In this sermon, the speaker recounts his experiences visiting different assemblies and witnessing the poverty and struggles faced by the people. He emphasizes the importance of showing mercy and goodness towards those in need. The speaker also mentions the lack of unity among believers and the need for more assemblies to come together. He concludes by mentioning a difficult situation that the brethren asked him about, but does not provide further details.

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