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The Christian's Manifesto
George Verwer

George Verwer (1938 - 2023). American evangelist and founder of Operation Mobilisation (OM), born in Ramsey, New Jersey, to Dutch immigrant parents. At 14, Dorothea Clapp gave him a Gospel of John and prayed for his conversion, which occurred at 16 during a 1955 Billy Graham rally in New York. As student council president, he distributed 1,000 Gospels, leading 200 classmates to faith. In 1957, while at Maryville College, he and two friends sold possessions to fund a Mexico mission trip, distributing 20,000 Spanish tracts. At Moody Bible Institute, he met Drena Knecht, marrying her in 1960; they had three children. In 1961, after smuggling Bibles into the USSR and being deported, he founded OM in Spain, growing it to 6,100 workers across 110 nations by 2003, with ships like Logos distributing 70 million Scriptures. Verwer authored books like Out of the Comfort Zone, spoke globally, and pioneered short-term missions. He led OM until 2003, then focused on special projects in England. His world-map jacket and inflatable globe symbolized his passion for unreached peoples.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of communion with God and following in the footsteps of those who truly knew God. He mentions the summer crusade in Europe, which represents only a small portion of his work. The speaker believes that the message of young people, who make up a significant part of his ministry, should be shared with every student in every university worldwide. He shares a personal experience of distributing materials at the University of Moscow and expresses his faith in the Lord's ability to accomplish great things.
Sermon Transcription
I ask our Father that you may speak to us from your word even now, that we may see the truth and do the truth. We may not be hearers of the word, but doers. Speak, O Lord, for we listen. In Jesus' name, Amen. I'd like you to open your Bibles, if you have your Bible with you, to the book of Romans, chapter 12. Beginning at verse 9, Let love be without dissimilation, that is, let it be sincere. Abhor that which is evil, plead to that which is good. Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love, in honor of preferring one another. Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. These are great words, and God speak to our hearts from them. Just add the 12th verse, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer. The title of the message tonight is the Christian's Manifesto. And I want to declare somewhat of a manifesto tonight. I want to speak to you about what OM, this little fellowship of young people, not so little now, with about 500 full-time on the year and a thousand or so for the summer, what they really believe. What they believe should be declared to every student in every university in the whole world. And we're just crazy enough to believe that that's going to happen. And I remember when I had my first contact from the University of Moscow and the wonderful time of distribution he had in that university a few years ago. And I'm convinced that nothing is too hard for the Lord. And I pray the Lord for this brief privilege I have to make this declaration tonight. What do we really believe? Very few of us know very much thoroughly. If you're a university student, you have to admit that. And when you finish all of your studies and you go on to research, you get to know more and more about less and less. And very few people understand any Christian movement thoroughly. I would be a very foolish person to try to give you an analysis of certain Christian groups that I really don't know that much about. And I believe it's important, especially for those of you praying and planning on going on one of these crusades, to know what we really stand for, what we really are trying to declare. Over 6,000 students and young people have passed through our ranks, some of them for only one month. To find out what O.N. is like from some young person who spent three weeks in one day on the summer crusade is not the best way to get the picture, because even the summer crusade in itself in Europe represents only about 25 to 30 percent of what O.N. does. So it's impossible to see really, unless you have real insight, and some fortunately do, what it's all about. What are we really trying to emphasize? What are we really trying to say? Now I can tell you that the devil is so powerful and so deceitful, and has such a power to deceive, that many young people come with us, even for a year or more, and never get what we're trying to say. Because we're not fighting a physical warfare in trying to declare these truths that I'm speaking about tonight. And the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and the tendency is to blindness rather than to vision and to sight. I hope that some of you, in your very first summer with us, or even not with us, may see some of these principles, because I don't know many Christian groups that would deny that these are the most basic issues a young person can get, if he wants to really be effective, if he wants to really be used of God. I think of what Eric Fyfe said. He's one of the leaders of inter-varsity in the United States. He said, Today we have perhaps a higher standard of academic preparation for the mission field than ever before, but it is unfortunately true that there are very few candidates whose prayer and conversation are such as have a heart-warming quality. The first thing that we want to declare, the first thing we want to emphasize, is the need to know reality in worship. There is nothing more important in the Christian life than worship. We have become the activist generation. We measure everything by what we do, how far we run, how many pieces of literature we give out, how many souls we want to Christ. Where God is seeking worshipers, he's seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. His work was born in prayer and worship meetings, meetings that didn't last necessarily one hour, but sometimes went on for one day. Because when we get in the presence of God and he's working in our hearts, we want to stay in his presence, not that we ever have to leave his presence, we don't. Fr. Lawrence knew more about worship and holiness in the midst of all the activities of the kitchen than the average person knows in a prayer club. And we've got to go back to the Christian's highest occupation, worship. It doesn't matter what you're doing. You can come on O.M. and work in the packing department or the shipping department where you put the books in the boxes, or you can come on O.M. and work as a mechanic, or you can come and drive a truck. I know one doctor from Cambridge who was a truck driver with O.M. in India working under an Indian team leader who had one-fiftieth as much education. But he learned a lot. Worship is what we're trying to teach young people. The first message they generally always get over in Belgium when they come is a message on worship. But the moment that message is in the head and in the heart, or at least getting in the heart, the devil comes and puts it out. And he has any one of a hundred major tangents going on right here in Britain today to get people away from priority. This is why we're constantly telling people to read the books of A.W. Tozer because he's calling people back to worship. He's calling people back to God because in this age of superficiality, instant Christianity, and spiritual pet pills, here's a man who has a message, a message that takes time to digest. Here's a man who knew communion with God, who followed in the steps of Madden, Gunion, Fenelon, and others in years gone by who knew God, who had something more than an intellectual rattle in their head, who knew God in their hearts. Let's forget evangelism, forget tract distribution, book selling, preaching, and all the rest, and get to know God, and learn what it is to worship God. Learn what it is to get off in the mountains alone with God. Maybe that's where some of you ought to spend the summer. Not on O.M. or with any other group. Go off to the mountains and spend a month in the presence of the Holy of Holies, and maybe you'll come down a different man, like Moses and many others who came down from the mountains. Men of God are not made in a summer, nor in five years. It takes a lifetime to make a man of God. No one could be more confused than the man who thinks O.M. is a shortcut to Christian service. It's the shortcut with the longest road that I've ever met. We don't believe Bible school, nor university, nor both of them combined can prepare a man for real spiritual work. A man has to spend time with God. He has to know what it is to worship. Read that book by Gibbs on the subject of worship. I don't think we have any on the table. Then you'll see what I mean. I'm not talking about coming into some little place once a week and going through an evangelical rosary, God deliver us. I'm talking about something that is so beyond that that the average man trembles at the very thought of it. Yet you read the word of God and you see the reality of this kind of life in the prophets, in the disciples, in the Lord Jesus Christ himself. This is our manifesto. We must worship him. He seeketh worshipers. He said that to thank him and to praise him was better than an ox and a bullock, Psalm 69. This is what God is seeking today. You say it's too old-fashioned? Call it old-fashioned. Call you what you want to, but I believe it is the greatest area of reality, worship. If it wasn't for the hour to two hours I spend every morning and other times throughout the day with God, my life would be nothing. I'm a weak person. I was overrun with habits, foul language, foul living, screwy ideas, wrong doctrines, you name it, I had it. But we become as him whom we worship. And for almost from the beginning of my Christian life I put this as number one. Strange for a person of 17. But when I was 17, on my knees I said, only one thing I want to know, prayer, reality. And the nights of prayer that continue to this day all over the world started when we were 17 and 18. That's what carried me through an unbelieving university with unbelieving professors and all the possible skeptical views that were sent my way. Several hours, many days, not every day. I'll be the first one to admit I've had days when I didn't get ten minutes. But that's what carried me through. Do you know this? Do you want to know it? You'll graduate from here or finish from here with a degree, but how many are going to finish from here with a degree in prayer? We're looking for PhDs, PhDs in the school of prayer. We aren't finding any, hardly at all, in our generation. I would rather fail out of university and know God than finish university at the top of my class and come out with a zero minus two knowledge of the Holy One. Fortunately, both are possible. Secondly, we believe, we declare, we must emphasize this revolution of love. I'm not the first one to write a book on love, if you know anything about Christian books. We've just produced 20,000 copies of a six-penny edition of Henry Drummond's book, The Greatest Thing in the World, one of the greatest messages ever given. And if you study the Church, you will see, maddened years gone by, many mighty saints of God felt that this was the major emphasis. Love. Love thy neighbor as thyself. This is the second commandment. The first is love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's worship and obedience and many other things. And so I haven't talked about anything new, have I? Just the same basic commandment we had way back in the book of Deuteronomy. The problem today, we oftentimes want things that are new, interesting, and different, when the message is old. It's revolutionary, but it's old, thousands of years old. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Very few of us understand what that means. I've preached that subject, I guess, more than any other subject, from 1 John, from 1 Corinthians. I've gone through every single verse in the entire New Testament on the subject of love. Several times I've listed them all, memorized many of them, and yet I find people, and even myself, very slow to really grasp what this is all about. You see, it's very much linked with humility, the last thing we seem to have in our day. When I read this book, it was the end. I was ready to quit, because I don't have it. I don't even understand it. But I want it. Do you want humility in your life? This is one of the greatest books in print, Andrew Murray's book, Humility. And if we don't come out of here humble, and it's not easy to come out of Cambridge humble, broken, contrite, we've wasted five years, four years, as far as God is concerned. And there's hundreds of Bible verses that prove it. We've got to get back to basics. And to know the revolution of love, one must humble himself. One must first of all admit he doesn't have it, admit his spiritual bankruptcy, the coldness of his heart, and then come and believe that God will do it. It won't happen in a day. You may have a crisis. You may have a crisis tonight as you go on the side of your bed and face God and ask Him to revolutionize your life and to make this revolution of love real. But if this crisis isn't followed by a process, it will soon become, as I've often said, an abscess. And I'm convinced that many of us want the crisis, and some have a crisis, some don't. But there's not many of us that are ready for the daily process of going to the cross, of instant repentance, of claiming the blood of Jesus Christ, of admitting what we are. I'm convinced with all my heart that God in our day wants to begin or to continue this revolution of love. I haven't got time. I could talk to you all night on this subject. I have many tapes available on this subject, if you'd like to hear more. I can't overemphasize it. Love. This is the disease that's killing the Church. Lack of love. Everywhere. I've been all over the world. That doesn't mean a thing. Anybody can travel. Travel means nothing. Sometimes I'm afraid about O.M. I have a little motto for O.M. It's called, Much Travel, Little Fruit. Traveling won't accomplish anything. But what we do when we get there, that's what's going to make the difference. Crossing the channel will not make you committed. Working in France will not cause you to be dedicated. But this love in your life, which comes when the Holy Spirit has His way, it can do something. You have to learn the life of love. I know a lot of people are just sort of waiting for it to fall on them. I have never met a man yet, in my 13 years as a Christian, who got love in that way. I know some who had an experience and that was a help. You have to learn how to love. You have to be broken again and again because there's so many aspects to love. You may have developed in one particular aspect of this revolution of love, but you'll only discover as you really get close to Jesus. There are dozens of aspects to this revolution. There isn't time to go into it. Thirdly, we want to declare, we want to emphasize the need for honesty. Absolute honesty. In our dealing with people, in our facing of ourselves. Many of us live spiritually dishonest lives. We're pretenders. I almost asked Peter to sing one of my favorite songs. It's a favorite song before I knew Christ. I used to hear it in the nightclubs where I spent a lot of my time. It's called, The Great Pretender. Peter has a great ability to change all the words, or some of his friends do. So he has some very spiritual words to this song. But it's true, many of us are the great pretenders. Pretending to be what we're not to be. Pretending that we're living a long victory. Pretending that somehow we're on the way and all the rest. We're not honest. This is so true, especially if people, if they're introverts, if they're shy, they will not share. They will not share, they push things, they repress things, and they catch up later. We have found a very important aspect of the Christian life is fellowship, real, straight, honest fellowship. You know, it's wonderful to know that your life is an open book. There's nothing about my life that isn't known, nothing. It's tremendous. I don't go around telling everybody everything about my life, but there are those around me, those who are close to me, and others who know everything about me. I've nothing to hide. Nor are my thoughts, which is all under the blood anyway, nor am I present. And I know young men who have, for the first time in their life when they've come on OM, opened their hearts to another brother about the things that were really bothering them, really eating away at their soul. Sometimes they weren't even conscious of these things until the light of the Word of God began to shine in their hearts. And when they came out, and they could really be taken under the blood, it's amazing what happens. This is what happened down in East Africa when these church leaders, bishops, top boys began confessing openly their failures, began admitting they weren't all that they pretended to be, began to admit they didn't love the Bible, began to admit they didn't have reality in prayer. When they started to admit honestly what they really were and claim the blood and the Lord's grace and realize that Christianity is a message of grace, revival came to East Africa and it has never left. That was 30 years ago. I've been there. And this is what we need to see today. Roy Heston talks about this in his book. Stanley Vogt talks about it in his book, Reality. Reality is not some super set of standards that you try to keep. Eventually you fall. When you fall you get so depressed because your self-image has been broken that you do not easily get back up again. But reality is a cross. Reality is Christ. Reality is taking your place as a failure, as a sinner, as a nobody, and allowing the grace of God to make you what Jesus would have you be. So many of us are maintaining an image. So many of us are shooting for a particular image. Many of us will end up extremely nervous because we'll fail somewhere along the way. And especially if you're a Christian, you have a greater possibility for failure in many ways because God is going to let you drop until you finally get at His feet and say, Jesus, you're all I want. Not Jesus plus success in Christian work. Not Jesus plus souls. Jesus plus Christian leadership. Jesus plus preaching ability. Jesus plus him or her. Jesus plus this or that. Not even Jesus plus Cambridge University. I know in the past how God has allowed people to fail and the thing they wanted the most was to bring them to the place where all they wanted was Jesus. That doesn't mean Christianity is a group of failures working together. No, because when God takes over, though we are failures, He brings success. He brings victory. But first we go down. Then we go up. Not first up. Except the corn of wheat fall in the ground and die. It'll bite us alone. Do you know this in your life? Reality. The cross. Amy Carmichael said, if we covet any other place in all the world other than the dust at the foot of the cross, we do not know Calvary love. This is what we're trying to teach on earth. This is what we're trying to bring through to our generation. Reality opens honestly. The masks are off. The curtains open. All the behind-the-stage activities that you've engaged in are now there and brought. Oh, beloved, if we don't see this in the church, there's no hope. I know that you, having not been out in the hundreds of situations I have been in in the evangelical church, cannot even begin to know how much dishonesty, how much hypocrisy, and how much sham there is. And unfortunately, you're probably as I have. And as thousands who I know, hundreds who I know, have had to learn it the hard way. I believe that Tozer hit the nail on the head when he described the evangelical climate of our day. Here's what he said. It's true. He said, the spiritual climate into which many modern Christians are born does not make for vigorous spiritual growth. Indeed, the whole evangelical world is to a large extent unfavorable to healthy Christianity. We may as well face it. The whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to see higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone. We are making converts to an ethic type of Christianity that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. The average so-called Bible Christian in our times is but a wretched parody on true sainthood. Yet we put millions of dollars behind movements to perpetuate this degenerate former religion and attack the man who dares to challenge the wisdom of it. This isn't from some little schoolboy. This is from a man who spent 40 years in the very thick of the battle. A man who is becoming one of the most widely read men even in Britain today, now that he's dead. When a prophet is dead, we begin to listen. But America turned their back to this prophet while he lived because he cut at the very heart core of our nation which is rotten right through the middle. And we as a nation have refused to listen. You will have to answer for your nation. Personally, I'm mainly concerned about answering for myself. We believe there must be a revolution of honesty, a revolution of walking in the light. What we don't mean, really, then let's not say it. Everybody's running around saying, God bless brother this, God bless, I'll pray for you. If we prayed for all the people we promised to pray for, we'd have to spend dozens of nights in prayer. And the whole evangelical church has become a long series of clichés and we've developed a whole set of jargon, and most of it is completely meaningless. We can talk about being a Christian soldier. We can talk about take my life, let it be. Take my silver and my gold. All these fantastic hymns. And we can go out of church and not be one iota different from when we came in. How long are we going to push it on? No wonder most students in Britain today are becoming agnostics. Why don't we face it? Why do we continue with our heads in the sand? And do you think that out of the students who go through our Christian unions in Britain and declare themselves little evangelicals during university, do you think they're all going on? I could tell you of so many backslidden degenerates who have gone out of our Christian unions. You wouldn't believe it. Why? Because we have given them dry husks. We don't know reality. We don't know revolution. We don't know spiritual honesty. We don't know New Testament Christianity. You say those words are too hard. I can give you the names of 25 Christian leaders. What does it mean? Who would agree to the same thing? Alan Redpath is one. A man from this nation, whose feet I sat under for two years at Moody Church, and I saw that church turn a deaf ear to another prophet. Oh, may God open our eyes before it's too late. We're young. We're flexible. God can change us. We're not yet set in our ways. May we not go down the drain of unreality. May we determine to buck against the tide and stand for that which the Bible talks about. Fourthly, we believe. We must emphasize the victorious life. The victorious life is not a myth. A life of abundance, a life of victory, the life of spiritual power, the life of overcoming. There must be at least 200 books written on this subject. Many different vocabularies. Sanctification, the spirit-filled life, the victorious life, the abundant life, the Keswick life, whatever you want to refer to. I like to say, as Billy Graham said, I don't care how you get it, just get it. But there is a life of victory. There is a life on the right side of Jordan. There is a life in which we're not up and down and one minute rejoicing, and the next minute complaining, one minute living in victory, and the next minute defeated, depressed, discouraged. And it's a life that Caleb and Joshua chose, the only two of the whole multitude out of the wilderness. All the rest. So are the giants. And I know as some of you hear about this message tonight, all you see is giants. The walled cities, you see the walled cities in your own life, the areas that seem so impossible. Psychological problems, emotional problems, battles. Walled cities, giants. And although there's milk and honey and you see that, not for me. Back to the wilderness. The greatest mistake you can make in your Christian life. And if I didn't believe in the sovereignty of God, I wouldn't even speak because it makes me tremble that my wretched personality, my miserable accent, or something else I might say tonight would cause you to turn away from the life of victory, from discipleship. I know he is sovereign. I know that somehow he can overrule my weaknesses. Don't throw the baby away with the dirty bathwater. Throw me away. Too noisy, American, go home Yankee. Fine, throw me away, but don't throw away this message. Take the New Testament and search it out. Throw O.M. away. I don't care if you ever come on O.M. That's meaningless unless it's part of God's plan. But oh, don't throw away this wonderful message of the abundant life, of victory in Jesus Christ, of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. This is something that we need to know. Some people come into it through crisis. Some people come into it without even knowing. I've seen and met people of both categories. The crisis boys, the process boys. Doesn't matter. I'll take all the Whitfields and all the Wesleys I can get. I'll take all the Darbys and all the Muellers and I'll take all the Finneys and all. I'll take all of them on my team and know this life. Do you know it? Are you learning it here at Cambridge? Victory, power, abundance, fruit, reality, God. Do you want it? If you want it, if you really want it, you will know. I believe we must emphasize this. I believe we must declare it. It's a subject I preach about more than anything else. People think that I go around preaching about forsaking all. I hardly ever touch this subject. Because when a man falls in love with Jesus Christ, he'll forsake all. Forsake all anyway is not an ultimate. We're only learning to forsake all. I'll give you the best definition I think I've ever seen of what a committed life really is. I wrote it in my Bible from the book Taste of New Wine. The totally committed Christian life is a life of continually committing oneself and one's problems day by day as they are slowly revealed to his own consciousness. Is it? There's no ultimate until we meet him. And this is one of the ways God uses this OM. Because most of us are used to living in a British culture. We have the climate we're used to, the food we're used to, the friends we're used to, the family we're used to, the music we're used to, all the things we're used to. Why, we can live pretty victorious. Is that victorious? Or is that, I wouldn't say it. But throw that man out in the southern heat of Italy in July. Take away his five cups of tea. Give him macaroni instead of pork chops. Take away his girlfriend for a month. Allow his letters to be lost in the post from mommy and daddy. And give him eight hours a day witnessing on the doors under an Italian leader who he can't understand and you'll see how victorious he is. This is why so many people get turned upside down in these crusades. This is why now leading mission societies are assigning candidates to come on OM. They know it works. Not because we're anything, but because when we expose ourselves to new situations, new pressures, it takes bank and we're either going to sink or swim. If you allow, I don't know if that's American, I don't know anymore what's American and what's English. I'm totally confused. And I'm convinced with all my heart that God does want some Cambridge students on these campaigns. I'm not ashamed to say that. When I think of the fact that no matter how many go from Cambridge to serve Christ on the continent, there still will be 500 times as many people serving in the British Isles, it's hard for me to panic over the exodus. You have no conception of the situation on the continent if you start comparing needs in Britain. If you believe the biblical teaching about evangelism, if you believe the unscriptural teaching that our job is to save everyone, stay in Britain because you're going to have a long, long journey to save everyone in this island. I'm convinced God has called us to evangelize. I believe with all my heart that we've got to know this victorious life. I believe, as Watchman Nee says in his little book, Released of the Spirit, I don't have a copy up here, that this is the most important thing. I praise God for this set of books that just came out. For those of you who read a book a day, like many of you, this is nothing. But if you want to dig your teeth into something this summer, you read the only books that Watchman Nee ever wrote. All the rest were taken from notes. Watchman Nee penned this encyclopedia on spiritual life in three volumes, The Spiritual Man. This is what we need. Now, you can get it without reading even one volume. You can get it just reading the New Testament. But I believe we've got to get down and develop a spiritual life, a victorious life in all of its many aspects. Fifthly, I believe we must declare, we must emphasize, the need for world evangelism. If men are lost, we've got to reach them. I don't care how Calvinist you are. It doesn't matter. We have some of the most on-fire Calvinists that I've ever met writing this work, and we have on-fire Arminians. Theology of all kinds, under the right pressure, will catch fire. But I'm convinced that we have been called to evangelize the world. I believe it. I believe firmly what this book says, that it's the world that's running away, and I believe we've got to catch it. And I believe that the Church has lost the vision of a lost world. We don't realize any longer that the Holy Ghost is going to bring a holy go, that we're either going to evangelize or fossilize, and one look at British churches can tell you what direction we're moving in. And it's not anything to laugh at. The heart of God is broken. The heart of God is crying out, as He did in Ezekiel, looking for men, looking for women that will stand in the gaps. Too many young men today are praying that aged prayer, Lord, here am I, send my sister. And the world, the mission field, is filled with single girls, two for every single man. While the Mormon Church, a little fanatical sect from Salt Lake City, has 20,000 men on the march tonight, more than all the churches of Britain and America all put together. Somehow we don't want to face the realities. Somehow we always come out with that trite little saying, charity begins at home. If only I could find it in the Bible. But I don't. Not that I don't believe we should practice charity at home. We should. But there'll be no problem with you doing that. Because most of you will not end up on the mission field for a long time. I hope that some will. But when I think of the comparisons, it's just staggering. Afghanistan, four believers among 13 million. I challenge anyone, anywhere, to come up and try to compare any need with that. Or do we believe, perhaps, that these are subhuman people? It's only the Aryans, sort of the Hitler theology, the white-faced boys, the Anglo-Saxons who deserve the best and throw the bones to the rest of the world. That's what we've done, evangelistically speaking. And as the cream of most of our universities ends up in the big industrial jobs of Britain, we send off a few Bible school boys to evangelize the world, most of whom do not have that which it takes to lead and to evangelize and to conquer. We need people in the mission field as well, with the brains, with the equipment, with the natural ability, anointed from God, to do the task. I think those of you who have received gifts from God and natural abilities and something upstairs need to pray and make sure it's on the altar and it's going to be really used for God. That could be an industry. I believe God wants to call spirit-filled men into every area of society. I don't separate the secular from the sacred. Some of the most dedicated men I know are in business. Personally, I prefer to be known as a businessman than a clergyman. But the neglected aspect today is not the business world. The neglected aspect today is Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, North India, Nepal. I was speaking at the main pastors' conference in Nepal. We had seven pastors in the whole nation, maybe eight, one or two weren't there. A hundred and fifty believers among ten million people. Can you picture London, beloved? Ten million people with seven pastors and a hundred and fifty believers. What would London be like? So you can know what it's like in Nepal. But where are those who will go? They say it's a closed country. We've had gospel and educational book exhibits everywhere, right under the king's nose, right in the streets in the biggest universities. We're showing gospel, moody science films all over the place. Closed countries. If I could only find the verse about this closed country business. I'm willing to believe anything I find in here. But we don't find it. That's why we believe in invading closed countries with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why we're in Turkey. Praise God for those Oxford students enrolled in the University of Turkey. One of them getting his PhD in the University of Turkey. We don't have any Cambridge men there yet. I never want to compare Cambridge with Oxford. It's not good politics. But I'm concerned about Turkey and the University of Kabul and the University of Tehran and the University of Shiraz and the University of Beirut and the University of Paris and Austria and Vienna and all these schools. If the Mormons can all give two years of their life, almost all of them, do you think one year for you would set you back that far in your professional goals? Are you willing to give God at least one year in militant Christian service to see if perhaps that is not His plan and if you go back from that into industry, into business, into research, I believe you'll be a better man for it. We've had some do this already and they've testified that this has been a blessing. This is enabling them now to pray for missions, to give to missions and to see that this is not a job for just a little woman's sewing circle in the church. This is the task of the whole church, of all of us together. We believe in world evangelism. Read this little book, Go You means you and you'll see what I mean. This is our declaration. There are many other things we emphasize, about 200, maybe more, because we believe we should declare the whole counsel of God. Too many of us get one little set of truths and we ride it and ride it and ride it and ride it until the horse falls down. I believe we must take the whole counsel of God in balance as we see it in the word of God. That takes a long time. I certainly haven't got there yet. But here are five basic issues that must be manifested in our generation. Worship, prayer, absolute number one priority. Love to others, a revolution of love, transforming us, humbling us and making us unselfish, loving, broken, kind, gentle, meek, spirit-filled individuals, honest, off with the mask, walking in the light. Fellowship, real fellowship with one another. Victory, promised land living, Holy Spirit, Christ-exalted, victorious living and world evangelism. May God give us students who will demonstrate, who will manifest, who will declare these biblical principles, each one of which I could give at least 50 Bible verses for, to our generation. Let us pray.
The Christian's Manifesto
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George Verwer (1938 - 2023). American evangelist and founder of Operation Mobilisation (OM), born in Ramsey, New Jersey, to Dutch immigrant parents. At 14, Dorothea Clapp gave him a Gospel of John and prayed for his conversion, which occurred at 16 during a 1955 Billy Graham rally in New York. As student council president, he distributed 1,000 Gospels, leading 200 classmates to faith. In 1957, while at Maryville College, he and two friends sold possessions to fund a Mexico mission trip, distributing 20,000 Spanish tracts. At Moody Bible Institute, he met Drena Knecht, marrying her in 1960; they had three children. In 1961, after smuggling Bibles into the USSR and being deported, he founded OM in Spain, growing it to 6,100 workers across 110 nations by 2003, with ships like Logos distributing 70 million Scriptures. Verwer authored books like Out of the Comfort Zone, spoke globally, and pioneered short-term missions. He led OM until 2003, then focused on special projects in England. His world-map jacket and inflatable globe symbolized his passion for unreached peoples.