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Tears_of_joy
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 Christ demanded no less. Letter written by a Communist.

Mission Commitment (Part 1 of 2) (Urbana 57)
Speech delivered at Urbana 1957
by Billy Graham
Summary: In this call to committment to Christ's mission, Billy Graham compares the attitude of the day's young communists to that of the early church. He challenges the Urbana delegates to have that kind of willingness to serve Jesus.


Turn with me to Ezekiel, the 22nd chapter, and the 30th and 31st verses, which
have been used very often in missionary addresses. We have four major prophets.
The reason they're major prophets is not because their message was more important
than the minor prophets, but because the books happen to be longer. One of the
major prophets is Ezekiel, who prophesied in Babylon. Many of the children of
Israel had been carried captive over to Babylon. The burden of his message all
the way through was, YOU ARE SINNERS AGAINST GOD, you've rebelled against
Him. Therefore, repent of your sins or even further judgment is to come.

In this chapter Ezekiel talks about the prophets. He reveals the sins of the
prophets. I'm sorry to say the prophets were guilty of sin. They had misled
the people. He says the priests had profaned holy things. He rebukes and reproves
the priests for having handled holy things lightly. Then he speaks of the princes,
those who had been in governmental authority. He talks about their sins.
Then he comes to the people. He says the people had been guilty of many gross
sins. He says judgment has come and judgment will come again. Then he says this,
God speaking through the prophet, "And I sought for a man among them, that
should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that
I should not destroy it: but I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine
indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their
own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD" (Ezek.
22:30-31).

Here we have an unbelievable picture, an almost impossible picture for us to
comprehend. The great and the Almighty God of the universe, the mighty God,
the everlasting Father who is from everlasting to everlasting in majesty and
glory and power, this mighty God is among us tonight. He is in this gymnasium
at the University of Illinois on the last night of 1957, on the threshold of
another year, searching, looking, searching, questing for a

man, for a woman, for a young man or a young woman who will stand in the gap
and make up the hedge.
God is searching for a young man or a young woman who will say, Lord, I will
be Thy man in Africa, I will be Thy man in South America, I will be Thy man
in the jungles at the head-waters of the Amazon, I will be Thy man in Formosa,
I will be Thy man in Indonesia. I will be Thy man! Oh, Lord God so help me tonight,
I will give myself to Thee to be at Thy disposal to send me and direct me in
any direction that Thou dost plan.
But God said of the people in that day, "But I found none." And we
read in Scripture, if I may say it reverently, of emotions with God. I can almost
hear the sob as God says, "I found none." I couldn't find a man in
all of Israel who would pay the price. I couldn't find a man in all of Judah
who would stand in the gap and make up a hedge.
Therefore, because I could find NONE, there is no alternative but judgment
and destruction. The world is engaged in a titanic struggle. There is a philosophy
sweeping the world like fire called Communism which many people believe to be
a Christian heresy. Lenin began in 1917 by going across part of Germany to Russia
with 40,000 men.
Today the Communists control about 800 million people and are penetrating every
part of the world. They are challenging the Christian Church as it has never
been challenged before. They are teaching us some lessons; I would to God that
we Christians learned the lessons before it's too late. The great lesson they
are teaching us is self-denial, discipline, dedication, and commitment. The
New Testament is filled with it, but we have forgotten New Testament Christianity
and Communism has to come and teach us something of the things that Christ taught
us.
I have in my hand a letter written by a Communist student at an eastern university
after he had gone to Mexico and become a Communist. He wrote to his fiancee,
breaking off their engagement. Here is in part what he said. This was given
to me by the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Montreat, North Carolina,
where I live. Here is what it says:

We Communists have a high casualty rate. We're the ones who get shot and
hung and lynched and tarred and feathered and jailed and slandered, and ridiculed
and fired from our jobs, and in every other way made as uncomfortable as possible.
A certain percentage of us get killed or imprisoned. We live in virtual poverty.
We turn back to the party every penny we make above what is absolutely necessary
to keep us alive.
We Communists don't have the time or the money for many movies, or concerts,
or T-bone steaks, or decent homes and new cars. We've been described as fanatics.
We are fanatics. Our lives are dominated by one great overshadowing factor,
THE STRUGGLE FOR WORLD COMMUNISM.

We Communists have a philosophy of life which no amount of money could
buy. We have a cause to fight for, a definite purpose in life. We subordinate
our petty personal selves into a great movement of humanity, and if our personal
lives seem hard, or our egos appear to suffer through subordination to the
party, then we are adequately compensated by the thought that each of us in
his small way is contributing to something new and true and better for mankind.

There is one thing in which I am dead earnest and that is the Communist
cause. It is my life, my business, my religion, my hobby, my sweetheart, my
wife and mistress, my bread and meat. I work at it in the daytime and dream
of it at night. Its hold on me grows, not lessens as time goes on. Therefore
I cannot carry on a friendship, a love affair, or even a conversation without
relating to this force which both drives and guides my life. I evaluate people,
books, ideas and actions according to how they effect the Communist cause
and by their attitude toward it. I've already been in jail because of my ideas
and if necessary, I'm ready to go before a firing squad.

I want to ask you do you have that much dedication to the Lord Jesus Christ?
I tell you Christ demanded no less. Show me one verse in the Bible where our
Lord demanded any less of those that follow Him. When the Cummunists came into
a village in China, they were commanded by a young man who was educated in the
United States, a lieutenant. Someone said to him, "Why do you say you're
going to capture that town tonight? Don't you know they have ten times more
troops than you do, and you've got to cross that river and face those enemy
guns that are stronger than yours?"
This young Communist lieutenant, educated in America, stood to full attention
and said, "I will gladly die that Communism may be advanced one more mile.

Would you gladly die that Christ might be advanced one more mile in Africa?
Five young men were willing to die last year that Christ might be taken to an
Indian tribe in Ecuador. But what about you?
Five years ago this month I spent a month on the battlefields of Korea. It
was Christmas Eve. Snow had fallen. It was a beautiful evening, a half moon
was in the sky. Snow was several inches deep and we were picking our way along
in a small helicopter. We landed at a hospital right behind the front lines.
We could see the glow of the artillery over the side of the mountain. Things
were rather quiet that Christmas Eve. We walked into the hospital where several
men had just come off patrol duty and had been carried back from their patrol
post by helicopter.
One young man was a football player from one of our southern universities.
He had a crew haircut. He was a marine, tough, strong. He was on his stomach.
The doctor whispered to me, "Part of his spine has been shot out and he'll
never walk again." That young man said to me in his pain, 'Mr. Graham,
we were looking forward to your coming. I've never seen your face, and I would
like to see your face." I got on my back on the floor and

looked up into the face of that tough marine. I didn't know what to say to him.
I gave him a verse of Scripture and we had a prayer. He said, "I know I'm
in bad shape, but I want you to tell people when you get back to America that
I'd gladly die for America."
That young man is in a hospital somewhere, a Veterans' Hospital, forgotten,
to spend the rest of his days on his stomach. Would you give the same dedication
to Jesus Christ that that young man gladly gave for America? Christ demands
no less.
I was at West Point a few days ago. I like to go there. I gave the Christmas
message the last two or three years to the cadets at West Point. I like the
discipline of West Point; there's a difference at West Point. There's something
about West Point that reminds me of what a Christian ought to be in discipline.
It's so different than so many other universities I go to: young men strong
physically, standing at attention, courteous, gracious, disciplined.
One fellow came to me (this is his first year there) and said, "Mr. Graham,
I don't think I can make it." I said, "What's the matter, fellow?"
He said, "Boy, do you know when they get us up around here?" I said,
"Yes, I usually can stand it about two mornings and that's all." He
said, "Do you know the things they make a first year fellow go through?"
I said, "I know a few of them." He said, "I just don't thing
I can make it." And he broke down and started crying. I tell you Christ
demands no less.
You go through the Old Testament and the New Testament and see the demands
that God made upon His servants. Look, at Abraham. Abraham, you claimed to believe
in God, do you really believe in God? All right, you've got a boy, your only
son by Sarah born in your old age. That boy who is to be your heir to propagate
your
seed. Abraham, I want you to take that boy, your only boy, up to Mt. Moriah,
a three days' journey. I want you to sacrifice him to Me. Not one place does
it say that Abraham argued with God, or debated with God, or reasoned with God
or rationalized.
Abraham in perfect obedience said, "All right Lord." He got his donkey,
put some wood on it, got Isaac and went three days' journey. When they got there,
he tied Isaac up, put the wood down, and bent Isaac over the wood.

I have a son, my only son, and I know how that little five year old fellow
has wrapped his fingers around my heart. Until you become the father of a son
you don't know exactly what it means. Abraham had his boy. He pulled out the
knife in absolute obedience to God. He couldn't understand why; he didn't ask
questions of God. Just in perfect obedience and faith he flashed the knife in
the sun. The knife was on the way down when God stopped him in mid-air and said,
"Abraham, I see that you believe in Me." God demanded ALL, no less.

Moses, handsome, brilliant, military commander of Egypt.

"By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be talled the
son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people
of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach
of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto
the recompense of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath
of the king: for he endured as seeing him who is invisible" (Heb. 11:24-27).


Yes, there will come a choice in your life. There will come a moment or moments
in which you must make the choice, and it will cost you everything.
A young university girl said to a Christian worker in England, "I would
give the world if I had the Christian testimony you have." The dear sweet
old lady said, "My dear, that's exactly what it cost me, the world."
Christ demands all.
When Daniel went to the den of lions he did not know whether God's will was
that he be delivered, but rather than compromise his conviction and his faith
in God and his relationship with God, he was willing to go and be torn from
limb to limb. Daniel, the Prime Minister of Babylon; one of the greatest of
the Old Testament, prime minister for many years of the greatest empire in all
the world; Daniel walked into the den of lions because God asked it of him.



The apostle Paul said one day, "Oh, God, I will follow Thee and serve
Thee. Oh, Christ, I give myself to Thee. Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to
do?" When Paul said that, God said, "I'm going to show you how much
you have to suffer for My name." The apostle Paul, writing years later,
sinimarized it in II Corinthians 11:24,

Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.

Five times they had taken long leather lashes with steel pellets on the end
and lashed him across the back thirty-nine times, till he was left bleeding
and cut to ribbons.

Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, three times I suffered
shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often,
in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen,
in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness,
in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness,
in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and in
nakedness. (11 Cor. 11:25-27)


Yet Paul followed Christ. He said the sufferings of this world are not compared
with the glory that is ours yonder. Christ demands all!
Oh, they were big crowds that followed Jesus. Great crowds of people said,
"My isn't it wonderful." Oh, look at Jesus. He made the blind to see,
the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, the lame to walk, and the dead to rise.
He fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes; let's follow Him. He's
a meal ticket! Social security from the cradle to the grave. Let's go with Jesus,
he's going places. Why, his popularity is so tremendous that one of these days
he's going to be crowned king. He will throw off the yoke of Rome. He's going
to be the King.
When they got to talking that way, Jesus turned around one day and said to
his disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross, and follow me" (Matt. 16:24).
Jesus, I don't believe we understood what you meant. You mean that if I'm going
to follow you that I've got to deny self and take up a cross? In that day taking
up the cross was the same as saying today, "Take up your electric chair
and come after me." That's what He wants. It is a place of execution. Christ
went down the road toward the cross, the shadow of the cross always before Him.
Many of His disciples and many of the people that followed Him thought it was
an earthly kingdom. But Jesus said, "I'm going to a cross! Unless you're
willing to go to that cross with Me, you cannot be My followers."
All right, you want to follow Christ all the way, then He lays down His conditions
and only a few can meet them. Only a few are willing to pay the price. It's
a way of discipline, and renunciation, and hardship. Here's the kind of words
you find in the New Testament: fight, wrestle, run, work, suffer, endure,
resist, agonize, mortify.

 2006/6/25 9:59Profile
ChrisJD
Member



Joined: 2006/2/11
Posts: 2895
Philadelphia PA

 Re: Christ demanded no less. Letter written by a Communist.

Hi everyone.


Quote:
[i]...then we are adequately compensated by the thought that each of us in his [b]small[/b] way is contributing to something new and true and better [b]for mankind[/b][/i].






Quote:
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die...



Quote:
...yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.



Quote:
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners,...



Quote:
...Christ died for us.


_________________
Christopher Joel Dandrow

 2006/6/25 13:54Profile
Tears_of_joy
Member



Joined: 2003/10/30
Posts: 1554


 Re: Christ demanded no less. Letter written by a Communist.

Mission Commitment (Part 2 of 2) (Urbana 57)
Speech delivered at Urbana 1957
by Billy Graham


I read in the Scripture that a Christian is a soldier who must suffer hardship.
"Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ"
(II Tim. 2:3). The Christian is said to be a boxer who masters his own body
and practices self restraint. "And every man who striveth for the mastery
is temperate in all things." He's an athlete who must strip for every handicap,
for every race, for every contest.
Christ said, "Come unto me ... and learn of me" (Matt. 11:28,29).
He went to the cross, and unless you're willing to be identified with Him in
renunciation and a disciplined life, and willing to pay the price of all-out
commitment, you cannot be His follower. This business of being a Christian disciple
is a lot more than a lot of us thought. If you will take the words of our Lord
and the conditions He laid down for being a follower and a disciple and a learner
of His, you'll find that they're rough and tough. It eliminates the sissies.
As we used to say in athletics, it separates the boys from the girls; or the
boys from the men.
Oh yes, I said that purposely. You know why? Because the women today are the
ones who are offering themselves for the hard tasks in Christian service. We've
got a lot of guys who say, "I'll go," but you never go. The mission
field is filled with women when it should be filled with men. Where in God's
name are our men today? Oh, the attraction of the security of America! The attraction
of a home, and business and money, and amusements and pleasure. It's easy to
sit beside the TV set now and sort of get doped. Edward R. Murrow said, "We
are doped." And we are doped. Many Christians are becoming ensnared and
entrapped. It's like a narcotic, it's like a sedative.

Christ said, "If any man will." He didn't say, "I compel you
to come." He said, "If you will." You must make your decision
and your choice. You must will to follow Christ and to pay the price He demands.
Let him deny himself. All right, are you ready to deny yourself? What does that
mean? Self means the flesh, the old man, the natural man. The self-life manifests
itself in self-indulgences, self-love, self-will, self-seeking, self-pride -
anything that contributes to self.
To different people it means different things. To one man, self may be intellectual
pride, pleasure, family before Christ. I want to tell you it takes self-denial
and discipline today to turn off the television set to spend an hour with your
Bible. It takes discipline to get up an hour earlier in the morning to spend
an hour with your quiet time. The denial of self means to renounce self as master
and accept Christ as Master, to cease living a self-centered life. It means
making Him Lord as well as Savior. I ask you, is He Lord? Oh, to die to self!

It means that we die to the world's riches, its amusements, its pleasures,
its powers, its honors, so that all the pleasures and applause of the world
no longer have a charm to us. The only object in life now is that Christ be
honored and glorified in our lives, and magnified. We have become crucified
with Christ, never again to live, yet not us, but Christ living in us and through
us. We say with the apostle Paul, "But what things were gain to me, those
I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered
the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ"
(Phil, 3:7-8).
I come to His glorious cross and I sing, Were the whole realm of nature
mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands
my soul, my life, my all. Oh, Lord Jesus, self shall no longer be on the
throne, only Christ. Has that happened In your life? Have you made such an irrevocable
commitment as that?

His second condition is to take up the cross. That again is voluntary. You
have a free choice in the matter. You don't have to pick up your cross, because
the cross he was talking about is not the cross of punishment for sin. Only
Christ could pay for our sins on that cross. It's not a cross of gold and ivory
and silver that some of you are wearing. It's not poverty and sickness, nor
the loss of friends. The cross He talked about is not the common annoyances
and vexations of life. It's not praying in public or witnessing for Christ,
from which many may shrink. It's not doing unpleasant duties. Our burdens are
not our crosses. Paul's thorn in the flesh was not his cross.

When Christ said, "Pick up the cross," they were startled. They were
amazed. What did He mean by that? The cross was a place of execution. It was
like saying pick up the gallows; pick up the electric chair and follow me. I'm
going to be executed. Come with me to the place of execution and be executed
with me; identify yourself with me in my suffering.
What does it mean? It means in His rejection, in His unpopularity on the campus,
in the classroom, in the fraternity, in the sorority. It means that I take my
stand for the Lord Jesus no matter what it costs. It may mean crucifixion of
self, and my desire for popularity and recognition; it may mean that I may be
the scuttle of the world, or the scum of the world as Paul said. It may mean
that I become refuse; it may mean that I become a spectacle to the world; it
may mean that I become foolishness to the world; it may mean all of those things.
It may mean that they laugh and sneer, and misunderstand, and call me fanatical
and crazy and misunderstand.

But I share the rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ and I take up my cross with
Him, and I identify, myself with Christ. I don't stand at the fire and deny
Him as Peter did. Are you ready to take up the cross? Christ demands all, not
part of you, all of you.
One disciple said, "But Lord, allow me to go and bury my father."
Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead." Even
the sacred duty of burying one's own father is not to interfere with the higher
obligation of following Christ. Even your family ties are second compared to
Christ. That means that Christ comes ahead of your girl friend if God has called
you to the mission field.
I have seen many a young man waylaid along the road. I remember young men who
answered the call for Christian service, but got sidetracked along the road.
They went to a university and got sidetracked perhaps. Or perhaps they married
the wrong person - and they got shelved. We saw young women - who had their
hearts set and they committed themselves to the field of the world, but they
were sidetracked.
One of them came up to me in New York and said, "Billy, I am living in
hell." She said, "Do you remember that night when such and such a
speaker spoke at the Foreign Missions Fellowship, and I was among those who
answered the call to give my life for service in China?" She said, "Today
China is closed. I'm living with the wrong man as my husband, and I'm living
in hell. Pray for me."


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he
that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that
taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me (Matt. 10:37-38).


That was the trouble with the rich young ruler. He wasn't ready to pay the
price. I'm asking you to follow Christ! Will you follow Christ in a disciplined
life? Don't beat around the bush. You can talk about everything else you want
to, but the heart of the whole business is a disciplined life.
Do you know what Dawson Trotman, head of the Navigators, told me before he
was drowned a year ago? For one of our evangelical mission boards he interviewed
100 missionary candidates. He asked this question of everyone of them, "Do
you have a systematic devotional life?" Do you know how many of those missionary
candidates said they had a systematic devotional life? Only eight out of a hundred.
I want to tell you young people, you might as well forget following Christ and
turn in your badge unless you're willing to pay the price of a disciplined devotional
life.
I have found that if I leave my room in the morning without my quiet time,
my day is all wrong, my ministry is gone, I have no walk, no fellowship with
Christ. I tell you from experience both ways, neglect your food. Job said, "I
have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food." Before
you have breakfast, neglect your breakfast, forget your breakfast, forget your
meals, but for the sake of your Christian experience have your quiet time!
Get alone with God every day, I don't care how busy the day is on the campus.
You say, but Billy I'm studying, I've got everything, I can't do it on the campus,
but when I finish school I'm really going to have it. If you don't have it now
and get in the habit of it, you'll never do it when you get out. Have your time
of prayer, your time of Bible reading, and above all discipline your mind.
How many young people today are letting their minds drift? The Bible has a
lot to say about the mind. "Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind
is stayed on thee." Get your mind in the habit of dwelling on the Person
of Christ. I've found sometimes when it's difficult to go to sleep that the
greatest sleeping pill in all the world is to get your mind on Christ. He's
the greatest tranquilizer I know. Get your mind fixed on Christ.
A lot of you women and men have a rough time with evil thoughts, don't you?
Of course you do. YOU cannot go to a magazine stand without blushing to buy
a newspaper; everywhere you look in this country, sex, sex, sex. There's nothing
wrong with sex in the right place; it's God ordained, it's God given, but we
have gone sex-mad. We've taught that morals are relative instead of absolute,
and the country is going the way of Sodom

and Gomorrah.
We Christians are caught up in the rush, until even a Christian girl wrote
the other day to our office and said, I've forgotten how to blush. I tell you
there is only one control for your sex impulses, and if you lose the sex battle,
you have lost the battle of the Christian life. At your age, this is a tremendous
possibility in your life because this is your creative force, this is your creative
power. If it is given to Christ and Christ becomes the master and Christ becomes
the Lord, you can take the world for Christ. But if you lose at that point,
you've lost.
I tell you I know that Jesus Christ can give power to live a clean, wholesome
life. I know He can keep your mind pure; I have experienced it in my own personal
experience. I've seen it in the lives of others. Let him take your tongue and
nail it to the cross. The thing that burdens me, I think, almost as much as
anything else, are the divisions among us Christians. How we talk about each
other. The Scripture says that we smite with the tongue. Take this little muscle
of yours in your mouth and nail it to the cross. Take these eyes of yours and
say with Job, "I've made a covenant with my eyes, why should I look upon
a maid," and nail them to the cross. Take these hands of yours, this mind
of yours, every part of your body. Make a list of every area of your life and
say, "Oh Lord, by Thy grace, I reckon myself dead indeed unto sin, I nail
these things to the cross. I identify myself with Thee at the cross."
Take your time and schedule it. Oh! the wasted hours. I wish I could go back
over my school days. I wish I could go back over my life and pick out the wasted
hours and become saturated with this book! Plan each day as though it were the
last.
Do you know what Lenin said about a Communist? He said, "A Communist
is a dead man on furlough." That's exactly what we ought to be for Jesus
Christ. Men and women who are living disciplined lives, men and women who are
following Christ in a Spirit filled life; He was filled with the Spirit, and
we should be filled, with the Spirit.

I wish I could speak to you on being filled with the Spirit. I spoke to 10,000
students in Madras, India, on being filled with the Spirit. "Be filled
with the Spirit" (Eph. 5:18). What does that mean? The Spirit-filled life
is producing the fruit of the spirit; having your heart cleansed by the blood
of Christ, having submitted and yielded every area of my life to Him, I can
claim by faith to be filled with the Spirit. Follow Christ in being filled with
the Spirit. And lastly, follow Christ in His passion for world evangelization.

Young people, there is in India, in Africa, all over the world, the march,
march, march of young people. Students, marching! And in America there is a
vacuum in the student world. They are searching. President Pusey of Harvard
put it in words when he said, "American young people are searching for
a creed to believe in, a song to sing." And we are. Let that creed be Christ!
Let that song be Christ!

There is an opportunity and a responsibility that perhaps God never gave to
any other generation of young people. I'm going to tell you something I have
never said publicly before, and my toes may be stepped on to say it, not by
anybody here. It sounds a little bit speculative, and it is. I have a feeling
in my heart that as God called the disciples and the early church to evangelize
the world in the first century, so you and I may be the ones God has called
to evangelize the world in the last generation before the coming of our Lord.

I believe that His coming draweth nigh. I do not see how the world can continue
at its present pace very much longer. I know that a thousand years is as a day
with the Lord, and I know a day is a thousand years. But I believe we're moving
rapidly with ever increasing acceleration toward the climactic moment of history
when Christ Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.
I believe we're on the verge, not only of world judgment, but of world evangelization.
And as we see the cup of iniquity being filled, we also see the world on the
verge of being evangelized with modern means of communication, and all we need
is not money.
We need young men and women who will say, by God's grace, whatever the cost,
I will enlist in the army of Christ, I will serve under His flag; and by God's
grace, I will stand in the gap and make up the hedge.
When John Mott, the great missionary statesman, was offered by Calvin Coolidge
the ambassadorship to Japan, he said, "Mr. President, since God called
me as a student to be an ambassador of His, my ears have been deaf to all other
calls." When the Standard Oil Company was looking in the Far East for a
man, they chose a missionary to be their representative. They offered him ten
thousand, and he turned it down; twenty-five thousand, and he
turned it down; fifty thousand, and he turned it down. They said, What's wrong?"
He said, "Your price is all right, but your job is too small. God has called
me to be a missionary."
Total commitment, an irrevocable commitment. If a Communist youth, a student,
could write a letter like that, can You write down the same kind of a letter
and substitute Christ instead of Communism? Can you say, "I am committed
irrevocably to Jesus Christ to spread this gospel."

There are two billion, five hundred thousand people in the world and over half
of them have never even heard of Jesus. The population of the world is growing
faster than the church. By 2000 A.D. there will be five billion people. Every
day right now there are two hundred and thirty thousand babies born in the world,
while a hundred and seventy thousand people die, leaving a new population every
day of 60,000 souls! There are 250,000 ministers in America and only 18,000
American Protestant missionaries abroad.
Will you say to God, "I will go where you want me to go, I'll be what
you want me to be, Oh, God, I want to be Thy man, Thy woman. I'll stand in the
gap and make up the hedge. I will deny self and take up the cross, and whatever
the cost I'll follow the Savior"?

 2006/6/26 14:36Profile
panieee
Member



Joined: 2008/6/13
Posts: 1


 Re:

Where can I get a complete copy of this message? I have found only the 1st part on YouTube, but the 2nd part is missing...

 2015/9/22 10:45Profile





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