In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of discipleship, spiritual reality, and missions in the context of the local church. He mentions a book on discipleship written by an unusual man from New Zealand and highlights the interconnectedness of various aspects of Christian life, such as Sunday school and prayer meetings. The speaker also mentions a set of prayer cards for 52 needy nations, which have been highly esteemed by Christian leaders. The sermon focuses on the need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the urgency of accepting Him as Savior.

O Lord our God, we do thank you that we have this quiet place to seek your face and to worship you and to open your word. We thank you for what you're doing around the world through many different movements and through your servants. And we just believe that tonight it has been ordained of you that we're together here. This is not an accident, it's not a coincidence, but it is of your divine arrangement that we are together tonight. We give you the praise, we give you the glory. Speak, O Lord, and give us obedient hearts, lest the very truth we receive turn to poison in our spiritual bloodstream, and we find ourselves on the shelf instead of in the spiritual warfare where we belong. We thank you, Lord, for answers to prayer. We pray for Toccoa Falls Bible College that is experiencing this enormous tragedy of this huge flood. We pray for the loved ones of those who have perished in the flood and for others who are in special need at this time there in Georgia. We pray for those that perhaps would be at this meeting but cannot come, minister to them perhaps through Christian literature. We pray for the pastor. We pray, Lord, that surely we may glorify you tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Our desire in every meeting, I believe, is to glorify the Lord, and that's what we want to do even as we share from His Word. Our hearts are somewhat grieved tonight as we know of this tragedy in Toccoa Falls where quite a few Bible school students living in trailers have perished in this flood when the dam broke, I believe yesterday, there in Georgia. Some of you perhaps have heard about that on the radio. And we want to be upholding them in prayer. And as I was talking to someone just about an hour or two ago, it hit me how we tend to immediately think, wow, some of God's people have died. And yet the thing that should hit us is not that perhaps some brother or sister has died in this flood, but that some died in this flood who did not know the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know, in these days that we live in, we are just reminded of how quick life can pass. And I just want to say this as someone from a non-Christian background. I wasn't reared in a Christian home. My mother and father came to Christ after I did. But if you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior tonight, you know, don't take any chances. The greatest slaughterhouse in the world, the American highways. You have no guarantee you'll ever even get home. Four of my best friends just two years ago, around this time of the year, gone. A drunken truck driver hit them. Three of them never woke up. One of them woke up and then died later. Life is short. Don't fool around. We're not here tonight to just preach the gospel, but I felt there may be someone who perhaps the Lord could touch. And it would be wonderful to talk to you if you don't know Christ personally. My grandfather actually was an atheist from the Netherlands. My father wasn't a Christian, even though he became a deacon in a local church that didn't preach the gospel. The greatest enemy of the gospel in America today is religion, good old Protestant religion, of the Christ-denying, Bible-denying variety. And I received the gospel of John through the nail as a young person, and I read it, and it began to speak to my heart. And then a man named Billy Graham came to New York City for one night, and I heard the gospel for the first time, and was born again in the Spirit of God. Before that I thought, oh, this kind of thing is all just an emotional thing. But it's been 22 years since I had that experience. It's hardly an emotion. Twenty-two years is a long time for any emotion to last. It's reality. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. That night as I went away from Madison Square Garden, it just seemed the most logical thing in the world was to tell others. And so I began telling others. I never wanted to start any kind of an organization, that's for sure. I wasn't even sure what I was doing most of the time. I just began to share Christ in my high school. I found out later that the lady who really had prayed me into the kingdom had been praying for that high school for 15 years. Surveilling, agonizing in prayer. A woman of prayer. Unknown woman. No wonder within the next year or two, over 200 in that ungodly high school near New York City surrendered their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ. And born out of that woman's prayers was a little movement known as Send the Light, a hymn I believe you were just playing, which later in Europe, where it really took root, became known as Operation Mobilization. You see, that woman not only prayed that people would be saved in that high school, but she prayed that from that school people would go out all over the world witnessing for Jesus Christ. Well, this is an insane prayer to pray for a half-drunken ungodly high school across the George Washington Bridge. You might pray that for a Bible school. Even that would take faith, the way the Bible schools are managing to put out so few missionary recruits. But she prayed this for an ungodly high school. And I, just in God's providence, was one of the vessels that was saved in that move of His Spirit in that high school. I went off to college. I met another brother who was saved in answer to prayer. We began to pray together. And by six months or ten months later, we found ourselves crossing the Mexican border to expose ourselves to a foreign country, to visit with missionaries, to see, is there anything we as young people can do? We were petrified as just teens, 19 and 20 years of age. But as we got into Mexico, we saw there was something we could do. Though we weren't yet trained. Though my Spanish was so bad that no one seemed to understand it. Though we were frightened. Missionaries welcomed us. We found out we could give out literature. We found out that we could play gospel recordings. We found out that people got converted through our ministry. And so, the next summer, five of us went down. And the next Christmas, a dozen or two dozen went down. And that was the birth of what today is known all over the world as Operation Mobilization. I can't give you a history lesson tonight, but there are now 1,000 of us full-time moving in about 100 nations, though we're only permanently based in about 25 nations. The Lord especially broke through in 1962 and 63 when in sheer answer to prayer, with almost no publicity, God gave us almost 2,000 Europeans in a situation 10 times more difficult than America to get recruits. He raised up this army of Europeans and brought to pass an invasion of France and Italy and Spain and many other European countries. This spilled over into the communist lands. It spilled over into the Middle East. Soon a movement was born in India, and today there are 200 full-time workers in India. There are 150 laboring in the Middle East, the largest number we've ever had in the history of our work, counting the Muslim push in Bangladesh. It was in about 1964, after some really big efforts in Europe where we distributed about 30 million pieces of Christian literature, though our main work is not literature but rather man-to-man discipling and small group discipling. But as we came back from that crusade, we thought, how can we move in a heavier way into Asia, into India, into the Middle East? By that time we had a fleet of 125 old vehicles. Most of them we purchased for less than $100. God brought mechanics willing to work with our hands. They repaired and rebuilt the engines, painted the old trucks, many of them large trucks, could carry 2, 3 ton of literature and 15 or 20 people. And how can we do this in Asia? We looked at the highways and we looked, as you can see on this map, and wherever we looked we saw water. It came to the mind of a few of us, why not a ship? Why not an ocean-going ship that could carry 20 or 30 vehicles, carry 100 or 200 people, carry 100, 200 tons of literature and spearhead an invasion anywhere in the world as we had seen God do in Europe in which already thousands had professed faith in Jesus Christ. In France alone 13 churches had been born through that operation. It wasn't just a matter of scattering literature or witnessing in the summer. This led to a year-round program in which people who learned the language planted churches and engaged in evangelism in depth. And so we asked God for an ocean-going ship. This seemed insane. We wrote to various people in the shipping world. They said it's impossible. They wrote us pages on how sophisticated a shipping operation has to be, the documents you need. We heard of other problems like one mission in America that tried a ship and it didn't work. The Lord kept this burden on our hearts. We kept praying. For two years we saw nothing. Not even one seaman joined us. At the end of two years, God gave us a captain, a man of faith, though he was destined never to sail on the ship. He became the director of our work in the British Isles instead as God raised up other captains. And the Lord brought into being a ship called the ship Lagos. It was a historical day when we signed that contract, seven years ago last month. It is a historical night tonight as tomorrow morning we will sign a contract for a second ship two to three times the size of the MV Lagos. A ship of 6,800 tons gross. A ship that can house 500 people, that can carry 300 tons of literature and that can move an army into any nation of the world, perhaps with the exception of a few countries. I've been on the phone to Germany all week as this has been such a frightening event. The signing of this contract. We have then four weeks to get our money down to Italy. We're buying the ship from a large Italian shipping company. It has been a first class cruise liner up until last week. We moved our men into the ship last week. She's lying in Genoa. One of the oldest ships in the world. That's why most people buying ships won't even go past looking at it on paper. We were crazy enough to investigate the ship and to discover that though it was built in 1914, the engines are 1970. The inside is 1950. And the steel built in Virginia is better than ships turned out in the 50s and the 60s. And so for $770,000 we're buying a ship that would cost between $10 and $15 million to build today. And it will do anything a new ship will do, especially with 1970 medium speed, 17 knot Fiat engines. The air conditioning alone, if we were to put it into a ship that size, would cost $300,000 and the scrap value is $500,000. So you can figure that we're getting a pretty good bargain in the way of a ship. You are the first church to hear this news anywhere in the United States. We are a strange little movement that doesn't believe in publicity. We only believe in being led by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads us to 10 men. He'll do more through those 10 than He'll do through 100,000 who may hear a blurb on television or through wasted propaganda sent out through the post. That's why many of you perhaps have hardly even heard of this work. Wherever I go in the United States they say, I've never heard of this work. Many people have never heard of the ship. I think you have heard here because of Jim Lamb who has been out with us. But we would ask you to take this burden, which very few people know about, the signing of the contract tomorrow, the moving of our men into the ship to make sure not too much gets stolen, the taking of the ship up to northern Germany where we'll have about $200,000 worth of repairs, which is quite normal when you take over a ship of this age. We would really ask you as the first church that I've spoken to about this. I'm hardly ever in the United States. In fact, it is intensely frustrating to know where I'm supposed to go on a Sunday. And how God brought me here I'm still trying to figure out. And I think you can thank a couple of stubborn saints and perhaps the Holy Spirit. I'm supposed to be speaking at Houghton College. I was booked to speak this morning and this evening at Houghton College where I've been speaking to 1,200 students twice a day for a week. When the flags came waving from this part of the world I decided to phone Houghton College and get out of that evening meeting. And my dear brother, the director of our work in India, is taking the meeting there tonight. And I got a very interesting airplane. One of the smallest planes I've ever flown on from a place called Bradford, Virginia. No, Pennsylvania. And I managed to get here for this meeting. Now, I'm ashamed of my little book exhibition because I could only bring a few books. We sold so many books at Houghton College we didn't have many left. Then I had to bring them on this plane. I was afraid the plane might not even get off the runway after I loaded the books. So, we have just a few books on display. For those of you who don't know anything about OM, we believe in Christian literature. We believe the power through print is as significant as the power through preaching. You know, John Wesley believed that. He was criticized all over the world, especially Britain, for always pushing books from the pulpit. Later on the Encyclopedia Britannica said, no man in the 18th century did more to get people reading Christian books than John Wesley. We cannot even imagine how God is using Christian books. And this is why when we have an opportunity for a meeting like this, we're limited in our time, we bring books. That you can take these books not just for yourself, we're little babes in Christ, we're just born again, we think mainly of ourself. What do I need? Me, me, me, me, my, my, my, my. But as we grow up in the Lord, we think of others. We think of someone we might be able to give a book to. And you know, a vast percentage of Christians in this country are the most Christian evangelized nation in the world. You may not think that. Because most of you have never studied the statistics. But if statistics mean anything and we know they can lie, we are the most Christian evangelized nation in the world. Now we've still got a long way to go. But if I could take you to the other 50 countries I've been in, you'd probably short circuit just thinking about it. Because I have been in nations where there are no believers. Not one single believer. I have been in quite a few countries where there is no church. There is no church. I have been in many more countries where we have less believers than we have believers sitting in this one church tonight. And I live in England where we are probably the third or the fourth most Christian evangelized country in the world. And we only get 5% of the nation in church on Sunday compared to 50% in America. And even if we shoveled off 70% of those as liberals or heretics depending on your theology, we still have an awful lot of people. And this is a burden. And yet with all those Christians, many of them have never read the most basic Christian books. And I believe that's one of the reasons that so many of them are spiritual midgets who have never grown. I believe many of our pastors in this nation, next week I go to speak at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, which is going to be an interesting experience. I believe that many of our pastors are spiritual midgets. And if we have spiritual midgets being churned out of our seminaries like cookies coming off a cutting machine, then what kind of saints are they going to produce in return? And I believe the greatest need is to get into some of these deep Christian books, the writings of men like Tozer, and to see where we have fallen short of the glory of God, and then to do something about it. Let me recommend very quickly some books I'd like you to read. Tozer is the first. The Pursuit of God. Gems from Tozer. We published this one ourself. To introduce people to Tozer, we took quotations from 20 of his other books and put them in this one book. Like you can get for 50 cents or 75 cents. So try to get those two books. If you don't have money, you see Jim Lamb. Jim Lamb, he's in charge of finance. He'll collect the money later on. Another great book on missions. Dick Hillis. Dick Hillis. Is there really only one way? What a powerful book that is. Very important for missions. A new book about Muslims. We are so ignorant about Muslims, and yet one out of every seven people in the world is a Muslim. Do you know how many hundreds, perhaps thousands of Muslims there are in this state? I don't know so much about Ohio. I think I'm in Ohio. Sometimes I get my countries mixed up, but usually I get the right state. But in Michigan there are thousands and thousands of Arabs. Someone said there's 200 Iranians at Akron University. We need to know what Muslims believe. And here's a new book. It used to be a dollar or two dollars. We published it for 50 cents. Reaching Muslims Today. There's another book. In case we run out of that one. Sharing Your Faith with a Muslim. So helpful. This kind of book to understand what Muslims believe. And then there's a book by a man named Leonard Ravenhill. Now you may not agree with all of his theology. Actually he and I are not exact same theology. But this book is anointed. Why Revival Theories is one of the most anointed books I've read in 23 years, and I probably started, I haven't finished, but I certainly started at least 2,000 books. Maybe finished 500 of them. I would just say this is one of the most anointed books I've ever read. We just printed a special edition for African Asia of 50,000 copies. I just talked to the printer tonight. Some of you have heard of Roy Hession. How many have ever heard of Roy Hession? Calvary Road. Good. This is a Christian classic in 35 languages. They probably read more Christian books in the Congo than we do in America. I don't know. But this is a classic, and this is his recent book on the problem of sexual immorality in the church. Not the liberal church, the evangelical church. Rather unusual subject, isn't it, for a Christian book? One of the most needed books in our day. Because one of the greatest problems in the evangelical church is the invasion of impurity. We don't talk about it much. It just goes on. It just goes on. And here's a man who after 40 or 50 years in ministry has finally written a book on repentance on this subject of morality. So take advantage of these great books. You'll get more from these books than you ever will from me in our little time together tonight. And I believe it could be an enormous blessing in your life. This is a map of the world. You can get one of these as well. These are special for your home. You hang this over the front of your television. This map. And you use it for prayer and intercession. And if we spend a little more time praying and a little less time watching some of the nonsense that comes through the tube, I believe that we might grow a little more in maturity in Jesus Christ. So take advantage of that map. We publish them ourselves. And this little set of prayer cards is often useful to have with a map. This little set of cards, you have 52 of the most needy nations in the world. Now I know you've had a tremendous missions emphasis here over the past weeks. And actually my first burden tonight is not missions. My first burden tonight is reality. And the subject, if you take notes, you want a title for this little talk, you can call it reality in Jesus Christ. I think there's a great danger of separating missions from reality. Separating missions from discipleship. I was so thrilled, our brother, your assistant pastor, reading that book by Winky Prattney. I was just with him. An unusual man from New Zealand. He's written a book on discipleship. But I think all of this is one. Discipleship, spiritual emphasis, world missions, local church, the Sunday school, a prayer meeting, it's all one. And the way I love to summarize it is, spiritual reality in Jesus Christ. These cards will give you some facts that I haven't got time to give you tonight. 52 of the most needy nations in the world. And as you read these cards, and they have prayer requests on the back of each card, a little map on each card, you'll be amazed. We have never printed anything that Christian leaders have so highly esteemed in terms of just tools for prayer as this little set of cards. So take advantage of them. And I think if you get them together with a map, we often give them at a special price. There's a lot of free literature there on the table about different aspects of our work. It happened in India. There's this little book about India that we're giving free. To cut down on the number, we're giving it free to anyone who buys any other book. There's also cassette tapes. If something I say tonight seems to minister to you, and I know different people are ministered to by different people, I may not minister much to some of you. You can just open your Bible and midway through my sermon, memorize the word. It won't bother me. Someone else will minister to you, maybe next week. But if somehow, if some of the things I say get on your wavelength and you want more, since it's unlikely I'll be back here for another decade, I'm hardly ever in the United States, there are some cassette tapes that are available. Let's now look in the Bible and read the Word of God. And I'm here tonight because I believe this book is the Word of God. Otherwise, there's no hope, there's no sense. I certainly wouldn't be here. I want you to look, first of all, at Acts 1, verse 8. Acts 1, verse 8. I was so thrilled when I heard about this church because I heard that sometimes the pastor, he goes on past a certain time preaching. Or maybe I have the wrong church. But if you're a clock conscious, you may get a little upset tonight. But I will try to limit myself. I remember Leonard Ravenhill preaching and he's the kind that goes really long. He was preaching at Asbury College and the bells rang to go back to class. He went on another hour. One time he was preaching and he said, Oh dear, I forgot my watch. You know, preparing the way for a long message. One of the elders popped up and says, Mr. Ravenhill, you don't need a watch, you need a calendar. But, I don't want to come here just with a little challenge and throw out a few exhortations. I want us to look into the Word of God. I want us to look at the world tonight. I believe we are living in a disaster area. I believe what's happening in Toccoa Falls is indicative of what's happening throughout the entire universe. The whole world tonight. Tozer said, The whole world is an emergency area. Nothing is right nor will be right until put right by the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. I believe that as evangelical Bible believing people we must take our faith absolutely serious. Otherwise we should clear out and admit we're just hypocrites. For people to say they believe the Bible, to say they believe men and women are lost, to say they believe in the Second Coming, to argue over inerrancy and then live, you know, as if it was all sort of semi-mythological. This is hypocrisy. And it is an abomination to God. We must take His Word seriously. We must realize this is such a privilege to be here tonight. Think of how many saints of God are in prison. Think of how many saints of God don't have this opportunity to be in a free country. I've lived in many closed countries. I've been in jail in the Soviet Union and have had many other interesting experiences that make me thank God every time I come back to a land where we have so much freedom. We have too many complainers in America and it's because they never lived anywhere else. Maybe if the Communists took over for a few years we'd come and thank God a little more and wouldn't worry too much about the preacher taking five extra minutes out of your television time or your snack time or whatever else you do after the evening service. Acts chapter 1 starting at verse 8. You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth. The uttermost part of the earth. I'm here to speak to you about that because I've just returned. In this past year my wife and I covered about 40,000 or 50,000. I covered 100,000. I guess she was with me for 50,000 of it. I covered miles visiting our teams and visiting countries doing line-up work for the ship or follow-up work for the ship or something else. I've just come back from Bangladesh, from Nepal, from Sudan, from the Seychelles Islands where the great radio broadcast Phoebus Seychelles is sent out from. From a number of other lands. And the burden is heavy upon my heart for the uttermost parts of the earth. And I want to share something about that with you. But first let's look at 2 Corinthians 10, 16. Just to get this burden from the Apostle Paul himself. From the Word of God. 2 Corinthians 10, 16. So good to hear the pages in the Bible rustling. I know I'm in a church where they believe God's Word. 2 Corinthians 10, 16. Don't be afraid to say Amen. Wow! Boy, that's encouraging. Woo! You know, we're so worried about becoming too emotional in America. It's like, you know, Tozer said, that's not our problem most of us getting too emotional. If we think we're going to get too emotional, that's like, that's like sending out a squadron of policemen to the nearby cemetery to stop a demonstration in the night. That's not our problem. We need people who can express themselves a little more. Anyway, 2 Corinthians 10, 16. Paul is speaking. This is in the 1st century. This is not 2,000 years later. To preach the Gospel in the regions beyond you. And not to boast in another man's line of things made ready to our hand. Paul in the 1st century had this burden. To preach the Gospel in the regions beyond. 2,000 years later. Here we are in America where there's 330,000 ministers. That doesn't even include thousands with Campus Crusade, with IVF, with child evangelism, with open air campaigners, with underground campaigners, and 100 other Christian organizations. 330,000 ministers in America. Even if only half of them were evangelicals and we're now told the evangelicals are triumphing, whatever in the world that means. I guess that's mainly in numbers. We have to look out over the regions beyond and realize there are only 37,000 American missionaries and a third of them are on furlough. And a very high percentage of them are women limited to social work. The number of men aggressively reaching cross-culture to the heathen in the world today represents less than 20% of all the missionaries. That's what Ralph Winner, one of the leading missionologists in America today has said. And that deserves some thinking if we are missionary minded. You know, World War II wasn't just a matter of realizing we had a war and then sending out the troops. And that's the foundation I've been fighting from. A foundation of terrific freedom. A foundation of accepting myself and the things about myself that used to disturb me. Realizing that God wants to change me but He doesn't want to annihilate me. And you may feel so inadequate, so fearful, but I can tell you God can make the difference. God can make the difference. And the time to start I can only say is the younger the better. The younger the better. Do you know we have a disease in many churches? And it's such a complex thing that I've wrestled with it I think for 20 years. It's a disease I call in my book Hunger for Reality. It's a disease called Spiritual Schizophrenia. In that we have heard so many messages, so many challenges. I think one of the reasons my three children love the Lord Jesus, one of them 13, one of them 17, one of them 15. And none of them are great apostles. But I believe one of the reasons the three of them are going on for Christ is that I decided years ago to give them a low dose of religion. Not force them into too many meetings. And I found out that low dosage is very, very helpful. Some of our children in evangelical circles get very heavy dosage of religion. And not always a high percentage of reality. And this produces Spiritual Schizophrenia. And some of us even as adults who were reared in the church know how patient God was with us to get us out of this kind of religious fog. But I can tell you this. Probably 40% of the young people in our work today around the world serving Jesus Christ were reared in evangelical homes. My number one man who leads the whole work in Europe was reared on the mission field. Over dosage, man! He just about drowned in the Word of God. And it's just so exciting to see young people from non-Christian backgrounds converted and set on fire with young people from Christian backgrounds who perhaps were overdosed coming into reality in Jesus Christ. And being delivered from the fog of Spiritual Schizophrenia, Spiritual Myopia or whatever else you want to call it. But it will take time. It will take time. And it will take patience. I pray that as we bring this meeting to a close that many of us may make a deeper commitment of our lives to Jesus. Not just in word but in action. What will that mean? I believe it will touch every area of our practical life. I believe it will touch the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we think, the way we spend, the way we buy. I believe it will determine the size of our house, the kind of furniture, the car we drive. Every area of our life will be touched. I believe it will determine our future. I believe it may mean that some people sitting here with very comfortable jobs, very nice situations, will prepare, at least prepare and do what you can to move out to the mission field. It's not easy. So God may close the door. Very easy for God to close the door. Why don't a few more people at least start moving in the right direction? When we consider the overbalance of evangelism in this country compared to so many other nations, perhaps it's fortunate your pastor's not here tonight because, you know, I'm sure you don't want to lose him at this stage of your church growth. But it does happen, I'm afraid, when I come around. I was in one of the biggest, fastest growing Baptist churches in the whole of the Chicago area. Pastor brought me in. He thought the high school students needed discipleship. So I went in. I preached to the high school students. He sat in the back of the meeting. Well, he quit his church two years ago. He's got four children, but he's joining the second ship. He's wandering around France right now. I think they managed to find another pastor. So I guess it's God's providence your pastor isn't here tonight. Of course your assistant pastor's here. We could use him. But I believe with all my heart if our pastors or our choir master or if our favorite Sunday school teacher or if anybody in the church says, I think I should go to the mission field, we should say hallelujah and not be so worried whether we're going to suffer here and who's going to replace him. We could spare 100,000 pastors from America and we've got 60,000 Bible school students right now that could step into their shoes pretty quickly. No doubt there's people sitting out here that could be pastoring churches. No, we've got the manpower never in history have there been so many men in one nation who claim to be born again as in America tonight. No wonder the devil is trying to do everything to deceive us, confuse us, sidetrack us, rock us to sleep. And tonight I am convinced you are either evangelizing or fossilizing. The Holy Ghost brings the Holy Go and if you're not going and that starts right here, this is a mission field right here in Ohio, then I believe something is wrong. You say, I feel so weak. I feel so shattered. I feel so inadequate. You don't know all my problems. I do. I probably have the same ones. Fear, inadequacy, struggles to this day yet with lust. All kinds of things. But greater is He who is in me than He who is against me. And I don't have any more of the Holy Spirit than you do or at least than you can have if you want. Oh beloved, I know this hasn't been exactly a streamlined message. I somehow was very poor at homiletics there at Dear Old Moody Bible Institute. But I pray the Holy Ghost will put it together. More than that, the Holy Ghost will put you together and make you what you should be for God and for His glory. That the whole world may feel the impact even of this one meeting. Why not? How many meetings in Acts chapter 2 did it take to set the whole world ablaze on that one day? How many meetings do we need in New Milford for the whole world to feel the impact? Isn't it exciting? We're not on the periphery. We're not sitting on the edge watching missionaries beat their brains out. We are right in the midst of the struggle. Every last believer. And we need people dedicated to missions and to Christ at home as much as we need them abroad. My main concern is not geography tonight, it's reality. And we could be doing, those of us who are out there, could be doing so much more if we had the interest and the prayer support standing behind us. Because right now, many Asians are signing up to be missionaries. We've just had 100 more Chinese young people full time into our work. 150 Indians full time into our work. We estimated it would only take one more year to have the full quota of 250 people for the second ship. By the way, there's a picture of it out on the table. But all of this will mean very little without the intercessors. Without the men and women who show up at the prayer meeting. How are you doing on that score? Moody Monthly, concerned about the disaster of the average prayer meeting across the American evangelical camp, asked me to write an article on that subject. I can't write, but I wrote it anyway. I think they'll be publishing it next month. It's entitled, What Happened to the Prayer Meeting? And I believe that the prayer meeting is the dynamo, the generator, the powerhouse of the Church. And though I know it's hard to get out in the middle of the week, and sometimes we come home from work tired, and I also work about 16, 17 hours a day, we need to get into the prayer meeting. We may feel weak. We may feel our prayers aren't much. You link your weak prayers with another lady's weak prayers, and another person's weak prayers, pretty soon they'll have a revival. Let's show up at the prayer meeting. Let's make sure we're having our own prayer time with our family, and in our own private time. These are practical things, but so often our Christianity is beautifully vague. We talk about all these things, witnessing and prayer and love, and sometimes it doesn't get down right to the nitty-gritty of where we are. Let's call people up on Tuesday night and say, Hey, are you coming to the prayer meeting? Or whatever night is appropriate. Are you coming to the missionary prayer meeting? If you can't get to the prayer meeting, why not at that time gather your family around and have an extra 10 minutes right there in your own home. People always say, Well, we're handicapped. I knew a man, I read about a man in Chicago, he had no arms. He had no legs. He was blind. I'd say that's a bit of a handicap. He learned to read the Braille Bible with his tongue and was a beautiful witness for Jesus Christ. There was a man in Switzerland for years, he couldn't get out of his bed, just there in his bed all the time. What was he doing? Praising Jesus. What else do you want to do in bed? And as he was praising Jesus from his sick bed, he was sending Gospels of John out all over the world. And people were being saved. The Word of God is still sharp. I could keep you here all night. I know at this point that's what some of you are worried about. Telling of what God does through His Word. A man just wrote us from Ghana, Africa. He was a pickpocket. He was out, you know, doing his business. He got somebody he thought was a wallet. It was a Gospel booklet that somebody just got from somebody off the ship. And he read this Gospel booklet and he got converted. He wrote to office in London. He said, I'm unemployed. What am I supposed to do from here? God's Word is sharp. How many of us are distributing tracts? How many of us are involved in getting out the Word of God? It's true. O.M. has been accused of being extremists. There's all kinds of rumors going around about, you know, if you come on O.M. you only eat peanut butter sandwiches. It's not really true. But it is true that we try to live on the barest essentials. I don't say this as if most of our married couples live on three or four thousand dollars a year, those who have two or three children. And it's more expensive to live in Europe than here. Petrol alone costs us two dollars a gallon. But we've learned how to live. Very few Americans know how to live. They've been brainwashed into thinking they need this, they need that, they gotta have this. You know, they gotta have a bowling alley in the center of their house. And if you and I love Jesus Christ, if you and I believe that this was the Word of God and the whole world should have the Word of God and many don't have it, simply because people don't give, I believe we would start to live a revolutionary sacrificial life and we would enjoy it even more. We'd be hilariously happy as simple followers of the carpenter, not the banker, the man from Galilee. What a joy! And don't do it if it isn't a joy. For the Bible says it's more blessed to give than receive. Give Christ your life, your all. Determine to be a disciple. Turn your back once and for all on this evangelicalism that is so prevalent in the present fishbowl community that many of us live in and determine to be a soldier of Jesus Christ. May God grant you the grace. It won't be easy, but the grace is there. Let us pray. It's just our hearts and our minds before the Lord in prayer. We need to just take a few minutes to think and to pray to consider what we have heard.