In this sermon, Kennedy emphasizes the importance of biblical balance and commitment in the Christian life. He uses the analogy of an airplane to illustrate the need for both wings and a fuselage for balance. He also highlights the reality of spiritual warfare and the need for zeal and tenacity in facing challenges. Kennedy discusses the cost of reaching the world for Christ and the need for a realistic perspective. He also addresses the issue of poverty and the responsibility of believers to respond with compassion and action. The sermon concludes with a call to change our ways and prioritize rest, family, and the human factor, even in the midst of zealous service to God. The biblical reference in the sermon is Luke 14, where Jesus speaks about counting the cost of discipleship.

This is tape number 19, World Evangelism by the year 2000. Is it possible? George Berwer, conference 643. I'm Jeff Taylor, I'm the development director for Open Doors USA. It's my privilege today to lead in this seminar, to introduce our speaker, and to lead our prayer time a little bit later on. Our speaker today, as you're aware, is George Berwer, who's the founder and international coordinator for Operation Mobilization, a longtime friend of Brother Andrew and Open Doors, and a ministry that's critical and heavily involved in church planning and evangelism and discipleship around the world today. George has got some exciting things to share with us. He's got some materials in the back I hope you'll take advantage of when we're done. Why don't we just give George a warm welcome as he comes and shares with us. Brother? We'll put this on somewhere. Microphones. It's a challenge to be here. This is my last full day of this USA 5,000 mile in a motorhome whirlwind tour. Started off at a little church in Chicago called Willow Creek. That started with a few dozen 10 or 15 years ago, maybe less, and now has 10, 12, who knows how many thousands of people. Of course, I haven't been able to get into the main congregation yet. They're still thinking about what they want to do in world missions. I've had lunch with a pastor, but I had the joy of speaking to about 400 of their young people. Again, it's the same everywhere. The young people want to move. The young people want to evangelize the world. The adults are not so sure. They're arguing about other things. There are plenty of exceptions to that, and probably in a seminar like this I'm preaching to the converted so I won't bother to carry the story any longer. But it's a privilege to be back in my home country. My wife and I left 30 years ago. We're still praying about that first furlough. It's an attractive option. We got a little busy with the rest of the world. But if we put our preaching trips together, they're certainly more than a furlough. Some people don't think I believe in R&R, but I do, and I hit the newest roller coaster in Los Angeles last night just before going to bed. It's incredible what people will do to get on a roller coaster. We got there just at a fluke time, and we got right on. After that, people were waiting two and three hours for one ride on this new roller coaster, which is no big deal anyway. Anyway, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for what you're doing in the world today, and we long to know what the next step is. We don't want to be pessimists on one hand or triumphalistic optimists on the other hand who are not really counting the cost. Grip us with the reality of the situation that we face as we think of attempting to reach the world by the year 2000. Even this now has become a controversy, as some think it might take a few more months after that. Lord, we just cry out to you for situations that hurt us around the world. So much suffering, so much slavery. Think of 100 million children who live in a form of slavery as having been forced into heavy intensive work before the age of 10. We think of 15 million refugees in the world. We think of a lot of things like Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and Kampuchea and Kuwait and the Gulf that stir us to realize that time may be short. We may not have to the year 2000 to obey you and to do your work and to do your will. So we are cast upon you now, and we go forward together by faith in Jesus' name. Amen. I'd like to just know who's here. It's always an advantage in small meetings. I don't like seminars and often refuse to take them because I don't have that much voice strength. I like to hold my voice for the main meeting, but I'll try to control myself. I've only had 50 meetings in the last three weeks. I should be able to get through a few more, but I'd like to know if there are some mission leaders here, and you could just stand up. I know we've got Greg Livingston, the founder and director of Frontiers, who would be better taking the seminar than listening, but Greg and I were on OM together. How long was that, Greg, that you were able to endure? Fourteen years. Fourteen years, that's pretty good. We met as students when I was at Chicago and he was at Wheaton. Do we have some other mission leaders? I mean, we realize everybody is just as important, but it would be good to see if we have some agencies represented. Anyone else? Do we have any pastors? They're the hardest people to get to a missions conference. I just spoke at a missions conference. They're supposed to have 200 pastors. They got seven. I tell you, I almost got them out of my mind. Yes, a pastor. Tell us where you're from. I'm from Indiana. Wow, that's a long way. And your church? Westwood. Great. One of my favorite heroes. Yes. Great. Give your name. Great. Yes. That's strategic. Great. Anyone else? Yes. Great. And give us your name. I know it might be hard for us. Another Kim. Yeah, Daniel Che. I just had the joy of being in Korea, speaking every night to 1,800 students who I believe are going to help turn the world upside down for Jesus. Welcome. Welcome here from Korea. Anyone else that represents a church or an organization, this is your chance. Make yourself known. I know this is a nation of very shy people, especially since Vietnam, but please feel free to give your name and tell the name of your organization. What about you back in the corner? You've got a nice smile. Open Doors. Great. Who are the Open Doors reps here? Way in the back. Give your name. Great. Just in Nebraska. You know that little church in Norfolk? Probably has the highest missionary sending. Yeah? For a small church, they must have the highest per capita sending. Well, the little church in Florida sent so many, they had to fold the church. I mean, that's dangerous. That's not the usual event. Anyone else want to speak for us? We're always short of time, aren't we? I never change my watch from England. It's my loyalty to my present country. It's just ten minutes after six in the evening there or something like that. I have two displays. One is out in the main Carter area. We hope you'll take a look at that and look at all the displays. I love these displays. When I was a young Christian, I didn't know much about missions. I went to a real sleepy Presbyterian college that tried to destroy my faith, but it only fueled it. The more cold water they threw, the turn the steam would blow back into their own face. But I went to a missions conference at another college, and for the first time I saw all these displays, and it was an overwhelming experience. I gathered up everything free that I could, and I don't think I've ever been the same since that missions conference. I've got a few items I'd like you to get. This is free. Many people have paid four dollars for this book. Personal Revival came out of the East African Revival. It's my deepest conviction. Perhaps the strongest part of my whole being and philosophy is that as Christians it is our privilege in Christ to live every day in the power of the Holy Spirit and personal revival. That's not in the absence of struggles and heartaches and problems and sometimes sin, but in the midst of it as we appropriate what's ours in Jesus Christ. It really grieves me that many people are just praying for revival. There's no biblical basis for just praying for revival. C.T. Studd, the great founder of Wexhead Prayer, is sometimes a cop-out for obedience. And as Christians we pray and we obey, and so as we pray we can appropriate that which is ours in Christ, and therefore we can live in revival, so as we pray we are praying from a position of reality rather than from just a position of vain expectation that something may someday happen. I find it so difficult that so many people are backslidden. A term I don't even like. They've gotten away from their first love. This is now accepted as the normal Christian life. Anyway, that's a separate issue. I can't get into that this morning, but there's a book about personal revival. It's about God's grace. The greatest book I'm reading right now, and I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for books, and I don't have it on my table, is Charles Swindoll's book, he's not far from here, Awakening Grace. Without that message the world is not going to be evangelized. It doesn't have to be his book, but God's grace. On the mission field we have so many problems. Many are very unrealistic about the problems on the mission field. We have as much immorality as the home area. We have tremendous backbiting and gossip. We have lying, cheating, embezzlement, and I'm glad the Bible is so honest. It's my favorite book in the Bible. And unless somehow there's more grace to love one another, to not be petty, Swindoll talks about this book, and he says, when a group of missionaries came back, casualties, and that's thousands every year return from the field, casualties. Some of them will get called casualties, some aren't casualties. This casualty came as a result of peanut butter. A group of very dedicated missionaries, all liked peanut butter, but there was no peanut butter available, so they made a commitment to Jesus, and in their field there would be no peanut butter. But somebody broke the rule. You've got to have rules, right? And they got peanut butter from a friend sent through the mail. And when this was found out, I mean, there was heavy weather, and this couple never did quite make it through. So much pettiness. When I saw the speakers coming at this conference, you'll get to understand that I have a gift of offending people. I'm going to try to be really careful today. When I saw this conference, I didn't do so good with the Presbyterians in San Francisco, but when I saw all the speakers at this conference, I think this is the first time in history where Lauren, Andrew, and myself, we're all linked together, love one another, are speaking at the same conference. I thought, well, there's enough speakers here to have an Urbana convention. And when you think of the number of Christians in California, I would have thought, excluding me with the speaker's agenda here, that we'd have to have a stadium to handle this particular gathering. But you see, that's not where people are. People, number one, are in their own world, and we're not judging anybody. But number two, our denominations and our individual churches feel that they're battling so much for survival, they can't really afford too much to anything that's in their denomination. And then if they look a little bit broad-minded, a little bit middle-road, like maybe open doors, much less operational mobilization, that can be dangerous. Well, so much for some thoughts for introduction. Do you know the great admission? Robertson McQuilkin, one of the greatest missionary statesmen I've ever had the privilege of meeting, and he wrote the book, The Great Omission. It is brilliant. There's one of my books, No Turning Back. I'm not a writer. These editors get my tapes, go through hundreds of them, miraculously don't have a nervous breakdown, and choose some of them to put into a book. Then I re-edit and take out burrower statements and put in Tozer quotes. But you may find some of this material a blessing. Probably some of you don't know much about operational mobilization. That is certainly understandable in California. In the Netherlands, we would be a little more well-known, and maybe Germany, but here we're not so well-known. My burden this morning is to talk to you about getting a job done by the year 2000. This is a big thing. The 2000 movement has its office, I believe, in California. They've asked me to serve on the council. I'm so slow. I'm still thinking about it, praying about it, trying to figure out what that involves. It was a very important meeting in Singapore. Christian leaders came together from all over the world. My right arm, Peter Maiden, represented us there, or maybe it was someone else, and I read a lot of papers from it. Out of that meeting in Singapore, and it was already happening, Singapore just helped bring it together closer, was this vision to reach the world by the year 2000. Now, if any of you are new to missiological thinking and missiological gymnastics, you're going to maybe find some of the things I say a little difficult, but I'm treating this as an advanced seminar. Forgive me. I'm not going to give you the biblical basis for world missions. I'm not going to give you the Great Commission. I take it you've read that, about going into all the world and preaching the gospel to everybody. I'm going to deal with some of the reality. The greatest burden of my heart is to know God. It's not world missions. It's to know God, and to know his word, and to be Christ-like. That involves honesty. It involves integrity. It involves a lot of, for me, failure, bouncing back. And I discovered in the very early days when I went to Mexico at 19 years of age, when no one was being born, way back in 1957, I discovered spiritual warfare, and that Satan is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, and that Satan does counterattack his work, and Satan does come as an angel of light. And we are told in Corinthians not to be ignorant of Satan's devices. And you can be sure that Satan is attacking the world mission's effort. And to not think he is having any victories is to be as naive as anyone could possibly be. We can all talk about faith. That's cheap. And I get people all jumping up and down when I'm talking about the Muslim world. They even clap and raise their hands. And I said, how many of you are willing to clap and raise your hands in the streets of Istanbul next summer? There's a sudden silence over the whole jumping, praising, leaping, happy audience. It's so easy to have a lot of wind in the mouth and not much in the sails. I guess I had that on the mind because a prayer partner wanted to take me sailing in San Francisco. I wanted to meet her new potential husband. So I went sailing. I said, look, is this going to take more than an hour? Of course, going sailing does generally take more than an hour, but I managed to intimidate him into the entire trip, keeping it under an hour and a half. We didn't get to see too much of the San Francisco Bay. But Satan is an angel of light. And as we think of the task of reaching the world by the year 2000, we want faith. We want optimism. I need more of it. I praise God for so many Christian leaders are more optimistic than me. I do have a negative streak. I guess I was influenced by Lloyd Jones, by A.W. Tozer, by Leonard Ravenhill, by old buddy David Wilkerson, who seemed to sometimes go a little over the top and even make me seem balanced. Another guy that's come into my life is Tony Campalo. I just followed Tony at the Nazarene College in Nampa. I love to speak after Tony because I just seem so laid back and so mellow after Tony Campalo hits the place. I listen to his tapes. It is unreal, the method that this man uses. But it works. And we praise God we have him back next summer again with Brother Andrew for Love Europe. And one of the problems on the mission field often is the tension between those who are mega optimistic the job is going to be done and so many are coming to Jesus and those that, especially who have lived out there. See, I've lived a bit of all my life on the field. I've lived many years in India. And in India, we have a difficult time being optimistic. I was reading an article yesterday that has hit me like a truck. I may repeat this again at my luncheon. Forgive me if I do. I've got the article here. I've already dictated a long memo in connection with this article. This article is about 100 million children in the world who are slaves. We talk about open doors. Who's going to open their door? Who even cares about the children of the world? 100 million children under 10, under 12, who are basically slaves. They have been sold into child labor. They sit in India, millions of them on the streets chipping huge boulders down into tiny pieces of stone night hour and day. They eat less in a whole day than you'd eat for breakfast. They have statute laws in India against this. Nothing has changed through those statute laws. In Thailand, they have 6 million children who are sold into worse forms of slavery than they even have in India. In Sudan and many other countries, the children of the world are behind a closed door. Who's going to do anything about that? 100 million, my friends. Poverty so raw, so awesome, that once you're exposed to it, as I have been, you can't walk in a building like this and not feel something because you're programmed. I'm not expecting you to be the same, but you also can't ever expect me to ever be like you if you've lived your whole life in the United States. I'm programmed. When I walk through the building as I did this morning, and suddenly I could see and I have too much vision and I sometimes can't live with it, all the children in the streets of Bombay live under cardboard coverings and sleep in the streets and they're the same children that go into the match factories and sit there for nine hours a day making the matches and live in a way that you wouldn't put your dog. You ever realize how much money we put in our country into caring for our pets? It's unbelievable. So, I want to be more optimistic and I listen to the tapes of many optimists and down underneath at the end of the day I come out optimistic because God is God, because the Holy Spirit is in me, because our God is the God of the impossible, and because the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and the calling of God is irreversible. But I can only come to that place through something I learned about in Luke chapter 14 and I'd like you to turn there with me. Luke chapter 14, the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking. Talks about following Jesus, bearing the cross, coming after him, being his disciple. It's incredible that so many churches are shaking all over our country through what they call the Lordship Teaching Controversy. Tied in with John MacArthur's book, tied in with some other people. At least three books have come out against John MacArthur's book. I haven't read any of them. I'm a little busy. I try to avoid some of the controversy, but it does seem to me that what both of these groups are saying is true. Forgive me, that's not a contradiction, but it's a paradox. And salvation is by grace alone, but that when you are saved, something's got to happen. Something's got to happen. You're not saved to sleep or saved to sink. But we won't get in that this morning. Let's look at these verses. The word of God is always safer when I'm preaching. Maybe I should just get up more and read chapters. Starting in verse 25. There went great multitudes with him, and he turned and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life, also he cannot be my disciples. Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Hard to believe that came out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, isn't it? Of course, we've had all kinds of explanations of what that hate your mother and father means. We've got to look at other scriptures as we wrestle with the tough text. That's a tough text. There are tough texts. And we realize he's speaking comparatively because we're told to honor our mothers and fathers as well, right? For which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost whether he hath sufficient to finish it? Lest perhaps after he hath laid the foundation is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. For what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an embassy of peace and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he is of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if the salt hath lost its savior, with what shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor yet for the dunghill. But man casteth out, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Isn't it interesting that last phrase? What does God think we're not hearing? Why don't we have that last sentence? This is the word of God. It's to say, saints, we don't easily hear. We don't easily receive a strong medicine. So if you have ears, if you know how to listen, hey, hear this. When did you last have a sermon on this particular passage? Christians today don't seem to be emphasizing very much the exposition of the word, but we need to look not only at the wonderful blessing passages, but we need to look at the hard passages. And this passage urges us to count the cost. In the midst of all the reading about the year 2000, and those of us in missionary leadership, we have to read widely. We now have 2000 full-time people in our work. They're not a bunch of yes-men. They have hard questions. They're shooting to me an average of two major memos a week. I go right from here into our main executive body that helps lead OM. Seven of us, we meet in a retreat center for three days solid. I just found out we have 50 major items on the agenda. Another 50 didn't make it through. I'd ask you to pray for my brother, Greg Livingston, who's leading one of the most dynamic thrusts into the Muslim world. He has close to 200 workers already. The complexities of reaching the Muslim world, which is really the greatest burden on Brother Andrew's heart right now. They're awesome. They're awesome. We have a lot of people getting interested, a lot of people talking, not many really, but more than there used to be. I wonder how many of us are counting across as to what this is going to involve. As I came in this morning, a friend asked me about John Tarswell. I appreciated that because a year ago, John Tarswell working among the Afghans in Peshawar, Pakistan, which has become a major training base for terrorists, disappeared. And we had no trace, no sign, no real information in one year. He has a wife, two children, another child born after his disappearance. It's cost her something. Her life will never be the same. Some of the people on that team will never be the same. A group called Shelter Now, we're working in that same area, very close friends of ours, when a group of Muslims started to just get a lot of information all mixed up, a man spoke about it in the mosque because they were working among the widows, which is very hard, very difficult among Muslims. And they were angry about this work among the widows, so they formed a mob and they destroyed that widow work. Now that wasn't much, a few little shelters and whatever else. By that time, there were 5,000 people building up in a frenzy, so they wanted to destroy something else. Some of them, I'm sure, were just troublemakers and don't think that all Muslims are like this because they're not. It's a great embarrassment to many Muslims. This mob of 5,000 went to the central headquarters of Shelter Now. These are praying people. These people have prayer partners. We can't just throw out some cliche, well, this is because there was a lack of prayer. Of course, I believe that's linked, but it's very difficult to know where to measure. But to leave that, I guess, to God, that they came into the headquarters, 5,000 strong, a million dollar operation, and destroyed everything. Everything. Brothers and sisters, if we're going to reach the unreached people, it's going to take a lot more than having one more conference. Some of us are conferenced out. We've got so much information that when we stand at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, we will be declared gluttons. We will say, hey, wait a minute, I never ate very much. I was on that special diet. I'm not a glutton. No, I'm not talking about food. I'm talking about truth. We have so much truth. So many seminars, so many great messages, great speakers, great Bible teachers. Of course, some will say we need more. I know it never ends. You know, our church is in Britain. People don't think that Britain is a very strong country as far as Christianity. Well, I still think it's in the top ten nations of the world in terms of potential for world missions. We had a little march for Jesus with Graham Kendrick and a few other characters. Over a quarter of a million took to the streets of Great Britain. I was with them a few weeks ago. At Spring Harvest, one of our big events where people gather together, 60,000 have signed up in advance to pay their deposit for next April. So God is working in Britain. Now, the church, on a percentage basis, is much smaller. Much smaller. We only have a couple of percent believers in the whole nation. A few percent more who go to church. So as far as the numbers of believers, we are less. But I dare to say that on a per capita basis, vision and spirituality and discipline and reality might be a little bit higher in UK than some parts of our country. Only God can judge that. God is working in Europe even though Europe is the only continent in the world where the church is not visibly growing. One of the reasons God has put us in Europe, and I hope you'll keep this in mind in your praying, is that in Great Britain alone we have 1,500,000 Muslims. We have only beginning stage work among those Muslims. Can you imagine? Brothers and sisters, praise God for everything that has been done. I could talk to you about certain countries and get you convinced that the job is going to be done. I could talk about Korea, though it's not always as nice as we hear when we're outside the country hearing about these wonderful people. Koreans themselves are always more realistic talking about their country. The Korean church is faced with a great crisis in many ways right now. We could talk about Brazil. We could talk about Argentina. We could talk about third world missionaries. I read things about third world missionaries. It blows my circuits. I wonder where do they get the information? Where do they get the information? They will throw into these statistics, for example, every Indian who is working in any other state within India. Now that's a great thing. But with that, we also have hardly any more missionaries left in India. With that, we have a general rejection in the north of India of all people from the south. And most of the missionaries are all coming out of the south. And they don't even know Hindi. They know Malayalam. They know English. Many of them have very little training, very little experience. They're just hired as national workers. And they're thrown into the target. And we've seen hundreds of casualties among these people who were prematurely sent to north India without the right training, the right understanding of life and spiritual warfare. We know little about that since we've been supporting and working with Indian nationals for 27 years and have 300 full-time workers there. Do you know how many people we have in India? Let's take a survey. Let's try a missionary survey. See how informed you are. How many of you say that we have about 500 million people in India? Raise your hand. About 500 million. How many say about 600 million people in India? How many say about 700 million people in India? 700, okay. That's not bad. You're very close. 800 million. That's where it is. And some would say 850 million. An Indian brother in my meeting yesterday said 850. He came from India. Can you believe? Do you know it took until 1835 to get the first billion people on planet Earth? Do you know what a billion people... People talk to me about how California's so big. It's got 30 million. Somebody else said 20. Somebody said 40. Somebody's got to tell me what the population of California is on the latest census. Does anybody know? Must be somewhere over 30 million. That's a huge number of people. Do you ever figure out how many churches, even gospel preaching, evangelical and charismatic churches we have in California? Probably more per capita than most places on planet Earth. And most people, they can't get their vision beyond California. They find it difficult to think beyond California. There's so much to do. I find it impossible to just think about California. It's just so... It's just so confining. I just came over the mountains and here I am and I'll fly out tomorrow and be in London. I can't... I can't confine myself to this little tiny area of the world. And brothers and sisters, maybe I'm extreme, but I would ask you to begin to think globally. I didn't wear this jacket in here to keep warm. This is the whole world and we've got Brazil three times. Somebody asked me what's under the armpit. I said, oh, Los Angeles. Well, the Lord knows. We've got to think globally. When you begin to think globally, you begin to understand, wow, India, 850 million. That's a lot of people. So that when you read about some great blessing in Tamil Nadu, some great blessing in Kerala, thousands of people going to conferences, you don't get a false impression. You think, well, the job's more or less being done in India. I did that. I was at a Bible Institute in Chicago when the great Bhaktsin who planted 300 churches in India came to speak to us. That was a very important time, formative time in my life. It was in the libraries of that Institute I got the vision for Turkey, the vision for Iraq, the vision for Iran, the vision for many, many countries in the world. And because of Bhaktsin's visit and his sharing of wonderful things in India, I thought, well, if God is leading me into something new and if he's bringing in a big thrust for world missions, it will not have to include India. And I made a decision that our fellowship would not go into India. Our burden was the communist world. That's how Andrew and I got so linked up. I'll tell you about that over lunch. And then our burden was the Muslim world. And I sent Dale Roton to check out the Muslims in India, found out there were tens of millions of them. There's now a hundred million of them. We'll get back to that. And I thought, well, we've got to send a team to India. We didn't have any people thinking about India. We didn't have any people praying about India. I had to think of somebody that was, you know, more a submissive type, sort of didn't know what was going on. I phoned Greg Livingston right here. What did I say, Greg? Tell me what I said. I wanted to go to the Arab world. He said, look, we need you to go to India. I said, I don't even know where it is. He said, it's in India. You can't mention it. And Greg was in the United States. We were in a financial crisis. We have been ever since, 30 years ago. But he came back to Europe. We got some old trucks. We got some teams together. There must have been a couple, maybe a couple dozen. And we couldn't even get out of Switzerland. Some people got mumps. Greg had to go on ahead. We had so many problems. A little group got angry with us and left O.M. But somehow those trucks got out of the mud and out of Switzerland and cured the mumps and they went overland, a historic trip in World Missions. Overland travel was unheard of in India at that time except hippies were these huge trucks and we discovered Indians were prepared by the spirit to mobilize, to evangelize and since then we've given the gospel to over 350 million people within India. But we've got 850 million people living in the country. So we can always talk about what God has done and we love to do that, especially as we get older. But if we're realistic, if we're group 14 committed, we count the cost, what's it going to take brothers and sisters? Now I'm going to be strong, but I'm going to say this, that unless the church changes their ways, the church around the world caught up in lukewarmness, caught up in pettiness, caught up in trivia, there are beautiful exceptions, but unless the church changes, I know the church a little bit, 35 years non-stop, 365 days a year in ministry with largely local churches, thousands of them, the biggest charismatic churches in the world, the biggest fundamentalist, the biggest evangelical, not all the biggest, I haven't met the young Joe yet, I was with the Presbyterians in Korea, they don't hardly acknowledge his existence because they have so many millions of Presbyterians, so I couldn't seem to mix the two over there. But I believe that unless the church changes, unless there is reformation and restoration and revival and greater reality, commitment, willingness for sacrifice, willingness to pour our resources joyfully into the task that God has given us, it's not going to happen, it's certainly not going to happen by the year 2000. And I'm not going to give up my faith if it doesn't happen by the year 2000. This is why this thing has become so controversial. And we now have opposition to the 2000 movement, because they're saying we're all going to get hyped up, like waiting for Jesus to come back in 1958 or whenever that was, we had these people standing all over the United States on the mountains, and when it didn't happen, they got disillusioned and they got confused, and whole cults were born. And I'll tell you, if the year 2000, January 2nd, it's not happened, I'm not losing my faith. My faith is bigger than all these theories. My faith is bigger than all of the man-made ideas, and even a lot of the man-given prophecies, half of which never proved to have really much but hot air. We have so many broken-hearted, disillusioned people, because they thought this was going to happen on this date, and it didn't happen. Now at the same time, I'm going to put all my time, energy, everything I've got, if I have a sabbatical, it's going to be after the year 2000, into this vision. I like to take other people's visions. I didn't get this vision, the 2000 vision. I'm not, I don't know, maybe I'm not organized enough, I'm not heavy into dates. When we launched out, in our work, we didn't even have the unreached people's groups measured. That was pre-Ralph Winner. We didn't have the computers and the statistics. We were just a bunch of spiritual gorillas, saved by Christ, filled with the Spirit, that wanted to give the gospel as quickly as possible to everybody in the whole world. And we lived this, and breathed this, and fought this, and that's still the passion of our life. Now in the process of this, of course we made mistakes, we discovered when you get married with three children, which is what happened to me, there are other things that come into your life, because we were very extreme. We were very extreme. And God had to bring us into balance, and God had to humble us, and God had to teach us more about the freedom we have in Jesus Christ. That's what that Swindle of Books is about, that's why it's such a blessing to me. But it's one thing when you're extreme, and you're over-committed, and you're using too many hours for Christian work, and you've got too many visions, and too many burdens to come into balance. It's another thing when you don't really have anything, and you're trying to come into balance. I love airports. You go down to the airport, you'll see a picture of beautiful balance, especially in John F. Kennedy. You watch Concord take off. Beautiful balance. If you ever go to an airport, you'll notice that an airplane has a fuselage, most of you fly, and it has wings, right? What if you saw a plane coming down the runway with no wings? Nothing to keep that balance. I tell you, you might want to move out of the way, but what if you saw a plane coming down the runway with only wings, and nothing between the wings? Then you would know that maybe you were seeing things. In order to have biblical balance, there's got to be commitment, there's got to be reality, there's got to be the fire, the zeal, the enthusiasm, the tenacity to keep running Hebrews 12, whatever may be thrown at us, and Satan will throw the book at us. So I believe, as we think of reaching the world by the year 2000, as we look at the phenomenal open doors in Eastern Europe and many parts of the world, we must realistically count the cost. The average church is not that much into world missions. Mythological leaders in the United States say the biggest problem for American missions will be finding the support in the next nine years to send them back. I just wanted to leave. Our big goal shouldn't be to get support. That's the beginning. The big goal isn't to get support. The goal is to win men to Christ and to plant churches. If we can't even get the support, the finance, to get these people to the field, and I will tell you, there's thousands of disillusioned American young people, because they wanted to go to the mission field, and they got cold water, and they got double-talked. The churches won't honestly say, we don't believe you're worth putting money into for the mission field. They won't tell somebody, that's going to hurt them. They engage in all kinds of other games. Now things are changing. The rhetoric is changing, and we know what happened in Indianapolis. We know what's happened in other conferences, but we can deceive by this. This change has not yet gotten to the grassroots, and we've only got nine years to go to the year 2000, and Christians traditionally prove to be very slow. We need this extra 50,000 Americans now. We need that 10,000 long-term career missionary Koreans. We need them now. Korea is beginning to happen. There's a lot happening, but it takes Koreans two or three years to learn English, and after the English, they may have to work on the Arabic. Frontiers, I think, is going to try to take them directly from Korea into Arabic. That's what your man told me in Korea. Be sure to send me your paper on that. There are obstacles. There are mountains. Many churches in America right now believe that they are in a survival pattern. Another major California minister was caught last week in adultery, and he's out of his church. That happens every week. Do you think it's easy for a church to recover when their senior pastor is knocked out through adultery? One of our biggest churches in Manchester, England, can you imagine when they had to remove him from the church and he got angry about that? I had to go in there, and I'm not that gifted in it, and try to hold a place together and try to minister on healing, and they're pulling through. They got a new pastor, they're pulling through. We are under attack at home. I sympathize. Be careful what you say to pastors. I sympathize with pastors who are not doing much for world missions. I can't just shout at these people. I have to come alongside them. I have to love them. I have to pray for them and understand what they are facing in their congregation as we have so many different goals. This group, night and day, they think only about the abortion issue. This group over here only think night and day about what the newest, latest prophecy is going to be. This group over here has just discovered somehow they're a bit sleepy, what the gifts of the Spirit are all about, and they're just going on all about that. This group over here is mainly concerned about demons. They're seeing them moving in heavy, they just read His present darkness, and our churches are caught up with so many issues that you come along and start talking about world evangelism, do you know what they do? They say, oh yeah, sure, we'll add that. You can be down the hall, three doors to the right, that's where your missionary group can meet. It's just considered one more issue, whereas the Bible teaches this is the heart. World evangelism is not an issue. It's not for the women's sewing group. It's not, as our seminaries have so often done, committed it to one little neglected department so that most ministers have been brainwashed into thinking that missions is a department. It's something for a certain group of people who are becoming career. We have become overly professional. We have become overly career conscious, and therefore we can't get a grassroots momentum. We've got to have a grassroots movement. Somebody was trying to put me in a heavy guilt trip about abortion. I wrote them back, and I am against abortion, of course. We are one of the major distributors of books against abortion, but I wrote them back and I said, I want to just remind you that according to my theology, I may be wrong, the next time you go to march on a clinic, all the non-Christians in the anti-abortion movement who are with you, if they die in the march, we'll go to hell. But the little baby who dies, as far as I can see, will somehow, in a mysterious way, be in eternity with Jesus Christ. So even in the abortion movement, our priority should be evangelism. Luis Palau said that if we are going to see social action and social change around the world, and we long for that, this children thing that's gripped my heart is tied in with that. The greatest way to bring it to pass is evangelism, winning men to Jesus Christ. I wonder if we really have the humility enough to admit that we can easily be deceived in our present-day American climate, and that the things we're deceived on may not be the things that people think we're deceived on. We have many books accusing us all of being seduced, ones written by a friend of mine who no longer relate too well with each other, but I feel that some of the books published today, though they have important issues, ultimately do more harm than good, because they exaggerate. Have you ever heard the word exaggeration? I thank God for godly men, more godly than I, who came alongside me in the early days, and they would not tolerate Verwarian exaggeration, and I was a natural exaggerator. In fact, we as Christians exaggerate so much that we speak of it as evangelistically speaking, and I might just insert here that I believe some of the people who have fallen by the wayside, I just throw this in, it is due to the lack of accountability. Now I am perhaps overly accountable, I have a board in the United States that I organized when I was 19, I have a board in Great Britain, I have the area leaders, I have the general council, I have the field leaders, I have my wife, and I'm also accountable to my own team, but I thank God for accountability. And when I'd preach in a meeting and maybe 90% of the message was on target, a little bit was over the top, a brother named Dale Roton, who I met at this little sleepy Presbyterian school would come up to me, he was very clever, he said, Brother George, God's using you, give me a couple of nice, you know, he said, but if you could, how did he put it, if you could be more accurate, or he'd ask, was that really the truth, what you said about 6,000 dogs just filled with spirit moving forward in world evangelism in Africa, and I would, oh, sometimes I would just, sometimes he was wise enough just to write me about it, I'd really get up ahead of steam before I repented. So easy when we're trying to tell the story of something wonderful, so easy to exaggerate, the Lord forgive me, the Lord help me, but we've got to count the cost, and we've got to change our ways, we've got to change our ways. Now, some people are so committed to the Lord, and so zealous and involved in prayer, and involved in God's work, changing their ways, and I believe Greg's in this camp, actually means going back the other way, more time for a little bit of rest, more time for wife and family, more time for the human factor, no matter how filled we are with the spirit, we're still human, that's why there's nothing wrong with enjoying a weekend in a nice hotel, this is part of our culture, it would be trivia to start some kind of big boom-de-boom-de-boom about where we're having the meeting, or what we're eating, or what kind of car we're driving, as Swindoll says in his book, we're free in Jesus Christ, we're all different, but we at the same time, in the midst of learning about this freedom to enjoy some of the good things that God gives, must beware of that subtle road, where we have top Christian leaders who are living high on the hog, brothers and sisters, it's a stumbling block, it's a stumbling block, it's dividing the church, when millions are without food, when millions are without Bibles, when millions are living in cardboard huts, and when we talk about it, somebody throws us some kind of little cliché, oh how I'd love to debate some of these people on this issue, but sometimes you can't even get near them, I wrote a letter to somebody who was into this kind of extreme teaching, all I got back was a computerized answer, and it didn't even answer the question I was asking, the girl on the computer obviously pushed the wrong button. I believe when the church of Jesus Christ has lost its ability to endure hardness as a soldier of Christ, which is a biblical teaching, when we've lost the ability to go the extra mile, to sacrifice for the sake of other people, when we become so inward that we're more concerned about the little house we're living in, rather than the millions of others without Christ across the world, something has gone wrong. I believe David Wilkerson has almost had a nervous breakdown, I've been with David, I love David, he became very extreme, he was saying some things that were really over the top, I was with him personally and he said George what's your advice for me, I said David it's the same as me, you and I are similar, you need balance, ever since I was with him he seemed to get more over the top, finally he decided to go back and just minister in evangelism in New York City, maybe that's the best thing, and I can relate, he'd been highly criticized, my friend David, but I can relate to him, because see I feel some of those same things, and I guess we've got a similar temperament, only he's more intensive than I, and I just beg of you even if you don't fully understand what I'm trying to say, that there are those of us who are gripped by the lawlessness of man, we're gripped by the hundred million children, we're gripped by the hundred million Muslims of India, can you say to me, be honest, have you ever been gripped by a hundred million Muslims in India, you've read about them, you've thought about them, and it's gripped your heart, so raise your hand, I know Greg has, and a few others, good I'm not putting you on a guilt trip, but don't go to the other extreme and think, the major thing we must do as American Christians is never feel guilty, that's a big thing over here, it is absolutely normal in this world, if you're a human, if you have a fiber of humanity and compassion to at times feel guilty, and in Christ through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, you'll know how to handle that, and Paul Tournier brought that out in a brilliant book on that subject, and when we think of that hundred million people in India, it should grip us because the church does not yet exist among those people, so some of you are into reaching the whole world by the year 2000, great, I'll follow you, forgive me for my doubts, forgive me that my major Indian leaders are not convinced the job can be done, and they're on the cutting edge of most of what's happening in India, we talk about a lot of Indian nationals mobilized, we think we can support them for thirty dollars a week, most people by the way can't live on that, and there's a lot of things being said that aren't true, but the fact is most Indians, ninety five percent cannot relate to Muslims, and Indians would be the first to acknowledge that perhaps an American coming to North India will in fact make a greater breakthrough than a Malayalee from Kerala who doesn't know the language and has never talked to a Muslim about Jesus Christ and his life. We have many Muslims in Kerala, the church in Kerala has almost zero contact, almost zero contact, the strongest church in the nation with the Muslims that live in their own state, so we've got a hundred million where the church doesn't yet exist, now we have given a lot of those people the word of God, tens of millions have the word of God, they have New Testament, they have Gospels, they have Bibles, scripture distribution which we fanatically believe in, it's not the end brothers and sisters, it's the beginning, we now have to go back and we've got to plant churches, we've got to contextualize and win those people to Christ, and we're talking about the toughest job the world has ever taken on. It's alright for us to say one thing in California, praise God for the optimism of California, we need that in the body of Christ, God has used California to bless the whole body of Christ across the world in various ways, especially through that great U.S. center and many great churches, but if you were living in a village in Uttar Pradesh surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Muslims and there was no church you might be a little more of a struggler like me, I want it to happen, I'm ready to give my life, I'm ready to give whatever God wants and I know he'll not ask me to do something and not give me the grace to do it because I'm feeble and weak and a struggler as you may guess, but if we don't make radical change and Patrick Johnson brought that out in his brilliant article on counting the cost in the Losantu magazine, if we're not willing for radical change in lifestyle, in vision, in action, in enthusiasm, networking, mobilizing, informationizing, getting up a little earlier, staying up a little later, learning how to redeem the time because the days are evil, if we're not willing for practical change and that often costs, it's not going to happen. Now a lot of things will happen, South America probably will be completely reached depending on your definition of what being reached is, certain parts of Africa it may happen, it may happen even right now in good parts of the Soviet Union, though keep in mind the Muslims, tens of millions, tens of millions of Muslims who are becoming more and more radical and outspoken in the Soviet Union, who were starting to persecute Christians, the last I heard, who are being fed hundreds of thousands of Korans in from Saudi Arabia, they represent another bastion, a huge bastion of unreached people in the world and I could go on and on and on for every part of the world where the response is great, the doors are open, people are coming to Christ, we love those areas, with our ships we go to those areas, there are other areas of the world that are forgotten, that are neglected, that are behind double doors, there are language barriers, and unless something big happens, even in the missionary movement, for a high percentage of all missionaries are working among people who have already responded to some degree, only 2% work among Muslims, of all the missionaries in the world, unless something radical, something strong, something grass roots happens, which is tied in with prayer and revival, I don't think it's going to happen by the year 2000, and the way population explosion is, I don't know what to say on top of that. Now if that frustrates you, if that causes you to be less happy than when you walked in the door, forgive me, with my heart caught up with 100 million slave children in absolute misery, I'll have to wrestle a bit to make your happiness number one priority in my thinking, because I feel that happiness in fact is a by-product of holiness rather than a goal that we are all to work our knuckles off to get with every kind of happiness seminar we can possibly go to. Brothers and sisters, many of my moments in life have not been happy, and yet I had known at those unhappy, sorrowful moments, seeing souls in such suffering, that Jesus Christ was in me and with me, and I had lived for him every single day for 35 years. And if a character like me, a loud mouthed pornoholic saved in Madison Square Garden under Billy Graham, with all my struggles and doubts and fears and emotional roller coasters, if I can somehow hang in there and do a little to evangelize the world, then nobody has any excuses. I'm not big on listening to excuses, though I have to listen to them. So let's go, and let's make the changes that need to be made, not in our own strength, but in his strength and his power. Let us pray. Lord, we just thank you that you brought us here to this conference, and we thank you that you have a purpose for every one of us. And often before you can do a new thing and give a new blessing, there has to be a new disturbance. You have to disturb us, you have to shake us, and I know I have to be shaken, and I have to be stirred, and I don't know why this person sent me this article about these children that has so stirred me in the last 24 hours. I have to search my heart, and I have to find your direction, and I have to take greater steps of faith. We thank you for the message of balance, and we thank you that you, by your strength and by your grace, will enable us to keep on running the race, day by day. We thank you, Lord, we only have to go one day at a time. And you will enable us to run the race, day by day. Just bless each one who is here, and guide them in their own personal situations, their own personal complexities, as our culture is so mega-complex in America. And we do cast every care upon you, knowing you care for us. In Jesus' name, Amen. There are not many of you here, but through this little cassette tape which you can order, you can get this message to the hands of pastors, Christian leaders, and people across this country. And that can help. Every little bit helps. Don't forget to take a look at the books. Amen. If you'll go ahead and get your prayer seats out, we're going to spend the next 15 minutes praying. You'll turn to the back of the third page, that's where the prayer requests for this session are. So, those are specific prayer requests you've heard on the stairs. I don't think there are any in here.