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Either or and Both And
Paris Reidhead

Paris Reidhead (1919 - 1992). American missionary, pastor, and author born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Raised in a Christian home, he graduated from the University of Minnesota and studied at World Gospel Mission’s Bible Institute. In 1945, he and his wife, Marjorie, served as missionaries in Sudan with the Sudan Interior Mission, working among the Dinka people for five years, facing tribal conflicts and malaria. Returning to the U.S., he pastored in New York and led the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Gospel Tabernacle in Manhattan from 1958 to 1966. Reidhead founded Bethany Fellowship in Minneapolis, a missionary training center, and authored books like Getting Evangelicals Saved. His 1960 sermon Ten Shekels and a Shirt, a critique of pragmatic Christianity, remains widely circulated, with millions of downloads. Known for his call to radical discipleship, he spoke at conferences across North America and Europe. Married to Marjorie since 1943, they had five children. His teachings, preserved online, emphasize God-centered faith over humanism, influencing evangelical thought globally.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of having three elements in everything we do: facts, interpretation, and a plan. He uses an illustration of a young man being pursued by wolves while skating on a river to illustrate the need for these elements. The speaker also highlights the significance of emotions and how they are not under our control, but can be influenced by what we think about. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of being alert, sensitive, concerned, and burdened as witnesses for Christ, and encourages the audience to actively engage in missions.
Sermon Transcription
Shall we bow in prayer? Our Heavenly Father, we lift our hearts to Thee tonight, asking that we may be sensitive to what Thou art trying to say to us, guide us and instruct us and lead us in the plain path, the way we should go. We might glorify Thee. We look to Thee, Father, now to help the group that are here to find their place in Thy will and in Thy plan, in Thy purpose, and to fill it effectively to the glory of Christ. May the contribution of these three days somehow be used of Thee and blessed of Thee to that end, we ask for Jesus' sake. Amen. Turn please, if you will, to Acts chapter 1, verse 8. I pick up on something that was said this morning. I wanted to explore it with you just a little further. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. I say that I question whether or not most adults in our congregations understand the difference between either or and both and. I seriously question it. I know, however, that children don't have that problem. Perhaps it's because they haven't been confused by our educational process. I remember years ago when I came back from a missionary deputation trip, my then four-and-a-half-year-old son met me at the car. He'd been waiting for me, his mother said. He was most, oh, he was delighted to see me. I had never been so affectionate before. Helped me carry things in the house and stayed with me. And when I caught my breath and he said, Daddy, can we go for a walk? Well, I'd been away several weeks and what father can turn down a trip, a walking trip with a four-year-old son who says, Daddy, can we go for a walk? Certainly I couldn't. So we went outside the house and stood there for a minute and I said, Jimmy, which way should we go? Our house is on the side of a hill. West Brow Terrace gives you a little idea. And we could have gone out the driveway and left around the circle up on the hill and back down. Pleasant walk. Or we could have walked down the side street that led to our driveway. Or we could have done as he chose to do. Go down the front stairs, about 30 steps that led down to the street below it. He said, let's go this way. So he took my hand and we started around the house and down the steps. Well, now when we got to the bottom of the steps, we had a choice. We could either go to the right or to the left. And I said, now, Jimmy, which way should we go? Let's go this way. Well, that meant a half a block down to Brainerd Road, which was the main street east out of Chattanooga under Missionary Ridge. And the little shopping center of Brainerd was there. So we walked the half a block down and there was some options. You could go to the left without having to cross the street. We'd cross the street and go the right toward the ridge. Or we could go directly across the street. So, Jimmy, which way shall we go? Jimmy fenced his forehead. Let's cross the street. So he said, but we can't go now. We got to wait a little while. That light is green, it's red now. We got to wait daddy. I said, okay, you tell me when to go. So when the light turned, he took my hand, we'd go now. We scampered across the street. Well, now we got across the street, we could go right or left. Which way, Jimmy? Let's go left. So about four or five doors, stores down the street, he said, daddy, there's the drugstore. Just as though it had popped out of the blue. Well, I said, yeah, that certainly is the drugstore, Jimmy. And he looked at me with a cherubic smile and he said, daddy, can I have an ice cream cone? Oh, now I realize why the affection and the warmth and all of this. Well, when you're conned by an expert, there's only one thing to do, relax and enjoy it. So I said the only thing I could do and say, certainly, Jimmy, you can have an ice cream cone. Reward for ingenious planning. We got in and he was on a roll. He got, I said, I want an ice cream. And I said, I want it packed down tight because he tips them, you know, and then it rolls across the street. So she was there trying to screw this ice cream down into the cone so it wouldn't come out. And Jimmy went over. Now what, before air conditioning and they had candy on little wire racks. And there was some Hershey kisses in a plastic bag. And I'm seeing this little fellow who's, I say, on a roll. He's got his ice cream. And he says, daddy, can I have these kisses? Well, there's a limit, you know. And so I looked at him and I took the kisses and they were scrunched between the little guy's fists. I know why he wanted them. His brother, two years older, loved chocolate. If he'd have been Eastside, he wouldn't have sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. He'd have sold it for a bag of Hershey kisses. He liked chocolate. And Jimmy just looked at that and he could trade his brother out of his IT for that bag of chocolate. He didn't want it particularly, but he had plans. Can I have it? And so I said, Jimmy, you can have either the ice cream, which was now in my hand, or the chocolate. And he's looking at that. Oh, how he wanted it. He'd been planning on it. You could see him. And then he looked at the chocolate and he knew what he could get with his brother. And he looked at the ice cream and just then plop, a drop of mellowed ice cream at the back of my hand. I didn't want the ice cream. I had to buy the chocolate. So I said, well, Jimmy, just this one. Here he is, one to the other, one to the other, trying to make up his mind. And I said, you can have both. His eyes lighted up, his face broke out in a smile, and his hands went out, one for the chocolate and one for the ice cream. Four and a half years old, and he knew the difference between either or, or both hands. And I say the Church of Jesus Christ has never learned it. Never learned it. The Lord Jesus didn't say you shall choose whether it's Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, or the outermost part of the earth. He didn't give a choice. He gave a commandment. He said, this is what it will be. Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Every believer in Christ has a mandate from the sovereign head of the Church for a worldwide ministry for the Son of God. Every believer, not some, not most, but every single one that is born of the Spirit and filled with the Spirit has a worldwide ministry for Christ. Now, it's not option. He didn't say, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, you will be presented with a series of choices, all of which are important, and you can take any one you want. It'll all be the same. Is that what he said? Not the way I read it. Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. Every believer has a worldwide responsibility to Christ. Now, you're going to look at me and say, that's all well and good for you to say, but will you explain to me how I can be a witness for the Lord, both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth? It doesn't make sense. No, not to you it doesn't, nor to me, until you give the other element in the equation. After that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, you shall be witnesses unto me. After that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. Now, you have to go back. Everything in the Scripture has a context, and if you take a text without the context, you make it a pretext. It's imperative for you to understand the context. We've got to go back to Abraham. Do you remember what God said to Abram when he was there in all the Calves? Remember what it was? He said, get up, leave your kindred, leave your family, leave your father's house, and go to a land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and in thee and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed. What did he give to Abraham? The promise of a worldwide ministry of blessing. In thee and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed. You say, well, what's that got to do with me? I'm not a Jew. I'm not a physical descendant of Abraham. That promise isn't to me, isn't it? You better go back and look at Romans chapter 4 before you become too certain that this promise is not to you. I think you'll find if you look at Romans 4 that the Spirit of God was very precise in trying to make clear to us the basis on which this worldwide ministry for the Son of God is founded. What shall we say then that our Abraham, our father, is pertaining to the flesh, is found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he have whereof the glory, but not before God. But what says the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of death. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describes the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputes righteousness without work, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Come is this blessedness then upon the circumcision only or upon the uncircumcision also? For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned when he was in circumcision or uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, the seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be, now notice, the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised. That righteousness might be imputed unto them also. And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. For the promise that he should be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect, because the law worketh rash. Therefore it is of faith that it might be by grace to the end that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to those only which are of the law, but that which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. And he's writing to the Roman church. And the promise that was made by God to Abraham is now transferred since Calvary, since the empty tomb, since the ascension to everyone who savingly receives the son of God. And in thee and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth and everyone born of God has a promise of a worldwide ministry for Christ. Worldwide ministry. That's the basis of it. If you understand the philosophy, if you understand the scripture, then you understand why a certain thing is true. Every believer has a worldwide privilege, a worldwide opportunity, and a worldwide responsibility. Both Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. The one to whom this truth was made quicken to my heart was Dr. Rowan B. Bingham, the founder of the Sudan Interior Mission. First time I heard Dr. Bingham say this, I said, hey, there must be something wrong. I never heard it from anyone else before. Then I went to the scripture and searched it as Paul commended the Berean believers to do and discovered that he was right. That this is the case. That every believer has a worldwide ministry for Christ. You don't see the implications of it. Dynamic. Because it puts every believer under obligation for the unfinished mission task. That's why it's so important. Not just that it gives a particular interpretation for a particular chapter of Romans, but because it lays a biblical responsibility. You see, people are not involved in missions because there's a need. They're not involved in missions because you're an eloquent spokesman for the field. There's only one reason why people should be involved in the missionary task, and that's because the head of the church commands it. And because they're indicted by the scripture to do it. And they're disavowing their father and their relationship to him if they aren't. So I think it's extremely important for us to make sure we understand the grounds in which we're talking to people. So, Roland Bingham. Roland Bingham firmly believed that every believer had a worldwide opportunity and a worldwide responsibility. One of the things that he did in the course of his ministry, in addition to founding the Sudan Interior Mission and acting as its general director for nearly 50 years, 60 years, I said one of the things was to found the Evangelical Christian, which was a magazine published in Toronto, Canada. The office of the magazine was 366 Bay Street. Back in the late 30s, early 40s, a group of his friends in Canada after the war, or was it prior to it, but in that vicinity, I'm not just sure, but either the mid-30s, I'll have to check that, make certain of this fact. But a group of his friends in Canada decided that since he was such a student of Abraham and had taught so much about Abraham, that he ought to have a trip to the Holy Land. So they raised the money and sent it in so that Roland Bingham could go to the land of Abraham. Well, he was on a bus tour from Damascus, going across from Damascus toward wherever the Chaldees would have been. And it was a gravel road the French government had put in for administrative purposes. All right, but terribly dusty and rough. And the bus had a flat tire way out in the edge of nowhere and halfway between. And there they had to get out, all the passengers got out, and they had to jack up the bus and change the tire. Three, four hour job. And so Roland Bingham decided that he told the bus driver that he was going to go for a walk. He'd walk down ahead some distance and they could pick him up when they were finished. Because he just wanted to be there with his Bible and with the shades of Abraham. Well, he'd gotten a couple of miles down this road when he saw a dust cloud coming toward him. And as the dust cloud approached, he thought it was an automobile. And as the automobile approached and rolled the window down, he heard someone speak to him in English. I perceive that you're either an American or perhaps a Canadian, but I wouldn't think you're British. My name is Dr. So-and-so. I'm on my way to a village down the road because there's a patient that's ill. Dr. Bingham walked over and introduced himself, said, well, I'm Canadian. Canadian, are you? Well, I would like very much to go to Canada, said the doctor as they chatted and said, you know, I want to go to Toronto. And I would like to go to 366 Bay Street in Toronto. Now, I told you where the office of the Evangelical Christian was. Dr. Bingham is standing there. He said, why, I asked you, sir, would you like to go to 366 Bay Street? Well, said the doctor, I took my medical training in England. I stayed in the home of a very devout Christian family. They were very courteous to me as a Muslim, giving me the full privilege to be in their home without troubling me. But there was something about their radiance of their lives that did impress me. And after I graduated, they said they were giving me a gift and they sent me a subscription to a magazine published at 366 Bay Street called the Evangelical Christian. That I read that after I got back and in the pressure and difficulties and what I'd seen and heard, reading it, especially an article by the publisher, founder of the magazine, a doctor, a certain Dr. Bingham, I opened my heart to Jesus Christ and I've become a Christian, an Evangelical Christian. And I'd just like to go to Toronto to 366 Bay Street and to see Dr. Bingham and to thank him for leading me to Christ. Dr. Bingham said, it certainly must be that our heavenly father wanted you to meet Roland B. Bingham because he sent me here. I'm Roland Bingham, confirming a truth that in thee and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed. How many ways does God have of doing it? Both hands, both hands. I think one of the vignettes out of Scottish missionary history, a Scottish woman back in the early 19th century wanted to be a missionary to all places to China, which hardly knew about. First, there were no women missionaries and secondly, no one could ever get into China. Admiral Perry had to open a gate with the rifles and guns and cannons. They wouldn't let us in. So, she's praying for China, reading anything she can get about it, which was precious little, finding out about it and crying out to God that someone go. She wanted to go and she had to stay home and take care of her elderly mother. She had a job and some income from her father who was dead and she worked what she could, but she loved the Lord. One Saturday, she had some shopping to do and she was going down one of the cobbled streets in Edinburgh where they lived and a little ragamuffin, tattered clothes, dirty face. When you looked at him, you wouldn't know whether you should clean him up or start over. I mean, he was hopeless. Bounced out of an alleyway, hit her in the side, fell to the cobbles and lay there sobbing and she reached down and picked him up and took her clean handkerchiefs and wiped his runny nose and his dripping eyes. What's the matter? Oh, he said, it's my father. My father's after me. He's drunk again and if he catches me, he'll beat me. What's your name, laddy? My name is Bobby and my father is drunk. Will Bobby come and walk along with me? No, I'll touch you while you're with me. We'll walk a bit and they walk past the church. Says, Bobby, do you ever go to the church? Ah, ma'am, you mean that's where the swells go? No, I'll go and sit there and hold their horses while they're in there and I hear the music, but I've never been inside. They wouldn't let the likes of me in there. Would you like to go? Ah, but I couldn't go. Look at me, I'm dirty from head to foot. No soap in the house or a bath and nothing to put on when I've done it. Bobby, would you like to go? Oh, I'd like to go, ma'am. And so she said, to tell you what, you see that store there? We'll go buy you some clothes and some soap and you go home tonight and you bathe and you put your clothes on and you meet me where we bumped into each other and you go to the church with me. So the next morning he was there and the clothes they bought and for the next three Sundays she met him there, but on the fourth he wasn't there. And she came back several times during the week looking for the lab, but she couldn't find him. And finally it was the middle of the next week and she said, Bobby, come here. And he came, shame faces. Bobby, what happened? Why weren't you here? Oh, he said, I tried to hide the little bundle with my clothes in it, but my father was looking for something to pawn and he found it, but he took it down to the pawn shop to get enough money for a drink. And I've been ashamed to tell you. Said, Bobby, we'll go right now and buy some clothes. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll take them to my house and you come an hour early on Sunday morning and you can bathe and put your clothes on and then change back again when you go home. Will you do that? Oh yes, ma'am, I'd like it. So that was their schedule from then on. Bobby would arrive at the home, have a bath, put on his clothes, go to church, come back, have lunch with the family and leave them. And somewhere in this process, God and his sweet, sovereign grace and mercy burst into that little heart and Bobby was born again, made a partaker of the divine nature. And his benefactress now began to pray for him and to talk to him and encourage him in how he would use his life for the Lord. Actually helped him to go on to school. And then he went on and he got his training and finally, well, the scene changes. Many years later, now we're in a little upper room like this with a bare table and a candle holder with a candle flickering on it, kneeling beside the table with a stack of paper under his hand as the man, tears are running down his cheek as he prays over that stack of paper. What is it? It's the first translation of the Bible into the Chinese language. And who's the man? Robert Moore, first missionary to China. For we, Bobby of Edinburgh, who's going to get food out of China to the glory of Christ? The great missionary statesman or a little nameless Scotch lassie who loved a ragamuffin lad in the alleys of Edinburgh. The Lord has more ways of having us to be witnesses for him than just being there ourselves. One more to try to help you understand a little bit how this works. In George, Iowa was a family who had a very fine Iowa farm. Iowa land is some of the richest in the face of the earth. Very wonderful, deep, rich, black soil, grows magnificent corn. And the family, Kortekamp, had 180 acres of Iowa farmland. And they grew good corn. They were frugal. And they saved their money. Then they got an opportunity to sell that land at $400 an acre, which was a lot of money in the days in which we talk. And they brought it in and they went to the local banker and they said we bought this home on Elm Street. It's free and clear and we want to live here now in our days. We've worked hard and we want to invest this in something that's going to give us a guaranteed yield the rest of our lives. One of the reasons they sold the farm was that Mr. Kortekamp's health was not the strongest. He'd had a bit of a heart murmur and things weren't all that good with him. And so the banker said well let me study it for a while and I'll then advise you what to do with it. They came back and he said I found just the portfolio for you. And so he put it all into that which you recommended and they agreed because what did they know? They know how to grow corn, conserve what they grew, but what do they know about investments? They went to bed one night quite comfortable with many thousands of dollars there to provide them with interest on which they could live their declining days. And they woke up in the morning penniless. Overnight the Samuel Insull empire of insured stocks and bonds had been disclosed to be nothing but a great corrupt scam. They had nothing. That day Mr. Kortekamp went to bed and a month later he was dead. No sickness other than just despair. Mrs. Kortekamp was made of sterner stuff. She couldn't afford the luxury caring for him and so she put a word out at the school that she had three or four rooms she could let out to teachers and could give them board and room and she went downstairs and closed off what was the library and put a cot in there and she stayed there while she cooked and cared for the teachers. She had about a little bit of money and was able to get along. Hal Street, Harold B Street, one of the deputation secretaries of the SIM had had meetings in and around George and he announced that there was going to be an SIM conference at Spirit Lake, Iowa. And Mrs. Kortekamp got the announcement and she came. She came one year and then she came back the second year and the second end of the week of the second year she said Mr. Kortekamp, Mr. Street, I want you to know that God's been dealing with me since last year. As I talked, as you listened, as you spoke and taught, I realized that my husband and I lived all of our lives for ourselves. We did nothing with what we had for the glory of God. We never realized that we had a worldwide responsibility for the gospel. And now it's not too late for me to make it up for him and myself and I'm going to do it. Mr. Street, I'm going to sell my house. I'm getting enough money from the sale of my house to build a mission station in Nigeria to give the gospel, as you said, to 500,000 people that have never heard the gospel in a new area. For those days we could build a station for $5,000 and she said that way my husband and I can have some fruit from Africa to lay at the feet of the Lord Jesus. No, he said Mrs. Kortekamp, you can't do that. This is all you have to live on. You can't do it. Don't tell me what I can or can't do. I don't take my orders from you. I take them from him and this is what he told me to do and don't worry about me. Oak Hill Fellowship at Bemidji, Minnesota have put out word that they need someone there as a laundress and they've given me opportunity to be a missionary and I'm going up to Oak Hill where I'll get my board and room and $15 a month. I can be the laundress to the missionary. Don't worry about me. So in due course $5,000 came in a check for Mrs. Kortekamp and the station was built in Nigeria. Three or four years later she had a chance to come back from Oak Hill to Spirit Lake, Iowa and at the end of the week she came back and she said Mr. Street, I want you to know I feel like Safira. I kept back part of the price. I only have $2,000 left that I was going to keep in case I got sick but now I'm so well cared for at Oak Hill I don't think I really need it and I'd like to have a part of a station somewhere in the Sudan. I've heard about it. By that time I'd been down the Sudan-Ethiopian border and I wrote to our mission and said we need $2,000 to put in two small houses to give the gospel to these four small tribes here in the Yaboos area. I got back word a short time later we've just received a gift of $2,000. We're sending it for the Yaboos station. The donor, Mrs. Kortekamp. That didn't mean anything to me except it was $2,000 for a station. I was up in New Jersey and I was telling just what I've told you. Hal Street had told me what I've told you previously about Mrs. Kortekamp and I told said that she gave $2,000 for a station in Sudan and a gentleman came to see me afterward tears in his eyes. The brother reads it. I'm so appreciative of learning this about Mrs. Kortekamp. She's never said a word about what she's done in Africa. We didn't know that. She's just there as our Andre. She's more than that. She gets clothes from all the families in our Bemidji and wherever she can and she mends them and sews them and sorts them to size and keeps them in cupboards. She gets bedding and she mends the sheets. She gets quilts. She gets towels. She gets everything that a family needs and then we have people out here these jack pine savages folks living in the jack in the pines. They're made so poor. Father's gone somewhere trying to get a job and mother's sick and children are sick and they'll come in and they'll say we've got a family out here and everyone's sick. Can we help and Mrs. Kortekamp will go to Mrs. Kortekamp and she'll say tell Cookie I need to have food for three days especially I want a cauldron of hot soup so I'll have something for the first meal and she makes up her boxes finds out the ages of the children and whether they're boys or girls clean bedding how many beds and so on and then they drive her out they pick her up in three days. She'll go in bathe the children put them in clean clothes give them a hot meal clean the house change the bed then sit down with them around her and say no I'm not a missionary I'm just a laundress but I'd like to tell you about the Lord Jesus and what he means to me. This tall dignified missionary from Oak Hill Fellowship telling me this. Here's streaming down his cheek. She's the best missionary in the fellowship. We've had more people come to Christ because she knew how to mop the floor. And we have from all the rest of us. Do you understand? He shall be witnesses unto me both and I don't know how the Lord wants to fulfill this world ministry in your life but you see the key is after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you then you are covered and filled with infinite intelligence limitless power boundless love all dedicated to the end of getting the gospel of his grace out to those that have never heard. So what are you talking about when you talk about mission? What are you talking about? You're talking about the commandment the indictment the mandate of the scripture not your idea not your plan. You're talking about that which is closest to the heart of God. Now I've told you three vignettes three pictures three people. The one I was there I was the father walking with my son Jimmy. I was never on the streets of Edinburgh on a Saturday when a wee Bobby bumped into a lass in the early 1900s. But that doesn't keep me from understanding it and feeling it. Do you understand? I didn't say I was there but I was there in mind there in heart. I was in China beside Robert Morrison when the deer stained the top paper on that stack that he had translated so laboriously. Why? Because I have the ability to be anywhere in the world I want to be by mind, by heart, by prayer, by love, by concern, by burden. You can't keep me if I want to go. I don't have to have a visa and I don't have to have a passport all I have to have is a heart and a mind. Do you understand? There's no limits. No limits in this past of getting people with the blessing of burden. No limits in getting this understanding of the principles by which people. No limits. You don't have to tell what you've experienced. You have to experience what others have experienced in your mind, in your spirit. I've seen people present when things happened of such tremendous import and for all practical purposes they might have been that mannequin. They had neither brains, eyes they had and saw not, ears they had and heard not, minds they had and perceived not, and hearts they had and felt not. They may have breathed and had some kind of a pulse but for all practical purposes they were globs of unanimated clay. I don't know where their brains were, don't know where the hearts were, don't know where their eyes were, where their ears were. But certainly what was happening, what was taking place, what was there, weren't involved. How alert and how sensitive and how concerned and how burdened and how interested are you? What kind of a person are you? Oh has the Holy Ghost come upon you? See it's all conditioned that after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. He shall be witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth. You say well look missions is in motion. Going to the mission field, anything that's an action, a totality experience has three elements in it. The first is the mental. You have to know where the fountain is. You have to know that there's water. You have to know there's some way of getting it to your lips. You can't have a drink of water without a mental aspect to it. But there's something else. There has to be a volitional element. I know where there's a fountain in cold water but right now I'm electing to stay here. I'm not drinking. I know how to drink. I know where you go, where you press the fountain, how the water comes out, how you drink it. But I haven't elected or chosen to go to the fountain. I'm staying here talking to you. Why? Because there's another element and that is the emotional aspect. I don't, I feel that I would rather stay with you than to go get a drink. Now if I, the action is always this way. I choose what I think about. What I think about is what I feel. What I feel is what I decide. Whether it's a drink of water, whether it's getting married, starting a business, going to the field, I don't care what it is. You don't have a totality experience, a real experience on the mental level. You can't have a real experience on the emotional level. You can't have a real experience just with the will unless you know and feel. These three elements go together in everything we do. Just giving facts about the mission field. How many square miles? How many people? How much disease? How much? Just the facts please. Here never will do it. People have to have the facts interpreted. Just having the facts and having them interpreted will never do it. They have to have a plan, a plan by which they can do it. Some plan, some steps marked out so that they can do it. So it's easy to get involved. You cannot have anything real in life without these three elements. And if you don't have those elements, I've heard people say, well I don't like that speaker, he's too emotional. Question is, is he biblical? Does he have the facts? Is it scriptural? You follow? You've got to have them all three together. It's not enough to have one. In everything we do, they all have to be there. And it's your responsibility to get those things balanced so that they're perceived and they're understood. People have first got to think. I remember years ago when I was a young pastor, we didn't have a box like this in the wall. We had open windows and Armstrong air conditioners. You know what they are, from the local mortuary. I guess the mortuary was thinking if you fanned yourself enough you'd get pneumonia and die and they'd get the business. Because they always had, it was all those fans that I ever saw came from the mortuary. And this particular day up at Long Prairie, Minnesota, halfway between Osakus, Minnesota and Long Prairie, head of Lake Osakus, a little church in the wilderness. And I was pastor. And there were about 60, 70 people there as usual and the fans were going in unison. Monotonous, like a metronome. You know, you sort of got to talk the way the fans were going. I mean, I tried to avoid it, but it's hard. Well, I wanted to find out how many of those fans were there because people were hot or because everybody else was fanning, so it was thing to do. So I gave an illustration that I had gotten about a young chap that was on a river skating in the wintertime and some wolves came to pursue him. And he was in dangerous position. And I told how he would skate and they'd get there and then he'd turn quickly and go around and the wolves would scratch him and they'd get after him, get a little traction and then he'd, and he got down where the rapids had made the ice thin and he got on a, on a flow. And the flow got out and he got stuck in the rocks. And he'd been sweating, perspiring, and a blizzard started. And there he was on this big cake of ice, stuck in the rocks. Wolves couldn't get him. But the wind howled and the snow blew and the perspiration turned to clammy ice against him. And he got colder and colder. And as I was talking, those fans were going slower and slower and slower. So just about the time he was going to go to unconscious, there wasn't a fan moving. And then they saw, he saw the lights on the shore and he hollowed and they got, got him off and got him home. Why? Look, let's suppose that for some reason I want you to be angry. Okay? So what I'm going to do is say, on the count of three, be angry. Will you? Okay. One, two, three, be angry. What are you laughing for? That wasn't what I told you to do. I told you to be angry. Listen, your emotions are not under the control of your will. If I want you to be angry, I don't tell you to be angry. I tell you something that you're going to think about that will make you angry. Classic example of this is Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Mark Anthony said, I didn't come to praise him. I came to bury Caesar. And then he says, but Caesar gave you the people his estate so that they could be parks for your pleasure. But I didn't come to praise him. I came to bury Caesar. And those people that had been crying, tear down his home, kill his wife and children, are now saying, where's Brutus? Where's the others? Mark Anthony didn't say, be angry with Brutus. He just got him to think. And then they got angry. You've got to be able to get people to think with you and give them something to think about. Now, I've tried to give you something worthy of you to think about. Namely, that the scripture teaches that everyone who has genuine faith in Jesus Christ, born again, filled with the Spirit, has a worldwide ministry for God's dear son. Not just where you're going, but you have an obligation one way and another for the whole world. By your prayer, by your presence, by your gifts, by your talent, by whom you challenge, whatever. God has an infinite variety of ways of enabling you to fulfill that. But all you need to do is to recognize the implications of being, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. I've been so tired with certain aspects of the charismatic movement, the full gospel movement. When I first heard of it, I was filled with the Spirit in 53 before there was such a movement. When I first heard of it, I said, marvelous, marvelous, everyone filled with the Spirit is interested in missions. And then I found a whole movement that grew up where they had virtually no interest in missions. And I divorced myself from it. I said, that's not the way I understand the scripture. If you want my interest and my support, then you're going to have to come to the heartbeat of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Missions is the family business of the Godhead. God loved the world and sent His Son. The Son loved the world and gave His life. And now He sent the Holy Spirit to bring the message of God's love and the Son's death to those that haven't heard. And after that, the Holy Ghost has come upon you, you shall be with Him. And anyone who claims the baptism of the Holy Spirit and doesn't have a burden for missions is spurious as far as that aspect is concerned. These things do go together. Well, I hope you understand something of what we were talking about this morning. I'll try to give you the thesis and then the illustration so that you can put it together and think your way through. I don't want you to use what I've given you, because there's a world of material from your experience that you can use. But don't ever forget this if you want to be effective in your deputation ministry. We ask Thee, Father, now to seal our thinking, seal this time together, the Word to our hearts, and enable us now to find our way into the most effective use of our time and lives for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And give to each of us, Lord, that passion and purpose that our lives shall be instrumental in fulfilling all the implications that Thou didst have for us in this promise You made to Abraham. In Thee and in Thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed. We ask it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.
Either or and Both And
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Paris Reidhead (1919 - 1992). American missionary, pastor, and author born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Raised in a Christian home, he graduated from the University of Minnesota and studied at World Gospel Mission’s Bible Institute. In 1945, he and his wife, Marjorie, served as missionaries in Sudan with the Sudan Interior Mission, working among the Dinka people for five years, facing tribal conflicts and malaria. Returning to the U.S., he pastored in New York and led the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Gospel Tabernacle in Manhattan from 1958 to 1966. Reidhead founded Bethany Fellowship in Minneapolis, a missionary training center, and authored books like Getting Evangelicals Saved. His 1960 sermon Ten Shekels and a Shirt, a critique of pragmatic Christianity, remains widely circulated, with millions of downloads. Known for his call to radical discipleship, he spoke at conferences across North America and Europe. Married to Marjorie since 1943, they had five children. His teachings, preserved online, emphasize God-centered faith over humanism, influencing evangelical thought globally.