In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of not only distributing literature but also following up with people to ensure their spiritual growth. They believe that it takes 14 years to fully follow up on the work that God does in just 14 days of distributing literature. The speaker also expresses their commitment to building churches based on God's Word and not cooperating with those that are not. They urge the audience to have a deep love for Jesus Christ and to be willing to go and be ambassadors for Him, even if it means sacrificing and giving up other good things.

Let's just unite our hearts for a moment of prayer. Our God and Father, we thank you for this time together tonight. We thank you that we can come apart and be with you and hear something of what you're doing. And we thank you for this great salvation. And we do want to spread the message around the world. And we thank you for every group, every movement, society, church, that's doing this work. And Lord, as we receive the reports of the victories we know, greater is He that is in us than he is against us. And we pray for this immigrant work this summer in Britain, that hundreds would be raised up to learn how to do this work and to do the work at the same time. A harvest is plenteous, the labors are few. We as disciples have much to say before the end of the day. Oh Lord, we often sing, O for a thousand tongues and fail to use the one. We ask you, O God, open our hearts, open our minds. We pray for the ship in Ghana. We pray for the armies moving forward in India. We pray for the work in the warehouse that starts again on Monday morning. We pray for the work of the church. Thank you, our God, that you hear and answer prayer, and we're trusting you and looking to you. In Jesus' name, Amen. I want to divide my thoughts and my message into two parts. Firstly, I want to share something about various countries that my wife and I have just visited. Actually, some people come to these meetings thinking that George Burwell has just arrived in Britain for a visit, when in fact, I actually live here in Bromley and have for quite a few years. So for a long time, I spent with my family half of the year in India, then Nepal, and then the ship. Now, because our children are in secondary school, it's a little difficult to shift the whole family. So they're based here, and I continue to travel. In fact, we leave in two days for our whole Easter vacation, taking about 30 meetings over in Germany. But on this trip, I had the privilege of taking my wife. Since I'd already just been away in Mexico, I just didn't feel that another seven weeks without my wife on this long trip was of the Lord. You know, normally her first task is the home and the children. After some heavy negotiations with the children, they're all here tonight, we decided to go on this seven-week trip throughout Africa and Asia. I can only begin to share just some prayer requests from some of the 11 nations that we visited. I hope some of you will write some of these things down, because I committed myself to the Church and to the brothers and sisters in these countries that I would try to mobilize prayer on their behalf when I return, and I want to do that right now. The first country we visited was the land of Egypt, and if you get one of these little sets of prayer cards, and I find these an enormous help, because I'm a mind wanderer. When I try to pray, my mind wanders all over the place, and I find these little cards a great help in concentrating my mind, and I just can't tell you what my own packet of cards meant. Actually, I had to borrow this set, because mine are soaking wet from Snowdin. But you'll find the little Egyptian card, and there you'll read the population is 36,000, 36,400,000. You'll read about the various kinds of people. You'll read that 88% are Muslim, 11% are Coptic, and on the back of the card you'll read some prayer requests for Egypt. I was amazed when I visited our team in Egypt, especially since the team leader was in the local prison, and I never did get to see him. This was shortly after the riot in Cairo, and somehow, really, I think by mistake, the leader of OM in Egypt was arrested during that time and put in the central Cairo prison for a little prison ministry. He's now out. He's had to leave the country and is based in Cyprus, and I would ask you to pray for Bertil Inquist, a Swedish artist who supported himself for many years by doing paintings, now as the leader of OM in the Arab world. The literature side of OM has now become a separate organization in the Arab world called Middle East Media, under the leadership of John Furwerda and Terry Ascot, who comes from Orpington. We'd ask you to pray for their work as well. We had a wonderful meeting together and talked about some of the publication projects they are involved in. We have two kinds of teams in Egypt, one based in Cairo, mainly trying to disciple Muslims and reach Muslims. The other in Alexandria, where the ship had such an exciting ministry last year, that team is mainly working with the churches, trying to get them to reach the Muslims and to reach out among their own people. It's a hard country, and we need more prayer for our work there. A number of new books are coming off the press in Arabic, and we're using those, and also we're mobilizing young people to go from Egypt in their summer holiday, just as we go over to France and Italy and Spain and Austria in these countries. Egyptians were hoping we'll go to other countries, especially the land of Sudan. That was the second country I visited. A country of great challenge. Brother Kamal, who received two years of training on the ship Lagos, is now the leader of ON in the Sudan, which we classify as part of the Arab world, since we are working in the Muslim part of Sudan, which is the north. The team is having a great open door. In fact, they distributed thousands of gospel packets. They look at something like that, a little smaller, and they sell them on a very low subsidized price in the streets of Khartoum. We had two evangelistic and challenge meetings in Khartoum. It was also my wife and I 17th wedding anniversary, so we wanted to do something special there in Khartoum, so we went out selling Christian books through secular bookshops, which is a rather unusual thing that had never been done before in Khartoum. We celebrated by having lunch together with Brother Kamal. But two secular bookshops purchased Christian books, including New Testament. These are being shipped out from probably this week, if they haven't already gone, from the warehouse right here in Bramley. Think of that, crates of books going out from Bramley right into the heart of Muslim Sudan. Some of our team members now have lost their visas, but the main strategy in ON Worldwide is as quickly as possible to get the work into the hands of nationals. They can't lose their visas. They may get put in prison for a while, but it's their own country. And our work worldwide is built on this concept of putting the responsibility of the leadership in the hands of nationals as quickly as possible, so that the work can become indigenous. And our real work as foreigners, it's very important to understand this, is not firstly evangelism. It's firstly helping to train, motivate nationals who can work in their own country. We evangelize as well, because we cannot tell them to do what we're not willing to do ourselves. But the real work of ON Worldwide is training nationals and internationals, and seeing them become effective in their own country. And I hope the name of Kamal Fahmy will be burned into your mind tonight, that you will pray for him. His father is the head of the Bible Society in Sudan, and his father's vision also has been expanding. So much so that on the quiet, he wants to open a Christian bookshop in the heart of Khartoum, where there is no Christian bookshop at this present time. Kamal was sharing with me that in one area of Sudan, there's a section of a million people, think of this, a million people where there is no witness for Jesus Christ. This experience that we had in Sudan was a great challenge to my wife and I, and we'll never forget it. And we feel committed to this country. One of us, I believe the second or third leading political man in Sudan recently wrote Peter Tomlin. He's another brother who lives in Bromley, but hardly ever here, at present in Kenya, coordinating all the African move of the ship. But Peter had a letter from this number two or number three man in Sudan, because the ship's been there already, and he said, we want Lagos to come back. This is a Muslim, and we're praying about the possibility, after Lagos finishes their journey around Africa, we're praying about the possibility next October or November of revisiting Sudan, and then even coming back through the Suez Canal to pick up books. We loaded a hundred and fifty, who knows how many tons of books, on the ship in Port Smith. And the book sales in West Africa have been beyond our wildest imagination. And before the ship can move on to Asia, we'll need to get at least another hundred tons of books out to her. And that'll cost a lot of money if we have to ship it. So we're thinking and praying, and you can pray with us, of bringing the ship back through the Suez Canal. We can get very cheap fuel in Jeddah. Saudi Arabians are very helpful. You know how it is there. They just sort of push a straw in the ground, and out it comes. I will come through the Suez Canal, probably to Italy, and then drive the trucks from Bromley and from London down to Italy to load books before she heads back to Asia in December. Pray for the possibility of the ship revisiting Sudan. Pray for young people, right from Britain, who can go to Sudan next year. If they're only allowed to go for six months or a short-term visa, then we want to keep a steady flow of short-term people to work with the Sudanese young people for the accomplishment of the task of helping to evangelize Sudan. From there, my wife and I moved on to Kenya. We had a little advanced meeting of people interested in the ship coming to Kenya, some Christian leaders. Kenya, of course, is probably one of the most evangelized areas in the whole of Africa. When we at OM go to a place like Kenya, it is with a challenge for them to move out to other countries. Africans reaching other parts of Africa. This is our message. We had a youth rally. We were only there 24 hours, so we only had about four meetings. And in the evening challenge rally, we challenged these young people from Kenya to pray about Sudan, to pray about Somalia, to pray about Chad and some of the surrounding lands. Everything north of where my hand is, is as un-evangelized as the Middle East or other Muslim lands that OM has been committed to for years. When we talk about a lot of Christians in Africa, we're talking about Nigeria. And again, Southern Nigeria, not Muslim Nigeria. We're talking about Kenya. We're talking about Uganda. Very small countries. We may be talking about South Africa, but we're not talking about anything north of where my hand is, north of the Sahara. And Islam is moving like a giant flood, moving slowly, just as the Sahara is moving slowly south, Islam is moving slowly south, grasping hundreds of thousands of new converts. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the Church of Jesus Christ. From Kenya, we moved on to that unusual and perplexing land of South Africa. Where Lagos will be visiting both Cape Town and Durban for an interracial ministry. And if you think that doesn't have a few complexities in South Africa, obviously, you don't read very much. And we need your prayers. There are many beautiful Christians in South Africa. Many of them are not happy about everything. But they believe that God wants them, first of all, to be a witness. We had some tremendous meetings in Johannesburg and in Durban. We also were given opportunity for nationwide broadcasts on both radio and television to share something of the burden of the gospel. The man who interviewed me for television was somewhat of an opposition type of person, and his sixth question was a real tough one. About, you know, do you really believe that people who have not heard of Christ are lost? You know, that difficult question to answer, especially on television. Fortunately, we got going so heavily on the first five questions that the time ran out before we got to number six. He was from Britain, by the way. But South Africa needs our prayers at this time. In Durban, there are 400,000 Indians. Most of them have never been in India. But they need Jesus Christ as much as Indians who are in India. We feel they will be one of the primary targets for the ship Lagos when she goes to Durban. There's a young man down there that I would like you to pray for, named Graham McIntosh. He's one of our prayer partners. He's also a member of Parliament for the opposition. He's got a heart for God. In fact, I had difficulty getting a visa when I answered all these questions on this gigantic form the embassy in London gave me. They said, I will have to refer this to Johannesburg. Well, I started my name dropping and I said, would a phone call to some of my friends in Johannesburg be of any help? The lady sort of backed up a bit. She said, well, if you want to. Anyway, within a day, I had my visa and dear brother Graham McIntosh made a few phone calls to Pretoria. You know, we have found all over the world God has people in strategic places, in government. Out in India, where we have to do so much work on the ship, the man in the Mazagon dockyard, the number two man, is a born-again believer who was interested in the ship six years before we had the ship. No man, no single man has helped the ship more than that one man in the Mazagon dockyard. And it's exciting to see how the Holy Spirit goes ahead of us in this work. The Holy Spirit is our lineup department. The real lineup. He goes ahead, then our men follow. And this is why prayer is so important. From South Africa, we joined the ship. Actually, the Queen Elizabeth. We felt rather out of place with all the multimillionaires, but there were a few inexpensive cabins down on foredeck and we had a burden to sail to Singapore to have a little bit of break between the meetings. We're having three or four every day. And also, because the ship was stopping at the Seychelles Islands, Ceylon, and one other place that I desperately wanted to go to. It was inconvenient to go to by air. Just a rather short trip, but we praised God for that visit to the Seychelles. And just to see those antennas out in the sea with Phoebus Seychelles beaming the gospel into the Middle East, into Africa, was a challenge we will never forget. We only had five or six hours there. With Brother Wheatley and Jeffrey Cook, who actually went to Moody Bible Institute with me many years ago. And I would ask you to pray for that vital ministry. They also have many personnel needs. I couldn't believe how many people they are lacking for that ministry. And that should be one of the key prayer targets. Also, they have no program into Turkey. We have been working with them for a program into Afghanistan. And that is now being beamed in, though so far there's been not a single letter back. Now, some people may be hearing it. It's another thing to get an Afghani to write to a New Delhi address. But we'd ask you to pray for that 15-minute broadcast into Afghanistan. But there's no broadcast from Phoebus into Turkey. Some of you may not realize, but the Christian radio station in Ethiopia has, I believe, been closed down and has been taken over by the government for the propagation of the revolution. And this is a vital concern. There's a little bit, very little, going in from here into Turkey. And as they were sharing this with me, I said, what's the problem? And they said, no one could do the program. No Turk who can do this program and someone with him who can write the script. And I want to make this a prayer target. Dennis Alexander, the coordinator of our whole work in the Middle East, has this upon his heart. He lives in Ankara. Actually, his mother and father are both involved in the Seychelles ministry. And his mother was sharing with me on the phone some weeks ago the burden to see a broadcast in Turkish from Seychelles into Turkey. But another burden came to my heart when I was there in the Seychelles. And that is to visit those islands. There are many islands there. It's not just one island, many islands. They're small ones, but those people are important. And we believe when we have two ships, we are going to be able to spend far more time with one of the ships. It doesn't matter which one, probably the smaller one. In these islands, there are hardly any local believers whatsoever in the Seychelles. And that is true of many islands around the world. There is no church in the Seychelles among the local people. And we would ask you to pray. We can't do it on this trip. We hope to be visiting some islands, the Comoros, Mauritius, Reunion, much larger populations. But I don't think we're going to be able to fit in the Seychelles. And this is another reason why we're so burdened about this second ship. We moved on by ship to Sri Lanka. And again, our hearts were just, were just broken during that one day. The ship has been to Sri Lanka a couple of times. I cannot begin to express the ministry the ship has had there. You know, you may think that many, many people are convinced about this ship ministry. The ship has now been to Great Britain. We learned through the visit of the ship to Great Britain what we already knew, that it is very easy for people to pay lip service to this project. It is a big project. It is an unusual project. It's hardly ever been done before in history. And so there's a high curiosity factor. But it has been proven to us since the ship sailed from Britain, that it takes something more than looking at the logos to give a man a real burden. That real burden can only come by the Holy Spirit. And it is our prayer that tonight in this meeting the Holy Spirit may put a burden of prayer, a greater burden of prayer, on your hearts for the Logos ministry and for the ministry around the world. But when I meet people who have doubts about the ship and wonder, well, you know, what's the purpose of it all? No, I just scratch my head. On the other hand, I can understand, because I haven't seen it. And seeing it in London, seeing it in Liverpool, is not like seeing it in Sri Lanka or Vietnam or Bombay or Mangalore or Madras, where we had 15,000 people show up in one day. We only had double that number come in London the whole period, and we thought that was a lot. But as I went to Sri Lanka, and it's been two years or so since the ship's had a ministry there, I saw the permanent fruit. Just two examples. We could give dozens. A Methodist pastor, most of the Methodists in Sri Lanka are Marxists or liberals or neo-Orthodox. But one of the leading Methodist pastors, who came to one of the conferences on the ship, was led to Christ by one of the Logos crew, and is now preaching the gospel full power in his church. Do you think that fruit is worth praising God for? Another minister, an Anglican, who was also a liberal, was converted to Christ during the same visit. We're not talking about people in the streets coming to Christ. We're talking about pastors with big churches repenting and coming to Christ. I can't think of any ministry more important than that. Because these people have under their leadership thousands of other people. Thousands. And they can lead them astray, like false shepherds described in the book of Jeremiah. They can lead them astray. And now this Anglican has been born again, and he's taking the lead in the evangelical Anglican movement of the British Isles. Together with a few others. I mean of Sri Lanka. What a challenge. Many others came to Christ, and they're looking forward to Logos coming back there. There are many complexities in going back. One is we can't get any money, not only out of the country, we can't even get it out of the bank. In fact, one of the reasons I went there was to try to get money out of the bank. All we want to do is put it into Christian books. We'll even give the books away, but we can't really afford to do that. Somehow we need to get some of the money back. We put it in the books, and we sell the books, and then we buy some tea. And when Logos comes, we load up on tea like you've never imagined. Because the tea consumption on the N.B. Logos, which is dominated by the British, is beyond all imagination. And so we would ask you to pray for Sri Lanka. From there, we sailed on to Singapore, which has become one of the fastest-growing sending countries in O.M. Singapore is not a target field. It's more evangelized than Bromley, and that's saying something. Got many strong churches. But there's a potential of young people in Singapore, and I was thrilled to discover myself that we now have 38 Singaporeans or Malaysians full-time in O.M. around the world. That's all happened in a couple of years. There are a number of key churches. The churches of Singapore, a number of key churches, would be ten times more committed to this work than any churches that we could find in the whole of London. That's Singapore. They really, really stand behind the work. Every young person, almost every young person sent out from Singapore has the full backing of their churches. The elders, the deacons, the pastor, they're fully supported, they're fully backed, and I tell you the potential we've only scratched the surface. Pray for the churches of Singapore. The challenge is great. Pray for Dr. Alan Adams, a medical doctor, who's given up his career, perhaps temporarily. I don't know if he's decided yet, because he has a burden for discipling men rather than repairing their broken legs. Both are important, but so often, so often, mission work, even to this day, has cared for man's body and has neglected his soul. It used to be the opposite. Evangelicals used to be accused of, you know, not caring for the body. But as usual, we're great pendulum swingers, and now the pendulum is over here, and you can go to places like Bangladesh, and up to recently, four out of every five missionaries, they're in relief work, caring for the body. Of course, some of them caring for the soul as well. But places like Singapore, many of the other countries we work in, they don't want our medical doctors. It's an insult to them. But we can go in in other ways, other capacities, and present Jesus Christ. Pray for an army of Singaporeans to launch out from that little island city, and Malaysians as well. We have a team working in Malaysia right now, in recruiting and challenging the churches. Pray that they may launch into India, into the Middle East. After Singapore, we took just a quick one-day visit to Bangkok, again to follow up on the ship ministry. In each one of these countries, we have a nucleus of people praying for us to come back, preparing for us to come back. Bangkok is a city we need to go to with a larger ship. In fact, that's true of many of these big cities. There's just so many people. There's so much to do, and Bangkok, Thailand, where my wife and I lived for quite a few months with our family, has never ceased to be on our hearts. Pray for Bangkok. Especially since most of the mission work in Thailand takes place more in the northern area. As you may know, Thailand is now one of the main targets for Communism. It is one of their primary goals at present, and there's a lot of terrorism and warfare on the borders. I hope every one of you will read articles about Cambodia. There was one in Reader's Digest, the ignorance of what Communists do when they take over most of these countries, here in Britain, and throughout the rest of sophisticated Europe, is frightening. And I believe that every Christian should pray and read about Cambodia, and what has happened to the Christians of Cambodia. And then we might be a little more prayerful about what can happen in some of these other countries. And as we look at what's happening with Communism in Southern Africa, Mozambique, the Cubans now moving in desire, I tell you, it should drive us to our knees firstly, and it should drive us to move in these open countries, as well as the closed ones, while we still have the opportunities. From Thailand, we moved on to Bangladesh, one of the primary purposes of our trip to Asia. In Bangladesh, we do not work under the name of Operation Mobilization. OM officially, in the early days, was asked to leave the country. And so we started a new work there called Young Christian Workers, mainly Bengalis. It's one of the most indigenous and exemplary works of the whole of OM worldwide. We have 15 to 20 Bengali men, a number of them converted to Christ through our own ministry in that country. We have a few other foreigners there. They go in officially with the International Christian Fellowship, and then are loaned back to work among the Young Christian Workers. You see, one of the key things in OM is maximum flexibility and adaptability. We're not interested in terminology. Whether you want to call yourself a missionary, or an engineer, or a salesman, or a carpet exporter, we got a man in Nepal got a visa for exporting shoulder bags. We have another man in Nepal right now where OM has also been kicked out. He's got a visa for teaching music. What's the difference? What's terminology? We've got to get into these places, and we've got to be flexible. If someone gets kicked out, we send someone else in. That's very simple. You don't even need to go to university to understand that strategy. And so God has kept us in many countries where we were thrown out. Some of them we were never allowed in, like Turkey, except in jail. We have people there every year, and we need, as we think of world evangelization, we need to get some of the cobwebs blown out of our thinking. We need to realize it is now 1977. We're sending spaceships out to the moon. We got satellites circling the whole of the earth, and though the gospel has not changed, the world situation has changed. We live in a global village. In four hours, you're in Washington from London. And this means that if missions is going to make an impact in the 20th century, there has to be a greater degree of flexibility. There has to be a greater degree of adaptability. There has to be, there has to be a greater willingness to adjust, to work side-by-side and under national leadership, to even take up jobs in these countries, to get a visa to stay there. There are unlimited open doors. In fact, the whole world is open for this type of missionary thinkers, and strategists, and workers. We had a conference in Bangladesh, and during the last evening we invited ex-OMers to come. I couldn't believe it. We have ex-OMers and ex-LAGOC people working with almost every major evangelical mission in the whole of Bangladesh. There are a couple of dozen. I think a young couple has just arrived in town tonight. I don't know if they're here, Bruce Littlejohn and his wife. But they just arrived in London tonight, and I've just found out they're going out to Bangladesh. Bruce was converted for one of our teams in Tehran years ago, has been our main diesel mechanic for many years. Like many of our long-termers, found his wife in the movement, a Swede, and they're headed back to work with another mission in Bangladesh. And this is an encouragement, because this is one of our major strategies, to train young people, the longer the better, in one sense, and then to see them going out into these needy areas with other missions. From Bangladesh, we took that Bangladesh Biman airline up to Nepal. You know, when you arrive in that little airport in Nepal, you realize you've got to the uttermost part. 10 to 12 million people in Nepal, 95% of them illiterate, an anti-christian Hindu government, the only Hindu monarchy remaining in the world today, Christians still in prison for their faith, the Whitcliffe Bible translators at the same time, as educational book exhibits, the name we were working under in Nepal, both had to leave the country, and yet, there's still an open door. We were in Nepal, not at this time, for the purpose of evangelizing Nepal, but because we were having our All India Conference in Nepal. It's a good change, a little cooler there, and during elections, it was good to sort of get out of India for a while, and so 250, 200 of that number are full-time OMers. Very few people, even people within OM, understand the scope of OM India. Not that this means that much in one sense, because we're not, our great concern is not statistics, but this army is now the largest single evangelistic body laboring in India today, as far as full-time workers, so my own conclusion, conviction, is that every Christian is full-time. But I think you know what I mean, and what a joy it was to be with these brothers and sisters for 14 days there in Kathmandu, to be in their prayer meetings, and to worship together with them. They gave one and a half, two hours every day for worship, and for praise, and for prayer, then into the Word of God. You can share with these brothers for an hour and a half ministry from the Word. They won't hardly bat an eyelash. They just fill their hearts and fill their notebooks. There's a potential in our Indian brothers that I do not find in many Westerners, and this is why I'm so happy that the work there has been built on Indian men. It's taken a long time. There have been many disappointments. Some of these brothers, we've poured seven years into them before they were ready for major leadership, but now many of them are ready. And we are continuing a full-scale invasion of the Indian subcontinent. It looks like a small place, India, doesn't it? I can cover it with my three fingers. Can't do that for Africa. Can't do that for South America. Yet there are more people living in this tiny single entity, this one country, than live in all of Africa and all of South America combined. More of them living there. There are over 30 nations, I believe, in Africa. Every nation, you need another visa. Every nation, there's new problems, political complexities. But one visa takes you in Africa, I mean into India, and if you're British, you don't need any visa. If you go there short term, if you go there as a businessman, if you go there with any reason in the world, I can give you a half a dozen, you don't need a visa. And I believe this is the reason God told me and my wife 17 years ago to leave North America, with the thought, most likely, that we'd never return. When I sailed on the Queen Elizabeth in 1960 to France and then met my wife, she came over by air because she was about to have my son. She flew into Madrid. It was with a thought that probably we'd never return, that God had a new place for us to make home. We never knew where that was going to be for a while. We thought it was Spain, and I had this great burden for Russia, but they weren't friendly, very friendly there, and they arrested me in the third day and threw me out. Then I lost the opportunity to get any further visas into India, which we really felt was home, and so I landed up in Bromley, Kent. I'm still trying to figure that out. But I believe one of the reasons is because the people of Britain have an open door into India without a visa. And it is our prayer that even from this meeting tonight, there might be some who are at least willing to consider firstly short-term service in the land of India. A number of the men with STL, Dave Scudder, and others, have labored in India. And the reason they're with STL, one of the reasons, and they're laboring in that warehouse is because they know the little profit that we get, and STL is firstly a ministry, is not firstly something that makes a lot of money. You don't make a lot of money selling Christian books, I can assure you. Not as wholesalers, when many times you're operating in a margin of 8%. Only because it's been a ministry, only because the Holy Spirit has been as much in Sherman Road as it's been on Lagos, has this STL even continued through the storms that have blown against everyone in the wholesale literature trade in this country. But because these men have a vision for India, they see with their own eyes the possibilities and the open doors. They're here and in that way helping the work out there. There's not really so much more time, but I would ask you to pray for certain areas in India. Saurashtra, the southern part of Gujarat, 10 million people, only 10 churches. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine London with 10 churches and half of them dead? The other half with less than 20 people? That's what it would be if it was Saurashtra. And yet if you say Saurashtra to most people, you know, they probably think you're taking them down to an Indian restaurant to give them some kind of special food. Saurashtra is a strategic area, as strategic and as important with God as the whole city of London. And it's got 10 million souls and it's got only 10 churches of any type, Protestant or evangelical. And our teams are making that a primary target. We'd ask you to pray. Also for Madhya Pradesh, right under my thumb, in the very heart of India, a state of 48 million people. We're uniting together with the churches. In fact, we have pushed this campaign on to them. It is now their campaign, it's not our campaign. And we are working under the churches of Madhya Pradesh for a massive effort to reach millions of people with the Word of God. In no place in the world can you reach people so quickly as India and so inexpensively, not that that matters that much. Recently, we sent 50 men to a Mela. You know what a Mela is? It was in the British press, it was on the state TV, someone told me. A Mela is a Hindu festival, a very religious, semi-sacred festival. And to this Mela in Allahabad, right there, between 20 and 30 million people went, most of them to take a bath in the Ganges. Incredible! Some of them never lived, to tell the story. Nowhere in the world, so many people together, it's unheard of in history. And that team, moving among those people, they couldn't go in the holy area, but on the borders, even during this time of emergency, reached face-to-face 2 million precious people in 14 days. 2 million people! Now when I say that, a little bell rings that I'm miscommunicating, because when I say that, people think, well, this is all O.M. does. They go to these places and they give out millions of tracts. But what about the follow-up work? 90% of our work around the world is the follow-up work. But if you don't do something in the first place, you don't have anything to follow up on. And so when we talk to you about reaching millions of people with literature, that is only a small part of the work. That only took 14 days. It'll take us 14 years, beloved, to follow up on what God did in those days. And our burden is not just to see people converted, but to see them gather together, studying the Word of God, and then to see new living fellowship churches born, if there is no living church in that area. We will not cooperate in any debt with churches that are not based upon God's Word. We consider that building unsand. We don't want to build unsand. And so, teams now have gone back under the leadership of Joseph de Souza, another young man, recruited and trained through the ship. Now giving his life to Uttar Pradesh, and he will be spearheading the follow-up campaign in Uttar Pradesh. Do you know how many people live in that one state? It's only one state. How can O.M. get so excited about one state? We must think about whole countries. How many people do you think live in that one state? 100 million people. Double the population of the British Isles in one state. And there are less gospel churches in that state than you'd find within a 10-mile radius of Brownlee Kent. And I'm not exaggerating. In the entire state of Uttar Pradesh. Do you see why our hearts are burdened and broken for this great subcontinent? This continent that once played such an important role in the thinking of British people, and which has been so incredibly neglected in the past 10 or 20 years. In fact, if you call a missionary meeting around Britain on the subject of India, hardly anyone will show up. In fact, in general, when I go to take a meeting, I write to the organizers and I say, please do not book it as a missionary meeting. And do not book me as a missionary. Book me as a youth speaker or book me as a anything, but not as a missionary. Why? Because if I have a missionary meeting, and especially if it's about India, hardly anyone will come. The best meetings I have are youth rallies. I'm going to Canada in June to speak to 15,000 Canadians. You think it's going to be a missionary meeting? No! It's going to be a music festival. They're going to bring in 25 of the top musicians in the whole of North America, and they've stuck me six times between these musicians. And I tell you, it's going to be a wonderful time, because we also have all of the book tables. 15,000 young people. People in general are not that interested in missionary work. And many times, it's because they have a false idea of what it is. And they think it's something of the 19th century, and they think now each country is taking care of itself, and the main thing for us British is to save our own tottering land. That's not what the Bible teaches. And I believe, I believe with all my heart, that God's hand is still mightily upon this country, because God works with a holy minority. And that he still has a plan to send out many missionaries from this land to the regions beyond. I shouldn't miss out on one other country, and that's the land of Iran. We stopped there on the way back, and visited with them during their mid-year conference. Ron George, a young man right from Bromley, the first young man I ever met in Bromley when I came here in 1962, in February, is leading the work there. And it's been hard going this year, but they're pressing on. And that Muslim country is a very primary target. Gordon Magney, a worker in Afghanistan, we actually have five in Afghanistan now. None of them are called missionaries, and none of them are called Omers. But they're there. There are only 12 believers in Afghanistan. Maybe 18, between 12 and 18, among 18 million people. People say it's a closed door, but it's not completely closed. Let's now look into the Word of God to sort of summarize our thinking this evening in Matthew chapter 7, verse 12. Therefore, all things whatever you would, that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. For this is the law and the prophets. With this strong verse in mind, can you try to imagine yourself tonight being a Turk? Take yourself out of Britain, out of this church, out of this country where the gospel has been preached more than almost any nation in the world apart from America, and perhaps, perhaps Canada, perhaps Australia. I don't know. I've never been there. Take yourself out of this country where even tomorrow in the public cinemas all over East Anglia, for weeks will be one of the most powerful gospel films of all times playing in the public cinemas, where men like Arthur Blissett have come and have been on BBC nationwide sharing his testimony. We take these things for granted. Filey, Keswick, radio, television. No matter what God does, no matter how many answers to prayer we have, of course, we know the job is still so great. But comparatively speaking, relatively speaking, Britain has had more than any nation I have ever been in apart from the United States and Canada. They have so much there in terms of gospel preaching, teaching, television. When you go there, as some of our British brothers have experienced when they've gone there, it just blows their mind. But just take yourself out of this context and put yourself in the shoes of a Turk in Eastern Turkey. Once you move east of Ankara, Turkey, you don't have to worry about determining what church you're going to fellowship in. If you're in Bramalea, you'll have to debate and decide whether you're going to go to the Assemblies of God or the Brethren Fellowship on East Street, or walk down a few more paces and come to this fine Baptist Church, or go down to any one of the other churches that you can find. But if you live anywhere east of Ankara, you won't have any trouble deciding what church you're going to go to, because there aren't any churches east of Ankara. And that involves tens of millions of people. Put yourself there, and if you could, and this of course is impossible, know what could happen in your town if the gospel came. What could happen in your little lost village? I remember going through some of those villages. One village, the people were so degraded that they literally tried to grab my wife right out of my arms, and it wasn't to say hello to her. Immorality is so prevalent through Islam, they hardly even discuss it. It is just perfectly normal every Muslim young man in Turkey to have prostitutes. I mean, that is just as normal as drinking water. We cannot understand how low, morally, most of the world's religions are. In Hinduism, it's all mixed in, right in with the temple. Some of the most ugly pornography in all the world is in those Hindu caves. In fact, American tourists spend thousands of dollars every year to fly to India, and one of the top things in India is to go to see the pornographic cave paintings. Man hasn't changed. We think that we've got some new liberation in the area of sex. We're now liberated, but you can go down to caves and see the drawings they put on the wall 3,000 years ago. The same pornography they're selling down in the Soho tonight. Man hasn't changed. It's not the new morality, it's the old immorality, perhaps just with a few extra colors due to modern printing. Put yourself in a Turkish village. Give yourself a knowledge of what the gospel could do, and then what would you say if you had a chance to speak as I have tonight? Perhaps you'd find, as I sometimes do, that it's difficult to stay calm. Perhaps you'd find, as I sometimes find, that you just want to scream, you want to cry out as the prophets cried out, and, and, and do anything to awaken people that they should take the gospel out to my village. And as I come to you tonight back from these seven weeks of these various countries, I haven't been to Turkey this time, but we'll be going there relatively soon, I come back just to, to, to speak on behalf of those people, and I say come over and help us. Come over and help us. I want to speak for the millions of India. One half of all the people in India, one half have never yet had the gospel. Even if we consider the miracle of radio, and there's been a new breakthrough in gospel radio in India from Radio Ceylon, never has India had such a breakthrough as this. That one of the Christian groups has now a very powerful program in Hindi and other languages on Radio Ceylon, a secular radio station, and they are beaming, they are beaming the gospel in the secular radio station into India, and they are getting 900 replies a day. 900 responses a day. Pray for that. But even with the miracle of radio, even with the literature that we've given out in India, over a hundred and twenty million pieces of literature, even with all that, one half the people in that country are still waiting to hear the gospel. What if you were born in an isolated village in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh or Saurashtra, rather than here? Look at the verse again, therefore, all things whatever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them. If you were in that situation, you would want people to come and preach to you. You would want them to come with literature, with Bibles, with New Testaments, with Gospels. Therefore, that's what we should do to them. The history of Britain is probably one of the most exciting histories you could ever read. Every year I always go through a particular phase in which I must read more of the history of this country. And I go out and visit the castles and it's amazing, just the history of Kent. Those who came to this country and first brought the gospel and those who died by the hundreds, who burned at the stake. There's a book I saw some time ago, The Martyrs of Kent. I don't know how many were martyred for the sake of the Word of God and the sake of the gospel, right here in Kent. And if we asked ourselves now, tonight, how many missionaries are going out from Kent to take the gospel to the innermost parts of the earth, I will tell you you'd come up with a very small number. I believe this verse is relevant whatsoever. You would that men should do to you, do even so to them. Think of the challenge of the fact that one half of the people in all the world have never had a gospel tract. Did you know that? We get mocked. No one knows how much O.M. has been mocked because we still believe in gospel tracts. That is, you're just considered a complete twit if you believe in giving out gospel tracts. And if you don't think that's true, go ask how many people, even in your church, give out tracts. Giving out tracts is considered something extreme or something for children. This is why people even think that O.M. is mainly for young people. Young people all run around witnessing. They load in trucks and go off on sort of an evangelical bonanza and they witness. But when you become old and you have a family, well, then, I mean, you can't go around doing all these things. You become refined and settle down to the normal life. A.W. Tozer says nothing is normal. Nothing is normal in this world. The whole world is a disaster area and nothing is right until we put it right by the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. Yes, in O.M. we believe in tracts. It's not our major ministry. In fact, it represents 10 percent. Maybe 10 percent, probably closer to 5 percent of our ministry, but we still believe in it. Because with all of our thinking and research, and I've been studying missions now for 21 years, reading the computer reports, reading books. Every week I'm reading a book on missions. Don't always get through them. We know of no other way where almost 4 billion people can be reached with the present rate that the church is doing the job. If the church will mobilize, if God's people will obey the Great Commission as the Word of God teaches, then we won't need so many tracts. We'll still need some. Because everyone will just be begin to move. Thousands will move out from Britain. When I look at the figures that our mission societies are getting of new recruits every year, I want to fall on the floor and weep and fast and pray. Now, praise God, there's been an increase. But you see, we've got to keep up with the death rate. Some of you may be in fellowship with Brethren Assemblies. In the Brethren Assemblies, we are barely keeping up with the death rate. Isn't that interesting? When you think of men like J.N. Darby, you think of men like George Muller, men so totally committed to God, burning out. And today, what has happened to this mighty movement of God that was raised up? We can barely keep up with the death rate. And some of the other societies in Britain, it's the same situation. Yet, praise God, there has been in certain places an increase of interest. To me, the most exciting thing in the British Isles is what God is doing in the universities. And then some little fellow walks up as I met some time ago, and he says, well, we don't really believe this university work is scriptural. God has so used these Christian unions, Cambridge, Oxford, London, so many thousands of students never reached by the church have been reached by these university fellowships. I believe it's part of the church. I believe it's foolishness to separate these things just because one thing operates on a campus or in a college and something else operates in a building like this. We say, well, this is the church. This is the main way that God's work, but this university work, it's not really scriptural. There's a whole movement in Britain today and tens of thousands are in it that say that everything outside the local church is not really scriptural. I don't think they've ever read the book of Acts. Because in the beginning of the book of Acts and all these places that Paul and his team went to, there were no churches. There were no churches. His team was unscriptural. But when, when they planted a church, then there was a local church, then all of a sudden it became scriptural. Somehow, you know, I know I'm not always logical, but somehow that doesn't make sense to me. And I believe with all my heart that these OM teams that are going out, or these Christian Union teams working in the universities trying to win believers, win people to become believers, I believe that is as scriptural as a local church. They are one. The local church should be sending out these teams. Many of our young people, not all, but many, are sent out from their local church. That's the way it should be. But when they go to Turkey, when they go to Iran, when they go to Afghanistan, when they go to Rajasthan, when they go to Saurastra, they are an evangelistic team. Then they firstly give out tracts, then they'll sell some books, then they'll start a Bible study, then they may show a film. I don't believe that's all unscriptural. And the result in many parts of the world has been the planting of a local church. In France, 14 local churches have been born directly or indirectly as a result of those teams. And we need now men and women who are willing to work on these biblical, scriptural, church-planting, evangelistic teams. And that's one of the purposes for this meeting tonight. If you were out there, never having once heard, no place to go to church, would you ask someone to send someone? Of course you would. Therefore, since you would do that, you should be willing to go yourself. I believe this meeting tonight, and your presence here, is not by accident. I believe it's in a divine purpose. I believe God has ordained that you be in this meeting tonight. We don't have that many meetings. There are not that many meetings of this, of this kind. And I believe it's because God's hand is upon some of you, specifically for India, for the Muslim world, maybe for behind-the-scenes work, that others can go. Oswald Smith said it again and again, looking forward to being in his, in his church in July. What a, what a church. It's not a rich church in the United States. His church is a moderate, people of moderate income in Canada. And they've just pledged that one church, a million dollars for world missions this year. Oswald J. Smith is around 80. He said, I think I can die now. I'm ready to go. We've hit the million dollars for world missions. And I tell you, I believe with all my heart, as we look out the task of world missions, that we should take this motto of Oswald J. Smith. You know what it is? If you can't go, send substitutes. And I would add, if you can't go, if we can't go, and some of us can't go to some of these countries, at least we can send them Bibles. At least we shouldn't have to keep writing people and say, we're sorry, there's no more tracks. Continually in India, many other countries, our main letter back to the churches. We want to work with the churches. Our whole work around the world is with the churches. We can't seem to get that into people's minds. When churches exist, but in many places we work, they don't exist. How are we going to work with them? So he says, why don't you work with the churches in Eastern Turkey? Because there are no churches in Eastern Turkey. And if we can't go, I believe we must send substitutes, and I believe we must send literature, and Bibles, and tracts, and New Testaments. Do you know right now, we are having the opportunity, I mention this with hesitancy, some people can misunderstand, but I just feel this burden. We have the opportunity to buy 300,000 New Testaments. Do you know what's going to cost us? Two pence per New Testament. Two British pence per New Testament. In Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, the languages of India. We've just signed a contract for 300,000 New Testaments. Subsidized by a tremendous group not known in Britain, the World Home Bible League. They will sell them to us for two or three pence, the exact more or less same price we sell them for in the streets. How many Bibles do you have in your house? There are 30 versions now in the English language, and now we have the Good News Bible. I guess there'll be another translation every, I mean, certainly the Jubilee Year, there should be another translation. How many Bibles do you have in your house? How many New Testaments? How many Gospel portions? Maybe just sitting, you pick them up in a meeting, and yet half the people in the world are waiting for their first Gospel tract, even that big. Eighty percent, at least, of the people in the world never had a New Testament. We're talking about very real things. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Learn to put yourself in other people's shoes. Learn by faith, it has to be by faith for many of us, to walk the streets of Turkey, to walk the streets of Iran, to walk the streets of Afghanistan where 98% are illiterate. That's why in these countries, more than literature, we use preaching and personal evangelism, and these brothers know the language. This is the advantage of working the way we work. There are always people who know the language, and God is so blessed as we have many, many people. Half of all the people in O.M. speak at least two languages. We have brothers speak five or six languages. We had one Indian that could hardly make it through secondary school, but when he was on O.M., learned a new language every year for five years. The language is not the barrier. It's our hearts. It's our stubbornness. It's our unbelief. It's our pride. It's our getting caught up with trivial things and secondary things. And I feel so strongly that oftentimes the enemy of the best, the enemy of the best, is the good. Think of all the good things that we can do. I've been criticized because I won't have a television in my home. People misunderstand that. I'm not against television. I'm not even against Christians having television. Christians that are disciplined and really have a good control over their lives, I think they should have a television. They can use it. There are some good programs. But I am not that disciplined. It would not be the bad things on television that would hinder me. It's the good things. I have so many interests. I have so many potential hobbies that it's the good things that would destroy my life, not the wicked things. And I would warn you in your life to watch out for the good things. There are many things that no one could say, oh, it's wicked. It's wrong. It's of the devil. No, I don't believe that. I don't believe that's the line. But is there something best? David Wilkerson, speaking to thousands of young people, said the sin of this generation is wasting time. Think of the precious time, young person, you've wasted, perhaps even this week. Perhaps in something good, but there could have been something better. Something you could have done positively, actively, that could have helped someone, that could have taken the gospel one more mile. Maybe a letter to a missionary. Maybe a witness down here in London or even right here in Bromley. Maybe a few tracts given out. Maybe a few books packaged up at the warehouse. There is so much to do and so few arms and hands and heads, tongues, willing to do it. I've written a little book called Come Live, Die. Actually, they're so hard to sell they're giving them away now. But amazing enough, this feeble book has brought me 3,000 personal letters. Over 3,000, it's pushing toward really 4,000. I never get any post, hardly, without a letter. And there are men here, help me open my post, can tell you that's true. And someone doesn't write. The letters I've had are phenomenal. From all over the world, from at least 50 nations. And many of these people have said the same thing. They said, Brother George, what you've said in this book is true. I'm a spiritual schizophrenic. I talk about spiritual schizophrenia. I talk about the danger of hearing so many hymns and so many messages going to so many conferences and conventions. Well, just today I was reading in one of the evangelical newspapers, we've got so many of them now, the coming agenda for Keswick. Did you read that? How many men, how many great men of God are going to be at that one convention this year? How much spiritual food we have to take to get so little finished product. A.W. Tozer said if any secular business needed so much raw material to get so little finished product as the Church of Jesus Christ, it would go bankrupt in six months. You say that's very hard. Well, you can talk to him in heaven about it when you get there, but I believe he's right. So many messages, so many challenges, so many Christian films, film strips, and yet so few willing to go out as ambassadors for Jesus Christ. So few willing to show up at the midweek prayer meeting when we get under the burden of missions and we engage in the highest calling of the Church, prayer and worship. So few willing to sacrifice and give and go. It's the master plan of the enemy to get us content with choruses, songs, doctrinal clichés, and whatever else, and to keep us from being and doing and acting. I don't want people to go away from this meeting with a guilt feeling, but I believe in the light of what we are doing to the people around the world, the guilt feeling is the least, and that can be taken care of. As we realize that God is not trying to whiplash us into evangelism or break our necks or push us out to the regions beyond, but he's trying to woo us and call us and lead us as a shepherd and encourage us to be his ambassadors, to go where he wants us to go and to be what he wants us to be. We'll never be able to give up the good things, so many good things that we can do, until we fall in love in a deeper way with that great Savior, Jesus Christ. So love of Christ constrains us to be and to go. We're not going to take more time tonight. The books can follow up on what we've said. The challenge is clear, and I believe there are some who tonight are going to say, yes, I will go where God wants me to go. Others who will say, yes, I will become an active, committed prayer warrior for world evangelization. I'm going to ask our brother Anderson to come up to the platform again, but as he comes, I'd like to give my own testimony, because seeing him reminds me of it. You see, I was converted to Christ primarily through a Pocket Testament League, Gospel of John. If you want to trace the origins of this work of O.M., with some 900 people full-time with us in some 25 nations around the world, you have to go back to a little lady in Birmingham who had a vision for Gospels in the work of the Pocket Testament League, a movement that Brother Anderson is very much involved in. An elderly lady, another elderly lady near my hometown in New York City, who sent me this Gospel of John through the post and prayed for me for three years. She'd been praying for the high school for 15 years. And then that Gospel plus the meeting of Billy Graham over a period of three years brought me to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And was one of the sparks, because other people were being saved at different times in different parts of the world, and God brought us together, and I don't feel I'm any more important than any of those other sparks that God brought together to make up those first teams. But that one lady in that one Gospel lit a spark, and that spark has caused a flame, and that flame has spread across the world, and through this little movement, no less than 240 million, almost a quarter of a billion, as some people say, people have been presented face-to-face with the Word of God, and I say this with a deep conviction, in many ways, in the midst of our second decade, we have only begun, because there's a world of 4,000 million people, and every one of them needs to hear about Jesus Christ. We ask you to unite hearts with us, unite hands with us, and do to these people all over the world what we would want them to do to us if the table were turned, and we were in Turkey instead of Bromley, or Afghanistan instead of England, or Saurastra instead of Kent, or Nepal instead of London. Amen.