Visit to China

Why'd I go to China? I'm trying to think now how to condense. I can either talk twice as fast or take twice as long, right? So I was sitting reading, I've just finished three biographies of Chinese missionaries. You say, where did you get the time to do that? My wife was away in Ireland with my two boys at a wedding and I had two weeks on my own and I was reading these these books that I got, right? Sent to me, where from? America, right? And so there I am, Hudson Taylor, Eric Liddell, and another one is that one I picked up in some secondhand shop somewhere about a lady that was taken captive by the communists.

I was finishing reading Eric Liddell's biography at about one in the morning and I was looking at the map in the back of the book and looking where he had died and where he's buried and I just closed the book and put it down. Never thought much about it. 1030 a.m. I wake up, upright, wide awake.

I got to pray. For what? I don't know, maybe it was in a car accident, maybe the children are sick, I don't know, but I'm going to pray. And I prayed and prayed that I would be able to accept the will of God and whatever was happening in my life at that time.

Fifteen minutes later, burdened, gone, went to sleep. Wake up the next morning. There's an email.

Great! Read the email. Will you please go to China, to the city of... What? What's this about? An invitation to go to China. I didn't recognize the city's name, so I grab a map and open it and it's in the center of where the map that I was looking at the night before.

Then I checked the time the email was sent. 230 a.m. I said, Lord, you have my full attention. We did go to China.

We went for the month of May and June. Did God do great things there? Yeah, he did. Can I be approached by a woman in a coffee shop? Excuse me, can I talk to you for a minute in English? Certainly.

Ruth says, well, I've got something for you, just before we go any further, handed her a tract in Chinese. And so she was reading the tract, and what is this? And Ruth began to explain. She says, I want to know more.

So out they go out of the restaurant, out to the patio area. There was someone else there that... He was a Chinese fellow that had lived in an American city here for eight years, so he was fluent. He had a great accent, too.

So he would come out and he was beginning to help out. He was a born-again believer. About an hour to an hour and a half later, Ruth comes back to me and says, I think I know why I was meant to come to China.

She says, I think that woman got saved. I said, really? We went to meet her later. Do you know what she said? Now, you can talk to Ruth all about China sometimes.

We had a car accident there. You can talk to her about the sanitary conditions. You can talk to her about the danger.

You can talk about all these various things. And yeah, it was. I found my heart beating about 90 beats a minute the whole time I was there.

I don't know if that's healthy or not, but at least I was alive. And this woman said to Ruth, just before we left, we met her again. She goes, thank you.

Thank you for coming to China so that I might know how to have my sins forgiven. I can't explain to you 1.4 billion people in a nation, but I give you just one. I met another young man in between various errands.

You always seem you're picking up a Bible here to take it there, but you meet someone in the meantime you use it with and so on. Chinese, English Bible. And there I was talking with this young man and he says, yes, he really believes in Jesus and so on.

We went over the ground and it came to that point that I don't know when this man got saved or what he knows or if he's saved or not, but you can be the judge. And he says to me, he says, so I said, so why would God put you in heaven? And he says, well, because I haven't done that many bad things. I said, wrong answer.

Oh, what's the right answer? We tried to explain the gospel to him and he goes like this. Now I understand. We talked a bit more.

I thought this might be the last time I can chat with this young man. I'm getting on an airplane to go back to Japan. This would be the last chance in a long while to get in touch with them.

Email's monitored. Cell phones are monitored. Everything like that's monitored.

When I spoke at the university, I had two communist monitors on me all the time, reporting things back to whoever it was. And so on. We thought we were moving undercover.

We run into someone in Shanghai, thousands of miles away. We tell this guy saying, by the way, do you know we're Christian? Oh yeah, I know. A university has phoned me and told me.

Okay. So everyone knew what we were doing. You know, we, we were the only ones moving undercover.

Everyone else. I said to this young man, listen, Christ is coming back to set up his kingdom. Really? What's that about? Explain the kingdom, explain baptism, explain the new testament assembly, even though there was not one to send them to really.

And so on. So it's not explained at all. I know we're talking about the kingdom and he says to me, this kingdom sounds really good, but he says, I'm really sad.

I said, why? He says, what if I die? What if I die before the Lord comes? He says, I'll miss all the blessings. I said, Oh no, no, no. First Corinthians, first Thessalonians chapter four was written just for that question.

If you die, you'll be raised again. Read it. You will not miss out on anything.

If you die before the Lord comes. Wow. It's just thrilled walking down through a university campus.

We come to the point where I get to go in what they call the foreign experts building, which means that they have security guards and cameras on you all the time. And so I'm going to say goodbye to this fella. We say goodbye.

He says, I'd like you to meet you again sometime. And so on. And then he looks heavenward and he shakes my hand and he says something.

And remember, he's never read an English Bible. He's never had a Bible before. I gave him that one.

And he says this, Jesus come quickly. Now you understand why I like my calling. Now you understand why it's worth it going to China.

Will I go back again? I don't know. God has an amazing way to pick you up and place you wherever you want. I gave a little report like this the other night in winter and a Vietnamese guy came up to me and says, when are you coming to Vietnam? I said, Vietnam? And another man came up and says, I'm from India.

When are you coming to India? He says, we talk English in India. I said, I'm coming. I'm coming.

God can use donkeys to speak. Well, he can use me too. And we're struggling in Japanese.

But when I was in China, I thought, Oh Lord, if you give me Japanese, I'm going to start in on the Chinese. The need is overwhelming and you might not be able to go brother. And you might not be able to go sister, but some of you are able to go and God can call you.

And some of you may not be able to go, but you can pray someone else into going. What does, what does the Lord say? He paints a whole new to his disciples. And then does he say, no, no, no.

He says, you pray the Lord of the harvest that he'll send his laborers. So my brother, my sister, can you do that? Can you pray into existence a work in Japan? Yes. There's 130 assemblies.

Yes. We have nine full-time workers that we move in fellowship with the national workers. Mr. Curry is the only brother, foreign brother.

We have much to do it. Yes. There appears to be some work of God that has been done, but what is this among so many? And what is going on in China? What is going on in these other nations of the world? Do I have any idea of the burden that must be on the heart of Christ? That some will go.

Will it be the from Mansfield? I can tell by that board out there that you have an interest in the work of God. Could I commend you for it? And could I say that you praying here moves men on the other side of the world? It moves us. Could I thank you in the Lord's name, but also beseech you, do not falter in your labors in prayer.

Do not falter one bit. You are making a difference. Souls will greet you in heaven and say, you are the assembly that prayed for that fellow to come over here.

So my brother, my sister, I know of works. I'm thinking of a little lady in Vancouver who prayed and prayed and prayed. She adopted a particular country in South America.

And whenever she would write S.A. for South America after the name of the country, the country was so unknown the mail would go to South Africa. There was nothing happening much there. Do you know what country that was? Venezuela.

She ended up sending. Her daughter went as a missionary, married to Mr. John Frith. She prayed a work into existence.

I'm thinking now of another sister in Labrador Coast of Canada. Her name is Mary Taylor. She was there as a nurse and she saw the need all around her.

And where are the labors? She prayed and prayed for the gospel to come to the coast of Labrador. And along comes a little boat one day carrying our brethren that we know, George Campbell, Herb Harris. And they started to preach the gospel.

Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know what they say? Do you know