We apologize for the rather rough quality of
this recording.
1 Corinthians chapter 9.
In chapter 9 we read about the laborer
being worthy of his hire.
Then Paul goes on, verse 12, If others
be partakers of this power over you, are
not we rather?
Nevertheless, we have not used this power, but
suffer all things, lest we should hinder the
gospel of Christ.
Do you not know that they which minister
about holy things live of the things of
the temple, and they which wait at the
altar are partakers with the altar?
Even so hath the Lord ordained that they
which preach the gospel should live of the
gospel.
But I have used none of these things.
Nevertheless, have I written these things, that it
should be so done unto me.
For it were better for me to die,
than that any man should make my glowing
void.
For though I preach the gospel, I have
nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid
upon me.
Yea, woe is me, or woe is unto
me, if I preach not the gospel.
Now the clear teaching of this chapter is
that the laborer of the gospel, the minister
of the gospel is worthy of his hire.
We're not going to go into the theological
aspects of that.
Yet Paul goes on to say, I don't
use this power.
In other words, Paul has a right to
take from the offerings of the church in
order to live.
He had that right, but he never used
it.
Instead it tells us in scripture that basically
Paul earned his living through tent making.
And of course now we have that expression
of tent making.
In that day it wasn't an expression, that's
what Paul did.
He made tents and he sold them.
And he took the money from the sale
of tents and he lived.
Now most of us have never pictured Paul
that way, have we?
Picture Paul the great preacher, the great theologian.
We never picture Paul sitting down sewing, making
a tent, and then selling it.
Almost sounds unspiritual, doesn't it?
Paul going out selling tents.
And yet the scripture is quite clear about
it, that Paul made his own living.
He tells in another place how he worked
with his own hands, his own hands to
support himself.
You say, well my poor fellow, didn't he
know the life of faith?
Didn't he know that he could have just
believed God for that money and have gone
to work?
We have a great distorted idea, some of
us, about the life of faith.
And we have it confused with sort of
a life of foolishness, a life of poverty.
There's a great verse in the New Testament,
I like it very much, some people don't.
It says, if a man not work, let
him not eat.
If a man not work, let him not
eat.
So it was very appropriate we sang that
hymn, work for the night is coming.
Ever since the beginning of this work, before
it was ever called OM or STL or
BDB or whatever other name you might want
to call it by, we were convinced that
God had given us the greatest tent making
that ever could be thought about.
The very first campaigns were sponsored often by
tent making.
We kept ourselves alive by tent making.
Now as you know, we're not living in
a day in which tents are exactly the
most flourishing business to get into.
So we never got into the literal tent
business, but we got into the selling of
Christian books.
We were planning our first campaign for Mexico.
We went out with Christian books, I must
confess, with a rather mercenary viewpoint in some
people's terms.
We went out to sell Christian books to
dear old Americans because we wanted to get
the profit to buy Gospels of John from
Mexico.
And now if you think there's something wrong
with that, you're in the wrong movement.
If you think there's something wrong with making
money and giving it to the Lord Jesus
Christ for the spread of the Gospel, if
you think that's not the life of faith,
I'm not saying God's going to call you
to make tents.
I'm not saying God's not going to call
you to take the hire that the labor
is worthy of.
If you think there's something wrong with that,
you're really on the wrong side of the
fence.
And so we went out from house to
house.
And we, of course, discovered that this was
what we would call in the States a
double-barreled ministry.
On one hand, we were tent making.
We were making our own way so that
as gifts came in in answer to prayer,
and we saw gifts come in in answer
to prayer, we didn't have to touch them.
We never had to touch them.
For our own food, our own clothing, our
own little necessities.
But any gifts that came in, we could
put that right into literature or into Mexicans,
national workers, or into a bookshop or whatever
it might be.
And so as we went out with these
books in this tent making, we saw that
this brought in funds for our own support
so that any gifts were given were given
to literature ministry.
Now sometimes I think of it vice versa.
Sometimes I like to think of it as
the money I'm making at the doorstep paying
for the literature and the gifts paying for
me.
For example, when somebody sends me a personal
gift and they say, well, this must be
for you.
You must use this personally.
Well, in my mind, my bank account, where
I keep it in my own head, I
say, well, that's for me personally.
So therefore today when I go out and
sell books, I'll give the book money to
the spreading of the gospel and the printing
of more literature.
So when people, you know, write you and
they say, well, I want to give you
a personal gift, you don't have to think,
well, that's not possible.
In a way it is possible.
That means if you get a personal gift,
any money you make on the doorstep can
go for the literature.
Naturally in any bookkeeping operation, any of you
know anything about accounting, it isn't a matter
of holding the money here or here or
in your pocket.
It's a matter of keeping the books.
And some people keep them on paper, which
is best.
Others keep them at least to some extent
in their head.
And so we have that one side of
the ministry, that of tent making, seeing money
come in so that we could continue on
in the work.
But the second ministry, which was so tremendous,
is that while we were doing the tent
making, the gospel was going out in a
tremendous way.
Now I'm absolutely convinced that if the apostle
Paul came back in the day of the
printing press, he would throw his tent and
he would become a cold porter.
You don't have to believe that, but I
believe it.
And most of you know, I'm stubborn enough
to stick to believe it.
Despite the fact that it isn't found in
scripture.
Naturally, there are certain things we don't find
in scripture.
We don't find anything about automobiles, electric lights,
tape recorders, microphones.
We don't even find much about chairs in
the scriptures.
And yet we see the basic principles.
We understand the basic attitude of the apostle
Paul.
And so we see that these are things
that are acceptable.
So the second barrel ministry is flooding out
the word of God.
This thing is so unique.
Why others have missed this?
I don't know.
Of course, we're not the first ones to
think of this type of thing.
For years, some of the greatest Christian workers
who never could get support in days when
they were to try to pray in two
pounds was like trying to move the walled
off Astoria with a teaspoon.
They had to depend.
They had to work their way.
The Bible Society, some of the great work
in its early years was done on this
basis.
The Waldensian Church, which was once a flaming
church in Italy, has a group very similar
in some ways.
They carried on their work through going house
to house, cold portage work.
And of course, this is especially realistic in
the mission field.
It's one thing for us to talk when
we're in these countries where there's money rolling
around.
It's another thing when you get out in
a place like India, where there's hardly enough
money to deliver, much less support lots of
full-time workers.
So God has given us this tent making.
The tent making ministry of Operation Mobilization is
its book selling.
In that one aspect of it.
At the same time, of course, in many
places we never make a penny on our
books.
We're still sold out and getting the books
out.
So if you don't like this side of
it, we don't care particularly which side motivates
you.
But we do want you to see the
absolute strategicness of using literature to the nth
degree.
And this is where many slip up on
OM.
Now I know some of you here don't
slip up at all on this, and you're
really doing very well.
But others, they really don't see fully how
this works in.
And they've been praying for funds, and they
haven't seen much money come in.
And they wonder sometimes, well, whether they should
even stay with the work.
They feel that they're sort of being carried
along on the OM gravy train, and they
get their meals, they get their clothing, to
get their census, or whatever else problem comes
up.
And yet they aren't seeing money come in
as they pray.
They're not seeing money come in.
What can you do?
Well, I want to tell you when I
first started in this work, I didn't have
very much faith to believe God for money.
I found that a tremendous battle.
But I did find that as I went
out and faithfully sold books and did this
work from house to house, that God blessed.
And I was making, selling books to Jews
and Roman Catholics, mainly.
A few Protestants.
Once, maybe every 50th person need evangelical, or
every 30th.
I was making a profit of two or
three pounds every day.
Clear profit.
Not turned in, gross.
Gross doesn't represent profit, but profit.
And I'm convinced that anybody who really wants
to can see the same thing happen.
I know it.
And I also know that salesmanship isn't learned
overnight, like, oh, Amherst wants it to happen.
They want one instruction session, one reading through
the literature manual, go out on the docker,
the Norah docker, with their six phrases, and
expect to come back with their pockets full
of pounds, as the Apostle Paul did when
he sold a lot of tents.
I'm sure he wasn't quite that ignorant, and
I'm sure the Apostle Paul knew quite a
bit about tents.
And so if you're going to accomplish anything
in this work, you must understand something about
it.
And one thing is for sure, you must
be convinced in your heart about book selling.
Now tonight we're going to have a night
of prayer.
One of the things we'll have to pray
for is the financial needs of the work.
You know, we think of dear George Mueller
with his orphans many years ago.
We might sit back and think, my, what
a tremendous need that was to feed those
orphans.
Why?
I mean, certainly he didn't have to pray
through the night.
He didn't have to fast.
He didn't have to exercise such faith and
make such a big story out of all
this believing God.
I mean, God would supply for those orphans,
wouldn't he?
God loves those orphans.
He'd supply for them, wouldn't he?
The fact of the matter is that there's
hundreds of thousands of orphans in the world
today, and whether we want to put it
in this terminology or not, God is not
supplying for them.
God is not supplying for them.
And you can blame God like many an
unbeliever does, many an agnostic, many an atheist,
blame God for all his suffering.
But God has given us this world, in
a sense.
We're in charge down here, or to put
it in clearer terms, the devil is in
charge.
He's the prince and the power of the
air.
In a sense, God has given up the
world.
He's just said, okay, let it go.
And I'm only going to deal with those
people who come to me in love and
brokenness and say, Lord, I'm yours.
When they say that, then I'm going to
come in.
I'm not going to force my way in.
And so God has chosen to use us.
He's chosen to use us to pray, to
believe, for victories.
I don't fully understand that, but that's his
message.
He chooses to work through prayer.
And so if we're going to see the
finances come in, it isn't just a matter
of sitting back and saying, well, Lord, you
know our needs.
I mean, you know that we need this
money.
We can't go out to the field.
We can't pay our grocery bills if we
don't supply.
Lord, you know all that, so we just
trust you for it.
It isn't a matter of just doing that.
It's a matter of exercising faith.
It's a matter of believing that God is
God and that he will supply.
All last week, we hardly mentioned anything about
finances.
We had too much of a mixed multitude
in our audiences.
We're not interested in dropping all kinds of
hints to visitors that we're sort of on
the rock pile.
But economically speaking, business-like speaking, ON is
on the economic rock pile.
I can tell you that this afternoon.
We absolutely are on the economic rock pile.
And if God doesn't come to our rescue
in the next few weeks, in the next
few days, there will be no campaign in
1966.
And I can tell you that's the truth.
In Turkey alone, there's $10,000 worth of
bills.
And if you think $10,000 comes in
quick I know once in a while you
hear a report of a great gift.
You think those gifts are coming in every
day.
I don't jump out of my shoes and
go halfway to the ceiling when these gifts
come in because it's something that comes in
every 24 hours.
Because they're just miracle mercy drops.
And I can tell you right now, as
it stands, there's not one team that'll cross
the English Channel.
Not one single team.
And I know that it is not our
plan or God's plan for us to go
launching out with unpaid bills.
We don't believe that we should.
Amen.
In this way, it's a poor testimony and
we don't believe it's God's plan.
Now this means we have to see funds
come in.
Tonight we're going to deal with the area
of faith.
We're going to believe God.
We're going to see answers.
But the Bible says faith without work is
dead.
The guy who can come to the pyramid
and pray for five pounds and isn't willing
to go out on the doorstep and exert
himself a little and try to learn a
few principles of salesmanship that he might make
his tents right and sell them right and
get the job done right.
This person, I don't believe, is going to
really see an answer to prayer.
It has always been in this work that
God wasn't just calling us to have an
easy way in which we could just have
a prayer meeting any night.
Bingo, we have $10,000 dropped in our
lap.
You know, we go along so far and
the well runs dry, so we have another
prayer meeting.
After all, a prayer meeting is relatively easy,
isn't it?
Especially the way some pray.
I think it's a tremendous time to sing
hymns, praise God.
I know sometimes it gets very hard, but
compared to knocking on the doors day after
day and hour after hour being insulted and
embarrassed and frustrated at times, I think most
of us realize that prayer can be, can
be easy.
It shouldn't be, but it can be.
And so we don't believe it's God's will
for us to sit back and make the
other man pay.
Let Christians give their money to us.
We use it all up so we can't
support any nationals.
We can't buy millions of tracts.
We can't buy millions of books because we're
using all the money up.
Now, or we have no economic problems.
All we have to do is stop buying
books, stop buying tracts by the millions, stop
traveling from here to India.
If we just consolidate and work in two
or three countries, like most groups do, they
certainly don't think of expanding into 20 countries
in a couple of years because, I mean,
the economic burden of this is impossible.
And you go down to London anytime you
want and you look at the Christian offices,
you look at the, the kind of desk,
I mean, the average director in a work,
I mean, expects to pay 150 bucks, $200
for a desk.
I mean, you can't have him working on
a, on a cardboard box or a wooden
crate.
And so of course is where all the
money goes.
And then they wonder why they haven't got
enough to send out more missionaries, why they
can't print millions of tracts.
And so they write to OM and ask
for free ones and all the rest.
We believe God has given us a tent
making ministry, a revolutionary tent making ministry, in
a sense, tents with gospel text painted on
all 10 sides.
If there is such thing as 10 sided
tents.
And so God has given us this ministry
of book selling.
And if we do it right, it's a
profit making ministry.
Places like India, not so easy that way,
all because of some nice donations by certain
groups of books, where we get the books
free.
Of course, then even if we only get
a half a rupee or a few diapice,
then we make a little bit of money.
You know, in India, we have seen, this
is the most heaven sent thing because the
Indians don't want foreign funds.
They think it's sin to take foreign funds.
Many Indians, they teach that.
For Indians to take dollars and pounds, they
believe it's sin, but they'll take books even
free and then they'll sell them and then
they'll take the money from that.
And that's how we support our armies in
India.
And we stay free from this criticism of
being a dollar pound organization.
And yet we've got more national workers than
practically very few groups have in India today.
All's happened within the past year and it's
all done on this tent making business.
It also gives the Indian a tremendous feeling
of self-support and satisfaction that he isn't
leaning on the West.
He isn't hanging on the crumbled dollar, but
he's out working.
And we tell our Indians, all right, you
don't work today, no ice today.
And, uh, they go out and we never
have to send money out to our Indian
team.
They go out and all the, uh, expenses
are paid.
In fact, many a team in India sends
in money all the time to our central
office.
And this is a tremendous unique thing.
You need to understand this.
This is part of the basic practical strategy
that enables us to have 300 young people
moving out this year instead of 30, because
this is our burden.
Our burden, those of us who were in
it from the beginning, wasn't that we would
just be able to go out and support
ourselves.
I would have no trouble with that.
I know that I'd have no trouble getting
support for myself and myself and my family,
but we weren't satisfied with it.
We wanted to get a multitude of people
with us and let's support them.
Let's fight and battle and believe God so
we can support a dozen Spaniards and a
couple of dozen Indians and a few dozen
Mexicans and some Italians.
And that's how we can have at this
conference.
The Spaniards, the Spaniards aren't, aren't paying their
own way.
They're not seeing money come in.
Very few of the Italians are doing it.
It's beginning more and more, but imagine what
a difficult thing this is in their country,
where there's so much poverty, where the Christians
don't have very much money, and where they've
never really read any books about the faith
principle or had any teaching along this line.
Why, to pray in 10 pounds in Spain
is like praying in 100 pounds in Britain.
But they're beginning to learn.
But how are we ever going to get
them started?
It's always nice.
Many missionaries, they see the nationals say, well,
just trust the Lord, brother.
The nationals hoping that perhaps he could get
maybe one or two pounds a week to
support his family.
A dear missionary, he's getting probably 50 pounds
a week.
He says, well, now we're faith missionaries.
We came out here by faith, you know,
horse's neck, as we say, faith, traveling around
all the churches in the United States for
two years until they finally decide to support
you, either to get rid of you or
some other falsely motivated reason.
Then you get out to the missionaries and
say, we're the faith missionaries.
You nationals want to work.
Well, believe God, trust the Lord like we
did.
Step out by faith.
The poor national, he doesn't understand this.
When you came over, you came over with
four or five missionary battles.
You came over with your little radio.
You came over at least with a Bible
and a few books.
The average national in countries like India, he
doesn't even have a proper Bible.
Many, they don't even have a library of
books.
And we try to tell them, step out
by faith.
Believe God, we can't give you any foreign
money.
And of course, then on the other hand,
you've had other groups that have gone to
the field, they've shelled out foreign money, right,
left, and center.
Some of the big denominations don't use the
faith principles.
They have salaries, give their missionary salaries.
And then what's happened?
Corruption, embezzlement, cheating, lying.
Oh, I tell you, it's going to grieve
your soul.
Isn't there an answer to this?
We believe we've found the answer.
The answer is we never give them money,
we give them books.
The books is the investment.
When they sell the books, they get the
money, but to sell the books, they have
to work.
And you don't find too many Freud men
and con men and fakers grabbing onto piles
of books to go out seven hours a
day.
Even if they don't return us a penny,
they've had to work for their money.
And it brings them back to a biblical
position and keeps them from resting on American
funds.
So this is a tremendous part, a vital
part of OM's strategy that all of us,
by God's grace, are booksellers.
We believe in selling books.
Might we realize just what this is.
Someone was just telling me the other day,
I don't remember who it is, a story
where someone was forced to buy a book.
Now, one thing I've always said, never force
people to buy a book.
And yet someone just told me the other
day that they just heard of a case
where a man was sort of forced to
buy a book.
He really didn't want it, but the guy
was a high-pressure man, which we don't
recommend.
But he was a high-pressure man, he
sold the book, and the guy was wonderfully
born again and his whole family saved because
that book was sort of forced upon him.
Now, if that can happen when the book
is sort of forced upon him, which we
don't recommend, how much can happen when the
man buys the book out of his own
will because he wants it?
Because he wants to read about the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Now, let's remember that the gospel is free
of charge.
The Bible says the gospel is free, we
believe that.
We never charge people for testimony, do we?
At any of our meetings last week, we
could have passed the offering plate any night.
I could have put on a little pressure
and got 20, 30, 40 pounds out of
those meetings.
I can raise money.
By the time when I was seven years
old, I knew how to raise money.
At 11, I knew how to cheat at
cards.
You could take anything out of your wallet.
I can raise money, but I don't want
any part of it.
The only fundraising campaign I won at the
throne of grace was the Trinity as my
finance committee.
And I believe, oh, some people say, well,
why didn't you take an offering?
You missed out, you missed an opportunity.
Look, if people aren't going to give willingly,
if they aren't going to just come out
and just give and just want to give,
then I don't want it.
I'm so sick of people being pressured, emotionalized,
stimulized, derived into giving.
What kind of, what does that money do
in the long run?
I think sometimes it's money that never values
anything for the kingdom of God.
I'd rather go out and work.
And isn't it strange?
Some people that will look down on book
selling will think nothing of turning on a
beggar at a meeting and passing the flint
and making a big offering.
And yet they'll despise somebody going out and
book selling.
Well, this is very hard for me to
understand.
This is work.
If I go out seven hours a day
on the doors working, I'm not, I'm not
a beggar.
I'm not begging for money.
I'm working and I've given them a better
value than they've ever given for their money.
Because the books, especially that we sell are
usually very cheap.
When I give a man a gospel in
India, five Naya Paisa that cost 14 Naya
Paisa to print, I think he's getting a
pretty good deal.
Now let's remember though, the gospel is free.
What we charge for is the paper and
ink.
Well, I have told people, I said, look,
you know, the gospel is free.
I'll be glad to talk to you about
Christ and explain the way of salvation.
It's just the paper and the books and
the ink that cost the binding.
And so we, we like to collect the
donations so that we can buy more books
for people that perhaps can't afford them.
So the gospel is free, but the books
cost money.
I trust that you understand what I've just
said.
I'd love to talk to you more about
it.
You don't know how I want to get
these things over.
I don't want to particularly come to these
sessions.
I've got so much work in my office
now, it's getting depressing to walk in the
door.
If I don't look at Jesus, I'm going
to be discouraged.
Just everything piled up in my desk and
the letters and I haven't even opened.
But I just pray that we can communicate
to you something of this vision for being
a tent maker.
Why?
Because as a tent maker, the money you
pray in can support nationals, Indians, Mexicans, Spaniards,
Italians, because the money then that you pray
in can be used to get more literature
out, to get literature into the Soviet countries.
What's the thing that's holding up the work
in the iron curtain countries?
I'll tell you what it is.
It's not manpower.
I've got men.
We've got some men.
It's money.
Every time you look this way or that
way, no money.
We haven't even paid.
Right now, I've got sitting right here, I
don't want to steal it.
It's only a 1,100 pound bill for
secret of happiness in the Russian language.
And it's due now.
It's due right now.
I've got a letter on my desk written
to them by John Watts.
The only thing I have to do is
put in the check.
I have a partial payment.
So the campaign from this past summer in
the communist world isn't paid.
OM owes Dave Borman at least $1,000
yet, because he's had to pay some OM
bill with money that he prayed in.
And in most places, we don't even have
anybody like Dave who's laying hold of funds
to carry on the work.
In fact, we don't for any communist country.
Communist projects have had to come from, sorry,
but general fund and from a few special
gifts here and there.
So we look at the communist world and
say, we want to do something in communist
world.
We want to get literature going.
Why in Poland right now, they're ready to
distribute all the Gospels we can give them.
They're ready to move out with the Gospels.
Who has any money for Gospels in Poland?
Nobody.
We haven't got two happenings to rub one
against the other right at this point.
Much less say, well, let's get some more
Gospels for Poland.
Somebody says, well, let's load up Mr. Barkus,
our double-walled vehicle.
Let's get him into the Soviet Russia.
That's right.
I went down and ordered 100 Bibles in
the Bible Society for Russia.
Pocket Bibles.
Everybody says, that's right.
I got the bill, 300 quid.
No, a hundred quid, $300.
So everybody likes to think, you know, and
what can be done?
Let's do this.
We got all kinds of people with vision,
all kinds of people with ideas of how
the money can be spent, what we can
do, what we can accomplish for God.
And I doubt if we have 20 people
that know how to lay hold of the
resources to do it.
Now, this is the same with all over
the world.
Not only with our Christian organization, this is
true of every nation other than practically America
and one or two other countries.
Why do they make you register your money
in all the communist countries?
Why is it you can't even take a
rupee into India?
Because these countries have all kinds of plans,
projects, ideas to solve their million and one
problems.
No resources.
No resource.
That's why in the black market in India,
I can take a rupee and sell it.
I can take a dollar and sell it
for eight rupees when the official rate is
only four.
Because they're trying some way, some way to
get the resources.
And the dollar represents merely resources.
It represents manpower and resources.
And that's what you must remember about money.
Money only represents something.
Money isn't worth anything.
Just like having German Deutschmarks in West Germany.
These German Deutschmarks in West Germany, they're not
worth very much.
You can have a whole bottle full of
them and you don't get too much of
a rate on them.
Some other kinds of currency, like we have
a pile of Indian rupees that came out
of India by mistake.
We can't do anything with them.
Actually, we're not even supposed to take them
back.
I don't know what we're going to do
with these rupees.
But this is the same way with money.
The paper is worth nothing.
It's what's behind it.
What does it represent?
So, a Christian, he's working very hard.
What does he get for all of his
work if he's working in a secular job?
At the end of the week, he goes
in and he collects a million gospel tracts
for a week's work.
What secular firms pay that way?
Did any of your firms, some of you
have worked in the world, did any of
them at the end of the week give
you a stack of Bibles or a pile
of tracts?
No!
They gave you money.
But that money, just as well, could have
been a stack of tracts or a pile
of Bibles.
You could take that money and immediately go
to the Bible Sciences and they'll give you,
exchange this money for Bibles.
You could do that on any printer and
you can exchange this money for tracts.
So, remember, money is merely the conversion unit
to convert your energy into tracts.
To convert your energy into something that counts
for eternity.
To take temporal power and convert it into
eternal investment.
That's why I'm not ashamed to make money.
And if the Lord ever calls me back
into business, I'll do it very happily.
I'll tell you, I'd never be settled at
10 and 20 pounds a week.
If I couldn't make 200 pounds a week
in the world, well, I'd be a very
frustrated individual.
But if I made that 200 pounds a
week, I figure my wife and I could
live on about two or three pounds, maybe
at the most, if inflation got bad.
And then we could give all the rest
of the world to Jesus Christ.
What greater joy could there be?
I believe a man can be a disciple
and be in business.
I believe that with all my heart.
I believe a man can be a disciple
and go down and work in a paper
mill or work down in the railroad station.
It all depends on what he does with
his manpower when he gets it in the
form of the currency.
That's why Billy Graham said, Billy Graham said,
the last thing a man will ever give
us is money.
That really shocked me when I saw that.
I said, well, that's not true.
The last thing a man will give us
is his heart.
That's right.
His money represents his heart.
Where your treasure is, what?
Where your heart is also.
And so if a man goes forward in
the ninth convention, a deeper life convention, therefore
now I would cry, fine.
What did he give?
He gave his hand.
He raised his hand.
But when he goes back to his bank
account, realizing that everything belongs more, he drains
out his 10,000 that he's been saving
for a rainy day.
And he sends it off to regions beyond
his heart.
It's about falls right at him.
It's true.
And so when people send us money, they're
sending us their labor power, their manpower converted
into currency.
And it's the same way when you go
out selling books.
So you always have that double opportunity at
the doorstep.
Maybe a soul will get saved through the
book.
That's a primary thing.
That's the greatest thing.
If we never got a quarter, never got
a penny for the book, a soul got
saved.
Why?
You came back and said, well, I haven't
sold any books all week.
We had five or six souls come to
Christ.
Praise God.
We never found that usually happening.
We found most people that sold the books
were also knew how to win the souls.
And so we have that double opportunity.
At the same time, if you go to
a doorstep, they buy some books, but they
never get saved.
They never come to Christ.
Still, what did you get?
You got some money.
Represent your labor.
You can take that money, invest it in
tracts.
Maybe the tracts will bring someone to Jesus
Christ.
Or invest it in a national worker, and
maybe he will lead a soul to Jesus
Christ.
So we always have this double, tremendous double
opportunity when we go out on the doorstep.
Tent making plus evangelizing at the same time.
Poor apostle Paul, he had to sit down
at times and make those tents.
And he must have thought, I could be
preaching right now.
I could be moving out, be evangelizing, planning
another trip.
He had to make those tents.
Then he had to go out and get
to the guy in the market.
He had to make a deal with him
to sell the tent.
Well, we have a tent making that at
every moment we're doing it, we're getting the
gospel out.
Every moment we're selling our tents, the gospel
is pouring out.
I tell you, it's terrific.
If that doesn't excite you, I think there's
something wrong with your blood pressure.
The possibility of supporting ourselves, the buying tract,
opening bookshops, advancing into China, Russia, places we
can't go, through sending literature through the post,
and yet never losing a minute, always giving
the gospel out at the same time.
It's tremendous.
You know, leading men in missions today, right
to the top.
I can name several missions right to the
very top.
They've changed their strategy in the light of
this strategy that I'm just talking to you
right now.
And you'll see it as you perhaps read
missionary magazines.
But now I want to just go a
little bit into what do you do with
these books.
You've got a nice pack of books this
weekend, and you go out.
The book selling for this past time, I
haven't got an official report on it, but
it certainly, if we had to live off
it, we'd sure be going down quick.
And we wouldn't be having these nice meals
we've been having here.
We'd be eating, well, I don't know, in
our book sales, we might be able to
find some potatoes and powdered milk, and perhaps
a few other things.
But there's many that seem to be content
with, you know, coming back after a whole
morning's work with a shovel.
Now tell me, if you were supporting your
wife and family, and you were going out
as a salesman of encyclopedias, or bubble gum,
or whatever other thing you were selling, would
you be satisfied coming back to your wife,
the baby's been crying because it hasn't had
its milk all day, and the cereal, you
know, hasn't been able to buy the cereal.
The baby's crying.
You know what a crying baby is.
Someday you'll learn.
Anyway, the baby's crying, and crying, and crying,
and the mother's saying that she's had a
hard day, frustrating, and you come back and
say, well, honey, great day today, honey.
Well, do you have a pound yet?
We have to go get the milk quickly
before the store.
Well, I've got a shilling.
She says, a shilling?
Honey, we have three children here.
Oh, I've got a shilling.
The Lord's blessed.
Gave great contact.
Had a wonderful time.
But the shilling, what are we going to
do with the shilling?
And that's the way many OMers come back.
They come back, Lord's blessed, didn't get any
money, didn't sell any books, but boy, it
was a good experience.
I got kicked around, and I don't believe
God just wants that.
Now, I'm willing to suffer that a few
times, but you know, I believe that our
God is a God of success.
He wasn't a failure.
You know, when he went after Jericho, the
walls went down and went down and when
the Red Sea, you know, was supposed to
move, it moved.
When Jordan was supposed to move, it moved.
God isn't a God of failure.
We're the failures, but God is a God
of success, and he wants you to be
successful.
He wants you to see results.
He doesn't want just a lot of activity.
He wants productivity, and he wants it so
that you can go out in a day,
and when you come back, you can buy
your bread and butter and your milk and
whatever needs you have.
It's nice to put a requisition slip in
a box.
Tremendous.
We've got all kinds of requisitions, deodorant string,
hairpins, bobby pins, food, clothing, medicines.
Boy, you just add it up.
The list gets longer and longer and longer.
It's very nice, but when it comes out,
from going on the doorstep to your tent
making, do you feel a burden to pay
for some of that?
Do you feel a burden to say, well,
Lord, I want to work.
The man that works, let him not eat.
I want to pay for the toothbrush that
I got last week and the soap base
and the medicines and the transportation or whatever
it was, and I believe that this is
a burden that all of us should have,
especially those that perhaps are frustrated a little
bit because you haven't been able to believe
God for the money, and you feel like
perhaps you're rolling along a little bit on
somebody else's face.
Well, I believe as you press on, as
you stay in the Word, as you're faithful,
as you hunger and thirst, you spend time
in prayer, God will eventually give you more
and more of that faith to believe for
fun.
But meanwhile, prove to the Lord that you
mean business.
Prove to the Lord that you're not just
a talker by putting everything you have into
this bookshelf, everything you have into this distribution.
Now, if you're going to do this, if
right now you're at the point where you're
willing to say, Lord, I'm going to put
everything I have into this.
I'm convinced that you want me to be
a tent maker, to get these books out.
At the same time, I know that souls
can come to Christ through books.
What's greater than giving out the Word of
God?
I mean, how in the world can you
argue against such a foolproof method of getting
the Word out?
And so now you're to the point and
say, well, look, what are things I can
do?
I want to give you five things guaranteed,
absolute guarantees.
If you do these five things, you'll eventually
know how to get books out.
I don't care who you are.
I don't care if you're introvert, extrovert, uptrovert,
or down-to-earth.
You'll get books out and the Word of
God will go out and soon you will
discover also that you'll learn how to win
souls to Jesus Christ.
Somebody said, Billy Graham has a great anointing.
Billy Graham is a great man.
He's won many souls to Christ.
Where did Billy Graham learn to speak?
You know where he learned?
He was a fuller brush salesman.
Billy Graham was a fuller brush salesman.
That's right.
And after that he used to go into
the Florida swamps and preach on the stumps
to the trees.
Is that where he got his anointing?
No, that's where he got some learning, some
wisdom.
So Billy Graham went out and sold brushes
and you'll discover many a man who's been
used for Christ as a salesman.
D.L. Moody was a salesman.
D
.L.
Moody was a salesman.
He was a salesman.
He was a If
you're not excited about any of these books,
if all of it's just a pile of
paper, and it's just part of the OM
ministry, and you're not really interested, you'll never
sell very many.
And I'd say I've worked in almost every
country, I've sold books in almost every country,
and I've never had trouble seeing people buy
books, because I'm excited about it, and I'm
enthusiastic about it, and you must be also.
Enthusiastic about Jesus Christ.
That's all a book is.
A book is a sermon in print.
Billy Graham preached seven sermons on seven deadly
sins.
You would have heard those sermons preached, you
would have went out rejoicing, what a great
ministry.
What a tremendous sermon.
Well, here's the book.
Why don't you do anything about it?
Billy Graham comes to London, a hundred thousand
people gather from all over England.
They jam into the stadium, they fight for
the seats, they pay six shillings to get
a reserved seat.
What for?
They hear Billy Graham.
His books are floating all over the place,
they hardly read them.
Doesn't make sense to me.
They're just going there because it's part of
the status, part of something they're not sure
of.
Distributing Christian books is the most logical thing
you can think of, in some ways.
So, the first thing, if we're going to
see anything happen, we're friendly, enthusiastic, we're excited
about our Lord Jesus Christ, not about paper
and ink, but about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And oh, I tell you, that's the first
step.
I've seen some of the most miserable salesmen
go out.
In many ways miserable, yet they were excited,
they were convinced about their product, and they
did tremendous things.
Now, the second thing is you must know
your product.
You must know your book.
You must know these books.
Now, if you can't read them all, read
a little bit of all of them.
Get that?
If you can't read them all, read a
little bit of all of them.
Now, I can comment on more books over
there.
Almost any title you pick up over there,
I can sell it.
You might call it bluffing, call it what
it will, but I can still sell it.
I know something about it.
I know something about the author, something about
the first chapter, something about the table of
contents, something about something.
If I don't know about the author, I
know a friend of the author.
If I don't know anything about the text,
I know something about the style.
But I always know something, just to get
talking about it and get things started.
So know your material.
Of course, the more you know the better
it is.
I've read this book several times.
I've read it in different languages.
I know that it's in 40 languages.
I know that Billy Graham speaks to more
people about God than any living man today
except the Pope.
I've had a lot of other interesting facts,
but I can talk in this book for
at least an hour.
And of course, it's easy to sell if
you know something about it, you understand it.
And oh, the hundreds, look, hundreds and hundreds
have been born again through this one book,
Peace with God.
I love those words.
This has been written for the man in
the street.
This has been written for the man in
the street.
I take the people and I show them
that.
The man in the street, I say, you
know, this isn't just a theological book that's
going to give you a lot of interesting
philosophies, leave your head in a whirl and
wonder what you've ever read.
This is something basic, written just for you.
And right away, well, they're interested, they want
to look at it.
And so you need to know your books.
You need to know that you've got some
books for children.
Danny Orlis.
When these first came out, people said they'd
never sell.
You know how many Danny Orlis books have
sold?
Millions, millions and millions of copies.
And when you get excited about Danny Orlis,
you can sell them too.
And they're good for young children and they
have a salvation message to them.
And I was speaking to Bernard Pommel some
time ago.
He wants to write a book, tried to
write a book about O.M., just a
novel using the background, not using the name
of O.M., but having a young person
come to Europe and take part in these
campaigns and go back.
Anyway, we shot that one out of the
air.
But get excited about that because children need
Christ.
Children need Jesus Christ.
And these books can meet their needs, can
meet their needs.
You know, I remember now that when I
was a child or a boy of about
11, I read a gospel book.
I never stuck in at that time.
But now as I look back, I realize
that I did read the story of a
boy who flew to Australia, a gospel book.
I don't remember much it said, but I'm
sure that that book had an effect on
my unconscious.
And that's what we must remember.
So the book consciously might not make any
impact.
It works on the unconscious level.
You cannot understand this if you don't understand
psychology.
But I can tell you everything a person
reads makes a little river, a little river.
And the river gets wider.
Now, the river, when it first begins, it
could never fit the whole message.
In other words, it would never accept Christ.
But the river begins to go and soon
the man accepts.
Look, why is it so easy to win
a man to Christ in England and America
and so hard to win a man to
Christ in France or in the Muslim world
or in India?
Because the river.
Don't you think for a minute that even
a modernist Sunday school doesn't help a man
prepare him for Christ?
It does.
The fact that you've had Christian background, Christian
training has made the river in your unconscious
mind open.
I could talk on this subject so long.
I don't know if you fully understand, but
it's so completely different from a Hindu has
no concept of God whatsoever.
No concept of Christ, why he has no
river, nothing, nothing like you can't.
He can't understand what you're saying.
You can talk to him day and night,
day and night, day and night.
He doesn't even understand God, much less a
triune God.
He doesn't understand your concepts, your morality, nothing.
It's just nothing to begin on.
It's like starting to build a house on
a piece of on a piece of water.
I mean, a glass of water won't work.
There's nothing to build on.
Whereas everybody in our society, even in a
Roman Catholic country, they have some foundation.
A Roman Catholic knows that there's a God.
He believes in the Trinity.
You say, well, that's nothing, nothing.
My eye.
That's a tremendous foundation to build on.
And until you try to deal with an
Orthodox Hindu or a Muslim, you won't even
understand how easy it is to win a
soul to Christ when they have a nominal
Christian background, because any word of Jesus, even
if it came from a modernist pulpit, opens
the way, opens the way.
And so every book we get out, it
begins to open the way, open the way,
open the way.
Get to know these books.
Do you know this book?
I tell you, I'm excited about this.
How to win over worry.
That's the number one problem of womanhood today.
You ever see a gray haired woman?
She didn't get that through sticking her head
in the laundry net.
She got it through worry, usually.
Worry, worry.
This is the plague.
It's in the church everywhere.
Worry, worry, worry.
Women are all worry worth.
Men lust and women worry.
You can use it.
You can say to a woman, look, do
you have any worries?
She'll use it.
Worries?
My whole life was a series of worries.
Others won't say that.
Depends on what type of woman you're talking
to.
You know, I have the greatest book ever
produced for women.
It's called How to Win Over a Worry.
Right now, I've got the biggest secular tycoon
in Bombay, a pocketbook, nibbling at this book
and he wants it.
If we'll get the price right and when
he buys it, it'll be an order of
a hundred thousand, 200,000, just like that.
Cause he knows that this thing will sell
on a newsstand.
And it's a Christ-centered book.
Now it isn't, to me, it isn't Christ
-centered enough.
I mean, it could be a little more
punchy.
So what do I always do?
I give a challenge with it.
I give a few tracks with it.
I give a gospel of John with it.
I always give my people a package deal.
I'm not a one-shot man.
I don't believe you want to be that
way either.
You want to give them a package.
So I give them a book like this.
I say, well, you know, you'd like to
have this free of charge and you'd like
to have this little gospel free of charge.
And also I have this very special booklet
in my pocket.
You can have that free of charge.
And I give them this special package deal.
So some of these books that are more
tactful and they don't just slam the gospel
home like you'd like to, you can use
that.
Although let's face it, God uses different books
in different ways.
And this gives a tremendous presentation of how
Christ is the solution.
And it's a book that people need.
And these days, many times you meet a
man who doesn't know anything about the Bible
or he doesn't believe the Bible.
There's a book you can use.
There's a miracle book that when you go
out tomorrow or Saturday, you can use these
books.
You can give them that a donation, these
non-net books on your price list, which
you should get.
It'll show you which books in England are
non-net.
That means you can give them away for
any donation.
They give you two bobs for this instead
of three fines.
They give you one in six fines, even
if they're absolutely poverty stricken.
I never lower the price until I have
to give it to them for a shilling.
We want to get the books out.
Of course, when you get the more price,
more of tent making.
When you don't get the right price, it's
more ministry.
So you just balance one way or the
other, you see.
And so let's get to know some of
these books like Dale's book.
I just have to give that copy away
to Federico for translation in Spain.
I had one with me.
You all know Dale's book.
You meet a student.
He's got questions.
Use that kind of book.
You meet an old lady who doesn't have
any questions about God and Christ, but she's
got a lot of worries.
Use another kind of book.
That's why you must know your books.
Point two, we're giving it to you.
Know your books.
Know the children's books.
Why you can sell this thing.
People would never buy a book for themselves.
You say, you know, what are your children
reading?
Don't you think it's important that children have
proper concepts of God?
You learn to use a proper vocabulary.
This is point three.
Learn to use a vocabulary that communicates.
You walk up to the book.
So this is a book about the redemption
that's found in Jesus Christ, who shed his
blood on Calvary's cross to bring you to
the foot of the cross that you might
know and experience redemption, salvation and sanctification.
He looks at you and he wonders whether
you just came out of the bathtub or
a night house.
Use vocabulary that communicates.
Ma'am, here's a book that will help
your children have proper concepts about God or
better ideas about God.
Use God.
The word God is still acceptable to some
extent.
So start with that.
Don't start right off in your book selling
with this is a book about how Jesus
Christ died on the cross for you.
You could use that if the person you
really saw was open.
But if it's just frozen cold, work your
way in.
Say, well, this is a book that gives
really good moral teaching.
They like to hear that catchphrase, good moral
teaching.
Nobody resists that.
There's a few that would.
But very basically, I hold the book up
like this, this way to happiness.
And I say, well, this is a book
that will really help you have real happiness
and reality in your life.
Or if you give this to your your
younger son, this will really help him find
happiness.
Don't you want to find happiness in life?
Then when they start to look through it,
maybe even the point of buying it, then
start moving in.
Now, whenever I sell books, I give a
testimony.
Well, if you think I'm just going out
to sell books, I wouldn't I wouldn't degenerate
into that.
I'm not asking you to degenerate into a
book salesman, even though really it isn't.
I really shouldn't say that because many a
man in the world is selling even non
-Christian books to make a living.
And I'm not sure if that's degenerate, especially
if the books are, you know, at least
fairly good.
But we don't have to go down to
that.
So when you sell a book, when they
buy the book, then you give your personal
testimony.
And after they take this book, or many
times even before, I explain, you know, that
this really shows how happiness comes as we
are brought back in a relationship with God.
And at that time, you can bring them
the four spiritual laws that Brother Greg is
going to teach us next week and you
can present your testimony.
You use whatever method you want and you
can tie it all into the book.
I sell Peace with God.
And I usually say, no, just before I
go, I want you to just look at
those chapter titles.
Well, those chapter titles, they're so tremendous.
If you look at them, why they preach
an 18 point sermon, an 18 point sermon,
because each chapter title speaks to the heart,
the Christ, the Bible, God, sin, the devil,
death.
Why Jesus came, how and where to begin,
repent, faith, the new birth, how to be
sure, enemies of the Christian, rules of the
Christian life, the Christian in the church, social
obligation of the Christian, future of the Christian,
peace at last.
And I come to that last phrase, I
say, tell me, do you have peace?
They say, well, no, I don't know what,
you know, so many different answers people give
you, say, but you know, you can have
peace.
Then you give your testimony.
Five years ago, through a message just like
this, even if you were converted, doesn't matter
where you were converted, you can use that
phrase, through a message just like this, the
only message that ever saved anybody, the message
of the gospel, through a message just like
this, I found peace that's beyond understanding.
And this brings us to the fourth point,
absolute sincerity, absolute sincerity.
First, get excited, enthusiastic and friendly.
Second, get to know your books.
Third, get phrases, presentations that communicate.
Fourth, absolute sincerity.
And I believe that a person behind the
door can read sincerity in your face.
I've had many people say to me, well,
I don't really want this book, but I
can tell you, you really are sincere.
I'll take it just for that.
Just to see that.
In other words, I convinced them just through
looking at them that there must have been
something happened and someone could be so sincere
about it.
And when you're talking to somebody, you don't,
you don't look over here.
Now, friends, I want to tell you about
a good book.
And, uh, it's really a tremendous book.
I wish you'd really read it.
I think it's a tremendous thing.
And I wonder just as, uh, if you've
ever thought about the Lord Jesus Christ, you
know, he's a wonderful savior.
He is.
Yes, he is.
You're not going to communicate.
If you want to communicate to someone, you
look them right in the eye and you
say to them, this book is for you.
And I'll tell you, if you read this
book, you're going to understand that this book
can really help you and bring you peace.
Did I communicate anything to you?
With your eyes, with your look, you can
communicate.
Now, some of you men before you were
unconverted, you know how to communicate a little
with your eyes.
And you girls, some of you, you don't
die to self, you're in a lot of
trouble with your eyes.
And so, and you're at the doorstep when
you're dealing with your own sex, communicate with
your eyes, communicate your sincerity.
Look, I know that if you read this
book, it can bring you peace and bring
you happiness.
The inflection in your voice, the expression, all
this communicates what Christ is in you.
You say, well, I can't do it.
I know you can't, but Christ can.
You might not be sincere, but he is.
And he wants to live through you at
the doorstep.
And I believe that sincerity will knock out
more than those other three things all put
together.
I would say if I was some of
you, I know the problem, some of you
have, if I was some of you, I
would say at the doorstep, you know, I'm
no salesman and I don't have a clue
how I can convince you to buy this
book.
I really don't know.
You know, there's a whole group of us
going out today and in myself, I really
don't know, don't know how to do this
work, but we're part of a youth movement.
We all go out with these books and
I know these books are tremendous and I
don't know how to, how to get it
across to you.
Maybe you could give me some ideas.
But I'll tell you, I know one thing,
you need this book, you need this message,
and if you read it, you'll get something
out of it.
I say you use approach like that, you'll
do far better than you do with your
stereotype phrases, trying to put an impression because
the average man at the door, he can
tell in 10 minutes that you're not a
salesman.
I tell you, if some of you could
knock on my door, it would be a
joke.
I love to run the salesman down and
give him a hard time.
And some people, they've had so many super
salesmen come around.
They look at you and they know, they
see the fear in you.
Might you remember those words?
The Lord doesn't give us a spirit of
fear, but of love and of a sound
mind.
And so be honest with the people.
Say, look, we're part of a youth movement
and part of our work is to go
out every day with books.
I'm a new recruit.
I'm so green at this.
I've been walking all morning for two or
three hours.
I've hardly sold a book.
Here I am at your door.
I tell you, you need this book and
I want to sell it and I believe
it'll be a blessing to you.
It's only two shillings.
What do you think?
Try different approaches.
I used to try everything.
And, uh, boy, I can remember one time
I was selling fire extinguishers, of course, before
I was converted shortly after, before I sold
my business.
And oh, I had a man, he was
going to buy about four dozen ones of
these fire extinguishers wholesale.
And, uh, then he finally said, no, I
don't think I'll take it.
And when he said, no, I just, I
put on the biggest phony, because I put
on the biggest phony, I just, oh, I
said, well, okay.
And I packed my bag, fire extinguishers slowly
in the bag, you know, I just put
it out.
I was really hurt.
I was just crushed by the sale.
And you know, yeah, it's been a morning.
He must, he said something like it was
a hard morning.
And yeah, I've been going for about six
hours.
It doesn't seem to be anybody interested in
fire extinguishers.
And I started to walk away.
You know, I was sad.
The guy said, well, wait a minute.
He said, maybe not two dozen, I'll take
a dozen after all.
Well, I wouldn't practice that, but I always
remember the words of scriptures.
The people in the world are wiser in
their day than we are, but you must
communicate sincerity.
You must communicate feelings.
You must communicate that you're real, that you're
sincere.
They might know that you're dumb.
Okay.
They might know that you're not a salesman.
Fine.
They might know that you're partly scared of
what you're doing.
Now, if you had your own choice, you
wouldn't even be there, but at least communicate
that there's something in you besides water and
water and waste.
Now, point five, let me review the points
again.
Enthusiastic, excited, and friendly.
Know your product.
Know your phrases.
Now, memorize some of those phrases in the
manual to get started.
How did the JWs work with all their
door-to-door work?
They're the pros at door-to-door work.
They memorize.
The new recruits memorize.
The ones that are scared to do anything,
don't know what to say, they memorize.
Then after a few weeks, they can forget
about the memory phrases and go on on
their own, but you have to start somewhere.
And if you're the kind of person that
can't get anything out when you get to
the doorstep, memorize something.
Say it in your sleep.
Say it over and over again until you
can say it at the doorstep.
Then you'll find in a week or so
you can throw all that memory business away
and just do it from yourself.
But you have to start somewhere.
And I made the mistake of not realizing
how far down some people are in this
business and this work.
And, uh, I pray that you'll dig into
that manual, learn the phrases, learn techniques.
You see someone on your team that sells
books.
They really get out.
Use your head.
What's your secret friend?
If someone was on my team and they
were selling more books than I, I'd want
to go out with them and see how
they do it.
There's no reason not to learn how to
do this work.
No reason.
Now the fifth point that will make the
clinch is this simple fact.
Stick to it.
Persevere.
No salesman was made in a week or
a day.
I heard of a salesman who was making
a little salary of about 25,000 pounds
a year, and he read a new book
on salesmanship every week to learn more about
how to do it.
Now, isn't that a little bit funny?
He was selling and making a clear net
profit of $25,000 a year after taxes,
25,000 pounds.
And, uh, yet every week you read a
new book on salesmanship.
The average person, I know I'm, they don't
feel they need to read any books on
salesmanship.
I want to tell you, we need to
learn how to persuade men, how to communicate
to men.
The greatest book on salesmanship ever written.
There it is right there.
The book of Proverbs, you read the book
of Proverbs.
You want to learn to sell tremendous techniques,
tremendous methods, God's methods, but remembering all of
this, it takes perseverance.
You know, when brother Buck Singh got up
to speak his first message in Indian Christ,
he couldn't speak.
He stuttered and bolted.
And, and today he's only led a few
hundred thousand souls to Christ.
Many a man has stuttered and slammered and
could hardly speak.
He today can speak fluently.
Some people hear me speak.
They think that, that, that, uh, I was
born with it.
The first time I got up to speak
in public, I was scared and I froze
solid on the stage and forgot my words
and my lines and began to cry.
And the first time I ever knocked on
doors, I was scared to death.
I didn't know hardly what to say.
The only thing, the reason I'm here perhaps
doing this today is I started to knock
on doors when I was seven years old.
Sometime, how in the sovereign plan of God,
it was about seven or eight years old.
I began knocking on doors, selling this and
that.
When I was nine, we ran a raffle
on a big cake.
Of course, the right thing would have been
do to sell about 15 or 20 raffle
tickets, lottery tickets on this cake, you see.
And then we choose one and one wins
the cake.
Of course, I sold several hundred lottery tickets
on one cake and the profits were very
high.
Well, that's the way I learned, just learned
and learned and learned.
And I know that, uh, you're not going
to get this just that quick.
Some do.
It's going to take time.
It's going to take perseverance.
And I can tell you, you can do
it.
You can get these books out and you
can convince people about the need to seek
the Lord.
And you know, that's where most soul winning
begins, doesn't it?
You have to convince them that they need
to seek the Lord.
Most people don't come to the doorstep and
they're jumping out of their shoes to receive
the Lord.
But some words you say that the Holy
Spirit drives home, the Holy Spirit takes your
words, doesn't it?
Drives it home.
And the hunger begins to come.
Then they take a book.
And then later on, they write him for
a correspondence course and it goes on from
there.
Well, there they are five points.
If you practice, you're going to see success
in this work and you're going to see
the gospel flowing out and we're going to
see souls come to Christ and at the
same time, we'll be tent makers and if
it was good enough for the apocryphal Paul,
it should be good enough for O.M.
And if a man despises book selling, he
certainly should despise making tents and so then
he must despise the apocryphal Paul who worked
with his hands.
This is our tent making.
This is the way we can support ourselves
at least to some extent.
It's never been true in O.M. We
could support the whole work through this.
The work is growing so fast.
If we just stopped, didn't expand, we could
support the work through this.
The work is growing so, so fast.
We need so much funds for capital investment
and all the new projects that you never
see, of course, the profits in a sense
from the old, just like pouring everything else
into a new business, those of you who
know anything about business.
And so, remember those points, get excited, enthusiastic
and be friendly.
The second point, read all these books, read
them, study of them, pour your heart into
them, find out what they're about, be able
to tell people something exciting about each book,
get to know this track.
What is it?
What's the advantage of this track?
Offers a free correspondence course.
Get to know the literature.
Third thing, get to know those techniques, those
ways of communicating to the unsaved man, the
way of getting your point across, just practical,
simple, practical knowledge improves a lot of facts
about these books and about Christ, about the
gospel like Dale emphasized, and fourthly, sincerity, absolute
sincerity, communicate your sincerity with your expressions, with
your intonation, with your eyes, with your feelings.
And of course, I believe basically, if you,
if the Holy Spirit is working in you
and you have this compassion for people, that
will communicate.
It will communicate.
I know you meet hard people.
I know you meet people that slam the
door, but you don't, even at that closing
moment, I've saw oftentimes at the closing moment,
I said, well, I realize you, you can
afford a book, I'd like to just give
you this track and I would really ask
you just to read this, just take a
few minutes to read it.
You know, that word of sincerity, that free
track, that expression in your voice, in your
eyes can knock them.
They'll go close that door and they'll walk
away from that door.
And the spirit of God will speak to
them.
I've had people come out of their homes,
running after me with tears in their eyes
because of the Holy Spirit working in their
hearts.
I've seen Krista Fisher go to homes and
in 20 minutes, selling books, talking about Jesus,
talking about the message of the book, women
were on their knees receiving Jesus Christ as
their Savior.
And there's nothing greater than winning souls for
Jesus Christ.
Don't think I'm just a book salesman.
This is what I'm sold on.
Before I ever did any book selling, actually,
I just did soul winning without books.
And the reason I saw books so well,
because I saw so many of my souls
that I'd led to Christ drifting away and
I couldn't give them enough teaching.
After all, I can't do it.
Sometimes I had maybe 20, 30 souls come
to Christ in a week.
And one night I had 120 come to
Christ.
What am I going to do?
How am I going to teach them?
I can't follow those people up.
Then I saw books.
I sent them all Peace with God through
the post, sent them all correspondence courses through
the post.
My own life, when I accepted Christ at
a Billy Graham meeting, no one followed me
up.
No one.
I went down to the front of the
church.
There were a thousand people accepted Christ that
night and they were not allowed to use
the bottom of Madison Square Garden.
We were just jammed, just jammed up in
front of Billy Graham to pray some prayer.
And I was just broken before God.
I was weeping.
And some man came up to me.
This was my follower.
He gave me a gospel, John, took my
name.
I went home.
I was from a modernist church.
They weren't going to follow me up.
I didn't know anything about evangelical churches, fundamental
churches, Bible believing people.
I had no clue.
I was wrong.
A few days I got a correspondence course
through the post.
A few days I got a copy of
Peace with God.
I don't know, maybe that's why I got
around so well.
Untouched by dead Christians for a long time
in my Christian life, I just grew on
the word of God.
Billy Graham sermons, Peace with God.
I read this stuff.
I tell you, you never know.
You'll never know what that book is going
to do that you plant in that door.
You'll never know.
You might have sold books last year and
say, well, I never saw a soul come
to Christ.
Do not doubt God.
He said my word will not return void.
You'll never know what that book will do.
I'd hate to be found without books.
I'd hate to be found without tract.
It might be in some jail.
It might be just lost.
But the word of God will not return
void.
And so that brings us again to that
fifth point.
Persevere, press on, study, learn what you're doing
wrong, put into practice, keep going week after
week, month after month.
And I'll tell you, by the doorsteps, you're
not only learning how to sell books, you're
learning the most basic needs in all of
life.
You're learning how to communicate.
You're learning how to talk with people.
If I asked you right now in a
survey, how many of you feel you have
trouble communicating to other people, even within the
group?
You feel you have trouble expressing yourself.
If you came into my office, you'd be
a little bit fearful.
And you wouldn't exactly be sure how to
express yourself.
All that can be taken away.
This is the greatest course in self-confidence,
which we need self-confidence, confidence that Christ
can do something with self, smash it and
make it all over again.
That's just a worldly term in my Christian
way of putting it back in its proper
place.
But you can have this confidence that Christ
is working in you so that you can
walk into the Queen's mansion tomorrow and shake
hands as if he was an old friend.
And from myself, a fearful person when I
spoke in public, scared to death when I
knocked on doors, unable to express myself, forgot
all my words and began to cry, almost
fell off the platform, I could be up
here speaking all night and it shouldn't matter
if there were four thousand, I've spoken to
four or five thousand people.
It's very relaxing.
It's far more relaxing than eating for me.
Just easy.
Now, it doesn't come that way with some
people, but certainly you can have victory over
the frustrations and fears and things that come
as you go to the doors, as you
speak with individuals.
God can do it.
You'll follow those five principles.
What are they?
Get excited, enthusiastic and friendly.
Learn your product, learn it well, learn it
thoroughly.
Thirdly, what was it, can you remember it?
Learn those phrases, learn the way to communicate,
learn the wording.
Fourth, most important in some ways, sincerity.
Fifth, cursed appearance.
Remember those things, practice them.
Look, I believe God wants to pay for
next week's food on this Saturday's work.
And I can tell you, I believe if
we do that, we'll find our prayer meetings
far more effective.
Let's go out this Saturday with a belief
that God is going to get these books,
look at the books piled up over there,
poor John Watts is going to have to
take them all back to Atherton and pile
them back on the shelves.
So let's believe God that this literature is
going to go out and then when we
come to pray, we'll feel that we're not
just a bunch of namby-pambys living off
the gifts of other people, but we're people
who work hard, like in the book of
Nehemiah, who have a mind to work.
Let us pray together.
Our Heavenly Father, we praise and thank Thee
for the fact that we can be excited
about Jesus Christ.
We can be enthused about the message of
the gospel.
Oh Lord, both for Christians and un-Christians,
these books are dynamite, and we've seen it.
Oh Lord, might we not be satisfied with
waddling down the street without our literature, with
going out and getting a shilling in the
morning when we could come back with a
pound.
Lord, I don't believe the Apostle Paul sold
his five pound tent for a shilling because
he didn't want to offend someone.
God, I believe that you want us to
be tent makers for Christ.
You've given us the greatest set of tents
that any man could ever ask for, the
gospel, the word of God.
We can get the tents made and at
the same time be working in gospel work
the whole time.
This is a privilege.
Lord, we've been granted a miracle privilege.
Might we be excited about it.
Lord, might we really get to know these
books and read them and study them and
understand them.
Lord, might we get to know the phrases
that communicate to people, the way to reach
the drunkard, the way to reach the millionaire,
the way to get through to the university
student, the agnostic, the unbeliever, the depressed Christian,
the loser.
Here's the right books.
Lord, might we communicate our sincerity.
Might we, God, if we don't have anything
else to say to people, say, well look,
I don't know what to say, but one
thing I know, Jesus Christ changed my life
and this book tells a story and you
read it, you believe it and he'll change
your life too.
God, might we just be so happy to
go forth in sincerity and God, make us
perseverant that Lord, when everybody slams the door
this Saturday morning, we come back in with
our shilling, even after all that was said,
we'll say, praise God, I'm not going to
do it again and go out and out
and out and out until we see more
and more and more growth and increase.
And Lord, we'd acknowledge that only the Holy
Spirit of God can do this.
We'd acknowledge that in the flesh it's a
waste of time and we look to thee
for the victory.
In Jesus' name, amen.