In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of the ministry of sending out pastors and leaders to spread the gospel in different parts of the world. They highlight the role of prayer and faith in bringing about miraculous results in these missions. The speaker also discusses how God uses providence and difficult circumstances to further His kingdom, citing examples from the Bible. They conclude by sharing their experiences from a recent trip to India and the impact of their ministry there. The sermon also includes references to Bible verses that speak about the reality of Satan and the importance of humility.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank and praise you that we have this privilege and the challenge of just meeting in the first part of this week to again have our hearts united and broken before you. We feel that without your help and without your grace, we can't do the work that you want us to do. We especially would unite together for our brothers and sisters in Bombay who have no place to work, they have no literature to pack, they have no typewriters to type on, no desks to sit at. We pray Lord for each one of them, ask that you give them special supernatural grace in this time of crisis. We just really look to you and praise you that we can trust you in the midst of these various fiery darts of the enemy. And we believe that you are King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that you can turn this and many other situations around. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. If I ever had a time when I was literally passing through Bromley, leaving Wednesday morning for Nepal, I think it's right now, and I thank God for this opportunity just to share a little bit about this trip to North America and just some further information about the fire in Bombay, which I know you've already had a fair amount of information. Some hearing this cassette may not realize that about two weeks ago there was this fire in Bombay that completely destroyed our offices and warehouse, taking a total of about a quarter of a million dollars worth of books, especially audiovisual equipment, films, typewriters, desks, everything, even all the money that was in the safe, four or five thousand pounds, fireproof safe was completely destroyed by the heat. I talked to Ray Eicher for the first time on the phone about three this morning, which is five hours ahead of that, in India. The young man who was the warehouse manager only just arrived back from holiday a couple of days ago to discover that there was no warehouse any longer to manage. It was encouraging to know, I think most of you realize, that no one was hurt in this fire. Also, it does seem that the Lord is sustaining the people in Bombay in this time of testing. I think most of you who know the meager history of Operation Mobilization know that we haven't had many disasters of this kind. In fact, the literature consumed in this fire represents less than one percent of all the literature we've distributed in India since the beginning of the work. Even now, the teams are not held back from distribution, at least temporarily, because so much of the literature in India is decentralized. It goes out to the various states. India is a big place. The literature, New Testaments, Gospels, a lot of it has gone out. Of course, a lot of it was there as well, including whole printings. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand booklets, and many other items were completely destroyed. I don't think they still really know exactly how the fire started. It was a very, very congested industrial state. This is a building that had already been gutted. The third floor was never rebuilt. They think it was some kind of a clothing place right next to our own warehouse. Alfie Franks went there early in the morning. Many of you already know this story. He discovered this fire. He was there earlier than usual. He started to fight it with a fire extinguisher but was unable to stop it. It must have been an awesome experience for him to see this fire from its earliest stage right until it had completely destroyed both the warehouse, which is somewhat a little bit separate from the offices. I was in Chicago at the time. I'm going to share a little bit about that. Having just finished Founders Week Saturday morning, and I received this phone call, which of course was a little hard to take. The Lord, I think, in many ways had prepared me for it. I then talked to a friend who really urged me to share this with Dr. George Sweeting, the president of Moody Bible Institute. Since I had just been with him, I had just been with John MacArthur as well, one of the main speakers at Founders Week. I found out this morning that all of his tapes and the entire cassette library in God's Providence was in another building and was not destroyed in the fire. This brother urged me to call George Sweeting and just share it with him, which I, around lunchtime in a very unusual way, was able to get through to him. He was still in the middle of Founders Week, about two and a half thousand people there, the weekend very much building up. So it wasn't an easy time even to get through to him on the telephone, especially since I was leaving Chicago at that time. But I did get through. I had prepared the day before also a news program, not knowing anything about this fire, for the radio station there. So I had had some previous contact with him. Anyway, to make a long story short, he felt led of the Lord to share this, which goes over the air, and then when the tapes are sent out to about seven stations, goes out over the air again, which was only a few days ago. So literally hundreds of thousands of people had at least heard something of this fire. He was then led to take an offering. I'm not sure which group it was, but I had a letter from him, which I came across last night, just thanking me for coming to Founders Week and sharing that they had taken an offering and were sent to our New Jersey office about $1,500. Another church that's very linked with us in the States, just talked to that pastor on the phone, David Burnham of the chapel in the University Park in Akron, they also took an offering, or I don't think they took an offering, they just designated some of their missions money, about $5,000. And I think some of you know that a church here in England, the Worthing Tabernacle, took an offering and it came to over $3,000. This is encouraging. We are not in any kind of special sort of fundraising effort, fire fund or whatever, but it's obvious that the Lord's people in compassion, when they hear this, are responding. I remember when, with the Bible Translator's headquarters, was destroyed by fire. Fires have been a real part of world missionary work. Some of you already remember the story of Carrie, whose printing shop with things that could not be replaced, completely destroyed by fire in India many, many years ago. We can just thank the Lord that we, up to this point, have never had such a mishap or anything even near it on our ships. As some of you know, I just returned from there. But I remember when the Wycliffe headquarters burned, how the Lord put it upon our hearts to try to muster together some money. I think it was probably Jerry's idea. And we are just committing this to the Lord, knowing that he can supply. I leave on Wednesday for Nepal. These meetings in Nepal were already arranged because it's almost two years since I met with the Indian leaders, and they will be making some very important decisions, of course, completely apart from this, which adds to the things that we have to discuss. They are still working on an inventory, a more clear inventory of all that has been destroyed. I was reading on the plane yesterday, just came across it by accident, how we need to know something about the spoiling of our goods, King James expression. And I hope that each one of us will understand through this something of the nature of the spiritual warfare, and that we may really stand firm together in prayer. Of course, the theological people are asking, you know, who lit the fire, God or the devil? Personally, I don't believe that God goes around destroying his work by fire. And I am convinced that there is a prince and a power of the air. It's amazing that I was with a dear friend in Mexico City, Ernesto Wong, who now lives in Canada. He flew down to Mexico to be with me for a couple of days and to attend the anniversary meetings there. And he was led of God to give me this very powerful book by Frederick Hegel, a man not known in this part of the world, but a great man of God in Mexico, about the time I went there, 25 years ago, whose life had been turned around by a deeper work of the Holy Spirit in his heart, the work of grace. And he has written a number of books, like Bone of His Bone, and he has written a very powerful book, which is out of print, on the subject of Satan. And I was reading this book on the airplane, in the middle of it now, and he shows how when he first went as a missionary to Mexico, you know, he just didn't understand hardly anything about the nature of the spiritual warfare and the reality of Satan. And he was forced through the study of the Word of God and through his horrific satanic experiences that he experienced in Mexico in those early years of missionary work there, the reality of Satan. I thought it would be good just to read this morning a few verses about the evil one, the one who attempts to destroy us, to destroy the work in whatever way he can. And I think a good passage to turn to is a very familiar one. In James, I mean in 1 Peter. 1 Peter, chapter 5. It's good to read it in its context. Verse 5. In like manner ye younger submit yourselves unto the elder, yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore unto the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time, and casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. And then that very heartfelt challenge, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil like a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. Some of you know that outstanding book, Box's Book of Martyrs. I think there's a sequel to it. I was looking at it the other day. I don't know the title, but bringing it up to date, all the people have been martyred since that book has been published. For many of those Christians in those early days, it wasn't a matter of their warehouses being burned or their books being burned or their typewriters being burned. It was their mothers, their daughters, it was their own lives. And in a sense, when we think of the fiery trials that the church has been through, there is a sense, but we see this as a subtle, again, effort of the enemy to stop the distribution of his word. That's a whole history in itself, how Satan has tried to destroy the word of God. If he couldn't destroy it, then the enemy tried to bring it into disrepute. And of course, the church today in many places hardly even is a church because people were deceived by the evil one to lay the Bible to one side, to no longer believe there was a real devil. And that type of theology has done more harm and is to this moment doing more harm than all the fires that the enemy could possibly light to destroy a warehouse full of Bibles, because I believe that through prayer God can turn this situation around. As we know, very few people in the Christian world pay any attention to India, it's hard enough even in O.N. at times to get people to pay attention to something so far away, much less the average Christian in the average church. I don't think God has to light a fire or allow a fire to get the attention of God's people, but there is a sense in which people are starting to think about India now and are starting to pray for India and starting to think about, oh, in India, we've already seen this in the last two weeks, time goes by very, very quickly. I've been all this time either on the way to Mexico, there, both in Mexico City and on the Dulas, and back here. Some of the telexes about this have only just caught up with me, as a lot of my posts never caught up with me in Mexico, but I've noticed that people are writing to me and are showing interest in the work in India that had not in the past. My prayer is that this will not be a passing interest because we have a crisis, but that somehow through this, God will, as God has done often when some missionary has been killed or martyred, or there's been some other crisis, that God will use this to stir the hearts of His people and get them to realize that the crisis of people going out into eternity without the gospel in India makes this fire look indeed very, very small. It's hard for us to sometimes understand these things because sometimes our eyesight is not what it should be. It seems to me the devil is always trying to, in a sense, frost over the vision of the church. My old vehicle wouldn't start this morning, so I contacted Howard Hall, who had already left, come here, managed to borrow from his wife his vehicle, and having now just come back from Mexico, two weeks ago I was in Chicago, which is far, far colder than here, but I started down the road after scraping the window a little bit, having trouble starting his car as well, only to almost run into somebody, somebody's car, because the window just frosted over. Such a simple little thing. We've all had that problem. If you don't get that window clear, it is indeed very difficult to drive, especially when the sun comes out at a certain angle, so I stopped the car. And cassette recorder, or cassette plastic boxes are always good for scraping the window if you can't find anything else. And only after I got the window scraped could I manage to drive this short distance from West Wickham. And it seems to me that so often in the church, everything is there, in a sense, in that vehicle, everything was there. I had petrol, I had a good engine, it was running, it started, just a little frost on the windshield, and I wasn't going anywhere. I had to literally pull over, stop, and get out. And I think so often the church is ready, the people are there, they know something about prayer, the potential is there, they're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, somehow just a little lack of vision. Lack of vision. Enemy frost on the windshield, maybe you'll think about that in the coming morning, if the weather doesn't turn, and start praying for more vision. As I've just come from the Doulos, I'm reminded of the fact that this certainly is one of the most important ministries of the ship at present in South America. Spreading the vision. Spreading the vision. I talked to a Christian leader from Venezuela, a doctor, his company gave me a year leave with pay to work on the MV Doulos, and he's now one of the responsible Latin American leaders on the ship, his name is Benjamin. And he shared with me how in Venezuela the church is only just beginning to send missionaries into their own jungles. We come there and try to challenge them to send missionaries to the Muslim world. We wonder that people don't exactly enlist immediately to go as missionaries to Tunisia or Libya. They are only now, after decades, decades of church growth, sending a few missionaries out into the jungle. He showed me one province of Venezuela that was un-evangelized largely, and that was jungle. There are a number of missionaries, I think, in that one province, maybe 100, 150 missionaries from outside of Venezuela, Americans and others. I'm sure there are just a couple of Venezuelans who are beginning to move out. They talk about missions in South America, but they are talking about going from one province in their own country, countries already far more evangelized than most of the countries that we have been sharing about in the Muslim world and that I shared about in the last two tapes that many of you have received or listened to. They are only just beginning to think about missionaries in those provinces, and when they speak about missions and have a missions conference, they are generally talking about going to another province in their own country, which is good. Let's praise the Lord for that. Let's praise the Lord for a few. Moving out from the sophisticated cities of oil-prosperous Venezuela to some of those tribes, and that is a difficult work. In many ways it would be difficult for someone from a city in Venezuela, as it would be from a city in North America. And I hope as you pray for Dulaz, you will pray for this continued sort of avant-garde spreading of the vision of world missions, not to in any way belittle reaching out to the local tribes, but that they may have a vision of what the Lord referred to in Acts 1.8 when He said we should be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth. Have you ever considered the amount of territory the Apostle Paul covered? And he wasn't traveling even in an O.M. van. The method of transport in those days was incredibly slow, sometimes by foot. And yet the vision took the Apostle Paul, sometimes by God's providence. You know, this is often forgotten by the Lord's people. In this age of infatuation with the spectacular, we forget how God uses providence. God used the persecution and the difficulties in Jerusalem far greater than this fire that we just faced in Bombay. God used that to scatter the believers. God used Paul's imprisonment to bring him to Italy, what we call today Italy. I'm reminded, one of the reasons I share this with you this morning, I would certainly prefer not to come because we're six hours behind time. If you figured out it's about three or four in the morning, then my body time, I have difficulty getting to sleep, so I just like to beat the devil at his own game. I just stay up and work harder, make more phone calls. You can make interesting calls at three or four in the morning. You just have to make sure you're calling in the right direction. So I didn't really feel like being here, but I appreciated Jerry Davies' phone call to wake me up, which I requested, and he was faithful. But one of the reasons I wanted to share is I feel these are urgent items of prayer, and I only have this short time with you. I have to decide tomorrow whether I come here to the prayer meeting or go to the Board of Directors meeting in Manchester, which normally we always have on Wednesday. But for a number of reasons, maybe one that I have to leave on Wednesday for Nepal, it was originally scheduled for London, now it's changed to Manchester. But the Lord has me sharing at this time. Let me just read these words in 2 Corinthians 10, verse 3. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not walk after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Now I know many of you and I have heard these verses again and again in the nights of prayer. They're often used to stir us into action in prayer. But there may be some hearing this cassette report that you have never really seen this incredibly important teaching and exhortation. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Satan thinks he has landed a blow in Bombay because the entire prayer partner list has been burned. Everything we have worked on for 18 years. I don't think some of the members understand the dimension of this fire. All the bookkeeping, all the prayer partners, all the equipment, hundreds and hundreds of film strips, many, many projectors, dozens of films, 16 millimeter and 18 millimeter films. All of the original soundtracks from probably one of the largest scale efforts to reach people in India with films that has ever been made. Those original soundtracks have been destroyed. Some of these things we can manage to overcome. If there is a film out on the field with that same soundtrack, I take it it can be brought back through endless work, thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of work on the part of many people. Some of this can be recovered. Some of it never will be recovered. People of course ask why we don't have insurance on something like this. You know, OM has grown very, very quickly. It's not, as I shared with you before, a no risk movement. If we start getting insurance on everything, if we start going the way of the world, we're finished. We have to back up at least 10 years. The people in OM do not have insurance. That's more important than warehouses. The complications of insuring an army of 1600 people from 30 nations from such a variety of backgrounds at the incredibly minimum support that most of us are finding a struggle at times, seeing come in, is not possible. I believe going the way of old flesh in missionary work, personally I feel it's slowing down the work of God enormously because once you begin moving in this direction, there's no end. Two things that will have to go for sure, doulos and longos, because the insurance premiums to cover the books on the ship are just out of sight, and if you do that you should cover the machinery. That's the first thing they cover on ships. We do have a minimum liability insurance for people that are hurt on the ship, and of course the vehicles in OM all have liability insurance for anybody that we hurt, but when it comes to insuring our goods, just the warehouse here in Bromley, what about the warehouses in almost every OM headquarters, and then of course as I mentioned the holds of the ship, the insurance premium to cover all this within OM, within say two years would be more than all that destroyed in the fires, as mountainous as that may seem. Maybe in the future we have to do more thanking and praying and if we're in a high fire risk area, which we now could sort of understand the Bombay situation was, maybe we'll have to make some kind of adjustment. This really does throw us on our face, and without deep, deep trust in God, a deep conviction that this is His work, and that He can protect us, and that He will only allow, God allows these things. Satan doesn't run around punching God in the nose, and we see this in the book of Job, though there's always an element of mystery that we may not fully understand, because we realize that some of the setbacks on the mission field are a result of prayerlessness. I think the thing that hit me the most about my time in Chicago at the Moody Bible Institute, was just the general prayerlessness there is among God's people. When I first arrived, I didn't head to the auditorium where there were two and a half thousand people, I headed to the main prayer meeting after lunch. I got there just in time for that. This is the main prayer meeting behind this conference. I'm not pointing any fingers, and I realize there's praying people that could not get to that prayer meeting. But out of the thousands who were there, there were only thirty people in that prayer meeting. Thirty people! That includes all the students of the Moody Bible Institute, over a thousand. The next morning, I think I spoke that night, and spoke about prayer to some degree. Those tapes are available to some people, by the way. I think we may have doubled or tripled that number, I think they had more in the mornings. Anyway, and as I shared with one of the leaders of the students, who was responsible for the India prayer group, it was only by providence I talked to him, he came to the prayer meeting. He shared that he'd get six people out to the India prayer group, in a student body of over a thousand. He went on to share how very few students are involved in a ministry of prayer. And I see this wherever I go. In many, many other Bible colleges, and Christian colleges, they would be so far behind Moody Bible Institute in terms of their prayer life, that you'd wonder if they were in the same league, the Christian league, at all. And I do believe that prayerlessness in the church, the lack of prayer, now praise God for a praying Redmond, and praise God for churches and pastors who want to do something about this, but I believe the prayerlessness of God's people does allow the enemy to take advantage. You must see that in the Word of God, as much as you may believe in the sovereignty of God, the greatness of God, you must see that the enemy does have power, and that God has chosen to work through prayer. As much as you may believe in the sovereignty of God, the greatness of God, you must see that the enemy does have power, and that God has chosen to work through prayer. Lack of prayer on our part here, in Bromley or any OM team, will have definite effects. Sometimes we think the only effect of our prayerlessness is, well we may feel a little tinge of guilt, oh I didn't make it to the prayer meeting, I'm not a man of prayer, so we have a little personal struggle over that, we have to watch out for that because God is not trying to put you into the double vice grip of guilt, but that isn't the main effect of your not coming to the prayer meeting, that's only your personal subjective experience. And you may think that's the most important thing, that your prayer life isn't what it should be, and oh once again, you haven't been able to really get down to prayer, and you may think, well, you know, who am I? Many, many people in OM, especially in their first couple of years, and some even after that, they're just struggling, they're ordinary people, they're struggling, and they don't find prayer easy. This is February, it will soon be March, it's the time of the year when prayer life can really slip. When you first, went to your first night of prayer in August, boy it was one of the great events, you never thought you'd be found in such a meeting, and we had to, as we often do in the summer conferences, chase you home at two or three in the morning. Now, if you make it to eleven o'clock, you would consider it a major miracle. I've been thinking a lot about writing a new book, and I want to call it The Human Factor, and I think in Operation Mobilization often our human factor gets exposed as we move on into the year, and many of the things we say or hear in the prayer meetings are now repetition. I thought as I drove here this morning, so much of my life is repetition. People think, oh boy, he's getting in a plane, flying to Nepal, how exciting. Do you know how many times I have flown from New Delhi to Nepal, on Royal Nepal Air, I guess we could call it an airline? Many, many, many, many times. Even looking at the Himalayas, or the Himalayas, however you pronounce it, provides no excitement at this present time, especially as I go, without my wife. And as I was driving here this morning, you know, the same old routine, frozen windows, cars that didn't start, traffic, roads that they're repairing, so much of our life is repetition. And one of the ways that we have to mature is we've got to be able to bring God into the mundane, we've got to bring God into that which is seemingly repetition. There may be someone here that would like to add a little bit of fire around Bromley, nothing this size, maybe in your rubbish can or something that you can have the monotony of the day change. And probably, as we've discovered, it's far harder to get people to pray for Bromley than it is Bombay. It's far harder to get people supported who are in the STL ministry than who launch out to India, because of course you're not classified as missionaries. People think you're here making a buck, or a pound, really. They can't conceive of someone in jolly England, with all the comforts of home, not quite for some of you, as being missionaries. And when I think of the potential of this ministry to support the work in India, and when I think of how the enemy likes to attack us around here, I'm just made aware, more than ever, of this significant verse, even though it be repetitious. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. As I was doing some research on unreached people, I was amazed at the number of unreached people's groups in India. And OM India is one of the groups that has reached the most unreached people. We have reached into a vast percentage of the unreached people groups in India. This doesn't come up on the computer, because the computers, which are linked with church growth, do not count open air meetings, giving someone a gospel tract, talking to them personally about Jesus Christ. This is something that I feel needs to be explained, because when the statistics are released about unreached people, they really only consider them even beginning to be evangelized, if there is a church in their language, in their area. I disagree with this very strongly, because I say there are two methods to reach people. And of course, the method we are aiming at ultimately is to see a church in the language of those people in that area. But I don't think we can say they are totally unreached until that happens. As these teams have fanned out for almost twenty years in every part of India, preaching, often in the language of the people, distributing literature in the language of the people, sharing Christ, not just OM, but other groups, in the language of the people, that these people have had some opportunity. Yes, it's not enough. But just as we can say it's not enough, on the other extreme, we must not say it's nothing. Because I think there is distortion in our thinking about evangelism, in that we confuse evangelism with church growth. The word church growth is not even found in that sense, the way the highly technical people speak about it today. Though I'm greatly in favor of church growth. But I think there's a lack of emphasis on the fact we are his witnesses. And in our fellowship, we believe in planting churches, we believe the ideal thing is a church in every language group and every people's group in the entire world. If we just wait for that to happen the way it's all neatly written in the books, a lot of us may be in heaven. Because it's not happening, this particular method, as fast as some people initially thought about, the multiplication method and starting churches. Meanwhile, I believe God does raise up and vanguard guerrilla forces who go in preaching and teaching with tapes, with films, with an army of the Lord's people, who have to cross cultural barriers and penetrate these people's groups. And often the seed that they sow will eventually bring forth those churches. That is now happening in a number of different places. Therefore, let's not diminish in our thinking the importance of that aspect of the work in India and other countries, the sowing of the seed, the preaching of the word of God. Even though sometimes it seems to be in soil that is not completely ready. And bringing this time to a close, I thought I'd give just a brief report about some of the actual happenings of this trip. Founders Week was a great challenge. I spoke on one evening and then the next morning. In the evening I felt burdened and I was encouraged by George Sweeney to give some kind of invitation. They set aside a large room, about twice the size of this room, for those who wanted to come for counseling. They were very free about me even challenging people to get involved in OM, though I didn't overly take advantage of that. They put a lot of OM literature out all there in front of everybody. George Sweeney pushed very much the visit of the ship to Florida. I was very encouraged by all of this. I guess about 200 came to the follow-up meeting I had after the first evening meeting. Couldn't even get them in the door. We were sitting on the floor and I was able to speak an extra half hour about how Satan would counter-attack their decision to begin moving in a deeper dimension of prayer and of action and of obedience. I've received written feedback from most of those people. One of the many things that the International Coordinating Team is involved in here is trying to follow up on these meetings. And I'd ask you to pray. As I prayed through all these little slips of paper given to me largely by students but some adults, as quite a few have asked for specific information about specific countries. That's something else that we're constantly involved in. Sending specific information about specific countries. I asked for feedback from the people on Duos just a couple of days ago. I was quite surprised the number of people on Duos, now close to 100 of them Portuguese or Spanish-speaking people, close to 100 out of the 300 on the ship, requesting information about different countries and realizing that a lot of this is not available at all in Spanish. Very little missionary material is available in Spanish. So there's one more challenge that's thrown upon us. Praise God, the little history of the work just came off the ship printing press in Spanish the day I was there. I think I'm carrying the negatives for that. Somewhere. I'd ask you therefore to pray for the people in Chicago who made this commitment and we're now involved in corresponding with. I'm already receiving other letters from Chicago that are very encouraging. This ministry shared two weeks ago in Chicago. Last week went out over a number of radio stations. I know because my mother told me in Florida. She heard it on the radio. There. Let's specifically pray. I think George Sweeting's challenge about the fire went out as well. Let's pray. That's a lot of people. I also spoke on the radio twice in two other news programs and also a radio interview which I don't even know whether it went over the air or not. Please understand that in America people are bombarded by the media. Something going on radio or going on television. I spoke to some people in Iowa last night where I'm preaching in May at a large missions conference. They finally informed me that these meetings are all going on television. But in the United States this isn't as big as it may sound in Europe because people are bombarded with the media. They're hearing one Christian thing after another. Only the Holy Spirit. In answer to prayer can penetrate through all this and bring real results. And our confidence and that's why we've never pushed these things. We've never tried to make any great effort in these areas. Our confidence to see workers thrust into India. To see literature produced. To see that work going and the other works in the Middle East and Bangladesh and Pakistan is truly prayer. One small group compassionately praying, fervently praying in faith will accomplish more than a hundred thousand people watching television who say isn't that a nice work. May the Lord bless them. But somehow are swallowed up in the activities of the day and trapped by the enemy's tactics. I moved on from Chicago. I was happy to head south. I was happy to head north. John Wright came all the way to Chicago in his old motor home which got stuck in a blizzard or a snow storm we had in Chicago at that time. He finally managed to get that going. We were by the way able to put powerful books into the Moody Book Shop. What was your job there Harold? I know Harold has some friends there. I think we may have drawn some of them out of their minds as we came in there with our Operation Worlds and cassette albums. They used to carry that as a textbook. Yeah, they do have Operation Worlds and not too many copies. But we did have quite a blitz on the Moody Book Shop which is an amazing, amazing Christian book shop. Just packed with people almost all day long. And let's pray. A lot of material went out all over as a result of that. We then drove on south. Visited my wife's uncle. Had a little meeting in that town and went on to Memphis for a meeting on Monday night. A small meeting but encouraging as of that. Fifteen or twenty XOMers. You know they're everywhere. Some people don't like that term. In India they call them OM graduates. But we had a time of prayer to our little more meeting and then moved on south to Mexico. One of the highlights of the trip to Mexico was to be able to visit Baldy Mark. He had no phone. Very hard to contact him. He was way out in a ranch. A farm. We were running about eight hours late. One hour before he got there he left to go back in the dark to his farm. Very disappointed with his family of six, seven children. Then I rolled in late. By then there were two motorhomes. Another motorhome joined us in Memphis. Plus more people that had to get to the Dulas. So it was a real caravan. David Yoho and his wife from that church in Akron had both joined Dulas to eventually get into LAMP. They'll be starting in the program department. The Lord so amazingly worked out a contact in this little Mexican village where I knew no. Finally through a contact of a contact there was a man that I had heard of and met sixteen years ago. And though he was in bed he got out of bed and drove me seventeen kilometers back over dirt roads into what seemed to me like the jungle to find Brother Baldy Mark. All of Baldy Mark's children, the last time I spoke about him I requested prayer for his family as they didn't know Christ. All of his children apart from maybe his smallest, just a little almost baby, have come to know the Lord Jesus personally. And I'd ask you to continue to pray. He's not in LAMP technically anymore. He's the first national in this work. He loves the Lord. He's had great difficulties with the various denominations. He tends to be a little outspoken and therefore not to be invited back. The Mexican denomination situation, church situation is one of the most complex in the world. I haven't got time to go into detail. We moved on to Mexico City and had the sort of 25th anniversary celebrations of OM. We didn't have a great crowd on a Friday night when we had a night of prayer, a half night of prayer, or the Saturday. It may have been 100, 150, it fluctuated. It was very encouraging to meet some old friends. And I think it was certainly worthwhile. I was able to have some very, very good time with Dick Griffin who has been battling on there almost 25 years. To go back 25 years you have to go back to the very first team. Dale Rotem, Walter Borcher who I was staying with in Chicago, that was another really great encouragement. And myself in the summer of 1957. Dick got involved I guess about a year or two later. And a year after that went full time to Mexico City where he has residence papers and he's been there ever since. We're going to make a number of changes in the work in Mexico to free Dick from some of the details. He's been more or less running the bookshop there. I went over to the bookshop that we started about 23 years ago which is run by Bethany Fellowship. This is a very expensive downtown bookshop. That was the first ground level bookshop in Mexico. It's the one my wife and I lived in the back after we were married. That shop is still going. It's probably the strongest bookshop in the city. We moved a little further off center for a cheaper place as we felt the bookshop ministry wasn't our first ministry and have a good bookshop called The Teacher. I was able to visit the relatively new location and our burden is to continue to see this to be a real center. Samuel Castro will probably be taking over the literature ministry and the bookshop ministry so that Dick can be more free to do some traveling and to oversee the work in Mexico which really has doubled in the past few years. With the complications that the ship brings, that's certainly necessary. All of Dick's children are in the United States at present. Dick and Helen are alone. They live on the very edge of the city, the largest city in the world. Over 15 million people in Mexico City. What an enormous challenge. There are however a thousand churches in Mexico City. One of the most important prayer requests I can give you is that these churches may be mobilized. Up to now there is almost no vision or action for world missions in Mexico. A little bit for Latin American countries. A little bit for Spain. And the message very strongly of this weekend and also the pastor's conference on the ship through this two very important cassettes have been made. The strongest ministry I've ever given in Mexico City and the biggest Baptist church in the city on a Sunday night. I spoke about the need for the Mexican church to grow up and come of age. I've never spoken so strongly. I had a fantastic interpreter. Two of us could speak faster than one almost. Juan Daniel. I just felt so burdened because I gave this message 15 years ago in Mexico, a couple hundred pastors, very little long term response. So I know the seeds are there. And I just felt freedom to speak stronger than I've ever spoke. Some of the OM leaders were really scared. Really scared. You have to hear that tape to know what I'm saying. But one of the Christian businessmen, one of the Christian leaders of Mexico felt that this tape must go out to all the pastors immediately in the nation. I don't know what's going to happen. I know they're doing a hundred tapes, but that's very strong material. It could be very offensive if misunderstood. We speak about Mexicans praying over Matthew 9, pray the Lord of the harvest, crying out to God that he'll send more gringos, more North Americans into the harvest fields or more Englishmen. There's a few other little antidotes of this type, which could be offensive if misunderstood, but seemingly went like an arrow to the Mexican soul, which I believe the spirit of the Lord has prepared. I went down to Tula, got myself right in the middle of a pastor's conference, risked speaking a similar message in Spanish to the pastors just before they left the ship, 200 pastors from many parts of Mexico. And I shared a similar message. Now is the hour for the Church of Mexico to come of age, to take her place right in the heart of world missionary work and to send forth laborers. Because you see the problem in Mexico is that there are young people interested, but 95% of the time the church is not interested in supporting them. And they have this mentality that the money will come from North America. We have a policy that we will not support Mexicans and overseas work on gringo or North American dollars. To our amazement, the pastors at the conference on the ship requested and paid for $3 a copy. By the way, the Mexican peso is just devalued by one third. At one sweep, all the money on the ship from book sales went down one third in value. $20,000 one day, gone. Now that may sound overwhelming, but it's a big operation. It's 300 people. There's a lot of book sales. By the way, a fourth of the sales there are Christian. But these pastors paid for 104 copies of that cassette. They were delivered within an hour. They do this all the time. This wasn't special for me. They had requested, I think, 70 copies of a message Frank Dietz had given that morning. The cassette ministry on the ship is, I believe, one of the cutting edge ministries. Very, very important. And it was so exciting to go around Tulas and to see the various ministries and to see the masses of people stampeding through that book exhibition. Don't neglect Frank for the Tulas. Don't presume that the enemy would not like to bring to Tulas what he has brought to Bombay. Believe me, generally speaking on a ship, it wouldn't be a matter of being able to announce that no one was hurt. And I was just humbled as I went to almost every part of that ship, meeting people of 30 different nationalities, seeing them pressing on on huge construction projects to repair the tank tops. They expected that to be done a long time ago. Those cabins are still not ready to live in. Took out a whole entire B deck sleeping area, two dozen or more berths. Everything has to be ripped out, even though it seems in good condition. And then everything has to be re-built. You're not talking about a building, you're talking about down in the valley of the ship. And then in another place, they're welding and repairing. It really is an exciting moment. And to be there and to see all this going on at once and to see so many people as these pastors coming into a deeper understanding of the Lord certainly refuels one's spiritual battery, recharges one's spiritual battery to pray for the doulos. There's a lot more that I could share, but I trust this report and these prayer requests will be real fuel for prayer, not just now as you listen to this, but as you refer back to these notes or as you listen to this cassette again or as you play this cassette to others. What we do about this information we receive does affect literally millions of people. A handful of people, even in Mexico, a handful of pastors with this vision, with this burden for prayer and the kind of faith that brings the miraculous to pass through prayer can make all the difference in the world as to whether the other half who are still waiting to hear the gospel ever do here. Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for what you've done. Even though only a couple of us went on this trip, we sense that we've all gone. From Bromley, as this is our ministry to send out some of our brothers and sisters and leaders into ministry in other parts of the world while the majority of us remain here behind the scenes, sending out the literature, keeping the communication going, sending out the books, publishing the books and these many other things. And Lord, we do thank you that as one rejoices, we all rejoice. So we rejoice in these answers to prayer. We rejoice in these breakthroughs down on doulos in Mexico City in Chicago. We know it's only a tiny part of what you're doing in the world today, but we thank you that we can be a tiny part of that tiny part to advance your work one more mile to reach the unreached and to work toward your return. Guide us now as to what we do with this information that we may not just be heroes of the word, but doers, men of action, men and women of obedience, that our prayer lives and our practical lives may be based on your holy word. For we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.