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God Uses Foolish Things - Part 1
Jackie Pullinger

Jacqueline Bryony Lucy ‘Jackie’ Pullinger (1944–present). Born in 1944 in London, England, Jackie Pullinger is a British missionary and evangelist renowned for her work in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City. After graduating from the Royal College of Music, specializing in the oboe, she felt called to missions at 22 but was rejected by organizations. A dream and a minister’s advice led her to board a boat to Hong Kong in 1966 with just $10. There, she taught music and began ministering in the lawless Walled City, notorious for drugs and triads. In 1981, she founded St. Stephen’s Society, aiding thousands of addicts through prayer-based rehabilitation, chronicled in her book Chasing the Dragon (1980). Pullinger’s charismatic ministry emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s power, leading to countless conversions and transformed lives. Awarded an MBE in 1988, she continues her work in Hong Kong and beyond with her husband, John To. She said, “God wants us to have soft hearts and hard feet.”
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I saw a picture of a group of people riding horses. The horses were answering questions. And I saw a boat. The group of people riding horses boarded the boat. I saw some fire in the chimney of the boat. But there was no one on board. But when I asked God, God clearly told me that some of you were already prepared. You were already prepared, like a horse. Some people were going to leave the boat. I saw the boat was going outside. The fire of the boat represented the fire of the Holy Spirit. It was very fiery. And some people were already prepared. Like a horse, ready to set off. But there was still no one on board. But when I looked at the picture again, I saw that someone was going to ride the boat. That someone, or a very stupid person, was going to ride the boat and leave. He had a picture of many people riding horses. And the horses are ready to go somewhere. And these people are ready to go on board a ship. And there is a chimney on the ship, which is burning because there is a great fire. And there is also, there is not yet, but there will be a captain to guide the ship. And he believes this means that there are many people ready, already in this church, who are ready to go. And they are very happy to do that. And he believes that possibly the captain may be somebody. He doesn't look very clever. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 27. No, we start at 26. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble birth. I always remember that there was a queen of one of the Netherlands countries who used to say, thank God for the M, because it doesn't say not any were wise by human standards. Not any were influential. Not any were of noble birth. It just says not many. So if you are clever, and you have been to college, if you have some influence in this world, and if you come from a good family, the good news is you can go to heaven. The other news is you're going to be in the minority. However, most of us, when we are looking for leaders, or future leaders, we'll choose to invest in those that appear to be wise, or influential, or a good family. And we see here that God has actually chosen the other ones. I have some friends in UK, and they're always talking about the people they're praying for, you know. And they say, wouldn't it be wonderful if Ken came to Christ? He's got such influence. And, you know, because he's high in finances or something. And I would say, yes, it would be great if he came to Christ. But God doesn't need his influence. And you'll find that most churches or Christian organizations throughout the world will target students. I mean, hopefully, because they want the students to know Christ. But often it's because they believe that they will have influential positions, and in the future they may be able to influence their countries. God doesn't need that. He may use it, but he doesn't need it. He had his son born into the least tribe with the wrong education and none of the right qualifications. Not of apparently noble birth, though he had good ancestors, but he was born illegitimate. God doesn't need what we think in order to reach the world for Christ. And I truly do believe that the quickest way of reaching the world with the good news of Jesus is through the poor. I truly believe that. You know what's happening in China right now? It's probably the greatest revival that there's ever been in any country ever in the history of Christians. There may be up to a hundred million who now know Jesus in mainland China. Never mind what politics they have or freedom they don't have, the good news of Christ is spreading more rapidly than in any nation on the earth these days. And how is it done? Well, it sort of happens like this. Before people come to know Jesus, they already know that the possibility is actually being killed and the probability is prison. In fact, we know groups of people who feel that they haven't been counted worthy because they've only been in prison for three years so far. This is true. So they've counted quite a cost when they come to Christ. So you hear about 16-year-old girls or 17-year-olds and they come to know Jesus and all they've got is a third of a page of a copied out bit of Bible. And they leave their home and in this home they only live on sweet potatoes and they carry a few sweet potatoes with them and their third of a page of Bible. And if they take a bicycle with them and if they take one more jacket or one more clothes with them, they will not have it by the time they get past the next village because as they go they leave their bit of Bible and their potatoes have gone and they've given their coat away and they've shared what they know of Him which isn't very much, but it's much. And two years later they come back to their village and their parents didn't know if they would ever see them again. And they tell them of the hundreds, thousands, the villages that have heard the Word of Christ turned to Him. The Holy Spirit's come. The government officials have come to the Lord. It's spread to the next village and the next. And the girls walk because they've got no bicycle anymore. Two years later they come back poor yet making money rich, dying and yet we live on. That's why revival's happening in China. And they've never been to a seminar. They've never been to a worship service except what they do in their family. They don't have hymn books. They sing scriptures. But they give everything they have away. And there was one man that I met and when I met him his eyesight is very poor but his face was shining. And I asked him what happened and what happened was that he was in the streets telling about Jesus and he was told not to do this. But he said, I cannot not but speak about my Lord. So he went on speaking and they put him in prison. And I have many friends who've been in prison or who are there now or who have disappeared. Many. And so he ended up in prison and they put him in a solitary cell which was like a pigsty. It just had a dirt floor. And he was in there for over a year in the dark. And they just threw his food in on the floor and that was also where he went to the bathroom. And so he ate off the floor which was his toilet. And when they finally released him his eyes had suffered very greatly because of the dark. And when they let him out he went to a certain village and you know he's just a very ordinary looking man. He doesn't know how to preach a sermon or anything. He just knows Jesus. And he spent his time in prison talking to Jesus and singing a bit. And when he came out of prison he was so shiny that when he walked down the street of the village and the city people turned to Christ. He didn't even open his mouth. And I said to him, Will they arrest you again? And he laughed. And he said, They regret arresting me before. Because this happens so many times. Those that have gone into prison come out so shiny even if their bodies are broken. Even if their eyes are poor. And I met a blind woman who'd been in prison for 23 years. Suong Wing To's wife. And he was very sick and he'd been in prison for 27 years apart from his wife not knowing if she was alive. But his eyes and his face he sang the song in English and Chinese four verses. All the way my Savior leads me. And his eyes were shining and he was laughing. He didn't think it was hard. And when they asked him What was it like in there all those years? He said, Oh, it was a honeymoon with Jesus. So you see, you think it sounds hard but it's not. God hasn't chosen a harder way for some people. It's not true. Sometimes people say, Oh, you know, poor Jackie she's had to live the cross. No. Why would you think my life's harder than yours? It's probably the other way around. One man's lot is no harder than another's. God's not like that. Will he not give grace for whatever it is that he's chosen us for? Whatever that is. The difficult thing in this world is not doing what he says. And then you get sicked up by a whale or something. You know, you might as well. That's how China is experiencing revival. No visual aids. No life tapes, changing tapes. No video of the month for Christian magazines. Just a few people who aren't very educated, without microphones, who love their lives not unto death. That's it. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. I went to England a few years ago with one of our girls. Her name is Afan. And, well, in the eyes of the world, and sometimes in mine, I'm sorry to tell you, she's foolish. I mean, she doesn't know how to do things, you know. She really doesn't know how to do things. She doesn't know how to behave in company. And she's not tactful. She's loud. Spiritually, she's very sensitive. Naturally, she's awful to be around. And I took her on this ministry trip to England. And we were in a... It was for ministers. Well, she gets up, you see. And all our guys, I tell them, wherever... You must prophesy wherever you go. This is biblical. So, get up and prophesy. So, she got up and did her bit. And, I couldn't translate her bit. You know, because she couldn't speak any English. And she said, there's something, something, something has come between us and God. And I couldn't get what it was. So, I got her face out of the mic, because she was shouting Chinese into it. And, didn't think the pastors would understand that. So, and I said to her, out of the mic, what do you mean? And she grabbed the mic and said loudly, you know, you know. And I said, what do you mean? She said, you know, you know. And I'm sweating by this time, you know, because the, the prophecy is not going well. Then she grabbed the scarf around my neck. And she goes, you know. And I thought she's trying to strangle me in the middle. You know, she says. And, and, this went on for a few minutes. And finally I understood what she was saying. It was just one of those difficult Chinese words. And, what she was saying was, there is a veil in between us and the Lord. And when the veil is taken away, so, oh good, I got it. But this was very embarrassing, you know, because we've done this sort of loud, embarrassing demonstration in front of all the pastors. But she's always like that. She's always like that. She, she was on drugs for how many years, I can't think. And most of our women drug addicts, along with their addiction, have had to do many other things to get money for their drugs. And she was very, although she's still strange in the natural, she's very much changed from what she was. And, after the meeting with the pastors, we invited the Holy Spirit to come. And this is a bunch of pastors who had not been very receptive historically to the Spirit. Up this girl goes. She lays her hands on each pastor. And God gives her one English word for each one. She doesn't speak English. It was THE word. One by one they cracked up. Fell down. And were visited mightily by the Holy Spirit, which had never happened to them before. And I just stood there in amazement. And I think, you know, we really think that it's our preaching that does it. It's not. It's the foolish things of the Lord. Now when you, when you work with the poor, you'll begin to understand this. Because the way the poor hear things is different from the way you hear things. The poor will be able to hear the Gospel very much more quickly than your kind of person. Because they can hear spiritually. It's cold, as in the Psalms, deep to deep. And I'll explain sort of how it happens. It's very amazing, this. You see, in the West we have been trained to approach people's minds and somehow we think that we could convince somebody about Christ, which you can't do. Nobody comes to Christ through the mind. Though, having come to Christ, our minds may then be changed. But we hear spiritually. And I was in Japan once, and I knew that historically it was very hard for the Japanese to hear the Gospel. So I said to the Lord, Please, will you speak to them? Because I don't think I can convince the Japanese. And I was at one of these awful preaches, you know, where they make people eat dinner first, which is not a good idea. Because, you know, everybody's going ... So there was this big fat green grocer there, a fruit seller, and he went to sleep after I'd started for about half a minute he was asleep. He slept through the whole thing. And then he woke up. And he went up to somebody. This was after about half an hour. He went up to somebody and he said, I have to accept Christ now. And this is what had happened. He listened to me for 30 seconds and he thought, Oh, I don't need to hear that. And he went to sleep. And while he was asleep, Jesus came to him and said, You need to believe in me now. So he woke up and he said, I need to believe in Jesus now. Now, this is what it means when it says God is pleased to use the foolishness of preaching. People aren't saved because of the sermon. They're saved despite it. They're saved despite it. No, this is true. When you hear the average testimony, you'll hear nearly every single person will say, I don't know what the preacher was saying, but I found myself walking forward or tears running down my cheeks. Now, we think that we have to convince and make four points, which will help. Or maybe it's three points here. But of course, the poor man cannot get your point. He doesn't know why there should be three. And anyway, you can't do three A's in Chinese. But he can hear spiritual things. He is foolish in the eyes of the world, but he can hear spiritually. I'll tell you how it works. This is what we do in our addicts' meetings. This is very exciting. And you'll begin to see how unfair the whole thing is. In our addicts' meetings, nearly all of our people come to Christ in five minutes. They walk in the door, and of course, they've come to meet him. But because their friend has changed, they want to know Jesus too. So it usually happens something like this. They walk down a street, and addicts are very thin, and they've bumped into a fat person. And they say, why are you so fat? And the fat man says, Jesus. And the... Just a cultural thing. And the thin man says, OK, I'll have him. Because they can't get fat, you see. And... Because they have to take drugs. And so they say, OK, where do I meet him? And the fat man says, he's in the walled city on Wednesdays and Saturdays. So they would come into the walled city, and they come to the door, and they say, OK, where is he? And one of our guys, like these three brothers here, will introduce them to Christ. This usually takes five minutes. We don't explain anything first, by the way. There's no point in explaining Christ. It's better they could meet him. And so we pray with them immediately. No explanation. I will not let people preach at them. Their minds are blown. But their spirit is calling. So no preaching. We pray with them. And, of course, as we pray with them, Jesus comes and touches them, and then we say, will you believe he's God's son? They say yes. They've never heard that before, but they say yes. They don't ever so believe, but they want to come and live with us. So they say yes. Which is all right, I think. And then we say, well, will you believe he died on the cross for you? They've never heard that before, but they say yes, because they want to come and live with us. They trust us, you see. Which is how they accept him so quickly. And then we say, you know, he rose again, and they can understand that. And then we pray with them. Then we say, will you tell him you'd like to follow him? And they say yes. We haven't talked much about sin yet, by the way. And then we say, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and he'll give you new words to help you speak. So this is how they come to Christ. And it usually takes about three minutes, or 30 years. You see, what I'm talking about is an unfair bit. Nowadays it takes three minutes. But it's because they trust us, you see. They know that we will share our house and our lunch and our nights and our free time. That's why they come to our Jesus. So it looks very quick. But anyway, after they've come to Christ, we then teach them to prophesy. So we they've just come to know him, and we say, okay, what did you hear him say? And then they'll tell you. They don't know it's prophecy. And then we get them to pray for the sick. They're still on drugs, by the way. So, then, the most fun bit is the Bible study. Now you see, their minds are still blown. Understand this. We're not operating in the mind. We're operating spiritually at this point. We will work on the mind later. But right now, we're doing spiritual things. Now this is very easy with the poor. And I never teach them Bible. Because I trust that as they've come to life through the Holy Spirit, they can hear. So I get them to teach me Bible. So anyway, they go to sleep in a sermon, because they're, you know, they've got a 20-year drug addict habit. And they're probably injecting six times a day. So we go through Gospel stories. We only ever do Gospels at this point. I will not allow people to teach epistles. So, they're completely new Christians. And I want them to meet Jesus like people met him. So we do parables or miracles only. These are addicts meetings. We have them twice a week. And this is to tell you that these people are foolish. Most of them have not been to school. But they can hear deep and profound things. And I'll give you two illustrations. We always do the parable of the man who found the treasure in the field and sold everything. And we do this twice a year. And I only let people who've known Christ less than four weeks answer the questions. And I say to them, okay, who is the one who sold everything he had? And who is the treasure? Okay, now they're all on drugs still. One hundred percent of the time they will answer this way. Jesus sold everything he had and we are the treasure. Which of course is theologically correct in case you thought you could buy Christ. But you've never heard it that way around, have you? Because a man taught it to you. They hear from the Spirit of God and they know that he bought us. They know that. Then another time we were doing the resurrection appearances of Jesus. And there was this man who'd come to know Jesus on a Wednesday. And the awful thing is when they've come to know Christ, they bring their friends. And that's terrible. I mean, it is. You might not think it was awful, but you know, it means we've got to find more places for them to sleep. Because we can't leave them outside. So he bought his friend. So this one of them has been a Christian three days. And the second one's been a Christian half an hour. And we were doing the resurrection of an appearance of Jesus when he appeared to his disciples in the room. Well, they've read the thing out. And then I said, OK, how did he get into the room? Well, one of them looked there and he said, Oh, he didn't get in through the door. It's locked. He got in through the wall. I said, OK, how did he get in through the wall? Well, the half an hour one said, he's a ghost. And the three day one says, no, he's not a ghost. On Wednesday we did that he's got flesh and bones. OK, how'd he get in through the wall? Well, we've got, by the way, about 80 addicts who've come to Christ, all waiting to come and live with us. And they're all on the edge of their seats. How'd he get in through the wall if he's got a body? Well, the three day one thought for a bit and then he said, Fatlick! Which means he's got magic power. I said, OK. Did he always have Fatlick? Did he always have this magic power? And he said, yeah, he always had it. But before he died he never used it on himself. And I said, do we get Fatlick? He said, yeah. We get it when we believe in Jesus. He says, for now it happens in our hearts. Later it'll happen in our body. Well, I think that's quite good for three days. But he didn't get it from theological school. In fact, I don't think he'd been to school probably for more than two years in his whole life. It's a different wisdom. It's God's secret wisdom which is revealed to those who may be foolish men to confound the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong. I walked down the street one day and met the big gang leader and he I'd been in Hong Kong that time I guess about eight years and some of his former gang members had come to Christ and he couldn't understand it. He couldn't understand why he used to control about 20,000 people. And he said to me, look, I'd really like to give you some money. I see you've got this miserable little room. And it was a miserable room. It was sort of eight feet by twelve, just big enough for a ping pong table. But it was filled with God's glory. I'm so glad nobody gave us the bigger one. Now I am. He looked at it and you see it was everything that was wrong. He said, you ought to be having a big room which is properly painted, with proper chairs and all I can see you've got is this miserable place. I'll give you money. And I said to him, I don't want your money. I want you. He couldn't understand how he had all this power. And I had nothing. This is God's way you see, for me anyway, of winning the world. People think it's the other way around. That somehow if you've got more money, you could have a better ministry. Well, we use money occasionally, but not instead of the heart. And God in his mercy chose to use the fact that we hadn't got anything to preach the gospel to the big gangster. That's how he came to Christ. Naturally, we couldn't compete with him. But we had something which was confounding. God's chosen the lowly things of the world to nullify the things that are. Once there was a young man who lived with us. And every time he would go on a holiday, he took drugs again. Now, when we live with drug addicts, I learned many things. I used to be quite judgmental. I would think, how could somebody who knows Christ hit someone the next day? Or how could they steal something again? Or how could they stick a needle in their arm a week after knowing Jesus? That didn't last very long. I didn't think like that very long. Because, you see, I started to look at myself and I noticed that there were many things in me which hadn't changed. It was just that with them it shows. And this guy, every time he took a holiday, took heroin. And every time he came back, he lied. And I knew he lied. Apart from that, he was fine! He lived with us and he loved worshipping and he was very good at prophesying. It's just that he took heroin every holiday. And I thought, well, I don't think I can lock him up forever, you know. I mean, I have to let him go sometime. And we tried everything. We did Bible study. And that didn't work. We did long prayer. That didn't work. I just couldn't get to the bottom of it. And so one day a friend was with us and we were persevering to try and find out what it was. And he had a picture of some water. And I said to this guy, does this mean anything to you? And he said, yes. When I was young, my father told us not to go swimming in a reservoir. But I went with my younger brother and by mistake my younger brother fell in. And he didn't come up for ages. And finally he came up and I got him out of the water and I told my younger brother, don't tell Daddy. Don't tell Daddy. But he went home and he told my father. And my father beat me very badly. And then he put me out of the door. The doors in Hong Kong have iron gates against robbers. And he banged on the door. And he banged on the door. And he said, let me in, let me in, let me in. And he was never allowed to live at home again. And once a month he was allowed to eat at home because his mother was a servant in a westerner's house. And he was allowed to come for a meal. But he was not allowed to stay at home again. And what had happened was that as he went out being severely rejected, that this great hurt in him meant that a spirit of loneliness came and dwelt in him. Which meant that later, even though he came to know Christ, every time he went out on a holiday, the spirit said to him, you're out again. This is what you must do to make yourself feel better. You must take drugs. So, that was very good because once we knew what it was, we addressed the spirit. And it was very satisfactory. You know, it was one of those real good quick ones. He went into the waste paper basket and that was good. And then we had a picture of a light shining on his family. And we believed that he would lead his family to Christ. And so it was very distressing when we heard two days later that his father had died in Canada. The whole family had emigrated without him. They left him behind when he was in prison. And he came out to find they'd gone. So, we managed to get him a special visa for Canada to attend the funeral. And I told him what to do. I said that you mustn't take part in the Buddhist funeral. This is how you must act with your family. And two weeks later, he came back off the plane. And I said, well, how was the funeral? And he said, it wasn't a Buddhist funeral. He said his father was in a nursing home. And the day before he died, he suddenly said, I must have a pastor. I must have a pastor. And the pastor came to see him. And he said to the pastor, I want to receive Jesus and be baptized. And that was exactly the moment that our man, after he had been delivered of the spirit, was praying for his father and saying, Father, I forgive you. And after that, he did bring his whole family to Christ. And he came back to Hong Kong. because he's only had a little education. And this is what he did. He got himself a pair of glasses. He doesn't need to wear glasses, you know. He just thought they looked smart. And so he wore these glasses. And he got himself a briefcase. There's nothing in it. And he would go to court. And because we're always having to go to court. And mostly what we do in court is pray. We pray for the people in court. And so he began to be our representative. These three guys I've brought with me, they spend half their life in court for other people and in prisons. They all work with our new addict. And he used to speak for us. He used to speak to the judge. And then after a bit, all the probation officers started calling him and saying, We'd like to talk about our client. And can we have your advice? And he was asked to address probation officers and to train the officers. This guy's done two years of school. And I went to visit someone in a hospital once. And the social worker came up. And he looked at me. And I was just wearing jeans and things and he didn't bother to talk to me. And he looked at this guy and he said, Mr. Kwan, I'd like to ask your advice. And I laughed. I thought that's great. You know, this stupid Hong Kong education system would mean that if this guy wanted to go back to the beginning, he would have to go to, he would have to do 12 more years of school before he could even get into a college which would qualify him for another college which would qualify him to be a probation officer. And I thought, that's just like God, isn't it? You know, he's chosen the foolish. And in his own way, he will lift up a man so that the government come to him for advice. It's the way it works in the kingdom. He's chosen the lowly things of the world to nullify the things that are. He's chosen the despised things to nullify the things that are. This is my favorite man coming up. There was a young man once who came to me and he said, Miss Poon, I've got this brother who's slipping in the streets. And I've tried to preach the gospel to him, but he won't listen. And I said, what do you mean? Preach the gospel. And he said, I read the Bible to him in the streets. And I said to him, how rude you are. That's awful of you to do that. Why should he listen to you reading the Bible to him in the streets? You live in a house and he doesn't. And you don't even let him know where you live. And he can't read anyway. We'll ask him to tea.
God Uses Foolish Things - Part 1
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Jacqueline Bryony Lucy ‘Jackie’ Pullinger (1944–present). Born in 1944 in London, England, Jackie Pullinger is a British missionary and evangelist renowned for her work in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City. After graduating from the Royal College of Music, specializing in the oboe, she felt called to missions at 22 but was rejected by organizations. A dream and a minister’s advice led her to board a boat to Hong Kong in 1966 with just $10. There, she taught music and began ministering in the lawless Walled City, notorious for drugs and triads. In 1981, she founded St. Stephen’s Society, aiding thousands of addicts through prayer-based rehabilitation, chronicled in her book Chasing the Dragon (1980). Pullinger’s charismatic ministry emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s power, leading to countless conversions and transformed lives. Awarded an MBE in 1988, she continues her work in Hong Kong and beyond with her husband, John To. She said, “God wants us to have soft hearts and hard feet.”