George Verwer emphasizes the transformative power of Jesus Christ in the lives of young people, sharing his own journey from a life of superficial pleasure to a genuine relationship with God. He challenges the youth to recognize their potential to impact the world and to make significant life decisions that align with God's purpose. Verwer highlights the importance of reading Scripture and engaging in a personal relationship with Christ, which leads to true fulfillment and freedom from sin. He calls for a commitment to discipleship, urging young people to become revolutionary followers of Jesus, actively sharing the Gospel and living out their faith. The sermon serves as a rallying cry for the youth to step into their God-given purpose and make a difference in the world.

I represent a movement of young people from 16 years of age on up, who believe that Jesus Christ is alive, and who believe that we should take this message of the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth. I'm so happy to see so many who are here around that age group, 16, up and down a little, because I believe the greatest hope for the world really lies with those who are in your age. In a sense, it's also the age in which you're going to have to make the most important decisions of your life. Now, I want to get it straight that I'm not here to talk about religion. It was when I was 16 that I began seriously thinking about the teachings of Jesus Christ. I, up to that time, was living for myself. I got my own business. I was making money, was spending most of my weekends in the nightclubs in New York, living for kicks and for fun and for pleasure and spending a lot of money. And yet, I really wasn't happy. I could put on the act as good as anyone else. In fact, I was elected the school clown because I could goof off and do more crazy things, like some of you, I'm sure, specialize in from time to time. And yet, all this outward bliss and all the outward happiness that I managed to manufacture did not create anything real in my own heart. And I was like so many young people at 16. I was phony. I was pretending everything was great. I was a school clown. I always had a joke. I always had a foul story. Everything was smiles, nightclubs, kicks, one girl after the other. And yet, down here, I knew something was missing. Something was missing. I did a little exploring in the area of religion, which left me completely confused. I wondered why there were so many different churches. They all claimed to have the truth. Most of them didn't seem to live very much like they had it. And I went into the Roman Catholic Church, and I went into the Christian Science Building, and I went into this place and that place, and I really didn't see where that fit into living. I wanted to live. I wanted to enjoy life. I figured I wasn't going to be around very long, and I wanted to enjoy life. And I was enjoying life. You know, you always hear the story of somebody got life, everything went bad, and he became real unhappy, and his girlfriend dropped him, and so he turned to God. Well, that didn't happen with me. Everything was going fine. But somehow, the night that I went to hear a speaker speak about Christ, similar to what we're hearing tonight, only I'm sure it was much better than anything I could say, I realized there was something wrong in my life. I realized that in many ways I was phony. I realized that there must be a life on a different dimension from what I knew. From all the things that I was getting involved in. And I began to seek. I began to read the Scriptures. Actually, I began reading the Gospel of John. And I read a number of startling things. I read, for example, John 3.16, which is old news to many people, but it wasn't old news to me. And I read John 1.12, and I read verses that clearly showed that I could know God through Christ. Jesus said, for example, in John 14, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me. And I began to read this. I only read a little each day. Over a period of, actually over two years, I'd even many times come back from the nightclubs over in the city, New York. I lived just outside of New York City. About one-third of all the students in my high school were drunk every weekend. And we were one of the wildest high schools in the whole New York area. Everything under the sun, you could think of was happening there. And so we'd come back from the clubs, and I'd take time just before I went to bed and read one little verse in this book. And I challenge you to do that. You may not have much time. You may not be very interested. But if you read just a little bit of John's Gospel, night after night, I believe it may speak to you. It did to me. And so that night when I went to an evangelistic meeting, I already had some of this in my heart. I'd begun to go to church. That didn't help me. I became the president of the young people's group. That didn't help me either. And that night, I realized that Jesus Christ died for me, and that Jesus Christ could change my life. And that in my heart, I wanted that my life changed. I knew that I wasn't headed in the right direction. I'd seen enough people, I'd read enough books to know that there weren't many people on this earth happy. I was just about to go to university where I was going to study history, and already in the little study of history that I had made, it was quite clear the dilemma that our society was in. Anyway, that night, I trusted Christ. I believed on Him. The Bible says in John 1.12, as many as receive Him, as many as receive Christ, to them He gives power to become the sons of God. And how I needed that power in my life, how I needed that change. One of the biggest areas that I wanted power in my life was power over lust. I'd begun in my pursuit of lust at about the age of eight. In fact, I had so many swear words and foul stories at nine years of age that I was going to produce a dictionary of such words. At eleven, I began to go steadily, constantly out with the different girls that I could find, and that was the big thing of my life. And I found myself being devoured by lust. Now, because of my upper middle class background, I didn't dive into the pit of immorality. I wasn't going to bed with all these girls, to put it bluntly. But I wanted to. It was just a matter of my social pressure keeping me from doing a lot of things. And so most of my real lust was in my mind. It was in my mind. And in the magazines that I allowed myself to feed on. Now, this is the last thing we talk about, especially in the church, because we're not in the church now, so we can talk. But even those of us who are out of the church, who claim to be more liberated, like some of you may claim to be, we don't really talk about it that much. Especially in an honest way. A lot of pretension goes on in this area. Anyway, my mind was beginning to be clogged up by lust. By the age of fifteen, I began to peddle pornography in my high school. Just mild stuff, not hard porn. That wasn't very well known back then where I was. And this was twisting my mind. And even the night I was converted to Christ, it ate down in my heart, could I ever be free from lust? Could I ever really control my life? Can I ever really control what I do when I'm out on these dates? Which is about every week. Could I ever really think pure again? A lot of the young people around me were eaten apart by guilt. A lot of the young people in my high school were going to bed with one another, and things were getting pretty wild. Nobody talked about it. And we especially didn't want our parents to know. Parents, of course, don't like to believe anything bad about their children. My parents didn't dream the trouble I was in. My dear mother, who was a good, sophisticated, lost materialist, thought her little son was an angel. Fortunately, she got converted to Christ a few years after I did. And I found that after I came to Christ, that he can give power over all sin. Maybe lust isn't your problem. Wonderful. I admire you. You don't have any problem with lust. Porn is no trouble with you. Your dates are all clean. Everything you do you can announce from the table tops. But I'm afraid I wasn't in that category. Nor are many of you, if you're honest. And the Bible is very clear. And you know, even modern psychologists today are going back to the Bible. Ten years ago, everybody was telling us to be free. We'd go to the psychiatrist and we'd say, Look, I feel lustful. The psychiatrist would say, Look, there's a prostitute down the road. It'll cost you only two quid. Go ahead down there and get release. Now the psychiatrists are not telling us anymore. Twenty years ago, we were producing neurotics because of our so-called Victorian ethics. But now psychiatrists are telling us that because of our ideas of liberty and license, we're producing a generation of psychotics. And that's a lot worse. And so now, a lot of psychiatrists are saying, Look, these Ten Commandments, they really can be helpful after all. And you really better be a little more careful and you better be a little more restrained or you're going to blow your mind out and you're going to find yourself in a mental institution. By the way, the most recent reports tell us that one out of every nine women in the British Isles spends part of her life in a mental institution. So just count down the row. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. One of you is going to be in in a little while. Now we can smile and you can smile here, but it isn't so funny when you hear the door click behind you and there's no open windows. The biggest problem in the area of health in Britain today is mental illness. Another one of the biggest problems in our society is suicide. Suicide rate is just going up, up, up, up, and the university students lead the way for suicide cases. And now they also tell us that one half of the people in our nation are on pills of one variety or the other. From the lower, you know, just the easy pills that we take just to calm the nerves a bit to the big stuff. Something is wrong with society. Something is desperately wrong. And we as young people, many of us are plunging toward the same mistakes that our parents made, the same mistakes that so many others have made who are filling our jails, filling our mental institutions, or merely existing. Sure they're living, they're going back and forth into the city and out again, on the train, the commuter generation, but they're existing. Is this all that life is for? A few fags, a few flicks, a few girls, a little food, eventually you've got to work or starve to death, so you settle down. Even the most rebellious characters at 19 become sophisticated, self-indulgent, indifferent so-called citizens at 27 because they get married and some babies are born, and well, I mean, you know, you've got to live. Is this what God created it for? Is this what God created you and I for, just to exist? A little food, a little work to get some food, a little pleasure that we can get back to work to get a little more food for a little pleasure and a little money so we can eat, so we can go back to work and get a little more food and a little more work and around and around we go in a vicious circle until we're dead and then someone puts a tombstone up and writes a few funny little words on it and that's it. Is this what we were created for? I don't believe it. You know, if you go out tonight, I think it's a clear night, you look up, you'll see some stars. We realize that in our one galaxy there are millions of stars. Think about this for a minute if your mind is big enough. Millions of stars in our one galaxy and you know how many galaxies there are? All in perfect order. How many do you think? A thousand? A hundred? Ten thousand galaxies with millions of stars in every galaxy? That's an awful lot, isn't it? Imagine if there were a hundred galaxies. A hundred times millions. Millions of galaxies. Millions of galaxies and every galaxy has millions of stars and you have to believe that that just all happened, that there's no God, it sort of just all fell. You know, you really got to have faith for that. You got to have terrific faith for that. I always admire atheists, they have such tremendous faith. Far more faith than I do. You know, I'm just not that brilliant. Just can't let my mind go that far. It's like believing I can go to Switzerland and put them in a bucket, shake the bucket and come out with a Swiss watch. But I'll tell you, if you've got that kind of faith, I really admire you. I'd like to see you do it. Friends, there is a God, there is a God and He has created this gigantic universe and you know the human mind, that little mind that's in your head, on top of your neck, just check and see if it's there. It's there. That mind is so brilliant, so intricately made, that it makes your life look like a little baby toy, a little child director set. That's your brain. And your heart is so fantastic that it makes an automobile engine look like two pieces of wire wrapped around a spool. You were created by God. It's the most logical, sensible explanation. The universe is created by God and the next logical step is that it is for a definite purpose. And that's one of the most important things I want to say tonight from this book. God has a plan for your life. Do you believe that? God has a plan for your life. Tremendous plan. It may include some very famous exploits. Maybe you'll end up on O.M., one of our teams, hiking over Mount Everest. Well, we haven't got to Mount Everest, but we were climbing over some mountains right next to Mount Everest recently. One of our young men from England. When he came, he was unconverted. He had been on drugs. He was as wild as any Englishman you could ever find. And he came up to our office and we didn't know who he was. We had to get some tracks that day. He says, look, will you go pick up some tracks? All the way across the country he was driving over to pick up these tracks. He didn't know how he even got recruited into doing that. We recruit rather quick in O.M., sometimes before you're converted and he met a little old lady who had to give him the tracks. She looked him in the eye and I can't tell you what she said, but she sure scared him. She sure scared him. And he began to think about this great salvation and he came to know Christ and recently he's been out in Nepal and he just was on a 40 day trek out into the mountains taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those people. You know, it's fairly tough, especially when you get up at 6,000 feet. You know, some people get the idea that the Christian life is, you know, for weaklings, for people that, you know, they can't quite make it in the world. They just, you know, they haven't really got what it takes to break through in the hard secular world and so they grab on to the crutch of the church and they go hobbling along sort of religious depressives. But, you know, that isn't what this Christianity is about. That may be what some pseudo kind of religious baggage you've heard about all your life. That's not the solution. This book speaks about men who commit themselves to Christ and find life gets tougher. You know, sometimes you go to a Christian meeting and the man comes up and he says, Oh, praise the Lord, everybody. Isn't Jesus wonderful? And if you give your heart to Jesus, why, it'll just be so wonderful and He'll forgive you of all your sin and then you'll go to heaven and, of course, the average fellow, he sits there, Heaven? Who wants to go to heaven? But I can tell you, this Bible teaches that if you give your life to Jesus, things may not become more heavenly for you. You will find this Christianity, this real stuff that's spoken about in this red hot book that I dare you to swallow will be the toughest, roughest thing you could ever get involved with. And I'm afraid many of you, if you dared try it, you probably wouldn't make it. First of all, physically you're not up to it. And the Christian life requires physical strength. And emotionally you might not be up to it either. Because the Bible says that when you come to Christ, suddenly you discover you have a whole lot of enemies. How many of you have ever got in a fight? I'd just like to know if there's any of you that ever got in a fight. Any of you fellows ever been in a fight? Come on, raise your hand. This one's been in hundreds of fights. Raise your hand. Well, I was always in fights. There was one at about five that if you wanted to survive in the local school, you'd have to fight. Now I wasn't very big, as you can gather right now. If I turn sideways, some of you won't even see me behind this microphone. But I still learned how to give a few quick blasts and then move out of the way. It's a good way to fight. We call it hit and run. I had a very unfortunate experience, however, in my childhood she was rather clever and she really beat me up pretty bad. I'll never forget that one. So be careful in your fighting. Of course, none of you good English girls ever fight. But I was this way. But I discovered the real fighting began when I gave my life to Christ. In fact, the very night I was converted to Christ, I walked outside the meeting hall because I was just completely new in the things of God. I walked outside the meeting hall and a young New York City tough or hood or gangster or whatever name they carry on now looked at this girl I was with. I had brought her along because I thought she needed religion. She was rather immoral. And he made some very foul remarks at her and I thought, well, this is my chance. I'm going to stand for God. And so I said to this fellow, I said, look, that isn't nice. You better be quiet. The next thing I knew, I was laying flat on the pavement. That was my first taste of the warfare in the Christian life. So really, if you accept Christ, if you believe in Christ, don't expect it to be easy. Some people will laugh at you. Some will think you're crazy. And others will want to fight with you or burn your Bible or hit you on the head with it. And it may lead you to some interesting places. Shortly after I was converted, I found myself in Mexico. I had a number of interesting experiences. A few years after I was converted, I found myself under arrest in the Soviet Union. I thought that we should get Bibles into the Soviet Union because they needed Bibles. So I got over to Europe. I was just out of my teens, actually. Very young. Got a hold of an old vehicle. Managed to get through the Czechoslovakian border. Went into Yugoslavia first and had wonderful days there and got through the Czechoslovakian border. We got into Russia and we were working in the night printing this literature and we were going to distribute it through the post mainly, mailing it within the country. And I'm one of these tight people, perhaps because of my Scottish blood, I don't know. Anyway, we had one gospel that had been soiled by margarine so I wanted to throw that away hoping some farmer would find it. Anyway, I threw it out the window of the car and that was the end of my Soviet Union ministry. And so you're not able to find when you come to Christ that God will lead you into some very interesting experiences. However, even if you remain here at home and take up a job in the local factory or the local office, if you stand for Christ you'll still find it can be rather difficult at times because the Bible says that the Christian life is a warfare. The Bible says that God is looking for soldiers and disciples for people who will deny themselves, take up the cross and follow Christ. And that's going to be true whether it's here or overseas. Some people ask, where do you get the 2,000 young people that come on Operation Mobilization? And I answer out of meetings just like this. Some of our very best people who have done the most in reaching people for Christ in Spain and Italy are ordinary young people who only went to religious meetings to see what girls were there or some other screwy motivation. But somehow through it came to realize that Jesus is alive, that the Bible is true, that God can change lives and that this thing is reality. And so they gave their life to Christ and then they got involved in reading and studying the Word of God and then they decided to share Christ with others and soon they found themselves and I just believe with all my heart that this is going to be the road that some of you are going to be led to take. I would challenge you to at least consider God has a plan for your life and step one is to trust Jesus Christ to save you from yourself. To save you from yourself. You may have heard people say to save you from sin. All right, you can say that if you want. But the real core of sin is to be selfish. I was a young person who always liked to respond to a challenge. But you know there was no greater challenge ever given to me than the challenge of Jesus Christ. He said if any man come after me let him deny himself, take up the cross and follow me. Have you ever done that? I'm not talking about religion. I'm not talking about joining the choir. That can be a challenge for some people. And throwing out your religious jargon. Though, don't despise it because it can be very real to some people. But I'm talking about daily denying yourself taking up the cross and following him. You know what I found the easiest thing to do in all of life? Sin. Sin. Oh, that was easy. Steal, lie, cheat, swear, deceive, bribe, gamble. In fact, the police didn't appreciate it so I ended up in the local jail. Fortunately, my father was also didn't appreciate me being in jail so I got out that very night. We don't talk about that in my town. And I found all that very easy. Very easy. I found it the simplest thing to go out and pick up a girl and go have fun in the back of a car. No problem at all. But when I accepted Christ, when I believed in Christ and then I found out I had to live righteous, I had to live clean, I had to speak clean, I had to walk clean, it was the most hard or difficult thing that I ever got involved in. And yet I found that Jesus Christ could do it. I couldn't. You know, before I came to Christ, a few of the girls I went with were the clean types. They were the church goers and they didn't swear. And I was interested in these girls. They presented a challenge to me and I pursued them until I got them and then dropped them, which was sort of an ego trick you play. And so I wanted to become clean at times and every time I swear, I'm going to put some money in this bank. Well, the bank was soon full and I needed money for the date so I broke the bank, took the money and went out and continued the same way of life. But you know, when I came to Christ, it completely changed my vocabulary. And hardly a swear word has come from my mouth in 18 years. You can't do it. You can't live the Christian life. I mentioned to you the struggle I had with lust, but I can tell you when I came to Christ, I came into victory. It wasn't all at once. Certain things came all at once. The porno magazines went up in smoke, no problem. But to have complete control when I walked next to the newsstand two weeks later, that was a little different story. But I found that through the Word of God, through prayer, through all the means of growth and grace in the Word of God, that I began to grow and I got stronger and stronger so that each year I could resist temptation and I had to admit that I was a new person. I was a new person. I had a different lifestyle. I had a different way of thinking, a different way of talking, a different way of walking. I had a different attitude toward women that was pure and clean and right. It was harder, it was tougher. It took more discipline. It was more mannish, much more mannish than just giving in to every little flicker of temptation that runs across your pitter-pattering heart. He's calling us to be real men and He's calling women to be real women and to stand and to live the kind of life that in the long run, really down inside we want to live, don't we? Down inside there's something that says I want to be clean. I want to be right. I want to go to bed with peace in my heart. You know, every date I ever came back from there was ache in my heart. I danced all night in the nightclubs in New York and did a lot of other things and everybody thought I was the life of the party. And when I laid down in bed at night there was no peace. And when I woke up in the morning I felt terrible. And now when I wake up every morning I feel clean. I wake up every morning with a clear conscience. I go to bed every night with a clear conscience. I haven't gone to bed once in 18 years without a clear conscience, without peace, without the love of God shedding my heart. Not because I haven't failed since becoming a Christian. Oh, don't get that idea. There are so many times that I really thought I have a permanent death. But this is a wonderful thing. When we become a follower of Jesus Christ it doesn't mean perfection. It means reality. And included in that reality is knowing what to do when we sin. So if you're running along in the Christian life as I was doing at 17 years of age and you fall flat on your nose as I did, He forgives you. You know, we easily feel guilty. I wonder if any of you who are Christians remember one experience I was a real soul winner. Oh, I'm going to lead this girl to Christ. And she was a good Anglican and I led her to Christ. And we fell in lust with each other on the same night. Not in love. Come now, let's not deceive ourselves with that expression. Most of the time when we think we fall in love we just fall in lust. It's infatuation. It's puppy love, Billy Graham calls it. Of course, it's very real to the puppy, admittedly. And we got ourselves in a mess. And I was a Christian. And I thought, oh God, that's the end. That's the end. And all kinds of accusations came and I felt guilty and I felt, well, I'm a phony. I'm more phony than I was before. I'm going to chuck all this business. I'm not going to go back into this. But I realized one of the greatest verses in the Bible. It says if we confess our sin He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You know, that's why I'm still here tonight. And I confessed that sin that night. I confessed it to that girl as well and admitted it was wrong and we were just being carried away. And God cleansed us and forgave us and restored us and used us. And this is something that's very important. I'm sure many of you have made some form of decision for Christ. I'm not asking you if you're a believer but I'm asking how many of you at some time you made some form of decision for Christ. You raised your hand and you went forward or somebody prayed with you. Just raise your hand. I'd just like to know. You may or may not be a believer but you made some form of decision somewhere. Just raise your hand. Young person, older person. Okay. Now we know many times that decision is real. That decision is real and it may have just been something I did because someone else did it or it may have been just purely emotion. If it was real then the revolution has begun. You may be only a babe but the revolution has begun. And as you feed on the Word of God I might say the most important thing for me as a young Christian was to memorize the Scriptures. I used to take time every day to memorize Bible verses. You know there's a verse that says now you are clean through the Word of God and that caused me to grow and grow and grow. And when temptation came and I had every temptation in the book it seems they all came on me every week. God gave me the strength through His Word to stand against it. And some of you may know Christ. You may have been born again. That night you made a decision through Arthur Blessed or Billy Graham or the local preacher or anyone. You were born again. God did begin something in you but you haven't fed on the Word and you haven't had spiritual growth. And maybe tonight you need to recommit your heart. Maybe tonight you need to rededicate your life and say Lord from this night on I'm going to follow you. From this night on it's not going to be playing and just words and just religious talk twice a week. It's going to be warfare. It's going to be discipleship. But I believe that many who accept Christ and who are born again never grow because they don't get into God's Word. They don't get into Christian books. And if you take something in and you don't give it out soon you grow stale. You grow cold. One of the things that kept me going day after day every month every year of my Christian life was every day I was witnessing. Every day I was giving out. From the day I was saved I began to win my schoolmates to Christ. Before God was done with that ungodly grammar school 150 students many of them alcoholics had come to Christ from many nations. This movement that runs this ship that you can read about in this pamphlet some of you saw the film was born through teenagers. Young people 16, 17 and 18 years of age. The first nights of prayer everyone there was 15, 16 and 17 years of age. You see some of you think well now I'm just young what can I do for Christ? I might as well just fool around and have fun. Later on I can serve Christ. Are you serious about Christ? No that's wrong. You're at the best age to become a revolutionary for Jesus Christ. You know in the Battle of the Bulge I don't know whether you believe in going to see the films but I believe some films are very good to see. 98% of them are rubbish but there are a few that are good and one of them that's very interesting and worth going to is the Battle of the Bulge a film about World War II. In the Battle of the Bulge the Germans and the young men come out of the tanks the Germans 16 year old kids driving tanks. How old do you think these young people are down there in the Middle East war? How old do you think they are? There's girls in that war that are 19 and they're carrying machine guns. There are men in that war at 17 and they're manning missile stations. After I was thrown out of the Soviet Union under arrest I was brought to the Czechoslovakian border I stepped out of my car and a young man stepped up to put a machine gun in my face he said get back in the car. He was no older than 17. All over the world the forces of evil are rallying and the forces of evil are rallying teenagers young people. We sit back fooling around wasting our teenage years away and he's got the 16 year olds and the 17 year olds and the 18 year olds and the 19 year olds and he's got them and they're moving with machine guns in their hands and there's millions and millions of teenage communists today who have one goal and that's the world and I've seen them with my own eyes marching through Red Square sitting in the airports of Asia Chinese communists with one goal one plan to become followers of Christ. We waste most of our time and it is all a gigantic fog of unreality because if we are born again if we have ever even begun in the spiritual revolution many of us have remained babes swallowed up in our own world of selfishness. Young person I challenge you tonight I ask of you tonight to become a revolutionary follower of Jesus Christ. If you've never believed on him if you've never trusted him do it tonight. Do it tonight. The Bible says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. There's two books that speak about this and show people how they can be saved. One is Runaway World an intellectual appeal a book that appeals to the mind because you know one of the reasons I'm a believer is because my intellectual questions have been answered and if you have intellectual questions that book will help you or you can write to me and I will give you the answer. He can free us from sin. He can free us from habits. He can free us from selfishness. If we really want to be free and I would challenge you to take some of these books and to read and to become a revolutionary a disciple a real follower of Jesus Christ. Whether we ever see you on Operation Mobilization or not isn't the main thing being in the Arab world or Europe or right here in England where we're having a big push next summer what I ask of you tonight become a spiritual revolutionary for Jesus Christ a disciple a soldier and you'll discover this is real life. Let us pray.