In this sermon transcript, the speaker discusses the vision of reaching a specific part of the world by the year 2000. The speaker emphasizes the importance of prayer as the greatest need in achieving this vision, followed by financial commitment. The speaker also mentions the request from the people in that part of the world to provide them with the necessary tools for their mission. The sermon includes personal experiences and reflections on leading a prayer meeting and reading reports about Vladivostok.

I was off the ferry at about 3.15, coming from Riga, which is a long ways away. I put up a map here so that you can see where Riga is. There it is. In Latvia, to get there, we had to go through Lithuania. To go through Lithuania, we had to go through Poland. And the Polish-Lithuanian borders, and even the Polish-German border, is complete unbelievable chaos. As we came through yesterday morning, just at this time, we crossed into Germany. There was a five-mile tailback into Poland, probably from Germany. But far worse is on the other side, going from Poland into Lithuania. There's some political problems. Some people are waiting three days to get back. I think we got across in about eight or nine hours. We then tried another border through Belarusia, where even though we had some funny visas, we were turned back in the middle of the night. I wish you could have all been with us two mornings ago when we took on VIP, high-priority role, and managed to talk our way past dozens and dozens and dozens of buses. Others were doing the same. And get through that border. It was so desperate, we were thinking of driving all the way to Tallinn to get a ferry to Finland. But I'm very glad that David Babcock was with us to share the driving with Peter Dance. So we're just back from this conference in Riga. It was just so exciting. Over 800 leaders from all over what was once the Soviet Union, I think greatly dominated by Russians. This was organized by the 2000 and Beyond Movement. People like Louise Bush, Thomas Wang. It was a challenge and inspiration to be with those people. I must say, however, if I'm really honest, I'm more nervous now speaking to you this morning than I was speaking to those 800 people through interpretation. I was a little nervous there. They were almost like two programs. The people of Riga had arranged a program and Thomas Wang had arranged a program. And they tried to dovetail the two together. So I was supposed to lead a two-hour prayer meeting. They had four or five major music items. Solos, bands, orchestras. I ended up with 25 minutes in which I was supposed to also speak. And the Lord just, it was only 25 minutes and they had to go because supper was waiting for them. Nothing like a meal to stop an extended prayer time. But the Lord really gave grace to share about India, about Afghanistan, about Somalia and Sudan. And the leaders thought that was just the right thing for that meeting because the tendency is for these people to focus on their own countries. And there are lots of problems. There was a rumor that Latvians were boycotting this conference. This is in Latvia, which is not part of the Commonwealth. It is a separate nation. Just the vocabulary you use when you're speaking is very, very important. But there was a sense that just to focus on places like India and the unreached people there and other countries, some of which they'd hardly ever heard of, and especially share about Afghanistan seemed to be very moving. And we opened to pray, of course, out loud. They're not into small group praying yet. I think many of us in the West don't realize how conservative the church is in that part of the world. Anyway, I'm jumping a little bit ahead of myself. My wife said, are you going to devotions? And said something about Wake Lee. And I said, no way. I'm going to take a bath and maybe go to sleep, but I'm not going up there. Having just gotten back and I had Scotland coming up and Westwatch and meetings in Birmingham. But as I got in the hot bath, especially if you haven't washed in four days, to stimulate the spiritual senses, I just felt I must share this burden that I have concerning what was once referred to as the Soviet Union, which is still, Americans say, a quarter of a billion people. I could have done it on Monday morning, but I just felt this is so burning on my heart that I should share it while the fire is the strongest. Because even in this weekend, there'll be so many other things I will have to get wrapped back up into. And I just sense that it was the Lord's plan to share it now. So I jumped in the vehicle and drove over here to share this burden. I think it is going to be this little tape among the top ten historic tapes that I have shared. I'm not going to give you history of how God has used cassette tapes in OM, but it has been one of the main methods, if not the main method, to communicate to the people who are with us in this work, who have stretched over the whole world, many of whom now I never even meet. They come on OM and they go and they never meet. Keep in mind, I can't even get into places like India, which is next to the ship's OM's largest field. I think I need to first of all say that when I came to Europe, my vision was the Soviet Union, something I have not mentioned very much. Because, I don't know, a number of reasons. I came to Spain a very, very serious student of Russian. This was not some kind of a little sideline. I felt that I should challenge others to go to the Muslim world. That was still the bigger vision. That was number one. But that I myself was not cut out for the Muslim world and that the place God wanted me to work was among communists. Now, all of us who came out of the fifties in the United States were taught to hate communism. I came out of the McCarthy era. There have been some recent films about that era that are very, very interesting and worth watching. And because I was converted to Jesus Christ and very, very much convinced about literally obeying the Bible, loving enemies became a very, very big thing. So the more people were uptight about the Russians, the more I committed myself to the Russians and declared that these were the people that I loved. Now included in that were the Yugoslavians, because I can even remember sitting at the table at Moody Bible Institute after the first trip to Mexico, which was from that other college I went to before Moody, sharing my burden for Yugoslavia and actually being laughed at straight to my face. And anybody thinking they were going to do anything in Yugoslavia really wasn't operating on a full deck. And before I went into the Soviet Union in the summer of 1960, we went into Yugoslavia. We had a tremendous time distributing there, throwing New Testaments over the fences and distributing literature in every possible way. To my own amazement, one of my fellow team members who was just with us for the summer, early in the morning decided to go in open distribution. I don't, to this day, know what got into his head, because there was no way we were going to get into open distribution. And within minutes he was arrested. I was having my quiet time. And I remember walking back to the car, the car still loaded with a lot of literature, and there were the police. Our Yugoslavian experience and the confiscation of literature there, combined with a broken windshield, so we drove back peering through the holes in the sheet in the rain to Austria, proved to be interesting enough. But as we thought of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union ahead of us, I tell you it was with fear and trembling. I was rapidly learning how to type the Cyrillic alphabet. My Russian was not at advanced stages, and I would not be able to converse. But our burden was that I would type any addresses I could get, and use a distribution similar to what we had been doing in Spain. No open distribution, but through the mail, through the post. Roger Molstead, who was with me, was to do the printing. We had a little printing press so we could buy paper and print a gospel tract and put a scripture thing with it. I was doing the typing. We were going officially camping, so supposedly it was cheap, but in 1960 the camping programs were not functioning, so they actually put us in a hotel in Love. What a blessing to meet a man from Love there in Riga last week. What a blessing to share this testimony to all these people last week. But to make a long story short, due to my own stupidity, and I think most of you have heard that story, I refused to throw away a Gospel of John that had some butter on it. I thought we'll just throw that away when no one's looking, because we don't want to waste the Word of God. And of course a farmer saw me throw that gospel out. I didn't see anybody. He phoned the police, and within miles they had a very, very, it seemed to me, large-scale roadblock just for us. They accused us of being American spies, said we were going to get all expenses paid, vacation to Siberia. This was flashed, major news across the whole of the Soviet Union. By the way, ten years later, when their newspaper was looking for news, they just grabbed this and put it in again. Amazing. Someone came to me ten years later and said, we just read you were just arrested. I said, it was ten years ago. Well, it's news today in the Soviet Union. Maybe it had a clipping, like my little hometown paper that people send me. Ten years ago, this happened. I have to do some more research if I ever get the privilege of going back there, which, by the way, was right near Chernobyl. It was coming back from there, the famous day of prayer that God gave me, and it was on the top of a tree, this idea of operationalization. Previous to that, we were not that interested in Western Europe, though there was some interest. It was the Muslim world. We were only in Spain because it was under Franco, it was Nazi, and it was closed. But our burden was to get out of those places. India was not even hardly in our thinking. In fact, because Buck Singh had spoken at Moody Bible Institute and given such glowing reports of India and some other characters, well, India I blotted clearly out of my thinking. Anywhere where others were already doing it, we didn't want to go. Our places were Afghanistan, Iraq, even before Turkey in our praying, not in our actions, Turkey, and then, of course, these communist countries, Albania, constantly being prayed for in those early OM prayer meetings, China, of course, Mongolia. And this change of vision through this failure, and failure is the backdoor to success, and failure often does bring at least a temporary death of the vision so that God can bring us into focus. Because as human beings, number one, we easily stray. Also, as human beings, in finding God's will, our humanity is always there, and God allows us to go down dead-end streets. God allows us to make mistakes. I was young, I was immature, I think I was only 22 at the time, and God had to teach me a lot of things. I can't and won't take time to explain how the vision for Western Europe was growing in my thinking. Arriving in France on the old Queen Elizabeth, and launching a project in France, visiting people in Western Europe, reading, having some people from Britain come down and visit me in Madrid, and for the first time getting first-hand information about the Church in Britain. That visit, and that man's slides, which we barely got going, the projector broke. But those slides of Britain, the youth group that I met in Vienna, when I was giving out lots of tracts waiting for visas and permissions to go in the Soviet Union, the idea, if I could mobilize that youth group, boy, it would be a lot less work for two of us, giving out these thousands of tracts. All these things culminated in my mind, together with thoughts about the terrible war, mobilization of hate, because that's what the war was, and the thought, could there not be a mobilization of love? By Western Europeans, that could bless the Church, that could evangelize and help evangelize Europe, and then spread. The vision was not lost. It was still very, very strong at that time for Eastern Europe. But the idea was to see Western Europeans do it. And if you follow O.M.'s history, though many of the things we've prayed for haven't yet happened, many things we have prayed for have happened, we will see how strategic, really, it was that Europeans, within two years, began to move into the Soviet Union. Some of them, like John Heinous, speaking Russian, a long way from where I was, with my phrases and Russian tapes. And that's a bit of history that is really quite amazing. In fact, one of the vehicles I sent into the Soviet Union was a brand new rented car from London. I discovered there were unlimited mileage rented cars. I did some research that they had no way to know where you took them once you crossed into the continent. And so we sent an unlimited mileage rented car all the way to Moscow. I think Ron Penny may have been in that car, but sometimes I get mixed up who was on what team. The work began there, and around that time, Dale Roton seemingly no longer could stay in Turkey. And so it just seemed to me, because the Indian vision was being born in my heart at that time, that Dale should take this whole Eastern European thing over. And he moved from Turkey to Vienna and pioneered, really, the early days. And as my method has always been delegation, I backed away quite a lot from that vision. I wasn't blacklisted. I did from India once haul a suitcase of books into Tashkent for a very interesting connection in Moscow, which almost backfired in my face with a black African. We did eventually meet him. We were going to stay overnight. We gave him the suitcase, got on the train out of Moscow. This was in mid-60s, and headed to Poland, where I had some ministry lined up there in Poland. I had the vision of that train of distributing Christian literature in Russian through the toilets. I had investigated the toilets, that most of them were sort of hand things you just pull, and there was the railway lines. And so my vision was to distribute tracts down through the toilet. This was a long time ago, and to be honest, I don't know if I ever did get even one tract flushed out for the sake of the evangelization of the Soviet Union. I only share this because the intensity of the vision for the Soviet Union that was so great back then has not been with me. Now, that's normal because I'm a human being and I've just been there. I was hesitant to go back to the Soviet Union when the door opened. I know it's no longer the Soviet Union, because I felt, well, I've delegated this to others. This is not for me to go get back involved there. I mean, after all, my initial attempts weren't so great, so it might be just better to work through all these existing people based in Vienna. I did go to Czechoslovakia last summer, partly linked with the burden to get back in that part of the world. I visited Poland a number of times, ministering over the years, because Poland has been so much of a different situation. And the history of how those early teams we sent into Poland, when eventually Keith Beckwith and John Watts were both killed, is an amazing history. And some leaders in Poland today trace a revival in their life and the turnaround in their life back to those early days when things were semi-closed in Poland, even though Dale Roton launched them out in door-to-door work. And some of it was quite successful. Now, it's interesting that this visit to what was once the Soviet Union was linked also with the 2000 movement, something that I also have had an ongoing struggle with. Though through that struggle, right from the earliest days, have tried to indicate to the people in that movement that we are with them. I think sometimes in my weak, struggling way of sharing things, I've expressed that I don't have the faith that some of these people have. I don't always understand the way they arrive at their goals. I'm sympathetic to some people who are not happy about certain things in the movement. But again and again over the past years, and there are a couple of tapes on this, I have shared that I feel we should link in with this thrust, even if we don't understand it all. So two main things have happened in this past week. We were away just for a week. By the way, the meeting's in Germany en route. And this whole thing was built really around us having to go to Germany anyway because that meeting was booked before Riga. I think they saw it in my itinerary, and that's why they asked me to come to Riga. The meetings there with Daguna, very dear brothers and sisters, went very well. I guess there were a thousand young people there. Quite a few stood to make commitments. A number came to us and shared their Christian work today because similar meetings years ago they stood and made commitments. And I find that encouraging, especially since I struggle about giving open invitations in Germany, partly because one of the first invitations I ever gave in Germany 24 years ago, two women came up to me and accused me of using the same methods of Aldolf Hitler. It's always an encouragement when you're just arriving in Germany for the first time. I'm trying to learn how to preach there. But the Holy Spirit, I believe, worked in those meetings in Daguna. But two things that have come out of this in my own heart. Number one, a deeper commitment to the 2000 Movement. We've taken some steps to be more aligned. David Hicks is now on the USA Board. Not the International Board, but the USA Board. Working with Louise Bush, Thomas Wang, John Kyle, a number of others. I spoke at one of the main opening meetings in Brazil. I asked Ralph Winter to be with us here a week ago this past Tuesday. I think also that was in God's plan to have him and his wife over to our home for just speaking together. And I feel that the Lord does want us in OM, in the midst of our own struggles and our own unique, sometimes, way of doing things, to do everything we can to see this come to pass. If after we've done everything we can to see the world evangelized by the year 2000, we know the process will have to continue. That's why the name of the Movement has been changed to 2000 and beyond. If we do everything we can in terms of prayer and commitment and networking and love and grace, we have to leave it with God. Since so many of our goals in OM have never been reached anyway, we talk about Turkey, we talk about Afghanistan, things we have prayed for, things we have aimed at, though sometimes our goals have been a bit vague. Some of our goals in the early days of the work, we didn't always arrive at those goals. And I thank God for the European influence on OM that is more, if you aim for the roof, you should hit the roof. That's better than to aim for the trees and hit the roof, which is more the American. Not all Americans, you realize, in a pluralistic country. But there is a very definite, different way of defining goals, generalizing now between California and London. In fact, Dave Babcock went to this huge meeting, a very, very important meeting in Chicago, where Gotherd and Bill Bright and a number of other major leaders from all over the United States planned this huge strategy in what was once the Soviet Union Commonwealth of Nations. And Dave was with me on this trip, more time than I've ever had with Dave almost in my life, and we were sharing. And he could see, as he had quite a lot of struggles in that meeting, that he sees things through a European viewpoint, which is good, but of course it isn't the only viewpoint. And our OM approach would be, as we think of this block of countries, not to think that it's only going to be the Americans or certainly only going to be the Europeans. The priority is surely that it's going to be the people from within those countries, the nationals, but that Europeans and Americans and Australians and people from many other parts of the world are also to be involved. So I see God pushing us to take some greater steps in connection with the Year 2000 movement. I think with that, I would beg every OM leader who hears this work to beware of cynicism, because someone's got some kind of huge program and you see holes in it. Let me just tell you, your cynicism, and especially negative statements, any kind of pride is more ugly than the holes in somebody's strategy. And if there's anything that breaks my heart in OM, it's arrogance and pride and the lack of humility. And when I see it even creeping into my life, and it does, I can assure you, I just repent as quickly as possible. I was rereading in the back of the bus, again, this little magazine book, Personal Revival by Stanley Vogt, and I was kicking myself spiritually, asking, why haven't I pushed this book more? And I have a copy of this going to Jerry Davey who's sitting here, asking him to see me immediately on this, to do some research about what languages this is in, because Calvary Road is a similar book, and it's in 30 or 40 languages. This book has just as strong a message as Calvary Road, a very similar message, and I don't think it's in many languages at all. We have it in the magazine book, and God has used it. You might say, why do I bring that, touch on that issue right at this point? Because I'm convinced the great need in those countries, as in so many other countries, is for people to understand personal revival. Now, also coming back in the bus, I read the report from George Barathon about Vladivostok. All these things dovetailing together in my mind. I tell you, you get alone for hours and hours and hours in the back of this old bus, bouncing, and reading the word and praying, reading reports, no phone interruptions, no other interruptions, visions and ideas come. There are about 19 tapes full of those ideas that May and Vera will have the great blessing typing up. I almost feel like apologizing for that, but that's part of the vision. The open door for the Duloths to go to Vladivostok. It's amazing. We've already had one container of books in Russia being sent to Vladivostok or to the ships, so they will have them when they go in. And one of the things I want to say at this point is that I have sinned against the Lord. Again, there are different kinds of sin. That might get me in trouble even saying that with some people. But I really feel that it's possible to be filled with the Spirit and be doing God's will on a day-by-day basis, which is what I've been doing these past years, and still be blind, still be blind about something lacking. And the blind spot with me has been the failure to respond with greater zeal, greater enthusiasm, greater vision, greater action in connection with this phenomenal new open door. Several reasons for that. The financial nightmare, the endless thumping that we go through because of the lack of money, which causes me at times, especially with my Calvinistic streak, to say, Lord, if you want me to do more in some of these countries, then you bring in the money. I've been playing that game with God. And He's very merciful, fortunately, because I'm not sure if that game is legitimate. Now, that's not the same game that accountants play who have the responsibility to put the brakes on the movement when they're spending too much. That's different. But with a person like me, a visionary, a leader, I must be very, very careful of making decisions purely on the basis of the economic problems. Again, I'm not saying that's a factor. And I believe, in a sense, the brakes being on me at times is a great help to this fellowship and to this movement because there are plenty of other people with vision. We made a decision back in Atlanta at the Area Leaders' Meeting, the only Area Leaders' Meeting we ever had in Atlanta, to give our work in Eastern Europe, as it became two separate fields, freedom to grow more than the normal 10%. It was amazing for me to discover from Dave Babcock that we have over 150 people in Eastern Europe between those two fields and growing very, very rapidly. That statistic alone I don't think is grasped within OM. I don't think OM leaders in other countries, whether it's Brazil or Argentina or New Zealand, who have the job of presenting the vision realize how big our work already is in Eastern Europe. I don't know how many people who listen to this tape realize that we have a functioning team in St. Petersburg. We can hear about these things, but when you're so bombarded with information it doesn't always register. But when I got to Riga and a woman walked up to me named Sandra, who's part of that team in St. Petersburg, somehow it becomes a little more real. I was so glad that she came to be with us at that conference. Hans Strom also came down. I was not able to stay for the whole conference and he came down to put on a literature seminar, another great privilege. And of course Dave Babcock was with us as well. What am I saying by all this? Perhaps I'm saying something to myself more than anyone else, is that I have had to make a deeper commitment and ask God to rebirth in me the original vision that I had for the Russian people and the people of those surrounding countries. God has overruled my lack of vision and action and the fact that I thought it should mainly only be through the people that we delegated to that area. God is merciful concerning our blind spots, but I cannot continue in the future the way I have continued in the past. The fact also that the Lord has taken from me the huge responsibility I carried for twenty-some years in connection with India does free me up to at least consider and give a little more time to things like this vast nation. I'm not planning to launch some George Verwer vision for that part of the world. I want to work for the existing people. I had a tremendous time with Dave Babcock sharing in the back of the bus as we drove back through Lithuania and Poland, good atmosphere. My main burden is that we could back our Central European team and our Greater Europe team more. I had held up, even a few weeks ago, they asked me for more money for literature in Russian. I think it was for my own book. Maybe that was the reason I was hesitant. I wrote some, asked them some hard questions and Dave Babcock asked me in the back of the bus why, if I had any money in special projects, I wasn't willing to finance more literature for Russia and for the Russian people and the Ukrainian people and the other republics and the Baltic states. I was a little embarrassed by my hesitancy and I hope that we as a team through special projects can pray and see a lot of finance released for literature projects. A lot of the literature ministry and this phenomenal literature ministry going on is Bibles and New Testaments. There is not a lot of evangelistic literature, realizing it's a country of a quarter of a billion people. There's not a lot of outstanding, hard-hitting material like Personal Revival by Stanley Volk or Calvary Road and it is of little value if we do an edition of a couple of thousand people when we're talking about hundreds of thousands of believers. And I believe the next few months, certainly the next year, is absolutely crucial. Most of the churches are not in a state of revival from all the information I can understand. This new freedom that has hit them has caught them off guard. They knew how to battle on under persecution. It's amazing. Yesterday... There's so many uncanny things happened on this trip. I can fill several tapes. Some of you may be worried about that. But when we finally got out of Poland yesterday I think we were between Lithuania and Poland. A Russian truck came through, just about touched our mirrors. The driver jumped out and ran up to our bus and said, Dave Babcock. He knew Dave Babcock. He had taken three days to cross the border and only to be turned back by the Polish people. You've got to get out of Lithuania, then you've got to get in Poland. Three days to get out of Lithuania, turned back, Poland lacking one document. Tremendous tension going on between all these countries right now in regard to trade. We thought we had a problem. But he stopped, he wanted a share, he wanted a fellowship. And just off the cuff, Babcock mentions to me that this man's father had been in prison for 20 years. These people have paid a tremendous price to be where they are today. But many of them are hurt. Many of them are confused. There's tension between Russians and Latvians. There's complexity because these groups have come in from countries with prosperity doctrine. A number of major people from the States are preaching legalism and extremism. One guy went on, I understood, from Babcock in a big meeting in Russia for an hour about the evils of rock music. Is this the message that we will bring from the West? It scares me silly. And one of the things that God has been dealing with me about is that I am so satisfied at times in taking a low profile. I have false ideas about humility. I'm sure I don't really know that much about humility. I don't even understand it. But I must have some false ideas about humility. That, for example, to never advertise my own ministry tapes that have ministered to hundreds of thousands of people, never advertise them or put something in a magazine where my name, much less my photo, would appear and say, write in for these tapes. Perhaps overreacting to the advertising. Christian advertising in general seems to make me ill. Because people so overstate things. I am extreme, I must confess, in the area of not wanting to overstate things. But there is a danger that in OM, because maybe that has been a strong point, we don't want to lose that. We don't want to lose anything that's from God. But isn't there danger that we overreact to boasting, we overreact to overstating, we overreact to people whose goals we know they'll never reach? Into the other corner where our profile is too low, we're unwilling to take steps of faith because someone has to be a fool for Christ to do it. We have, of course, changed and we allow photographs in leaflets, like the Love Europe leaflet. We seem to, at times, allow something to happen for one field of the work, like Love Europe, but not allow it to happen for another field. And it's bound to be. I don't have a big thing about this, in one sense. But there is a danger that we become sort of schizophrenic, that OM becomes sort of two organizations. There's the conservatives, who are all trying to be so men of integrity and humility, even though they may in fact be on an ego trip as much as someone who's got his picture on the front page of a magazine. Now, the other thing that just pushes me along this line is that, brothers and sisters, the extremists and teachers of false doctrine are on the move. As we are intimidated by our overdue bills, as we are intimidated by our fear of growing too big too quickly, which is important, as we are intimidated by some of our own mistakes and things that we see in OM that we don't like, so we become more and more pushed to want quality and be skeptical about quantity, we could end up in a real sort of spiritual schizophrenic position with people in OM not like-minded, not of one heart, and the enemy could really use that. I don't have all the answers, but I know the first step I have to take is a deeper commitment to this original vision God gave me for this part of the world, and to join with these people who have greater faith than me, including my Russian brothers and sisters, and say, you know, let's go all the way. We want everybody in that part of the world, we see on that huge map, we want everybody there to hear of the gospel of Jesus Christ by the year 2000. We know our part in OM is going to be small, our work in that part of the world now, I'm thinking specifically of the Soviet Union, our work in Romania, our work in Czechoslovakia and in Hungary, one or two other places, compared to the size of the country, compared to what others are doing, is significant. Our work in the Soviet Union, and what was once the Soviet Union and the surrounding countries, though we've just made this big move about Central Asia, but if we consider the numbers of people, our work is very, very tiny. Now, the amount of literature going in is not tiny, but manpower, budget apart from literature, would be quite small. So I feel, and I hope some who hear this tape will join me in this, that despite the fact that we are stretched, and we are scared, and we know our own weaknesses, that we make a commitment to this great area of the world, and that we not lose this part of the original vision. And that when we're speaking in meetings, and we're showing slides, or we're talking to individuals, that we will consider, and I think many people already do, that this is a major part of Operation Mobilization's forward thrust in the coming decade, and especially to the year 2000. Literature is absolutely crucial right now. If I had arrived in Europe with my mentality and my vision, right now, and we had just had something equivalent to 1962, because it was the success of 62, 12 vehicles, 25 million pieces of literature in one summer, that just so overwhelmed me to believe that O.M. could grow 10 times in one year, to increase from 200 people to 2,000 people in the summer in one year, to increase from 12 vehicles to 120 vehicles in one year, in order to blanket the whole of Western Europe, not with tracks, as it was in 62, but with books, with Bibles, a slower approach, etc. If you're able to do this in your mind, can you picture me arriving at this period of history, with this fur burning for the Russian people and the other people's groups of that part of the world, what would I be planning for this summer? Surely I would be planning and praying for at least 100 trucks. These are not Volkswagens we had in those days. These were trucks that could carry tons of literature. I'm not saying we should do this, because we've got to live in history where we are. We don't want to get into fantasy. But if it were, in a sense, 62, or 62 could be exchanged with 92, that's interesting, probably we would be thrusting 2,000 people into the Commonwealth of Nations and the surrounding countries this summer. If you examine what we're doing in this part of the world this summer through Love Europe, you will realize it is a very, very minute or small operation, though that doesn't mean it's not significant. And in the light of all the other things, every nation now in Europe, nobody wants to be left out. What we are doing in what was once the Soviet Union is important and is significant, and many other things are happening all year round that we need to be more sensitive to. Even the thrust of ALOC, that Jerry Davey is so involved in, I have that leaflet in front of me, I've been pushing it a lot lately. Again, I guess part of what the Holy Spirit has been attempting to do in my own heart. But if you study this leaflet, which is so fantastic, you will see Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Romanian, and then you will have this little note here at the bottom. Former countries of the USSR, ALOC is researching possibilities to establish further publishing houses in Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, and other countries emerging from the former Soviet Union. That's what we have so far through this organization that we are in partnership with and work through and with. There's even a picture of Peter Maiden because of Jerry's low profile. There's a spot for Jerry's picture, but I guess you were responsible for the leaflet, no? So he left his picture out. You see how we operate. That's okay, Jerry can keep a low profile, but big mouth George may not be able to. I don't know how many people are going to hear this cassette tape. That depends a lot on the people who listen to it and whether they can get a vision to make a copy because it's not copyrighted and share it with others. But I believe if we are to see this vision of reaching this part of the world or any other part of the world by the year 2000 come to pass, that the greatest need at this present time is prayer. The second greatest need combined always with commitment in our own lives is finance. One of the exciting aspects of this vision is that the people in that part of the world to some degree are saying to us, give us the tools and we'll do the job. I don't believe the answer is sending thousands of young, immature trainees into this part of the world. There's scope for some of that, especially people who want to get seriously into the Russian language or other languages. Central Asia is very, very distinct from Russia. I can't cover much about that on this tape, but I think people know we have declared Central Asia as a separate field under Berthiel about to be turned over to another brother. I might just say that one of my burdens as I shared with these people who were mainly Russians, of course, was the challenge of the unreached people. One of the messages that we are going to be responsible to sharing with our brothers and sisters in that part of the world is the message of the unreached people. Just to give you an example of the uncanniness of some of the contacts. I had very little time there, 24 hours. We had to unload all of this, Charlie and all this, these things we brought for people's physical needs. We had to unload all these books. We picked up all these Russian books in Germany. We didn't know what to do. The conference was a little bit chaotic. Should we turn them over to the committee? I wrestled with this. I mean, I was terrifically in spiritual warfare my first morning just before my second message as we arrived the evening before. I decided we should put the books out now, why I'm speaking, sell them at some kind of price. Very hard to know what price to put because a dollar is 130 rubles. But we filled our diesel tank, and that's what gave me the right idea, for about $7. So what is the buying value? These people, how are they going to buy these books? I decided the smaller books should be the price of a liter of diesel. It was a gamble. We put all the books out, most of them, a lot of them. The people just mobbed the table, but they didn't just grab. They picked and they chose because 10 rubles for small books, 20 rubles for bigger books, it's still money. So it just seemed to be the right price. But what a bonanza. In fact, such a bonanza, Peter Hanström asked, please leave Russ back here to help. And so we left Russ, by the way, in Riga, and he will be coming back with Hanström via Sweden. Just another prayer burden in regard to Riga, and that is as we get these names and addresses and contacts that we would have wisdom as to what the next move is. Even with the little time I have there, I met a man from the part of the Soviet Union north of Finland. It's not on this map, but you can see it. It's not even on that map. It's basically in Lapland. I can't pronounce it. Marmunsk? Who can pronounce it? Thanks. I met a man from there who spoke fluent English. I was looking for someone to give this box of personal Verwer Charlie that I wanted to get rid of, including various and sunny things. He seemed to be the ideal man. He was telling me about the poor up there. And soon I had him link with Sandra. She then said, we're sending a team up there in the next few months, and we have no contacts except one. This man right on the spot offered them hospitality. He also began to share with me about some of the unreached people in that part of the world. It's amazing. Another leaflet that was in the bus and things I was sorting through was an old copy of Pulse, six months old. The whole thrust of that issue of Pulse was Siberia. I could just envisage ourselves turning the bus around and just heading in that old bus toward Siberia, but I don't think we'll do that this summer. How many of us really pray for Siberia? I'm sure some do. But Siberia represents many, many people's groups. We're not talking about Central Asia now. We're talking north of Central Asia. OM has hardly anything there. Though I've noticed that we keep sending teams to that funny city called what? Novosibirsk. Again, talking to Dave Babcock, I find out there's 4 million people there. I was wondering, why do we keep sending teams? Dave is journeying up to this city in the middle of... Is that actually Siberia? 4 million people in that city. We already have teams going there a number of times. I wonder how many of our prayer partners, how many of us really know what we are actually doing in that part of the world. I want to commit myself to somehow make that known, to somehow find the people and the finance that we need, and to join hands with all those biblical and grace-awakened people who want to see that whole area of the world evangelized, whether they are part of the AD2000 movement or part of some other movement I believe another major contribution we can make in all of this is, and I touched on it but I want to just say it again, key books for believers. Pastors need the right books. If pastors are going to give the right preaching and the right teaching, they need the right book. I have never seen so many weird books coming out as in the last 5 years. I'm just being honest. I looked at one full publishing catalog yesterday, and I must confess there were 2 or 3 that were good and I ordered some and chucked it in the catalog in the rubbish bin in the back of the bus. It seems to me if Satan can't keep us from being zealous and committed and active for Jesus, then Satan changes his strategy and tries to get us into extremism. We need books in the languages of these people groups that are going to encourage, that are going to bless, that are going to be grace awakened, that are going to help them through the time of transition. If the churches don't come out of legalism, go through a transition properly, they will lose this generation. They will lose also a lot of the more zealous activist types who go to congresses like this, at least some of them, and they want to get on with the job. Some of them are going to be ready to pitch traditions to get on with the job. Others, especially if they're reading the wrong books, are not going to pitch those traditions. And so what's going to happen? We're going to see massive disunity in the church. It already exists. We can't boast about our unity in our countries. And that's why I'm convinced that Christian literature for believers and leaders, the right books, well translated, as well as books written by people from within the countries, will be strategic in connection with this vision. God has given us in his mercy. If we go back to 1961, when we first crossed the border and got arrested, God has given us over 30 years of experience in this part of the world. We, of course, also must be ready for the huge transition. And I think our people in Vienna so far are doing pretty well. And I want to back them, both fields. I want to mobilize, I hope, at least a million people who can pray for them, because prayer mobilization is absolutely basic. I've been asked to be the chairperson for some big prayer mobilization of the AD 2000 movement. I'm not so keen on that, but I do want to be part of any prayer mobilization. Jack McAllister, who follows me in prayer as much as any man I know, was there trying to mobilize a billion hours of prayer. I can't keep up with Jack when he starts mobilizing hours of prayer but I thank God there is a prayer movement going on. And if you read the latest issues of Mission Frontiers that comes out of the U.S. Center, or you read other material, you will see that the brothers and sisters involved in all of this are very, very much putting a big emphasis on prayer. Even though that prayer meeting the first night that I was asked to lead didn't quite go the way we would dream, it was still a significant step for that kind of conference to say we're going to have, this was optional by the way, we're going to have this extended prayer time before we do anything else including eat supper. Things that are very common to you and me, like five hour prayer meetings, small groups, praying for nations, praying for people's groups, these things are unheard of in many of these churches. And we must not in any way look down on them because of that. As they've been going through one set of experiences in the last 70 years in that part of the world, we've been going through other experiences. Let's stop arguing about who's better. Let's beware of false humility. Let's not put them on a pedestal because some of them have been in prison. They don't want that. Let's learn from each other. Let's share what we have with them. Let's receive what they have. Let's take what we've received from the Indians and the Brazilians and the Japanese and the Koreans, all these people that are tied in with our movement and our fellowship and other fellowships, and let's share that sensitively, carefully, with this part of the world that has been locked behind that iron curtain all of these years. To me, that's so reasonable, it's so logical, and though I know there are many, many problems involved, I believe we should be as Caleb and Joshua, that's who I preach from, by the way, in my message on Revival in Prayer, and let's believe that God will do this thing. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your mercy in connection with this trip. Lord, I haven't had much time to mention just the physical aspects of the trip and how that old bus, now 30 years old, just kept running and running 20 hours a day for a good part of this journey. Thank you for giving grace to Peter Dance, to Dave Babcock. Thank you that Daniel Dance was able to go with us. Pray for Russ and his final hours there in Riga right now as the conference comes to a close and as follow-up groups join every national group and now spread out around that whole part of the world in order to follow up on local events and local prayer mobilizations throughout the Commonwealth of Nations and other nations in that area. Oh God, we thank you for answers to prayer. We know that as we look at that part of the world and all the unreached people's groups, the complexities, the obstacles, the huge rapid growth of cults, the huge push of the Muslims from the south and in places that are rapidly becoming Muslim republics that truly we are faced with one of the greatest challenges in the history of our entire movement. We feel weak, we feel inadequate, we feel overstretched, Satan is trying to intimidate us because we can't even pay our own bills right here in our so-called international headquarters. But Lord, we stand against this intimidation. We believe that this finance is going to come in without taking money from special projects to any great degree which we feel should be going largely toward literature and toward the unreached people and toward other unique crisis and phenomenal open doors in other parts of the world. Oh God, we thank you for the teams there in those eastern European countries and in what was once the Soviet Union, like that team in St. Petersburg. We pray for Dave Babcock, for Terry Jarvis, we pray for Jerry Davey right here from our own fellowship who is constantly going there. Show Lord when he should be going to Moscow as so much is now centered on Moscow and that seems at times to be rather intimidating and frightening. But Lord, we don't want to miss your plan. We don't want to be intimidated by the unknown. We don't want to be frightened by our own weaknesses but we want to somehow stand in faith as Caleb and Joshua to believe that you will give us this land, a land that floweth with milk and honey, spiritually speaking. We believe there could be a harvest of millions. There could be a harvest of millions of people involved even in what we do with this information that we are receiving and this challenge that we are listening to. And we pray, oh God, that the church in that part of the world will experience not just revival off in the future which some of them are praying for but personal revival now, brokenness, the cross, Jesus reigning and ruling in their lives and that we would be experiencing the same thing so that in no way will we miss what you have for us in our lives, in our family, in our teams and in our whole worldwide ministry. We thank you for the tremendous strategy meetings we were able to have right here a few weeks ago, reported so clearly in Roots and Branches. And we see what you are putting on our hearts there, dovetailing with, Lord, what you have put on my own heart even over these past days and the hearts of our brothers and sisters in Central and Eastern Europe. Lord, you alone can put all this together. You can give us the grace to battle through battle through when things are rough and tough. You can give us the grace and the strength to move heavily in this area and not neglect India and not neglect the Middle East and not neglect certain parts of Africa and Latin America. You can give us that extra mile mentality that big heartedness, that grace awakenedness so that this whole worldwide trust can dovetail together under the anointing and the gifting and the reality of your Holy Spirit. We pray this in much inadequacy and much weakness in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. ...of the Central Asia work. You can write these people care of any O.M. office. They'll forward the letter. You can also write to me care of Box 17 Bromley-Kent. That's George Verwer, Box 17 Bromley-Kent, BR13NR. I can send more literature. You can feel free to make copies of this tape or you can order extra copies. We'd appreciate your prayers for our tape ministry and especially Alec Brackett here in the U.K., John Wright in the U.S.A., and also Bill Webster in the audiovisual section down there, Peachtree Tyrone.