Challenge to Students - Part 3

United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, Republic, Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland, El Salvador, too. Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guyana, and still. Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina, and Ecuador, Chile, Brazil. Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Bermuda, Bahamas, Tobago, San Juan. Paraguay, Uruguay, Suriname, French Guiana, Barbados, and Guam. Norway, and Sweden, and Iceland, and Finland, and Germany, now in one piece. Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Turkey, and Greece. Poland, Romania, Scotland, Albania, Ireland, Russia, Oman. Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Cyprus, Iraq, and Iran. There's Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, both Yemen's, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Portugal, France, England, Denmark, and Spain. India, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan, Thailand, Nepal, and Bhutan. Kampuchea, Malaysia, then Bangladesh, Asia, and China, Korea, Japan. Mongolia, Laos, and Tibet, Indonesia, the Philippine Islands, Taiwan. Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Sumatra, New Zealand, then Borneo, and Vietnam. Tunisia, Morocco, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Djibouti, Botswana. Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Gambia, Guinea, Algeria, Ghana. Urundi, Lesotho, and Malawi, Togo, the Spanish Sahara is gone. Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Liberia, Egypt, Benin, and Gabon. Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, and Mali, Sierra Leone, and Algiers. Dahomey, Namibia, Senegal, Libya, Cameroon, Congo, Zaire, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Rwanda, Mayor, and Cayman. Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Yugoslavia, Crete, Mauritania, then Transylvania, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Palestine, Fiji, Australia, Sudan. Wow, I thought I used to speak fast. What a challenge. The theme tonight, the world, the world in which we live, the people of the world, the nations of the world. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for what you've already said to us tonight. We thank you that we've been experiencing you in worship, in dance, in testimony. And now we're looking into your word. We're here because, at least most of us, we really believe the Bible is your word, that it's inspired by you. You used people to bring it to us, 2,000 and far more years ago. And somehow we want your word to be the authority in our life. And we believe, as we think of the challenge of tonight, that we must look into your word. We bless you. We worship you. And pray especially for people that may be wrestling with some special challenges, special difficult situations, that you'd especially bless them and minister to them in a grace-awakened way tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. I want to thank each one of you who's gone over to visit the various displays. There's people there that have literature and freebies. And some of you on the way over there have stopped at the book table. The book we're especially featuring tonight. I know it's a big book, but they're giving it at a very special price. It's called Operation World. Its origin actually was here in South Africa with Patrick Johnson maybe 35 or more years ago. It's become one of the most widely circulated missionary books in the entire history of the church. It's a book that, if you can invest in, you'll probably use it as a reference book the rest of your life. Imagine prayer requests and data about the church and missions about every nation in the world. There's Egypt. There's the Cook Islands. There's Cape Verde. Got little places as well as the big places. And I'd encourage you at least to take a look at that book. Some of you have been asking about the book that I've referred to called Calvary Road. A great book about grace and brokenness and reality and revival that came out of the East Africa revival a long time ago. They now have copies of that at the table this evening. The same bargain goes that we've offered other nights. If you buy one of my books like Hunger for Reality, you can have no turning back free of charge. I grabbed a few minutes with Bill Hybels on the way to the airport about a year ago. We were ministering at the same conference. He's a man I've come to really respect, the founder or co-founder of the Willow Creek Church. And even though he's got this huge church, 15,000, 20,000, and I think he's turned it over to another senior pastor, Bill is the kind of person that constantly has time to witness and be with non-Christians and share his faith. And he's written a book called Courageous Leadership. There's also a book by Oswald Saunders on leadership on that same table. Believe me, many of you, whether you know it or not, you are going to be leaders in God's work. God has put that on my heart as sure as I'm standing here. You may not think of yourself as leaders, but the way I've seen the Holy Spirit using ordinary people who have been to conferences like this for the last 40 or 50 years in all kinds of leadership, often not until a few years later. And I'd encourage you to read books on leadership, even though you may not think that's where you are in terms of your spiritual pilgrimage. Tonight, in some ways, is a hard message. The message the night before last I know that some people found rather stretching, rather difficult, to think of all these people who are suffering. And I just pray with all my heart that you're not just willing to embrace the more encouraging and blessing-filled sides of the Christian faith. And there are many. But that you're willing to also reach out in connection with some of these hard things. We're going to be talking tonight about the nations of the world. That's one of the main purposes of this whole conference. Some people have made the whole thing of missions a little bit blase, a little bit blurry. So basically, they're just thinking about maybe what they're doing here down the road, or what they're doing in their church, or what they're doing right here at the university. That is part of the challenge of global missions. I'm not going to be mainly talking about that tonight, but it doesn't mean I don't think that's an important part. In fact, I don't believe it's an accident that our sister from the world of television was sharing her testimony, because I've already touched on the fact that I believe we need God's people in every aspect of society, including the world of arts. I preach that all over the world. I'm on the board of reference for the Christian Hollywood Film Commission. That is one of the greatest shaker and mover organizations in the world to promote family films. They have an alternative to the Oscars. I was there a couple of years ago with all these actors and actresses and movie stars, and people were given all kinds of awards, the biggest being about 700,000 Rand. And God is moving in Hollywood. God is moving in the world of drama and arts and television. Satan is, of course, also moving, and that's true everywhere. So if God is leading you to work in Pretoria long term in the world of business or arts or politics or television, I just say, praise the Lord, that's part of the kingdom. But that's not – we can only do so much in one night. You don't need me to come here from London, someone who's been involved in about 100 nations of the world. I've only visited about 90 personally. You don't need me to come here to tell you about Pretoria. And so I come with this mandate, this tremendous distance, to share about other nations of the world, where I've walked the streets, where I've, for 49 years more or less, have been involved since God sent me to Mexico as a teenager. A number of scriptures come to mind, the first being in Matthew chapter 9, where we see Jesus going out into all the towns and villages. We see the Lord Jesus moved with compassion. Turn with me, if you have your Bible, to Matthew chapter 9, and let's read this powerful chapter – not chapter, just a few verses. Jesus went through all the towns – it picks up at verse 35, chapter 9. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Wow. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Most of you heard my own testimony about a lady who prayed for me. I wasn't from a Christian home. I went to an incredible, sleepy, liberal church that was not really preaching the gospel. And somehow a woman of God put my name on her Holy Ghost hit list, and prayed for me, and sent me a gospel. She not only prayed that I become a Christian, she prayed that I become a missionary. And I went to this Billy Graham meeting in New York City, near my home. My father had immigrated from the Netherlands. And there I heard the gospel, and there I was saved. And there, I believe that very night or within the next few days, I just had this passion to reach my own high school. And within the next year or two, about 200 came to Christ in my high school. A very ungodly, quite a drunken high school near New York City. About 125 of those were in one meeting, where I shared the gospel, and I preached the gospel. And then it spread. There's not time, and we're not here to get into history. But it spread into Mexico, and we saw that God could use us. Even though we were only teenagers, that God could use us. That we could learn a language. That we could bond with Mexicans. They could become some of our best friends. That's true to this day. Then it was more action in our own city. I was still a college student. I left university and went to Moody, where I met my wife that I talked about last night. And I began to work in the streets of Chicago, door to door in Chicago, and work among Spanish people and people of different ethnic backgrounds. And I'd really encourage you here in Pretoria to reach out to people of different ethnic backgrounds. You have more such people here literally every week. And go over to Joburg, and you'll find even more. That could be the greatest training. Don't just continually go to meetings and conferences without taking what you're learning and going out to non-Christians of different ethnic backgrounds from different nations. You don't have to go out, and the first time you talk with them, thump them with the gospel. You can go out to listen. You can go out to learn. You can go out to check if there's any sincerity in their heart, regard the things of God, or you just throw your pearl before swine, as the Bible says. I learned so much working among my African-American friends in Chicago. I learned so much as I got in child evangelism. That was wild. I learned so much going to the Spanish people door to door. And I learned so much fellowshipping in the Filipino church and beginning to meet people of different nations. And you have some of them right here studying at your university. They should become a priority because you're a learner, because you're God's child, and you're concerned about the nations because Jesus was concerned about the nations. In this passage, he said, Pray the Lord of the harvest that he'll send forth workers. So this, of course, is a real simple command, isn't it? We should be praying for workers. This isn't something bizarre. This isn't something for just the missions committee or the people who are hanging around in the prayer tent. We can all be praying for workers. Another passage of Scripture I want to read that you all, I think, are aware of is Acts 1 and verse 8. This chapter, this passage is mentioned in, I guess, most missions conferences. And I think that it's good that it is. And the Holy Spirit, maybe instead of quoting it, I'll read it. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Would you just take this verse into your spiritual DNA? This is the final word of Jesus before he went into heaven. This has tremendous authority. There's a lot of emphasis and a lot of pressure on us speakers to tell stories. And we're told that people relate to stories. And I've told you a few stories, and I've told you even the story of my own life to some degree. But I don't think we should only tell stories. I think we should preach the Word of God. This is the Word of God. This is the Lord Jesus before he ascended into heaven saying, Ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. We've got to take this seriously. If we turn over to Romans chapter 15, we find this concept of going to the uttermost parts of the earth affirmed even more. Chapter 15, verse 20. It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known so that I would not be building on another person's foundation. Now, this is very, very strong. You have a lot of churches here in Pretoria. You have a lot of churches in South Africa, more than most countries. And yet we have people coming and starting churches. We have all kinds of evangelistic agencies, all kinds of organizations, organizations for children, for students, for adults. And I'm in favor of that. But these people to some degree are building on other foundations. There's nothing wrong with that. God will lead some people to do that. But Paul in the book of Romans, this apostle, this model is saying, I don't want to build on other foundations. I want to preach where Christ is not known, not named, not known. And so all I'm saying this evening, it's not either or. It's got to be both. It's clear that for the church to grow, for us to penetrate society, we've got to have people building on other people's foundations. But surely there are other people who sense this apostolic vision that Paul had, and they want to build on other foundations. That's what God did in my heart at 17 years of age. I did not want to stay in the United States, a land with hundreds of thousands of churches, and just evangelize people who had already had an opportunity to hear, though I knew much more had to be done in America. And so I started to pray for Iraq, started to do research. I didn't have the book Operation World, but I got other material, and I got endless missionary prayer letters. I think it's crazy that people don't subscribe to missionary prayer letters and missionary emails. I've gone through about 50 of them today. I get hundreds and hundreds of them, and I just think it's a privilege to be praying for people in about 100 different nations. You get a 24-hour day. I read in a magazine this week that people who are classified as retired, and people classify me as retired because I stepped out of leadership of a movement that I led for 46 years. I don't think of myself as being retired, but this was a secular magazine, and it was urging people in general to never retire. It's better for your health, your psychology. It was a totally secular article. And then it had a little box and pointed out how many hours a week these people who are refusing to be retired, how many hours they are working. I couldn't believe it. My age category is working 18 hours a week. They call that work? I need to write to the guy who wrote this article. I couldn't believe it. All this sales pitch to keep working, and then this little statistic that the person who's supposedly still working is working 15 hours a week. I joyfully work 100, Holy Ghost, hours a week, and I'm retired. And it's because I belong to Jesus. It's because he has saved me. He has called me to be his witness. That is bigger than any career. That is bigger than anything the world can talk to me about. It's not a job. We don't go into missions as a job. Of course it is a job in another sense. It's a calling. It's a vision. It's a passion. It's on us from the moment we wake up in the morning until we go to bed at night because men are lost, because Jesus told us to go to the nations, and because we have this tremendous model in the Word of God. I wanted to read one other verse from 2 Corinthians 10. This one also, I think, gets missed by the average person. Our hope is that as your faith continues to grow, our area of activity among you will greatly expand so that we can preach the gospel in the regions beyond you. Missions, what we're on about this week, this is on the heart of God. You have honored God even being here. Maybe you didn't want to be here. Maybe you had a lot of other things you needed to do. I'm certainly in that category, but I know this is where God wanted me. I believe it's easier for me in some ways than it is for you. Speaking is often easier than listening. I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank you for your e-mails. I want to thank you for your prayers. And I'm praying that some of you will also go the extra mile and come to this thing we're having on Friday. Our final major meeting here is tomorrow night when we're going to give this call to respond to the Holy Spirit directing you to pray that prayer, here am I, send me. We're going to have some little dedication cards to distribute. And we just hope as many of you as possible will be here for the final night here. But on Friday, we have a special event. I think it costs a little to go there. If you can't afford it, come to me. I'll be happy to give you the money. And I'll do anything to get people sitting there in front of me. But we're going to have a bit of a question and answer session, and you're going to get a chance to get at me and ask things because I'm sure I've miscommunicated at least on some points. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every person. That's the great commission in the book of Matthew, in the book of Mark. We have those words. Another strong challenge for missions comes from those words of Jesus when he said, As the Father sent me, so send I you. So let's think a little more about some of these. I know my globe has this leak in it. I'm going to get a new globe before I ever come back to South Africa. I saw all those globes here the other night. They all disappeared. I want to share with you right now, and I hope some of you will write this down. After a lot of reading, like 50-some years, and visiting about 90 different countries and listening to a lot of music lover, Christian music, regular music, whatever you call, Top of the Pops. I don't know if you have Top of the Pops here. I think I was listening to a Christian station. They have a Christian Top of the Pops. That was really poppy. I'm going to share with you my top ten. I know some have the top 30, but I'm going to share my top ten. I'm going to share the top ten most impossible, difficult nations in the world according to the Verwer charts. The decision in regard to the Verwer charts is made exclusively by George Verwer. So if you don't agree with my top ten, you can produce your own top ten. My top ten are nations that have less than 1% of the witness that you have in South Africa. You think you're a pretty needy country, right? You need more missionaries here. I just met some Americans who have come as missionaries to South Africa. I'm glad they've come because I believe the Holy Spirit is sending all kinds of people in all kinds of places, and there's missionaries going from South Africa to the United States, a desperately needy nation that's paganizing. Well, it's a little slow, the paganization there, compared to Europe. There are Nigerians flocking in as missionaries to London. So we know South Africa is a needy country, and yet these top ten have less than 1%. And I'm just begging you. Is there anybody here? Is there anybody here who will take it? Some of you are convinced God has called you here. You're going to build on other people's foundation. You're going to have better churches, better situations, more witness. God bless you. Is there anybody here willing to go to the regions beyond, willing to follow this biblical mandate? What are these top ten? Number one is North Korea. There's almost no workers going to North Korea. It's a semi-closed, restricted country. There are many Christians in prison. The suffering level, the starvation level is worse. It's worse than almost any nation in Africa. North Korea, number one. Number two is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia promoted Wahhabi Islam.