believe
that one of these denominations is the denomination.
I know some of my Anglican friends that
try to give me that idea.
I have great respect for the Anglicans, especially
the evangelical born-again ones who love Jesus
and his word, and some great Anglican churches.
I just preached a cathedral in Sri Lanka,
but I think most balanced Anglicans would not
claim that they are the true only church.
They are one denomination, and the Presbyterians are
another, and the Assembly of God is another,
and your little newly formed house stream with
your leaders and apostles and teachers just battling
for survival, maybe in terms of the whole
world of ecclesiastical combat, they are another.
And if you don't have a sense of
humor through all this, you're liable to just
deny the faith or decide to parachute off
a high building with an umbrella marked, Jesus
saves.
God is working in different ways in different
people.
It's interesting that churches that were closer to
the charismatic movement in some ways, like the
old holiness churches, actually collided with the movement
more than churches that were very, very, very
completely different.
For example, in America, well, I won't go
into too many details about the states.
I don't have time.
I would recommend, rather, a book called Love
Covers.
I used to be giving out all kinds
of free copies of this book.
If you write to me, I'll send you
one, but I hope they have some on
the book table.
I'm famous for recommending books that they don't
have on the book table, because until I
share, I don't know all the books that
the Lord is going to bring to my
mind.
What are some of the other big trends
that are really hitting us?
One of the biggest today is Kingdom Theology.
If you get into Kingdom Theology, you can
get into Dominion Theology, you get into Dominion
Theology, you can get into Reconstructionism.
By that point, I'm sure I've lost you.
But there's a group of people today—Kingdom Theology
is very, very divided, all different levels.
Charles Colson's latest book touching on this is
probably a masterpiece.
I haven't finished it, haven't even started it,
read the reviews.
I've looked at it.
It's dynamite, and most of the things that
Chuck Colson says, I like to read.
But there are other people, especially a character
named Gary North, who's considered a leader of
the Reconstruction movement, really believe that the Church
must move in the realm of taking over
nations, ruling and dominating and taking over nations.
This controversy is destined to be one of
the most divisive, one of the most heavily
argued controversies in the next five years.
A lot of people are talking about Kingdom
Teaching and Kingdom Theology, and I also use
the word Kingdom, have not done the research
of what this is all about and are
coming out with some very interesting statements.
This is a big trend.
This is linked with the fact that Christians
are getting more involved in politics.
I say hallelujah.
Surprised you, didn't I?
To me, one of the reasons it's difficult
to discern what to do with these different
trends is because in most trends there are
strong elements of truth, and there are things
that you and I would say yes to.
In reading Gary North's book, I just thought
there were some things and they were absolutely
tremendous.
He hit Liberation Theology, one of my favorite
enemies, absolutely with a dynamite knockout punch.
If you have any thought that Liberation Theology,
this mixture of Communism and Christianity, is the
real answer to Latin America or any other
part of the world, just try a little
bit of Gary North and Reconstruction Theology.
But of course, as I read on, I
found out it went off into things that
I just, I found very, very naive and
very difficult to believe.
Doesn't the word of God say, narrow is
the way and few there will be who
will find it?
Isn't there some truth in the extreme, but
we must avoid going to the other extreme
and get into things in which ultimately we're
going to get depressed and discouraged and into
foolishness, thinking that we can just sort of
take over whole nations.
We can influence nations through prayer.
We can influence nations through being the Saul.
We can influence kings and governors.
We have tremendous power, but it's so easy
when you have a little power to become
power crazy.
And I tell you, you know why a
lot of people are discouraged?
Because God is not answering their prayers.
All kinds of wild prayers, all kinds of
prayers born out of excitement or reading the
latest book and they're not seeing the answers.
And you know what bothers me is sometimes
we're very dishonest about just saying we've not
seen the breakthrough.
We've not seen the answer.
So-and-so was not really healed.
It looked like they were healed in the
meeting, but actually they're back ill in bed.
And there is a lack of integrity.
There is a lack of honesty in the
present day church scene.
I feel that very, very strongly.
We need to be guided by the Holy
Spirit as to what we should pray for
and how we should pray.
Of course, some of the goals we have
in prayer with our burdens about the kingdom
and our burdens about the world situation are
wonderful goals.
And I basically move with a lot of
these goals.
We want more righteousness in the nation.
We want to see abortion stop.
We want justice.
We want truth.
We want more godly men in the right
places.
But that's only part of the other part
perhaps could better be seen if you were
living in a country where Christians are persecuted
and in prison.
Are we saying these people don't know anything
about the kingdom?
These people don't know how to pray?
These people don't know how to reign and
rule and carry forth God's will in their
nation?
That is simple as some people would make
us think.
So that's a major trend.
We're going to have to wrestle with it.
And I pray that we'll again understand God
will lead different people in different ways.
Another major trend that is so exciting in
the world today is the growing emphasis on
world evangelism.
All of us would acknowledge that this is
a positive trend.
When I think of the book Operation World,
and I hope every one of you will
get a copy of that book, if you
want to understand what's going on in the
church, if you want to understand some of
the problems in the church, read Operation World.
500 pages of facts and information.
I'm sure they are giving some kind of
bargain or something free with copies of Operation
World.
I forgot to bring my copy with me.
I'll probably wave it at you tonight.
I don't know if you've heard of the
prayer concert movement, not so well known in
Europe.
One of the main leaders, David Bryant, part
of InterVarsity in America, now launching out into
a separate fellowship to emphasize prayer concerts.
They are Knights of Prayer, one of the
main practices of OM, since our foundation was
Knights of Prayer.
Now they call them prayer concerts.
Great.
We will also use that name when necessary.
Extended prayer time.
It's an exciting movement.
How many of you were with us at
TEMA about a year and a couple of
months ago?
Any of you were at TEMA over in
Utrecht?
They're coming up again in 1990, or just
before 1990, 89 leading into 90.
I've been asked to go back again and
lead that prayer concert.
Several hours of praying for the nation.
You can start a prayer concert in your
own fellowship, sharing about the nation.
This is a modern trend.
It's a good trend.
You can incorporate some of these other trends.
Praying for the nations, praying for leaders of
government, praying against abortion, praying for justice, praying
for the South African crisis, the Nicaraguan crisis.
God's people, through books like Operation World, through
the Ministry of Tapes and Cassettes, are becoming
more conscious of the whole world.
I believe that's true.
They are becoming world Christians.
Now they still may be a remnant.
I think we've got a little more than
a remnant now.
I just spoke at the Urbana Convention.
18,000 men and women gathered at Urbana.
The one whole focus of Urbana was world
missions.
Their main route comes out of the main
evangelical world of North America.
A student movement in America that has its
roots completely in the charismatic camp, Maranatha Ministries,
had a similar conference, not as many, I
think somewhere else in the United States.
Now you may think, well, you know, why
doesn't God just lump us all together?
Why doesn't God just give us all on
the head and get us all to become
the same?
We've got 2,000, yay, 4,000 years
of history to prove that's not the way
God works.
I think that's pretty strong.
That even may be stronger than a new
book on the subject of ecumenicalism.
A couple thousand years history.
God's unity is in the midst of diversity.
We're going to waste a lot of energy
if we try to get everybody to be
the same.
If we try to get Maranatha Ministries to
close down their conference and go to Urbana.
If we try to get one of the
new fellowships with these live summer camps, with
the praising and the dancing and the hand
-waving and the leaping and the healing and
whatever, get them to close down and go
to Keswick, or get Keswick to close down
and go there.
We've got a couple thousand years of history
that show basically you're wasting your time.
Better to pray the Holy Ghost moves in
power in Keswick, the Holy Ghost moves in
power in Spring Harvest.
I'm one of the few characters that spoke
at both places in the same year and
survived.
Let the Holy Spirit work through the Restoration
Movement.
Let the Holy Spirit work through the Anglicans.
And you know when we get to heaven
we'll compare the results.
Actually when we get to heaven we'll all
be more humble, we'll all be more loving,
and all these things that we see darkly,
and that's why we can't fully understand it
all, we'll see face to face.
Now God's leading different people in different ways,
and my plea is for greater understanding and
integrity and honesty in our attitudes toward one
another, because this attitude of arrogance and pride
that one believer has toward another believer is
not from God.
That doesn't mean God won't bless that person.
Do you think God only blesses you when
you're perfectly clean, no wrong attitudes, no wrong
ideas, no sin, no wrong this or wrong
that?
The Word of God teaches that this treasure
is in earthen vessels.
Being successful and being blessed does not prove
that you are walking as holy as you
should be on that particular day.
I've seen great blessings in my ministry of
preaching and teaching on days when I had
displeased the Lord.
Preaching and teaching is only one aspect of
the Christian life, and it is overemphasized.
And that's why we turn people into heroes,
and that's why we can't find enough people
to work behind the scenes in ministry, typing
letters and keeping the books and driving the
cars and fixing them.
Our movement is going through a nightmare from
the lack of technical people and mechanics.
We have so many preachers that we can't
even find enough meetings for them.
I don't know, maybe they're not good enough.
So praise the Lord for this great trend.
It's been going on for a long time.
Those of us in modern missions are following
in the steps of awesome characters, from Hudson
Taylor to C.T. Studd, from Jim Elliott
to Amy Carmichael.
And we ought to walk with great humility,
and we ought to learn from these saints.
Let's not just read the new books published
by the latest half-converted gospel cowboy with
a flying wonderful testimony, but let's dig a
little bit into Andrew Murray.
Let's spend a little bit time with men
like A.W. Tozer.
We may even go on, want to go
back before that into some of the mystics,
because a lot of Tozer is rehashed mystics
way back many centuries ago.
It's exciting.
I was touching on this emphasis of Reformed
theology and wanted to, in mentioning that trend,
emphasize the great leader of the Reformed movement
in Britain, now with the Lord.
I remember the day when he came to
speak on the ship Dulos in London, Dr.
Martin Lloyd-Jones.
You may not agree with everything in his
book, and some of his disciples have carried
some of his things into extremes, but this
man was the leading theologian in Britain for
a couple of decades, in my mind, together
with John Stott.
They actually had a strong public collision once
in a meeting in London.
Later on, I think there was some dialogue.
But certainly when Lloyd-Jones called people to
come out of the churches, because the churches
were uniting with the World Council of Churches,
and terrific compromise, the way a man like
this would think, the way American fundamentalists would
think, John Stott, I mean, Dr. Lloyd-Jones
called people to come out of their churches,
started up the Evangelical Council, which is a
parallel thing to the Evangelical Missionary Alliance and
the Evangelical Alliance.
And John Stott, of course, gave a strong
rebuttal in that meeting and challenged, especially, people
to be loyal to their own existing churches.
What happened back in those years in the
60s happened before that, and it still happens.
God's unity is in the midst of diversity.
Today, more often than ever, we don't have
pure theological lines.
I don't think you could claim that Lloyd
-Jones was a pure, took a pure Reformed
line.
Read his books about the Holy Spirit.
It will blow your circuits.
His roots go back more into Wales.
It goes into Calvinistic Methodism, and the Methodists
preached and teach an experience with the Holy
Spirit.
So today we're living in the age of
cocktails.
If you want any mega trend, it's the
cocktail trend.
You don't find pure Calvinists.
You don't find pure Arminians.
Can't even get people anymore to agree what
that is.
You find people are a mixture.
And so you, you are the children of
the cocktail generation, and who in the world
knows what you're going to come up with?
Even in the area of eschatology, there are
many trends in the area of eschatology.
Traditionally the Church, a large segment of the
Church, had a very strong bias, for example,
toward the Jews.
Certain segments of the Church, of course, just
the opposite.
But especially as American Christianity became dominant throughout
the world, and premillennial teaching, dispensational teaching, the
Schofield Bible, all kinds of things in that
area, we found some people going extreme and
making incredible strong statements about Israel that were
more Zionist than the Zionists were stating.
Now we're seeing a new resurgence and a
number of books coming out countering this.
And I tell you, this controversy is really
heating up.
And I think it's something that you're probably
going to end up reading about in the
coming few years.
I have said to a number of people
who are strong on both sides, I have
intimate friends absolutely on both sides of this
controversy, pulling me.
And I have said we cannot let these
arguments about Israel, about the Palestinian question, about
premillennialism, about the real place of the Jewish
people, and other issues like the rapture, and
the thousand-year reign, and the non-thousand
- year reign, divide and destroy our evangelistic
thrust to preach the gospel to every creature
in the world.
You know, if I see a Muslim saved,
it's such a miracle to see a Muslim
saved.
And that is another trend, an increased interest
in reaching the unreached people and reaching the
Muslims.
And it is such a miracle to see
a Muslim saved.
I, forgive me, am not too worried if
he is premillennial or postmillennial.
I am not too concerned whether he speaks
in tongues or does not speak in tongues.
I may have my preferences.
We all have our preferences.
We also all have our prejudices, brother and
sister.
And anybody who has no prejudice, I would
like you to sign and autograph personally the
back of my Bible under the section marked
hypocrites, sign here.
God has been working on my prejudices since
the day of my conversion.
He was very gracious to me.
He started working on mine before my conversion.
And I'm still learning.
I'm trying to understand the South African question
in an objective, balanced way.
I'm not sure how far I'm getting.
I probably, from my childhood and what I
heard in school and what I learned as
I stood and saluted the American flag as
a little loyal, 100% go-go American,
developed a slight bias.
Now, none of you would experience that in
your country.
You're all more balanced and more disciplined and
more set free.
He's the first man to come and sign
my Bible.
Thank you very much.
So there are many trends.
There are many, many trends in the present
-day church.
I have touched on only a few of
them.
The trend increasing the ministry of women, very
important today.
The trend towards small groups, house groups.
This exists both in the non-charismatic and
in the charismatic fellowships.
Somebody wrote a book in America, Megatrends.
It talks about high touch, high tech, high
touch.
The more people are involved in the technical
world, the more they need closeness.
And one of the things that's been a
mark of most growing churches is intimate fellowship,
emphasis on relationship, emphasis on healing, not only
the body and of the mind.
With that also there have come extremes, overemphasis,
people digging into their past histories, all kinds
of therapies and quasi psychological programs that Christians
get drawn into.
The fact that someone has been helped or
blessed through this or that program doesn't necessarily
mean it is a hundred percent scriptural.
There are basic psychological principles that to some
degree work, I'm sure, for unconverted people.
Look at the huge trend of self-help.
Everything is self-help, self-confidence, self-this,
self-that.
There's even a book, a big book on
how to manipulate people.
And as Christians, we need what A.W.
Tozer said, more than ever before, we need
discernment.
There's discernment that comes to us in a
supernatural way, but I don't believe that is
the main kind of discernment that God gives
today.
I believe that the discernment we need may
include that, but it's built on a sterile
knowledge of the Word of God.
It's built on a knowledge of history.
It's built on an understanding that the Holy
Spirit gives over many years of experience.
I'm sure there are some exceptions when God
works in unusual ways.
I have my basic policies, my basic rules,
my basic game plan, and then when I
have, I have my exception department.
And so if you had something wild happening
in your life, probably as much as possible,
I would not condemn that.
I would put it in my exception department
and then try to keep you from majoring
on exceptions and get on the main highway
of sound doctrine, love, unity, and all the
rest of the biblical principles that we hope
we stand for this weekend.
Now, who would like to ask a question?
It can only be a person with a
good voice, and I hope you will ask
it quickly and briefly, no sermons as we
have just six or seven minutes.
Yes, a very good question, and I think
we need to realize that there has been
a trend in the church emphasizing worship, but
I think we need to be fair that
in some places it is emphasizing a particular
interpretation of worship.
Worship is not a narrow thing, except we
believe worship must be to the living God,
but different people worship in different ways.
And it is some of the people who
have been into this kind of trend, they
are now saying to us that it has
become just as much a routine as the
old sandwich thing they were preaching about 15
years ago.
This is why we need to be willing
for change, and this is why we try
to emphasize balance.
Why can't we still sing some of those
great old hymns written by godly men?
Sometimes we change the tunes, also we can
have choruses.
There's a strong emphasis, God's doing a new
thing.
I've been listening to that for over 30
years.
Praise the Lord, it's an important cliche.
God is, of course, doing a new thing,
but the greatest thing God ever did was
he gave his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
to die on the cross for our sins
and to give the gift of the Holy
Spirit to live within us.
I believe the Holy Spirit works in many,
many different ways, and an important factor in
this is what I call the human factor.
There's always the error, to some degree in
this world, mixed with truth.
The less error, the better.
But it is amazing how much blessing can
come on a person or a fellowship where
there is significant error, at least in my
way of thinking.
God is God.
He will not be put into a box.
So there's another area where we have to
work for balance.
For a group like Operation Mobilization, with our
somewhat conservative roots and convictions, the most difficult
part of the Charismatic Renewal, in our attempt
to relate to that, not from a distance,
but mingled, because people in our work have
been brought to Christ or come into help
and blessing through that.
Our biggest problem would be that whole issue.
We love individual Catholic believers.
You know, I've prayed with priests, but we
cannot see, in our particular situation, how we
can work hand-in-hand with the Catholic
Church in evangelism.
I believe the huge meeting in New Orleans
has proven the point very, very well.
This was the biggest Charismatic Jamboree in North
America, and 50% were Roman Catholics.
And yet, if you read the research on
what happened there, you will see that a
high number of these people obviously did not
know the Lord Jesus as personal Lord and
Savior.
And there is a lot of confusion.
So here again, what we are in as
a fellowship is an ongoing process.
We are learning.
We are growing.
But we will not abandon basic Biblical truth
in order to have more friends or more
fellowship.
And it's a tough issue, so if you
don't agree with us on that, and there
may be Roman Catholics here, that is no
problem, just be patient with us.
It's taken us 25 years to win credibility
among Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Protestants in Europe.
Who were we?
We were nobody when we arrived here.
We can't throw that out of the window,
the Evangelicals and Protestants of Italy and Spain
and France and other countries so linked with
OM.
It's a miracle.
We can't just throw that out the window
because we get excited about some new ecumenical
adventure that some overly idealistic character wants to
get us into.
We can't do it.
We've got other priorities to evangelize the whole
world.
And most of the Catholic countries I've spent
a lot of time in, most of the
people don't have a real understanding of the
gospel of grace and justification by faith that
the Word of God teaches.
That is all there is of this recording.