In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of responding to the call of Jesus Christ. He mentions his heart being in Eastern Europe and expresses a desire to speak on the first three words of Matthew 28: "and Jesus came." The speaker shares a powerful story of two prisoners in Russia who found faith in Christ and endured harsh conditions. He then highlights the significance of Jesus' resurrection and the command to go into the world and share the message of salvation.

But if you give your name and address to any of the OMers here, they will pass it on to me and we'll put you on the list anyway. So you can get informed and pray. Then also, there is still a supply of this long prayer letter. It's not a book, it's a prayer letter called God Smuggler. And how I hated that title when the book came out. I didn't like it, it was not the title we gave to the book, but the publisher did it. I'm a missionary, I'm not a smuggler. But I just love to work in countries where missionary work is not allowed. And I love to take in Bibles in places where it is not allowed, and I guess that's why they call me a smuggler. But I'm really just a missionary. And the fact that the Lord has helped us to get in so many Bibles, tens of thousands, well I did over a hundred thousand myself, is only because so many people are praying. And with so many people here together tonight, praying, we will experience more miracles than ever. And if you get involved with Operation Mobilization, they in turn will experience more miracles than ever in their worldwide ministry. And we have a tremendous ministry. And this is a great time to live in and to be alive. One of the great Russian authors, by the name of Taras Kravchenko, wrote, Terrible to be in chains, to die in captivity, but worse, far worse, to sleep, to sleep, to sleep in liberty. And today God's call goes over the world for total mobilization. And here are so many hundreds of people. I don't know why you came, but hundreds of you are still not involved, have not been mobilized yet by our Master, because we have not responded. And tonight I want to speak to you from the Word of God, from a very, very well-known passage. Almost so well-known you could feel you like to apologize for taking those verses. And yet we will keep on speaking on that, until we have done what it says. And that is from Matthew 28, the last three verses. Matthew 28, the last three verses, where we read, And Jesus came. Now, by the way, if I were in Eastern Europe tonight, my heart is there, I tell you. My body and a part of my heart is in London today, but the rest of my heart is in Eastern Europe, in Siberia, in Central Asia, in Red China, in Vietnam. But I had to be here, the Lord told me to get here. If I were there, I would just speak on those first three words here, And Jesus came. Because this is our message for everyone in the world. And Jesus came. Jesus is here in this hall tonight. And when Jesus comes to you personally, and when he comes into your heart and into your life, then everything changes. And this is the tremendous thing about everyone who is in the business of preaching the gospel, that we can offer a new outlook, a new life, a new future, a new today for everyone to whom Jesus comes. And sure, that is a tremendous message in an atheistic country, where they close the churches, burn them down, kill the pastors, forbid mystery work, and make it impossible, almost, to import Bibles. What a tremendous message that we can say, And Jesus came. He came to me. And my, I could speak for hours on what he did in me and for me. And the change he wrought in my life. I'll never forget that moment when he came into my life, when on a dark attic room in that house in Holland, I got on my knees for the first time in my life, and I uttered my first prayer. I'm not going to say which prayer it is, because you can find it in the book, you see. And I don't want to overlap myself. Of course, you want to sell the books. And I have no time to repeat myself. What I've written, I will not tell. But it is tremendous when Jesus comes. I mean, you can say to a burned Russian, When Jesus comes into your heart, Ivan, things are going to be different from that moment on. What a message we have. What an incentive in this world of need, anxiety, despair, hatred, and near revolution and annihilation, to go to people and preach Jesus Christ. There is no greater privilege. And no one in the business of the gospel has to apologize for only preaching Christ, because this is the answer. I tell you, one day, I was in East Germany, preaching, giving out tracts, and I went to one of those communist literature stalls, kiosks, and I wanted to buy some picture postcards, which he happened to have, and all the rest was just communist literature. And as he gave me the cards, I handed him the Gospel of John. And he looked at it, and he looked at me, and he looked at the book, and he looked at me, and he said, Sir, this is what we need here? I said, That is why I came here? That's our business. Because that's what they need, and they know they need it. Ah, if only we knew that they need that, then we wouldn't be so upset about the Cold War that seems to start again when you throw out a handful of spies. Then we wouldn't be so upset when we read the paper today. I read it, with great interest, of course, because we know the answer. It's not spying, not British spying in Russia, not the Russians spying here. It's Jesus Christ. And Jesus came. He came to his group, to his disciples, and quite a number of other people, probably more than 500 at one time there together. And Jesus spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Now I want you to imagine this group standing there. I want you to be there, because Jesus had made a number of appointments with friends as he met them here and there at different occasions and said, Now one day you must meet me on that hill there in Galilee, and then I will meet you. I'm going to make some very important statements. So from every direction they come to that hill, and Jesus is just full with one thing. For about 40 days now he has been meeting with disciples at various occasions, and he has been speaking about one thing only, the kingdom of God. Ever since the moment when he rose from the dead on the first Easter day, after he had hung on that cross and bore the sin of the whole world upon himself, when he took sin out of the world and out of everyone who would commit himself to Jesus Christ, and when he then had gone through all that, when he had borne the grief and punishment that was ours by right, but he took it upon himself, when he had gone right into death, being buried three days and three nights in the grave, when he rose from the dead, his first words were, You must go into the world and tell. Tell that I am the mighty victor of Calvary. Tell everyone that they need no longer to be emboldened to the devil. I took the sin away. I dealt a death blow to the devil. Now there's going to be another, a bright future. The kingdom of God will come. Tell. Work on it. And then in all those meetings he said practically the same, how they had to do it, where to start, what to say, and here he is with this big group of people, and again he's going to say only one thing really, that they had to do a job. But you know Jesus is a master psychologist. He's not going to frustrate you and tell you, you've got to do it. No, Jesus will never say that. He will never tell us to do anything that's bigger than the power we have. There's never any need to be frustrated in the service of Jesus. If you don't have guts to take a hundred Bibles to Russia, God will not ask you to do it. And here the big problem that Jesus is facing, that he wants to tell them what they have to do, but he doesn't want to frustrate them. So he first made that tremendous statement, that I want you to get deep into your heart tonight, because this is going to unlock the door to greater horizons and a tremendous future, a future of victory in Jesus Christ. He looks at his disciples, and most of them are young, quite young, he looks in their eyes, he sees their eagerness, their willingness to get on with the job, if only they would know exactly what to do. And then he says, all authority, a better translation than the King James says here, with all power, all authority has been given to me and mine. Those are words, authority. Ah, the Jews knew about that. After all, just like the Dutch during the war, they were an occupied country. The enemy army was in. They didn't have any authority. The enemy had it. They were suppressed, a minority group, not at all popular, just Jews. Authority in the pierced hands of Jesus, all authority is given unto me in heaven, and I can see how they all are following Jesus. Yes, Lord. And they're nodding their heads piously. Yes, Lord, sure. You have all authority in heaven. We agree. We sing about it. We believe it. After all, Lord, we believe everything that we cannot check up on. We believe everything that's away in the far future. Everything for later we believe. No problem, Lord, with us. And they stand and they're startled because Jesus doesn't put a full stop there. He goes home with his sentence and he says, and full authority has been given to me here on earth. Then I see them straighten their backs and their eyes grow big. Their eyes are fastened on Jesus. You mean that, Lord? You have all authority in heaven and here on earth in Palestine, in Rome? And today Jesus says the same. If you can accept it, I have all authority, all. Now that makes me think. How much is then left for Peking? I mean, I'm not a politician, but I want to be practical. How much is left for Moscow? How much is left for London? How much is left for Washington? And I'm not going to speak about Amsterdam. We never had any. It's too small for that. But don't you think there's a lot of talk about superpowers? Of course you always think about China, Russia, and America, but when you read this verse, that all authority is in the pierced hands of Jesus, then where is a superpower in the world? It's nonsense. It doesn't exist. God certainly doesn't see it. God only sees people that need Jesus. God only sees the world, and He loves that world. But you see, before Jesus can trust anyone, and trust Him with a message so great, the message of the Kingdom of God, He must make sure that everyone who is involved knows this matter of authority, that it is in Jesus' hands, and not in the hands of man. And that makes all the difference today. That's the whole reason that we as a church in the West have written off with the stroke of a pen a third of the entire world population by saying, well, they live behind the Iron Curtain. You can't reach them. What a crime. What a terrible crime to write off a third of the world and deny them the entrance to the Word of God with the silly excuse that they live behind the Iron Curtain. After all, who invented that word, Iron Curtain? Do you know? It was Winston Churchill. It was not Stalin. It was Churchill. We have erected an Iron Curtain to make an excuse for not having to go into dangerous countries, for not having to risk our physical lives in order to bring salvation to the nations that are held captive under Communism and Atheism. And in doing this, we have enslaved our own nation with permissiveness and moral pollution, because we had no answer to the East Bloc, then we have no answer to our own country. And we cannot solve Britain's problems by wearing a badge, however noble it is. Good chance to start a conversation on the street anyway. But this is not the solution. The solution is that we begin to see that Jesus has all authority and that he says, go ye therefore. And this go ye at least means a change of location. That's why I'm glad this is an OM workshop. Whatever it has been before, I don't know. I forgot to ask. But I do know there's no future for this factory anyway except when it's a workshop in which people are prepared. You probably know from my book, if you've read it, that I used to work in a chocolate factory. So did a nice girl who is now my wife. But I tell you this, that chocolate factory of Ringer's, they're broke. But we are still in the business. See the difference? I pity poor Ringer's. No more Ringer's chocolate in Holland. But the gospel message is still going on. And only that which we invest in lives has value, not what we invest in dead buildings unless we can use those buildings as workshops. Jesus says that he has all authority. And the basic problem today, friends, is not political tensions, not whether we are Tory or Labour, not whether we are Democrat or Republican, not whether we live in East or West, not whether we are black or white. The main problem in the world today is this problem of authority. And the world, atheism, is defying the authority of God. That's basically atheism. It has nothing to do with communism. But there's one thing to defy the authority of God, and I've seen them do it on the Red Square. I have a slide where you see thousands of people from the Red Square in Moscow with their fists raised and extreme fanaticism on their faces. It looks demonic. And you see that picture, you shiver with fear. That's hatred, defying God. And what are we doing? Have we accepted the full authority of Jesus Christ over our personal lives, over our family life, over our church life, in our community, and then at large in our country? This is our main problem. And this will be the problem all over. It's when Jesus comes on the scene and he says, The kingdom of God has now come. Because it's in him. And if Jesus Christ lives in us, then the kingdom of God is coming wherever you come. But my, if we stay away from the atheist countries, how will the kingdom of God ever break through there? If we are filled with fear and timidity, if we have no message for the atheist bloc, which we call communistic, but it is a wrong word, then what message do we have in our own country? And then we should not be surprised that our own country goes to pieces. Because we do not fully accept the authority of Jesus Christ, so in one part of the world they are defying his authority, and we are not accepting it. Now what's the difference really? In both cases there will be no kingdom of God, but the manifestations of the kingdom of God. Righteousness, peace, and joy, these are the three ingredients of the kingdom of God, according to the letter to the Romans. Jesus says, I have all authority. Therefore you can go. Therefore you can do it. What? Go therefore into all the world. Preach the gospel to every creature. And again, here is the clash. We say, Lord, we can't do it. They won't allow us. Of course not. And Jesus knew it. Again, when he looked those disciples in their eyes, and he saw those wonderful young people, by saying, and restating it later in Acts 1.8, you will receive power, and the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and on the outermost parts of the world. When saying it, he knew that where they would begin in Jerusalem, there they would be arrested, beaten, imprisoned. James would be killed. Peter, John, James in prison. Stephen stoned. Jesus knew it. But that did not change anything in his position of having all authority, including in Jerusalem, because Jesus is speaking about something totally different. When we think about power or authority, we think of the authority influence that our foreign embassy in Moscow has, in case they arrest me with a load of Bibles. And Jesus says, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die at the bides alone, brings forth no fruit. Jesus says, come, follow me. Now where did Jesus go? To the cross. We have a very popular chorus in Britain, come and dine, the master calls, come and dine. And I so often think of that great German hero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died in Hitler's camp in, I think, April 1945, just before the war finished in Berlin. And one of his great sayings is, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. That's the difference. And unless we get to know this Jesus Christ, who has all authority, and who is establishing his kingdom of righteousness here on earth, and unless we see that in order to establish that kingdom here, we have to lay down our lives in the most literal sense of the word, unless we really get to know that Jesus Christ, we'll never make any impact on the world. Never. We must get to know that Jesus. This is far more than just a sweet Savior that we were singing about when we were in Sunday school. It's a rugged Jesus, who can be so hard. You say, all right, if you first want to bury your father, you cannot follow me. Let the dead bury the dead. If you want to follow me, all right, but then take up your cross and follow me daily. Foxes have holes. Birds have nests. The Son of Man has nothing. Not even a stone to put his tired head on. You follow me. This is the way to the cross. The utter self-denial. And I have been scared when I traveled in Red China, and I saw how they still worship those boys that died in the Korean War. You know that China lost one million boys in the Korean War. But they sure beat the Americans, by the way. And they pushed them right back halfway Korea, although the Americans were right there at the Chinese border. At the cost of one million boys, they pushed the Americans back. And they were marching, eight abreast, right into the deadly American machine guns. They were just mowed down by the thousands. And as they marched, those Chinese boys, on their back they had pinned sheets of paper with the thoughts of Mao, so that the guy marching behind him, right into death, to the very latest breath, could still recite the sayings of Mao. That's dedication. That's extreme dedication that's conquering the world today. And we must get to know a Jesus, who first of all becomes our Savior, who takes away our sin, who gives us new life, and then says, I want you to follow me. Where do you go, Lord? Jesus goes there where there are people. Always. I don't say Jesus goes to church. Church is a hospital for the sinners, not a rest home for the saints. If Jesus goes to church, he's going to meet sinners there. But since there are more sinners outside the church, it's very likely that Jesus is outside the church too. He goes to the masses of India, 560 million. He wants to go to Red China with 800 million. Siberia with 50 million people already. Central Asia, where I have traveled widely, 17 million Muslims, they've never had to miss me there. And then Soviet Union, European part, 200 million. Churches close. And I said this afternoon, there are hundreds of Baptists today in prison. If you're a member of the Baptist church, you better ask your pastor to pray. There are well over 1,000 Pentecostal young people in prison today in Russia alone. If you're a member of the full gospel church, you better ask your pastor to pray. And if you're not a member of those two churches, you better ask your pastor to pray for the church of Christ. Because they are suffering, and they are our brothers, our sisters. What are we doing for them? We must get to know Jesus as he really is. We must get to know a Jesus who can solve our own problems simply because he has all authority. And by accepting Christ Jesus, he shares his authority with us so that the devil has no more power over us and sin shall no longer reign over us. That's the scriptural position. You can never be part of the solution as long as you are still part of the problem. Unless you get to know Jesus Christ who solves your problem in his authority, you can never go out and defy the devil's authority or power over mankind. God doesn't just send us out to give a piece of paper to people and leave the decision to them. God sends us out to present the gospel in such a clear way that every human being is obliged to make a moral decision for or against Christ. Then he has heard the gospel. Not when he only has heard the gospel tract or even part of the Bible. How can we ever penetrate if we are still afraid? And of course every fear that we have for human systems or political systems is an indication that we have still not accepted the authority of Jesus Christ. I want to make it very clear tonight to you, to myself, that as long as we still talk about closed borders, we have not understood anything about the authority of Jesus Christ. And as long as we still talk about closed doors, we still have not understood the great commission which Jesus Christ is giving here. That's why our prayer today is called Open Doors, because there are no closed doors. This afternoon in that great gathering of O-Emers, I have challenged them to name me one country where they cannot get in as a messenger for Jesus Christ. And not one has come to me. Because they all agree with me, you can today go to every country in the world as a dedicated Christian, providing you are willing to go in and not to come out. Well, that's just what Jesus did. Did Jesus get out of this world? No, they crucified him. He did not get out. Did any of the apostles get out? Occasionally some made their way back to Jerusalem, but eventually all the apostles died as martyrs on the mission field. Beheaded, crucified, strangled, stripped, anything, but they all died as martyrs. Why? Because they followed Jesus Christ, who knew that it was impossible to establish the kingdom of God except people would be willing to lay down their lives. And that is the time in which we live today. I have no other message. I have seen people die. I have traveled all over Vietnam. I've seen people die for something which the world will never understand. I've seen communists die, and they know why they died. They are so fully dedicated. And it is Chairman Mao who said, in one of the statements that I do agree with, that it is not the weapons that decide the outcome of war, but the people that carry the weapons. Now, what are the weapons that God has? Or rather, what are the tools that the New Testament describes? Do they have any amplifying systems, printing presses? What do they have? Nothing but man. Man that were willing to lay down their lives for the brethren. People that were willing to put their lives constantly in jeopardy, if only by doing so they could reach the other tribes, the other nations, the other people. A friend of mine, the youth leader of the underground church in Ukraine, his name is Bondarenko. He's been in and out of prison. Very famous preacher, still a young man. And a couple of years ago he came out of prison again. So I rushed off to Russia with a lot of financial help to get his youth movement started again. And then I heard a wonderful story because a few months later he got married. Some of our friends were there and they took a whole series of color slides, which I have at home and I treasure greatly. But that last time when he was in prison, or back in prison, as he walked into the prison again, he was greeted with shouts of joy from the other prisoners. And they said, Bondarenko, when you were away, we prayed to God that you would come back. Now that's a terrible prayer. They said, because when you were in there, we had no one to teach you the word of God. And you had led us to Christ, but we didn't know enough yet about the Bible. So we prayed that you would come back and now you're back. Praise God. Well, I don't know what he thought. He probably agreed, though. And he started witnessing again. And he was thrown in a cell with a terrible criminal who was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. A real criminal. A huge fellow and a very bad boy. It didn't take long and they both had a prayer meeting. And they started singing hymns, because in no time Bondarenko led him to Christ. So they were both sent to another cell, unheated, with no bed for quite a long period in a Russian winter. That was terrible. And for about two or three days they kept alive by just walking in that little cell, keeping warm. But then they got so tired and exhausted, they got hardly any food, they said, well now we have to lay down. So the big one laid himself on the floor and he said, now Bondarenko, you lay on top of me. Try to keep each other warm. And they made it. They stayed alive. Then a couple of years ago Bondarenko was released. A few months later this big fellow was released, because he had finished his 15 years. Then in August Bondarenko got married. And there were 2,000 people in the village at his wedding service, which of course took place in the open air. That was overdoing it, because they were singing all day. And the police sure didn't like that. And I have those slides, those photos, and the nicest is where you see Bondarenko with his bride, beautiful girl in white, and behind him the best man. Very big fellow. Beautiful. Now what if Bondarenko had not been willing to go back to prison? You see what I want to say? There are people everywhere. And we do not call it a disaster when a person has to go to prison for his faith, because it only means that God has a job to do for him in prison. And it's the easiest thing to keep out of prison. But just do like you and me. We never go to prison, do we? No. Of course not. Why not? That's what they ask. One day I was having a big campaign in the Baptist churches in Budapest, in Hungary, every night in another church because of police and the danger. We never announced the next meeting, but next evening it was overcrowded again. And one evening we went to the home of one of the leading pastors, a dozen or so of us, and we had good fellowship. And then in came a good friend of mine, and by the way that story I have related in this issue of Open Doors, a Baptist pastor from Romania. By the way, Romania right now is under terrific pressure. The believers complain it is turning into another China. You better pray for Romania. This news I got three days ago, straight from Romania. He walked in, he had been in prison a number of times, and I'd known him throughout the years. And as we had our fellowship around the Word of God, he said to me, Brother Andrew, are there any pastors in Holland in prison? Well, I didn't have to think about that because I figured if there was any, it was not a good one anyway. So I might as well say no. No one, none of us. Well, he looked and then he said, why not? I said, well, why should we be in prison? We can do all we want. We can print Bibles, sell them, give them away, publish Christian books, give them away, sell them, give out tracts, preach in the churches, in the houses, the street corners, the market squares. We don't do it, but I mean, we could if we want to. Anything we want to, we can do. And as I was explaining that, I saw that I was losing my audience. He couldn't follow me. I was speaking from another world, as she was. And then he said with his soft voice, But then, Andrew, what do you do with 2 Timothy 3.12? I had to confess my ignorance of the Scriptures. I had to look it up, as much as you would. And then I read to myself, and I blushed, because there I read, And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And I knew we in Holland were not suffering persecution. Maybe one or two cases where people are a bit discriminated against because of their faith in Christ, or maybe because of their extremism or fanaticism, or their stress upon particular doctrines. But for Jesus, I don't know, I doubt. And I read it again. It took a long time before I dared to look up. And I said to him, Carl, we do nothing with this verse. And I thought in my heart, and there are so many other verses we do nothing with, like this one that I'm speaking of tonight. Go into all the world, we don't do it. Because it's not convenient to us. And we only choose to do the things that are convenient. But we've lost that sense of soldiership, of true followership, where the word of God says that we must please him who has chosen us. But we only choose that which pleases us. And that's the whole problem in Britain, as far as I'm concerned, and in Holland, too, and in the whole so-called free world. I don't believe in the free world. I believe in that place there in East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, where in the morning, so often we had an early morning prayer meeting with 2,000 believers. And never anywhere in Holland have I been to an early morning prayer meeting with 2,000 believers. Not that it is a distance from the home to the prayer meeting. No, it's a distance from the bed to the floor. But it's a problem all the same. It's not living under the authority of Jesus. And therefore we don't have any authority. We don't accept his authority. Just this afternoon I was reading in the Scriptures about that centurion who had a sick, dying son. He said, Jesus, he is sick. He said, I will come. He said, no, you don't have to come. Speak a word. He said, because I am a man under authority. And I say to my soldiers, go, and they go, and to him, come, and he comes. But he first said, and this is very significant, I am a man also under authority. And therefore I can exercise authority. Because I accept authority. And no one in any field, whether it be for you as parents with your children, or you teachers with your pupils, or you professors with your students, or you OM team leaders with your team members, you can never exert any influence or authority if you do not accept authority. And authority comes from the pierced hands of Jesus. And I believe in a Jesus who today is still on the throne of the universe. I do not believe in political calamities, even if the Russians would come to Britain. I still believe in the love of God. And I say they come here because we didn't go to them. So you better stockpile some Russian Bibles in your home. They may come for it one day, I mean that. We've seen it in Czechoslovakia. It's just over three years ago, that fateful day when we saw on television how the Russian army suddenly marched into Czechoslovakia, 21st of August, 1968. Do you remember that day? I do. I saw it happen. And I didn't need much time. I quickly loaded my car with Russian Bibles and Czech Gospels and tracts. And in one day I drove to the border, the Czech border. I knew what I had to do. It had been a while since I had been in Russia and now they were meeting me halfway. What a challenge. Shouldn't I go the other half? I sure did. It was a funny situation though. I came at the Czech border. Inside was chaos and a line of at least two miles long of cars were waiting at the border and thousands of people, tourists, business people and Czechs, waiting to get out. And I was the only car going in. Well, that was it. The custom officer looked at my passport and he looked at me. And with this very sad face he said, Do you know what's happening in our country? I said, Sure sir, I know it. And do you still want to go in? I said, This is the reason that I want to go in. Well, he didn't understand that. I didn't bother to explain either. He sent my passport, waved me through with my load of Bibles, never checked up. A little further I was stopped by the Russians, only five miles further. On the left and the right the fields, tanks, hundreds of them. Two big tanks on the road, one on that side, one on the other side. The big guns pointing toward my very, very, very tiny little Volkswagen, I mean station wagon. I thought it was a big one until that moment. Well, it was not a very pleasant feeling, but I prayed my smuggler's prayer. I said, Lord Jesus, you've made so many blind eyes to see when you were on earth. Sure it's the same to you to make those seeing eyes blind. Don't let me get caught here. I want to go further. So the Lord did. And no problem. They waved me through after a while. And when I arrived there in Prague, saw very, very depressed people there. And on that first Sunday of the Russian occupation, I preached in the churches in Prague. Because more teams had come, I had phoned them. And I preached in the same church where I preached in October 55. And still had the same interpreter too. And I've never seen such a depressed group of people in any church. Especially when the tanks were passing through the street and when the shooting was on. They were shaking with fear. And I was preaching from the Word of God. And I said, if we do not go to the heathen, the heathen will come to us. And I knew I was speaking about the Russians. And I explained to them in rather camouflage terms that when under Dubček they had their so-called springtime for at least six months, they never went to Russia with the gospel. They could have done it because they were still in the communist bloc. Know what did they do? They came to the West. Germany, Holland, Britain. They bought transistor radios, tape recorders, new clothes, cars that they could afford. They just did what you and I always do. Enjoy our liberty. With no second thought. Just enjoy it as long as it lasts. Everybody does it. Then all of a sudden the Russians clamped down on their country. Why on theirs? Why not on ours? I have no answer. And as I was preaching, and I explained this, I saw that God brought conviction upon them. They saw that they had failed, they had sinned because this was a day of great opportunity and they held their peace. They didn't utilize that wonderful opportunity. They stayed in, although they also had in their Bible, Go ye therefore and teach all nations. And now the Russians were in the country. Finished. Gone their liberty. Shooting. Stalinism would come back. It is back today. After the church service they came to me. They grabbed my hand and they had tears. They said, oh Andrew, if only we could give Bibles to those Russian soldiers. But we don't have any. I said, well why do you think I came? Oh, you have any? They said, yes. So I piled them up on the desk and I took them. They went, piles of Russian Bibles. They took them. Can you imagine those Iranians there? The population even refused them water. They were almost starving, those poor boys. The Czechs hated them. And all of a sudden a man comes with a big smile and says, would you like to have a Bible? Sure. They took them. They took them home. And later we got letters from their parents thanking us that we had given the son a Bible while he was occupying Czechoslovakia. And that was not the most important thing. The most important is that the Czech believers got the victory. They saw that this was not a political calamity, but this was love in action. God's love in action. For God so loved the world, that included Russia, that if we do not go to the Russians, he will allow the Russians to come to us. So much does he love them. That's great love. Do you have that love in your heart? You better get some Russian Bibles in your home. Or, better still, take them and go to Russia. We just this week finished printing 10,000 from living letters, the epistles of the Romans in modern Russian. Beautiful pictures. The first time, to my knowledge, that the word of God has been published in modern Russian. I've never seen anything like it in Russia. Kenneth Taylor's translation. You can come, take them. If not, you better stockpile them in your home. Because if we do not go to the heathen, the heathen will come to us. God said, go heathen. And God tells us to go to Red China too. And I think God must have a tremendous love for China, else he would not have made so many Chinese, a quarter of the world population. He must have far more love for them than for us. But do we have love for them? Or, or is something going to happen that they are planning right now? You know Jeffrey Boole's book, When Iron Gates Yield? Jeffrey is a good friend of mine, and I don't know whether it's in his book or whether he told me personally. But then after three years in Chinese communist prison, under constant brainwashing, they suddenly, without explanation, released him and let him go out to Hong Kong. The last words were, we will take up your case again as soon as we occupy Great Britain. And they meant it. You see, this is the situation. Accept the authority of Jesus Christ, and that will bring about a revolution in our own country. And a revolution is what we need. A revolution of love, or we'll have a revolution of hatred, one of the two. We'll have revival or we'll have riot, one of the two. And I have to close now. I want to quote from a book written by George Young, who still lives somewhere in Scotland. His book is printed in 1948 in London. It's called The Living Christ in Modern China. And he says there in his book, the evangelism that we practice must be that healthy, balanced evangelism of Jesus, which seeks the salvation of the whole man, mind, body, and soul. The revival that we pray for must be spiritual and social. It must go deep in cleansing the moral life. Well, we all agree, don't we? That's why we had our Festival of Light. It must go deep in cleansing the moral life and wide in transforming the social and economic life of our nation. It must be a revival of apostolic preaching that is in the authority of Jesus. Nothing stopped them because nothing could stop them. Of apostolic preaching and of apostolic practicing of Christianity. It is my deep personal conviction that the answer to the challenge of communism is a rebirth of apostolic Christianity with a flaming evangelism and a kingdom of God community life which will be more revolutionary than that of the communists. And I tell you tonight, this is gloriously possible. If you and I, we as a Church of Christ worldwide, accept the authority of Jesus Christ, then nothing can stop us. Then we will have that revival that goes so deep that it cleanses the moral life of our nation. Then we have the answer to the challenge of communism because communism is a tremendous challenge, especially to the developing nations. And our morally corrupt society has no challenge nor appeal whatsoever to the developing nations. But revival, a revived Christianity does have it. Are you willing to be touched by God tonight? Touched so far, so deep, that you get away from this place where Jesus Christ is your Lord, living from now on under the full authority of Jesus. That you go when he says go. You stay when you have to stay. You speak when you must speak. You give when you must give. You smuggle when you must smuggle. But you do it because he tells you to. Then the kingdom of God will have come. Then. Amen. Let's unite in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we believe that you sent your servant into our midst. Not that we could just say that we've heard another message or that we've heard Brother Andrew, but that you could say something to us. We don't believe, Lord, that any of us are here by accident tonight. We pray, Lord, that you would help each one of us know what you want us to do, where you want each one of us to go, what part each one of us should play in this great task of reaching every nation. O Lord, melt our hearts. Bless our brother as he goes back to more urgent tasks than being here in our midst. To people who do not have the opportunities that we have. For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.