I've prayed repeatedly for you when I was
President of the United States, and I've no
doubt that ever you were praying for me
before the Gorman Corporate.
Can you hear me?
Well, I have to tell you, I left
my voice 36,000 feet up in the
air and it never came back to me.
There's no remedy, no medicine for it.
It has to come back itself, and it's
a little bit slow and tense.
Nevertheless, I'll do my best for to make
you hear me.
Should you not hear me anywhere but please
raise your hand and I'll raise my voice.
There's still two seats up here, and that's
the last thing I'm going to mention.
I greatly appreciate your prayers on behalf of
your dear people, and I've often said in
privilege, and to the Lord in private, I
would be afraid to leave if the Lord's
people stopped paying attention.
I'm not afraid of anything, but I would
be afraid to leave if all the Lord's
people stopped paying attention.
And I'm very, very thankful I've left a
lot more behind me than the four countries
that have been praying for me now and
that never prayed for me before.
I have been thinking about New Zealand for
about four years, but never made my mind
up to go.
And a man came to me one day
and he said, Mr. Knox, I'm going back
to New Zealand, I want you to come
for me, with me.
I said, well, I can't come, I'm meant
to stay at home.
He said, well, I'll be in Belfast for
the next ten months, that will do the
change and make the main note.
I said, yes.
Well, he said a great deal about it,
and at the end of about ten months
I made up my mind for New Zealand.
New Zealand is the same size as Australia,
with Ireland cut out, but is only Scotland,
Wales and the Northern Isles.
The population is only two and a half
million.
And there are thousands of males of nine
hundred and hundreds of thousands of males lying
unpopulated.
New Zealand is really a new country.
It largely promises itself, eighty percent, and the
key, the structure structure for the gospel of
New Zealand is the prosperity and pleasure, and
I'm sorry, it affects the faith of God.
So I said, well, we'll get ready to
go.
And we started off.
We left London on the 28th of November
1962, and we got up into the air
at 36,000 feet.
We got there late.
And we started our travel at 640 miles
an hour.
We got on there.
The plane was very comfortable, the food was
splendid, the attendant was great, and the tobacco
smoke was abominable.
That's the first thing I can put.
It was totally obnoxious both night and day,
and you can't just get out of a
plane whenever you like, brother.
At least I couldn't, so we had to
stay there.
I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I felt
very unhappy.
So we got there all right, and we
spent a lot of people greeting with my
friends.
And we went through the pain of safety,
first of all.
New Zealand is divided into three islands, the
North Island and the South Island.
And it's divided by what's called the Cape
Strait.
Because Cape was a man who sailed up
there with a boat and a key, and
almost took New Zealand off the Aboriginal shore
to Great Britain.
Consequently, that's called the Cape Strait.
It takes 11 hours to cross it in
a boat, to cross it in a plane,
in about half an hour.
The timing of the meeting was very difficult.
I was invited to some conferences from the
North Island over the South, and I went.
And the result was I had a bit
more than possibly six conferences, and none of
which were there, only the South.
It was very sad and frightening to see
30 conferences and no seats at all.
Frightening as well it was, so I made
up my mind I'd go down to the
extreme south of the South Island, right on
the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
I couldn't go any further.
I was quite delighted.
And the first little assembly I got was
a good, lively little assembly, lovely, clean little
hall with nine people dressed in red.
It was very encouraging to me to see
those four dragons out in the open air
every Saturday night with a little table in
their hands, and the citizens were friendly, and
the leader treated everybody else a bit like
a kid.
We are badly behaving with open air meetings
in Belfast, and the preaching inside and outside
in Belfast is not what it used to
be.
I couldn't, I feel that from the North
of Ireland now.
I remember well when they had three open
air meetings every week in the assembly I'm
connected with.
Now you have none at all.
You could easily get six open air meetings
in Sandy Roo on Saturday night, and six
on the Newton Islands, and six on the
Shatner Roo.
You only get one or two more.
Whether we make it or not, whether it
wounds our pain or not, we are definitely
league and drang in the gospel in the
North of Ireland.
Then I stayed a week, couldn't stay any
more than a week.
The market was open for the lot and
didn't want any more than a week, and
they didn't want a whole week's maintenance, which
they did.
From there I went to another little assembly.
The first one was called Brains, and the
second one was called Numbed One.
There was only sputum breaking their bones.
It was very poor in every sense of
the word.
I was torn.
We agreed that I went to a mate,
asked a mate for two to ten or
twenty.
That probably wounded my pride, feeling that the
Lord has always given me good numbers.
But it was a dream for three.
Three men, three Protestants, just this many iniquitous
people, not one would come for the day.
I said, we could invite them to come
with three.
I tried that one day.
It was very hot, for four houses with
me, and I had to take a rest.
The sun was melty, indeed.
It was that warm.
I may as well tell you plainly, I
took my eggs outside in the sun, and
I got one.
I was a hundred and fifty and I
was in Old Dominion.
And I wanted to walk my way up
to Dominion, and in between Old London and
Dominion were sixteen assemblies.
I went to them all.
I didn't miss any.
And I'm very thankful for that mate, who
told me, if you miss something like that,
tell me you told me then you're sorry
you didn't do it.
It's the same as being out visiting a
lot of houses all afternoon, and you saw
one in the distance and you didn't go.
Tell me you told me you were sorry
you didn't go.
So it was, I went to them all
without exception.
I won't tell you the names of them,
it wouldn't possible anything, and you wouldn't understand
them anyway.
They had all come from the old of
the original, the original owners of New Zealand.
I'll have something more to tell you about
them later on.
On that road, part of a main road,
we were able to get up twenty pets
of God's worth.
I begged.
I said, Brethren, it's quite right to have
the pets inside, but there's nobody coming in
to read them.
What about some of them outside?
Some of them said, that's good.
Some of them said, not it.
Some of them didn't like it.
And I just said, plain, I can do
that in my time, as most people do.
And I said then, I'm going to say
no, I'm going to say they're going to
eat that, if I get the opportunity, do
it plainly, that has not got any gospel
outside the hall.
It's not disclosing it's responsibility to the public.
I said, you have nothing better than I
tell you all, to keep a man out
of hell, not assuring there's a road to
heaven.
We got them a boat trophy.
We're very thankful to God for that, and
I was telling them there was a good
house of sorts, which I didn't get them
for free, and I let them have that.
I couldn't have done it without the help
of my brethren.
Some of them gave me really good help,
and some of them didn't give me anything.
Then with a little assembly, I grew up
on a mountain, when there was one green
bean on the top of a mountain, brethren,
but there's another green bean in a range
of mountains, and that's where I landed one
night in the dark.
And when I awoke in the morning, I
said, Lord, help me, where am I now?
And I think that a train will come
along, I think we're going to drop in
and come home.
But the one didn't come, for certain.
The meat was real good, and we did
not make a place where it was dreadfully
lonely.
Glen Armourie is the name of the place.
However, the little handful of kittens were good.
We lay them well and helped them well.
We, it was impossible to do business.
Neither a long-store company, whose name, I'll
say here, never will come up, lend themselves
to anything, has to be in the North
of England.
Because a highway is too far apart.
We would have 20 highways in Belfast, where
you'd only have one in any of those
countries.
It's difficult for us to visit them.
Then again, in some places we're not allowed
to visit them.
If we're visiting them, I'm going along in
the simple way as I was, the police
car pull up beside you and ask you
what you're doing.
You tell them, well, if you're getting into
your car and take this back to Ireland,
we don't want you here.
Then another state will say, well, you can
give us that, but we must not ring
the bell.
Just put them in the letter box.
Well, that's all that.
Different states have different rules.
And you have to obey the rules.
That's the main thing.
I have no trouble with the police, whatever.
I told them, they were very civil to
me, because I was civil to them, as
you may expect.
We didn't have a bigger guy than any
place.
Now, I'm not speaking discouragingly of a bigger
guy, really.
But we hadn't any in any place, nor
did we accept them.
But we had a little blessing every place
we went.
And to me, it's very pleasant to sit
down and look back over all the places
you've been and remember the little bit of
blessing that God gave you.
Sometimes the sections that needed a babbling.
Sometimes the singing.
Sometimes the books.
And it's really comforting to me to know
I did my best and I didn't make
a mistake.
So far as my health is concerned, it's
as good as ever it was.
But when I landed on Tuesday morning, I
had to go to bed for three days
for what we might call a rest.
And the doctor said, Yes, I've told you
before that you think of it difficultly because
you don't know when you're tired.
And you work on after you're tired that
you're difficult.
And I never knew how tired I am
until I begin to rest.
Probably you'd be saying, I'd better not be
doing it.
I'd have to close up London and break
down or the bliss off.
So I'm very, very confident of God after
travelling about 70,000 miles.
About.
I'm physically fit.
And I'm very, very thankful for God for
that.
The biggest trouble in New Zealand is, the
title is something, but I'm only talking about
New Zealand just now, is there's a dreadful
division amongst the people and amongst the families.
That's most grievous.
The assemblies that are on the lane that
we are in the north of Ireland and
I want to tell you, we're on rope
lanes in the north of Ireland and that's
something that's contradiction.
And I never compromise, no matter what country
I go to, I'm sorry, I can't say
that about all my guests.
I'm not going to criticise them.
But I never compromise regarding good, the Gospel
halls.
If they're on the same lanes there as
I am here, I go to them.
If they're not, then I don't.
And I go to them and tell them,
hey, I don't have to do it.
You can't be vulgar or ignorant with people
that don't agree with certain things.
For instance, I never went to a hall
where they do it and I'm not doing
it yet.
Not a bit, not a bit.
So we try to justify it.
It's not on, because we know perfectly well
it's not on.
And then, whether I have any inventions, I've
put a lot of inventions over there that
we know nothing about here and never will,
I hope, I'm speaking about New Zealanders, North
Asians and South Asians.
They've put a lot of those things in
and have banded themselves together under the hood
of their Christian brethren.
For some in the hall know what I'm
talking about.
And they didn't have nearly anything.
I certainly didn't do any of those things.
One man asked me, so, do you see
anything wrong with a name?
Well, he said, I'm not so much wrong
with a name, although it's the name of
a branch of the Roman Catholic Church.
But it's not the name, it's what you
have, what you carry on.
No, I won't do that.
I'm saying that to all you here.
I cleared the depths of it up when
I learned it.
I don't believe in telling on the false
cost.
He said, let it, let it, let it
go, let it go.
But gentlemen, there can be no compromise in
the faith of God.
We've had more than enough of that in
the North of Ireland already.
And I'm good against that.
Though I have lost a few friends, I'm
prepared to lose a few more.
But no compromise, faithless compromise, is a cost
amongst the people of God and amongst the
Ascended of God people as well.
Most people know that and most people will
agree with me.
But if none of you agree with me,
it wouldn't change my mind.
Have you anything in your assemblies not in
the Bible to have?
Then I won't say that.
You're going to be wrong, you'll let them
out.
If it's in the Bible, no matter how
cruel you are, or how unfit you are,
I would love to come and help you.
No matter how rightful you are, or how
popular it is, if you have left the
Scriptures, no, I won't be there.
I'm sorry I don't.
That does not apply to all my brethren
from the Lord of God.
And I preach them very well.
Then, I get invited to these conferences and
I think about six, and I wasn't just
preaching, but not a few.
Now that does no harm to the brethren
and it does no harm to the Ascended.
There simply was no preaching part at all.
One little assembly said, brethren of mine, we
haven't had a spell of God's permission for
twenty years.
No wonder they are dying out, and they
are dying out.
I'm speaking about the South Island now, too.
Don't confuse the two, or I may be
blamed for making a mistake here.
Luckily we aren't here.
And the principle of difficulty varies, but they're
not only different of what we have to
do with some of our brethren here, but
they're very good.
And that should never be amongst God's people.
I can differ with any of you, brethren,
and I can take a good hiding off
you, but I'll let you get on by.
And then, I can go home and pray
for you and say, God bless you.
Only thing else, is ridding your soul and
robbing your fellowship of God.
Well, I'll not criticise them any further.
What they did to me, I'm very, very
sad to see.
You simply couldn't have fellowship with them and
come back to the North of Ireland and
say you were faithful to God in each
word.
I thank God, I can differ.
By then, the island was about 800 miles
off.
You think, and look at a map of
New Zealand, site of Australia, it's a little
place where, I'll show you inside of it,
it's about 800 miles off.
Population only two and a half million, it's
a new country, and it will luckily never
be populated.
Thousands of miles of unpopulated land and villages
of mountains as well.
Then, I got up to the North, I
had a come up to the North of
the site, I had a come over on
a boat to the North Island, where there
are very few families in all the North
Ireland I could reach through to.
I'd see about four sites, of course it's
in my book.
Other people said, oh, that's very fair, not
mine.
Other people said, oh, not my jade, they're
not the real thing.
My jade is a book, but nothing a
book.
I'm not the jade, let that in.
If it's in the book, no matter how
poor the little island may be, I'll try
and help them, as I did, there's no
place like New Zealand for the little nation.
When I got over into the North Ireland,
I went, we had a go-by boat,
and I found there was only four families
in all the North Ireland that I could
reach through to.
That was, I couldn't reach in various places,
can you imagine?
I wrote and told them why.
I didn't like civil law.
I said, Joe Gladden, I thank you for
your invitation, I regret I cannot come to
help you on account of the condition of
your family.
Not the critical condition, but the condition of
having unscriptural things in God's assembly.
Brethren, we talk about loose and tight, it's
not in the Bible.
What's in the Bible is right and wrong.
The man that's right is the man that's
ruled by what's in the Bible, and the
man that's wrong is ruled by what's not
in the Bible, no matter who he is
or what he is.
I know that will go all over the
North Ireland tomorrow.
If it doesn't, I hope it doesn't.
One man came to me, he used to
be a preacher, he's not now, no harm
to the man.
He said, we want you to come to
our meetings whether or not for a week
for believers.
We all wanted meetings for believers.
I think only two or three invited me
for gospel meetings.
I don't know why, I can't explain that,
meetings for believers, and the Lord knows the
meetings are going to get done badly.
I said, well my dear brother, I've been
praying about your assembly at second hand, and
what should I, have you got music?
I heard you have.
He said, no, we have not.
He said, you have.
He said, yes, we have.
I said, what is it now?
He said, we don't do that.
I said, what is it now?
He said, is it an anthology?
No, he said.
I said, what happened then?
He said, well, there were two of us
which got against that, and we dropped the
ribbons to each other, and we dropped the
organ of the assembly.
There was a giggle about that, but it
worked all right.
We dropped it off the assembly, and we
said, now brethren, the organs are our own,
and we said, we want the left with
it, and we did it.
It played out in the backyard.
We took the assembly out of order, and
out of tune, and that's the way things
are.
It should not be in a family gathered
processively by the scriptures unto the name of
the Lord Jesus, that no authority for it
got to them.
Some people in China thought it's not condemned,
but it should be condemned, and condemned in
every one of the church officials by the
fact that it's not mentioned at all, and
not set enough condemnation for every man who
wants to be jaded by what's written.
There's no condemnation in that mind.
I go over that again and just remind
you.
It's condemned in every one of the church
officials by the fact that it's never mentioned
nor hinted at, and that's quite sufficient condemnation
for the man or woman that wants to
be jaded by the scriptures.
Pretty good people don't want it.
God's feelings verbally grip them.
I say that to the people in the
hand and in the leg of the judgment
seat of church.
I look at it as an impression.
It's written in the text to improve on
its own fashion.
And the fashion of the church in any
fashion is their own.
Did God forget it at Calvary?
Would He send the Sahabahs?
Would He do the same but not only
change up the chalice?
No.
He never intended it to happen.
Oh no.
I had a reply to that meeting and
they appreciated it very much and they turned
like red for the long time they had
meetings before.
So should brethren and so should assemblies allow
reception over a thing like that.
And they say why do you let a
little thing like that annoy you?
Why do you have a little thing like
that in your assembly but can't deny them?
It's in fact the way they put it.
I went to the other assembly and I
was the first preacher to do that for
years because the assemblies of preachers wouldn't go
across the assembly.
There are more preachers in the north than
there is in the south.
I am, I may.
The other assembly was smaller but real good
meetings there.
I only spent a week there.
Seemingly they don't want any more and of
course I didn't put my company on.
I think I'm safe in saying in speaking
clearly that every place I went would be
accepted across half a dozen.
I was either invited to stay a week
longer or from that later on.
I couldn't do either of those two things.
I knew things would not allow me.
That would show you that they really appreciate
the right things and they don't want the
wrong things.
I'm speaking now about the first North I'm
doing about six assemblies on the North Island.
When my friend came up a hundred miles
over there and brought me down from the
North of the North Island back to Hastings
where we started.
We had four meetings there in the little
assembly.
I'm very sorry to tell you there are
four meetings in the current assembly but only
one assembly.
It's a little assembly.
The same thing applies to Dunedin specifically where
there are four meetings, only one assembly.
So we make a difference.
I make a difference by those that are
voted by the committee and those that are
not.
I had three staff calls in the meeting
in Dunedin and after I left there were
five other junior assemblies.
Most of you think I'm a good thing
over there to have five other junior assemblies.
I'm a good thing as a good thing
to have a staff meeting for the Northern
House.
And I'm very sorry to say in New
Zealand, in Australia, in America, there's lots of
Western men preaching.
I don't think they have to go so
far.
And there are a number of lazy men
who are supposed to be out preaching and
the preaching they do is that conference and
on Lord's Day that's three o'clock.
I have no truth to give you that
whatever they have now have and have at
night but when it's a new month and
it hasn't critical ability we'll all be glad
to help them if it's on critical day
and it is not then we will.
But I'm speaking about young men now.
And the result a president made from one
conference to another and passed by possibly twenty
literary assemblies.
But the result is on the brethren in
heaven and I'm not going to hold the
table on that.
I'm saying thank God that we've changed.
So what's wrong with these dear brethren?
Nothing.
They're a small assembly, too small for twenty
people to go through with as many people
as I can put.
The meetings in Hastings the last time I
would come on my way home was good.
There were five other assemblies, one or two
from the other assembly.
A young man, he went from the morning
I went out and he said great help
for the next assembly.
From my left there was eleven other for
that little assembly.
And at least three or four assemblies brought
me things good enough we didn't know the
value of the meetings until they were over.
From the top just as well.
So that was very encouraging for me.
And I turned to him, I have to
put the lock on, I
have to put the lock on, I
have to put the lock on, I have
to put on, I have to put on,
I have to put on, I have
to put on, I have to put on,
I have to put on, I have to
put on, I have to put on, I
have to put on, I have to put
on, I have to put on, I have
to put on, I have to put on,
I have to put on, I have to
put
on, I have to put on, I have
to put on, I have to put on,
I have to put on, I have to
put on, I have to put on, I
have to put on, I have to put
on, I have to put on, on, on,