Thank you, David. I’m feeling very emotional. I don’t normally sit under the word this long because it doesn’t take very much to get me sparked and back out into ministry. I’ve been kind of glad this thing is coming to an end so we can get back to work. I had no idea really when John invited me to come that God had in mind that I should be ministered unto, and yet that has very much been the case. I sensed that even before I came that that’s what God had in mind. So you’re looking at a very grateful person right now. In the goodness of God, I am totally amazed that though I’m going to focus on the task, God seems to be so much more focused on us and doing a deep work in us and making us something that is an adornment of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I’m very thankful for that.

Hungry for God

I almost didn’t come. As you have heard, my wife is in the hospital for the third time in a couple of years, but she blessed me in coming, even though I just arrived back from visiting missionaries in Yugoslavia, among the Albanian Muslims there, and in Istanbul, among the Iranians and among the Turks, and then in the great city of Cairo. There are 16 million people there, 99 percent of which haven’t got a clue that God ever visited the earth or sacrificed himself for them. So if I’m a little pumped up, you will have to be indulgent between the conference and that trip and the wonderful prayer time we had yesterday, which also ministered to me. I’m just thrilled to be here.

I’m drawn also by the fact that I sense I’m in a room of mostly men, who are hungry for God, who are not satisfied with the status quo, who are here because you believe there is something more. I love to be around hungry men. It just causes me to be spurred on and I pray that God will always surround me with people who are dissatisfied with the degree to which we are bringing glory to our God. I’m thrilled with our theme. I can’t tell you how much I believe this theme is basic to our ministries. I was trying to reflect, Sinclair, on the last time I had heard some real concentrated teaching on the whole issue of eternal punishment. I think it was in 1961 in a systematic theology class under Walt Kaiser at Wheaton College where I was also deeply moved and thinking, “If this is true, what are the implications?”

I trust that’s what is going through your heart. What are the implications, Lord, of this tremendous truth? I hope you’re aware that probably 80 percent of the people in our congregations are what I would call “emotional universalists.” They would all sign the right doctrinal statement and would say, “Oh yes, of course I believe in heaven and hell, of course I believe people without Christ are going to be separated from God eternally,” but as even one brother mentioned, it’s very, very difficult in this age of tolerance, in this age where we have just been shrouded with a fog of relativism, to really stand there, particularly since if you preach it, you’re going to get battered as a bigot. You’re going to get battered as an intolerant person. People will say, “What about those wonderful people in India and the Muslims who we see all these pictures of them praying on their faces? They look so reverent.” Let me tell you, that’s taking a picture of Easter Sunday in the Vatican.

If you think most Muslims pray five times a day and are seeking hard after God, I invite you to spend some time in a Muslim country to see that most of them are like some of our Catholic friends who say, “Well, yeah, when I get old and can’t do anything else, I’m going to start getting serious about religion. Maybe.” So I think it’s so vital that we come back and say, “Are we walking by the facts or are we walking by our emotions?” If God would give me a vote, “Hey Greg, would you like to have a vote? What would you like to remove from the truth?” I would say, “Oh Lord, I know what I do. Let’s get rid of this hell business. Come on, Lord, this is very bothersome.”

I mean, my testimony is that before I became a Christian, I was a relatively happy person, happy-go-lucky. The universe was centered around me, not too much to worry about. After I became a Bible-believing Christian, then I really got down. I mean, good grief, the burden of millions of people who still haven’t had a reasonable opportunity to know what Christ has done on that cross, that’s burdensome. That bothers me, and I hope that it bothers you. I can understand something of Brainard’s depression when you think of how vast the task is. And that’s probably why I’m a Calvinist. I mean, I could never take this if it was all on me. Man, oh man, if we had the last word, oh boy, I would really be having 17 psychosomatic diseases.

If I didn’t believe in the sovereignty of God and the wisdom of God and the goodness of God and that this is God’s deal and that God knows how to do it and God has answers, I would be a very frustrated person. I’m frustrated enough as it is.

The Gospel of Comfortableness

I think we must constantly go into battle in our churches against this gospel of comfortableness. That phrase never came into people’s vocabulary until a few years ago. Imagine one of our missionaries out in Mauritania, below Morocco there where they have 200 days of sandstorms a year. I mean, they’re wicked. I’ve been in them. You think you’ve got sand behind your eyeballs and it’s just grating away, and those are the good days. Because the other days you’ve got a hundred flies in your face. Imagine yourself or one of your parishioners out there standing in Mauritania saying, “Am I comfortable with this? Is this me?”

That’s not me. That’s not anybody. You have to be pretty much a masochist if you think that going out to a people to learn another language to live where you really are considered a weirdo or trickery or CIA agent or something worse — if that’s has to be you, I don’t know what you are. We don’t do it because it fits. We don’t do it because it turns us on. We don’t do it because we’re comfortable. We do it because we believe what we’ve been hearing this week that people really are in trouble and we really are on a rescue operation.

We have to get our people away from treating the Bible as a smorgasbord, picking and choosing, “Ooh, I like this one. Oh, I don’t like this one. Ooh, I like this one. Don’t like this one.” God hasn’t given me a choice. God isn’t going to let me decide what is truth and what isn’t on the basis of what I’m comfortable with or what I like to preach or what turns the people on. Hell is not so much the issue at stake, but how do we take the Scriptures? Do we take this as an accurate communication from God, the God who is really there just the way it is at face value, or not? What bothers me is so many of us don’t jump, and when we find something that disagrees with the way we’ve always thought, say, “Hey, I’m wrong.” John, you can tell me who it was who was quoted, but I love the concept of the one who said, “Before God, I’m always wrong.” So I want to constantly reform my own thinking as I study his word.

A Workman Approved

Now let’s turn to it in 2 Timothy 2:15. Of course, you’ve got this memorized so you don’t really need to turn to it, but I don’t. We very often are used to a mission emphasis of hearing the last words of our Lord Jesus Christ, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” and if you’ve got any mythological sophistication at all, you know that Jesus did not mean political countries, which are always being changed by political powers, but he said ethnōs (peoples), like you read about in the book of Revelation. These are peoples and kindreds and tribes, and in fact we will see people, we are told, as we peek in the back of the book. They are worshiping the lamb from every people, from every tribe, from every ethnos, and that’s what encourages me.

Whenever I think this working among unreached peoples is some kind of exercise in futility, I peek in the back of the book to see how it’s going to come out and I read there in Revelation 7:9, John says, “And behold, I looked . . .” See, he peaked as well. He wanted to know how this came out, and there we see that we win, brethren. This is not an exercise of futility or something that masochistic missionary types do. This enterprise is not missions; it is accomplishing the purposes of God in our generation, of which I want to speak more. But I want to turn not to the last words of the Lord Jesus Christ who said, “Make disciples of all nations (not just some of them),” but reflect for a few moments on the last words of the Apostle Paul, who as you know here in 2 Timothy is anticipating his death.

He’s been in prison many times. That doesn’t bother him a whole lot. But this time he’s worried. Is he worried about dying? No, he says to be with Christ is far better. People who worry about dying don’t have a very biblical perspective. I mean, if your boss normally wants you to work till 6:00 p.m. and he lets you off at 2:00 p.m., are you going to get angry? We have the most weird view about dying. “Oh, he was only 40. What a tragedy.” It’s only a tragedy if he wasn’t doing the will of God up to the age of 40. But anyway, Paul is worried. He’s worried not about him dying, but about these bozos that are going to take on the work after he leaves. He’s worried about Timothy, who always needed to be pumped up. He said, “Timothy, don’t be ashamed of the gospel. Timothy, don’t be ashamed of the Lord.”

The Greeks and the Romans were saying, “What kind of religion is this? Your god gets killed. Can’t you do better than that?” Paul would say, “Timothy, don’t be ashamed of the gospel.” Others said, “What do you mean you just trust the Lord Jesus Christ? You’ve got to have something more sophisticated than that.” Paul said, “Don’t be ashamed of me.” Others would say, “You follow that stubby little guy that’s bowl legged?” I kind of relate. Timothy always needed to be pumped up. He was always drifting. If you can’t relate to the Apostle Paul, maybe you can relate to Timothy. That’s me. To Timothy, he gives this warning in 2 Timothy 2:15. Some translations begin with, “Do your best.”

Doesn’t that sound like a Sunday school teacher? “Do your best.” You Greek scholars know better than I that the word there is strive. It’s taken from a runner. It means, “Kick it on. Push yourself, brother. Go for the finish line, keeping your eyes on that day. Timothy, whatever you do, don’t get distracted, but do your best. Put everything you’ve got into that day when you’re going to present yourself to God.”

Focused on the Great Day

Now I’m going to tell you how I keep going. I keep focused on that day. One of these days, it’s all over, brethren. One of these days we’re in the presence of the King of kings. One of these days I’m going to hear him say, “Greg, well done.” I don’t know if the Lord does high-fives, but I think he might. He will say, “I was able to accomplish, Greg, everything I wanted to do through your life.” That’s what I want to hear more than anything else. I eat it, I drink it, and I sleep it. I don’t want to hear Jesus say, “Greg, I could have done a lot more through your life except for your unbelief.” You know what the worst disease that missionaries get is? It’s not malaria. You get that down in Africa. Or filaria. I have filaria, that’s microscopic worms in the blood that I got in India. That’s why I have to move around a lot. They tickle.

But malaria or filaria is not the worst disease a missionary can get. The worst disease is dularia. Apparently John, we missionaries have brought this disease back to North America because it seems to be here as well. You know you have dularia when you are no longer excited by the promises of God. Think how many times you get excited about a book written by man as opposed to the Scriptures, because you know the scriptures. What does that verse, “Just say into this mountain, get up and jump into the sea,” do for you? That’s a devotional, isn’t it? That’s not a reality, that’s a devotional. Let me tell you something. Jesus didn’t give devotionals. Every time he spoke, he made every word count and he meant every word to be taken seriously. He didn’t do devotionals. He didn’t do inspirational thoughts.

He talked about reality and he’s still looking for people who are so dumb they don’t know what God can’t do, who take his promises seriously, who love to let God be God. I praise God that I’m as crazy at 50 as I was at 20, that I still believe that he wants us to expect great and mighty things. When I don’t see them, I get disappointed. I just had a tremendous disappointment yesterday. I was praying for a chief financial officer for our mission. That’s why I’m growing this beard. I said, “Guys, I’m not going to shave until we get this chief financial officer.” I knew we had the guy, ex-college president, and he was praying about it and I just knew we had him and he said yesterday he’s not coming.

There are disappointments, but I believe that the scriptures teach let God be true and every man a liar. I don’t go by my disappointing experiences. If 49 out of 49 experiences of going to someone seeking to lead him to Christ or praying for his healing or whatever you felt you were supposed to do ended with no response, then I believe the 50th time is going to be when it’s going to come

I don’t want to hear Jesus say, “Greg, I could have done a lot more, except for your unbelief, except that you no longer lived in a risk-taking situation where God had to work or you were seriously in trouble.” Nor do I want to hear Jesus say, “I could have done a lot more through your life except that you were always putting your agenda in front of mine.”

Strive to Be Unashamed

Let’s go on here to see what Paul says:

Do your best (strive) to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Now, what’s the implication? The implication is that a lot of God’s servants are going to be ashamed. He is going to wipe away all tears and a lot of them are going to be tears of regret. They will say, “Good grief, how did I get so excited about that which really amounted to nothing?”

Brother George Burwer, who is a mentor to both Paul Troper and myself used to always warn us, “Look out for the tangents.” If the devil can’t get you to go into immorality or to throw away the faith or to lose your confidence in the Scriptures, what’s the next best tactic? It’s to get you majoring in the minors, to get you on a tangent, to get you to become a crusader for some obscure thought that nobody else has thought of and therefore you can be somebody. The crusades that some people go on just absolutely baffle me in light of eternal punishment of the lost. Are we majoring in the majors? Paul would ask Timothy, “You want to be a workman who doesn’t need to be ashamed?”

A Man Like David

Now, when I think about examples, I’d like to be a little more biblical than Brother John and go to an example in the Scriptures. No, I’m just kidding. Let’s go to Acts 13 and look at a couple. In Acts 13:21, God holds up these two men, and you know these things, but don’t we often need to come back to the basics? I find I constantly need to come back to the basics. I don’t need some new truth. I need to come back to the basics. Here are two men, one approved by God and one not approved. These things in the Old Testament, the Bible says, are written for our warning.

Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years (Acts 13:21).

Now, Saul was voted by his class most likely to succeed. We know he was handsome. We know he was articulate. We know he was intelligent. We know he had charisma. He had it all. But Saul was always putting his agenda in front of God’s. Read it again in your Bible. God would say, “Now I want you to go to this place and do this thing in this way,” and Saul would not find it quite working out right and say, “Well, gee, I think I better take matters in my own hands and do it my way”. Finally, look at these terrifying words: “After, God removed Saul” (Acts 13:22). After God put him on the shelf. After God said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t use you.” Then it says:

He raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will” (Acts 13:22).

Now, do you have a hunger as I do to have God say this about you? He said, “I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He’s a man who thinks like I think. He’s a man who has my priorities as his priorities. He’s a man who has my concerns as his concerns. He’s a man who is thinking all the time about my agenda, not his retirement program or a better pastorate.” Isn’t it funny that God seldom leads pastors to go down? I’ve never understood that. For some strange reason, God always leads pastors to go to a better church, a better situation, a better recompense. How much has the world’s idea of status and significance come into our hearts?

Isn’t it strange how many people who were very, very gifted and used as an associate pastor think by the time they’re 40, they’ve got to be a senior pastor or there’s something wrong with them. So the Peter principle is exemplified. They are promoted to the level of their incompetence. They’re terrible as a senior minister, but they have to be a senior minister because how could they be an associate after 40? How terrible. Whose idea is that? What kind of rubbish is that? Where is that coming from? Happy is the man who knows his gifts, who knows where he makes his contribution and is faithful to them. But I think that’s not my sermon, but somebody else’s.

Doing All of God’s Will

He made David their king and testified that he was a man after God’s own heart. What can a man after or a woman after God’s own heart do? Look at this. He will do everything I want him to do. Now see, we’ve got to make a differentiation between sinlessness and holiness and task. It’s obviously not possible to even go an hour a day without failing God in our character, in our passion, in our purity, in our life, and thank God for the blood of Jesus Christ. It cleanses us from all sin and we can bask in that marvelous grace. But it is possible, I believe, to accomplish everything God wants to do through you if you want it badly enough.

That’s what I think we learned from Brainard earlier. Here was a man who wanted everything God wanted for him and he wanted to accomplish God’s purposes. I was thrilled, Brother John, to know what I didn’t know before. He had been offered those pastorates and he had another value system obviously, and he went on to complete the work that God had given him to do. That really deeply ministered to me.

How did David get such a reputation? It also says in Acts 13:36 that David served God’s purpose in his own generation. Wouldn’t that be enough to put on your tombstone? Put your own name there, that you served God’s purposes in his own generation. Hallelujah. That’s all. That’s enough.

David and Goliath

Well, I like to reflect on the story of David and Goliath, particularly because this is not a children’s story. I don’t know why we teach it in Sunday school. If it was on film, it would have to be rated R for violence and language. It’s not for children, it’s for adults.

I happen to believe, as I just said, that it’s true history. There really was a giant. There really were the Israelites battling against the Philistines and you know how often the Israelites would defeat the Philistines, but the Philistines, like the Jehovah Witnesses, would keep coming back and this time in their midst came a nine-foot three giant. That’s what the Bible says if you can work out the cubits. Think of the basketball contract he could have gone. He comes up and as the custom of the day, taunts the God of the opposing tribe and says, “Baal is God! Jehovah is . . . ” And I can’t repeat what he said, not in church. It says he cursed Israel and the God of Israel. And the people of God that had loved God like you and me, they ran out and killed the giant. Right? Wrong. They did the only reasonable thing God’s people would do. They formed a committee.

Can’t you just see them gather there saying, “Hey, what are we going to do about this giant? This is getting a little bit embarrassing. Face is very important in the east and we’re losing face really bad and the king is really getting hot under the collar. He wonders who’s going to do something about this.” Maybe they said, “What about you, brother? You look a little stocky. Maybe you could go out and fight Goliath.” One said, “Well, I’m willing, you understand. I’m very willing, but I’m very busy with my church duties and the pastor would be very disappointed if I didn’t show up Wednesday night. What about you, brother? Maybe you could go.” Another says, “Well, I’ve been praying about it (you know how we always have some nice pious phrases to not do the will of God). I’ve been praying about it and I’ve never been to giant killing school, so obviously God doesn’t want me to go. I didn’t major in that. What about you brother?” Another says, “Well, I thought I might go and I went home to talk to my parents and they were definitely against it, and you know what Bill Gothard says about that, so I can’t go.”

Or they said, “Well, I’m not really called to giants. I’m called to midgets. I believe that’s somebody else’s work.” I can imagine that just like us, they were made of the same stuff as us, they could think of every reason why they shouldn’t go out and take on Goliath.

God’s Man

We know that God had prepared a man. The Bible says he was ruddy. I guess he was a little sunburned. He may not have been old enough to shave. He may have still only been a teenager. He was the last of Jesse’s sons. They put him on a buckboard, sent him off to the warfront with some cheese sandwiches for his brothers, and he came up to the battle and guess who comes out right at that point? Goliath is cursing. I can imagine David’s eyes getting like saucers and saying, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine? Come on, boys, let’s get him.” Now what do you do, pastors, when some young, zealous kid in your congregation wants to take Afghanistan for Christ? He says, “Come on, we can do it. We only need 300,000 dollars.”

Can I tell you a story in parentheses about William Carey? One thing that did come out of that book was the understanding that Carey did not ask for monthly support. He only asked the churches for one time ship fare to India and that ship fare, because France was sinking every British boat, was 20 times the average baptist deacon’s annual salary. If you would take the figure of 20,000 dollars just to take something, imagine a missionary coming saying, “God’s called me to India. I want to go to India. I need 400,000 dollars. Pastor John, please pass the hat. We need 400,000 dollars from this collection to send me and my family out to India. No monthly support.” What would you say? You would come up with a theological objection. You would say, “Well, brother, when God wants somebody to go to the heathen, he’ll take care of that.” The real problem was where are we going to get the equivalent of 400,000 dollars?

In any case, David couldn’t understand why these guys didn’t want to fight Goliath. After all, the reputation of God was being smeared in the dirt and instead of them repenting saying, “Oh, brother David, you’ve got so much more faith than we do. Your heart’s for God.” Is that what we do? No. When a kid comes up to us like that, we say, “Now, listen kid, we’ll tell you when you’re supposed to go to the mission field. When we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you. Besides, the missions committee is making a design for our plan and the elders are going to pray about this.” We just pour cold water all over the visionary. Why? Because it makes us feel bad.

Instead of saying, “Gee, I wonder if possibly God could be speaking to us through this immature, inconsistent kid.” Well, David couldn’t stand it any longer, so he says, “Well, if you guys aren’t going out, I’m going out.” Remember, this is a true story, right? I don’t see any heads. Do any of you believe that? All right? A few of you believe that.

The Greatest Motive in Missions

Now, the question is why? What was his motivation? Well, there are three possibilities. The first one is that he was tired of being poor. I mean, what do you get on a sheep herder’s salary? The king had promised great riches to the one who would slay Goliath. That must be it. But if that was his motivation, what about all those guys in front of him that had priority to go and take on a Goliath? Why didn’t they go? They probably weren’t happy with a corporal’s pay. No doubt they thought they couldn’t spend it without a head.

Maybe his motivation was to marry the king’s daughter. Sure, that was in the deal as well. He would go from sheep herder to prince overnight. What a deal. Well, we know that wasn’t his motivation because after he killed Goliath and was offered the king’s daughter, he said, “I’m not worthy to be the king’s son-in-law.” In fact, we don’t have to guess because he tells us. The word of God tells us in 1 Samuel 17 what his motivation was. It says:

Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied” (1 Samuel 17:45).

Now, that’s big talk for a prayer meeting. I’ve been in prayer meetings where they say, “Oh, the devil. Boom, into the sea. Oh, we’re taking the Muslim world for Christ.” That’s really easy in a prayer meeting, but this is no prayer meeting, brethren. This is a real giant. He says, “I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied.” Do you have that kind of confidence in God that he can use even you? He says:

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth (why?), that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel . . . (1 Samuel 17:46).

Why was David called a man after God’s own heart? Because he lived for the glory of God. He lived for the reputation of God. Isn’t it amazing? If you read secular history next to the Bible, you will note how through most of Israel’s history, very few people knew about Israel, very few people knew about the God of Israel until David established his name across the then known world and in effect evangelized the world in his generation. It was so that people would know Jehovah God, the one true God. David is called “a man after my own heart who will do all my will.”

Witnesses at Home and Abroad

Has God put that kind of hunger in your heart? Now, I’m not going to be judgmental. I want you to know my three years in the pastorate between missionary stints really kicked the judgemental-ness out of me. I mean, it was tough after three years to even think about the 90 percent that live outside of the United States. I mean, it’s hard when that lady is in your face and she says, “How come you didn’t get a rose for the piano from my Aunt Tilly who died?” I thought the pastorate was tough. It was tough having to go to the door and shake hands with all these people and say, “Oh, it’s so nice to have you here,” even though you feel they’re a total jerk. That was tough. I realized that trying to get messages prepared and trying to get to the hospital was hard. It doesn’t count if the senior minister doesn’t get to the hospital. I don’t care what your theology is, they discount it. There were all the challenges of the pastorate, particularly if you don’t have a multiple staff, and I suppose there’s a lot of different challenges if you do. But you have my empathy.

It is a tough job and it’s very tough to obey the Lord Jesus Christ when you’re a pastor, when he said, “Lift up your eyes and look on the fields,” because you have so much right in your face. How in the world are you supposed to do that? Do you want the will of God for your life? Aren’t you delighted when somebody comes from California to give you the will of God for your life? Here it is: Acts 1:8. Ninety percent of you have been preaching it incorrectly. Check it.

It does not say, “You shall be my witnesses first in your hometown Jerusalem, and then I guess you could get a little workout in the old folks homes nearby and call that ‘Judea.’ Then of course you can send some of the kids to Mexico or Haiti on a little summer trip and that’d be your ‘Samaria.’ Then of course you have to do something about those people in your congregation, who knows how it happens to them, but they’re going long and God says, ‘Go to the uttermost parts,’ and so they come along and they want some money and we got to somehow beat the congregation to get a few more bucks to get them out there. I guess it’s got to be done long as we don’t overdo it.”

That’s not, brethren, what it says. The Lord Jesus Christ loves us far too much for that. He loves us so much that he wants to give you a world ministry, whether or not your feet ever leave United States soil or not. He wants to give you a world ministry and he says, “You shall be my witnesses — all of those of you who are serious about being in leadership in my church,” as I’m sure the disciples were. He says, “You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.” The will of God for your life and mind is not to be an either or Christian — “Well, I think my ministry is right here in Jerusalem.” If you really insist after everything I’ve said that you must have your ministry in Jerusalem, fair enough, we’ll fly you to Israel because beloved Jerusalem is not east overcoat Nebraska. Jerusalem is Jerusalem.

God wanted them to start first in Jerusalem, no question about it. He told them to start first in Jerusalem. Why? Because there were 200,000 God seekers from all over the then known world who had come for that “deeper life” conference, who wanted to know more about God. Of course he would send them first in Jerusalem so that they would spread back out across the world and get the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ among every people. He wanted them to have a world ministry and the best way to get it was to start there in Jerusalem at that time. But you can’t get away with, “My ministry’s in Jerusalem,” if you want to be a biblical pastor. God wants you to have a ministry both in Jerusalem, both where you are, if you want to interpret it that way, obviously where you are and.

Multiply Your Life

You know what the thrill of my life is? The thrill of my life beyond God himself is that I have 400 compatriots ministering all over the world who I’ve helped get there. It’s called spiritual reproduction, isn’t it? “If you miss this,” I say to our missionaries, “You miss everything when it comes to missionary strategy.” We’re looking for these great missionary strategies. Hey, don’t forget 2 Timothy 2:2. Find faithful men who are able to teach others also and multiply your life.

The pastor who is going through his years having meetings and not discipling his men and multiplying his life is missing it. Be careful. Be careful you don’t miss that. After everything else is done, when the dust clears, where are your faithful men who are out teaching others? It’s a thrill of my life that my life is in India today through 350 Indian brethren I helped get started who went on to teach others, who went on to teach others. I have a great ministry among Hindus through them, even though I have no intention of having any direct ministry among Hindus unless one bumps into me and says, “What must I do to be saved?”

Multiply in your life. God will give you a world ministry if you want it badly enough, if you’ll hang onto the promises of God and you will plead with him to show you the implications of the truths that we have absorbed. You will say, “God, deliver me from small ambitions.”

Prayerless Prayer Meetings

Now, let me just digress and say a little bit about how I got into this. I used to be a normal person. When I was converted in Aspen, Colorado, I didn’t know what a missionary was, but I knew I didn’t want to be one. I mean, I didn’t want to marry some girl that had her hair up in a bun with a doily on the top. I didn’t like snakes and spiders. I’m an urban person. Maybe Brainard didn’t enjoy nature because he was an urban person. Cows scare me. Have you ever seen a cow smile? Much less elephants or something. So I have no natural inclination to go live among people who speak a weird language and are dancing around in the bushes or whatever. But I went off to Wheaton College at the last minute, canceling on Princeton, to be very honest, because I heard Wheaton had a thousand Christian girls and Princeton didn’t have any women at all at the time. It wasn’t co-ed yet.

Besides I had a better chance of playing football, being a little guy at Wheaton, than I did at Princeton and off I went, but being very clear in my mind that I was not going into the ministry with all those wimps that have to live off other people’s money. After all, I was going to be a lawyer and I was going to make the money. Besides, I thought God must need a few good Christian lawyers. There don’t seem to be many. Well, I was walking across the campus and a guy came up to me and said, “Hey Greg, how would you like to go to an all night prayer meeting?” I said, “What? What do you have to pray about that takes all night?”

Now, in my little Baptist church, we had prayer meetings, which were really Bible studies with about 10 minutes of prayer tacked on to the end. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in such a church. God help you if you do it that way. Our prayers were rather interesting. If there’s anybody here old enough, do you remember we used to have in Baptist churches the unspoken request? There would be 16 hands that went up with an “unspoken request.” I mean, that’s intimate fellowship. We would pray like the Buddhists do. The Buddhist have a very nice system. They have a prayer wheel with little boxes in it, and you put the prayer requests in and you whip it around and hope something happens.

So the pastor would come out kind of nervous and say, “Are there any prayer requests? Yes, Susie. Oh, your grandfather fell down and hurt his hip? All right, anything else? Joseph? Exam coming up, you’ve got nausea, okay. Would someone pray for Joe’s nausea? Thank you.” If Suzie’s grandfather, after we prayed, had stood up and said, “I’m healed,” do you know what we’d have done? We would have kicked him out, right? I mean, we didn’t believe that sort of thing. Don’t confuse hunger with the charismatic movement necessarily. Don’t chase away hungry kids just because they’ve got some charismatic notions. A guy came to me and he said, “I want to go to Mauritania.” It’s one of the most unreached countries of the world, you know that, brother, and no church there in all of history as far as we know. I said, “What’s going to be your strategy?” He says, “We’re going to raise the dead.” I said, “That’s heavy, brother. Do you have a plan B, just in case?”

But I didn’t strike him off my list and today he’s got a little congregation of 12 Muslim converts there. Nobody has risen from the dead, but I’ll take it.

Stirred for the Nations Through Prayer

So I said to this guy, “What do you have to pray about that takes all night?” He said, “The Muslim world.” Right. Now in the 1990s, we know about Muslims. I’m so thankful they’re moving into the United States. I hope they build a mosque right next to your church and when you go into a pastoral prayer, you hear “Allahu Akbar” and sort of shakes you up. Because otherwise Americans don’t get interested in something that isn’t right in their face. But in the 1950s, we didn’t know about Muslims. We didn’t know such existed. When he said the Muslim world, nothing came on my computer screen. I mean, nothing. We didn’t have computer screens. I thought Muslim, Muslim, Muslim. Is that a white cheese cloth?

I had no idea that one out of every five people in the world is a Muslim that’s been told, “Jesus is not gone. Jesus did not die on the cross. Wicked Jews changed the Old Testament. Wicked Christians changed the New Testament. The Bible is useless. The Qur’an is the word of God, and Mohamed is the prophet of God, and Mohamed is the way, the truth, and the life.” I had no idea that one out of every five people in the world has been brainwashed from the day they were born. I don’t know if I hadn’t known it whether I would’ve cared that much. After all, isn’t that the missionary’s job? That’s the missionary’s job. Why don’t they get on with it? But more out of spiritual pride than anything else, I went down to this prayer meeting at Moody Bible Institute thinking I might meet some girls there, at least get some coffee and donuts.

Well, I walked in the room and there were guys like Paul Troper with about 15 other guys, no girls, no coffee, no donuts. And as I came through the door, this skinny little 19 year old named George Verwer put his finger in my face and he said, “What country are you claiming, brother?” I wasn’t even claiming my tuition, much less a country. I didn’t know what claiming meant, but I didn’t want him to know. So I said, “Well, what’s left?” He said, “Libya. You have Libya.” I’m going, “Libya. I know it’s one of those islands off Florida. Just give me a minute here.”

You’re laughing, but I’d love to give you a quiz to you. There’s some pretty provincial pastors out in this audience and I’m glad I don’t know which ones they are. They don’t know the difference between Liberia, Libya, and Louisiana, or are not aware of how many people still don’t have their first church. Well, I’ll tell you, that night, praying through the night, huddled over these maps of Turkey and Afghanistan, Algeria, East Pakistan, and Indonesia, trying to pronounce these places, asking God to establish his church in these places among peoples who still didn’t have their first fellowship of any kind, it was like that ad where the guy’s shaving with a blade and it goes, “Gotcha.” God opened my eyes and I realized my ambitions had been too small and that God was so great he could use me with my complexes.

I’m glad I didn’t know about dysfunctional families at the time. Now at candidate school we say, “Look, if there’s anybody here that’s not from a dysfunctional family, I feel sorry for you. It’s very trendy and you’re kind of out of it, but we’ll try to let God use you anyway.” But I knew I had complexes, I had zits, and I had all kinds of problems, but God opened my eyes to see how great he was and that he’s always used weak, inconsistent, struggling sinners and he wasn’t going to change his program now. God showed me that he loved me so much, he could even use me to believe him with others to see tens of thousands of people, particularly those who didn’t have their church, bowing the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s been the passion of my life ever since that night.

Seeking for Glory

Do you want to hear the end of the David story? Read it. He wins. But I want you to ask yourself, “Do I still have any hunger to be a giant killer?” I remember when I first heard this message. This is not my message. I got it from Leroy Imes in the Navigators. I heard it and God so touched me that I walked up and down the cornfields in Iowa right through all these cornfields and said, “God, make me a giant killer. God, if you’re going to use a man, use me.” Though those kinds of prayers are so mixed with bad motivation, he did it. Before I was a Christian I wanted to have my face on “Time Magazine” and the only thing that changed after I became a Christian is I wanted my face on eternity.

It was the same ego and the same kingdom builder. The same junk is still there. But as George Burwer loves to say, “If you find yourself doing the right thing with the wrong motives, don’t stop doing the right thing. Let God change your motives.” Let him keep working on the motives, but let’s keep doing the right thing for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, where he is not named, where people don’t know him and the giants today that we face in the United States, I believe the greatest giant is the New Age movement. If you don’t understand relativism, you’re defeated already. I thank God for my time studying under Francis Schaffer and that I know how to start with a relativist and show him how he’s really in trouble. You better know, if you love people, how to deal with a New Age, how to deal with all the Buddhist and Hindu infiltrations upon our culture. Otherwise you’re just singing Mickey Mouse when you’re trying to preach the gospel.

Remember, you have not successfully proclaimed the gospel until a person who hears that understands, one, that you really are concerned about them, and secondly, that they would be thinking, “If this was true, if this was true, this would really be tremendous news.” If you don’t have that over, then you may be pacifying the evangelical conscience instead of doing the will of God. We need to work so much harder on learning how to make the good news good news to the receptor until bingo, they get it. Then it’s no longer our job, but it’s our job to make sure that they’ve really heard it as good news.

Making the Gospel Intelligible

When I went back to my supporting church there in Aspen, Colorado where I’d been saved and baptized 14 years before, I realized that people were staying away from us in droves. They thought they knew what we believed and they were not interested. It’s not that they weren’t interested in God, they didn’t want somebody to grab them by the neck, strangle them, and bring them down to the front, so forth. They had such a terrible stereotype of Baptists that I said, “The first thing we’ve got to do is stop the alder calls and second thing we’ve got to stop doing is the visitation program because you guys aren’t making any sense and they don’t want to come to the Baptist church. What we’ve got to do is believe God to do such a work in us that we whet the appetite as a community that cares for people seven days a week.”

Do you know, two years later we sensed that God had answered our prayer when one of our ladies in the church overheard one non-Christian lady saying to another non-Christian lady, “If you want a blankety blank friend in this blankety blank town, you have to go to the Blankety Blank Baptist Church,” and we said, “Hallelujah. I think they’re beginning to understand where the gospel is, where the good news is, where God is and where you can know him.”

The Missions of the Church

I beg of you to not let this be a message, but to go back to your churches and say, “Lord, what about our apostolic mission?” You see, there’s six missions of the church, as I understand it, from Ephesians 4:11. If I was a pastor, I would have six banners going down the front of my church, signifying the sixth missions of the church.

The first one is the apostolic mission, starting churches where they aren’t. The second one is the prophetic mission. That’s our mission into the ills of society and the ills of the church and that’s why we’re trying to do something about the abortion, trying to do something about getting Christians in the right places in government, and trying to do something about the pornography. It will bring purity in the church. Then there is the evangelistic mission, which is winning our own people of Christ who already have some background but need to be pushed into the kingdom. It includes working in our neighborhoods, investigative Bible studies and so forth.

Then there is the pastoral mission, which includes counseling, the building up of the body, the small groups. Obviously that is vital. Then there is the teaching mission, which I think is quite different despite all my life hearing the pastor/teacher. I don’t believe that. I believe a pastor is one thing and a teacher is another, and neither one of them necessarily the senior minister of the church. I know the difference between a pastor and teacher. Have you never seen the difference between a pastor and a teacher? The pastor says, “Oh, I want to build people up.” The prophet wants to knock them down. The teacher says, “Well, we need to be rooted and grounded in the word. That’s what we really need when we get out to the institute and get this straight.”

I am not a teacher, as you’ve obviously learned by now. I’m not a pastor. I like Tony Campello’s version of counseling. A guy comes in and says, “I want to run off with my secretary.” He says, “If you do, you’re going to hell.” I like that direct approach. Let’s do that. None of these thousand hours like my wife. She has a gift of mercy. She can come alongside and be filling up people, helping them sort through that. I’m not a pastor. I don’t have that gift of mercy, but I’m an apostle. Do you know apostles still exist? It’s not ones with a big A. I don’t get revelation. But what’s the word “missionary” mean anyway? It’s just a Latin word for “apostle.” It means the same thing. It’s one who is sent out to start something where it isn’t.

So you need to be praying for God to give to your church all those missions, including someone who can help us get our apostolic mission going, not to send more people to people who are already saved in the teaching or pastoral mission, but to go to people who still don’t have their first church, who are beyond the range.

The sixth one isn’t in Ephesians 4:11. Ah, somebody was sharp. But I believe it is obviously there and that’s what I would call, for lack of a better word, the priestly mission. It’s those who would lead us in worship and intercession. Let’s face it, if you don’t have gifted people in these different areas, you know the difference. Someone says, “I took song leading at Wheaton College. All right, ready? One, two, three, four.” Somehow it just doesn’t draw you into the presence of God. One person will say, “We’re going to have a prayer meeting at three o’clock.” Nobody shows. Another person says, “We are going to meet at three o’clock,” and people will come. What is the difference? There are those who are gifted to lead us into the presence of God, to intercede and to worship. I would appreciate it if you’d find a verse for me so I have a verse for that.

The State of the World

But I’d like to give you the state of the world, okay? Picture a little Swiss village. I got this from Ralph Winter. There is a little Swiss village in the mountains and this tremendous avalanche comes down over the Swiss village and buries the village and rescue workers come tearing in from all the surrounding villages and they dig out the city hall furiously and they get a list of all the chateaus and the villas in there and they assign them, “You go there, you go there, you go there, you go there,” and they’re digging furiously trying to get people out. This one has a broken leg, this one’s half asphyxiated and frozen and so forth and they’re getting them into Jeeps and they’re sending them off to nearby hospitals. They’re just going a hundred miles an hour and they finally think they’ve got everybody as the sun is sort of setting.

Then suddenly to their horror, somebody digging around in city hall finds out that they’ve only uncovered half of the village and they yell to the rescue workers, “Come back, come back. We’ve only got half the village uncovered,” and they say, “We’re sorry, we can’t come back. We have got to get these people to the hospital, or they’re going to be in trouble.” Do you see the analogy? We have to teach the believers. We’ve got to build up the church. What you’re doing is right. I’m not condemning you. All right? But what about the fact that 90 percent of all the missionaries, nevermind all the pastors at home, are working among people who are already saved. The force that actually exists that’s been set apart to break new ground among those who don’t know the Lord is actually very, very small.

So this is a call to balance. You could divide up the world. Now, if you’ve seen different statistics in this, don’t throw the faith. I mean, how do you count all these things? They are somewhat educated guesses, but you can divide up the world. Thirty-two percent would be Christendom. I don’t know how to spell that, but you understand what I mean. It includes Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox people who know the Christmas story. They know the Easter story, if not the implications. All right? They probably have a Bible accessible to them if they really wanted to get into it. Okay? Another 21 percent of the world’s population, missiologists now estimate, are within range. They are hearing the gospel or they could very easily hear the gospel like the Saudi Arabian studying at the U of M here, who speaks English perfectly, or like the Cambodians who are here, or the people who are under direct ministry of radio and literature. They’re being blitzed up and down like the French for example.

Now for the French, there are very few good churches in France, comparably speaking, but you say that the French haven’t had opportunity. I mean, every door has been visited by Operation Mobilization and by so many other groups. The little Protestant churches are out there whacking away at it. They’re not buying it, but they are what we would call within range of the gospel.

You could take Japan. Our brother may find an exception to my taking Japan, but for the most part I would say a Japanese person could find a Bible and could find out about Jesus Christ if he wanted to. So he is within range. But look what it leaves, folks. Would you please take this home with you? Maybe 47 percent of all the people walking on Earth today live in cultures, in situations, and in a sphere where they are not going to bump into a Christian who can explain to them the gospel. They do not have access to the gospel. There is not really a lot of radio or literature being put in front of their face. They are beyond the reach of all the missionaries, all the churches, and all the efforts of God’s church as near as we can tell.

Going After the Cause of World Evangelization

Now, that is not to say that God can’t get to them. The God who got to Abraham can get to them. I’m not saying, and we heard this very carefully, that they’re going to be lost because they haven’t heard the name of Jesus. I don’t believe that. They are lost. That’s what we heard this week. They are in trouble and they are not getting a reasonable opportunity to consider the claims of Christ. They go to bed every night and they get up every morning without anything to remind them that God has ever visited the earth, and that ought to bother us.

This is where we’re calling for Davids who say, “That giant is one I want my church to deal with. Even though I don’t believe I’m supposed to go to Afghanistan, I’m going to pray, I’m going to fast, I’m going to cry out to God to send forth laborers for God to multiply my life and so that I can have a ministry in Afghanistan (who are among the people that suffer greatest in the world). Or it could be Bangladesh, Algeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, or India.” I honestly believe — maybe this is my Armenian side — that you can have a world ministry if you go after it, if it’s on your priorities, if you’ll wait on God until he gives it to you.

Question and Answer

I face the angry Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists so you don’t scare me much. Go ahead and challenge anything.

What percent of missionaries are going to the 47 percent remaining?

Roughly 10 percent. Basically 10 percent of the missionary force is concentrating on being really unsaved at all. So it would be less than 10 percent that are actually trying to go. Now, I have to be fair and say you know that we don’t get missionary visas for most of these peoples. Most of these peoples live within the borders of countries where the government is hostile to professional missionaries. Now, the problem there is that we have put an unbiblical thought in our heads and created a notion called “closed countries.” Now, if you can find that in the Bible, I will repent, but I don’t believe that a government saying, “You can’t come here and tell people about Jesus,” has anything to do with what we do anymore than it did when Peter and John were told, “Don’t you dare mention this Jesus or teach in his name here in Jerusalem.” They didn’t say, “Oh, sorry, we didn’t want to offend you. We want to keep Romans 12. Sorry, we’ll stop.”

We’re going back to normal. You see, for 1,800 years Christians had to obey the Great Commission without missionary visas. Because of the colonial period, we rode the shirt tails of the colonial powers, got missionary visas forced on the people, they got their independence, they said, “Enough of that rubbish,” and we’re back to normal now. We have to carry out the Great Commission without the benefit of this license from the country. That seems normal.

How would you recommend going about getting and keeping a world Christian view?

Obviously as a church, if you are risking your own funds by getting behind people and you get in your mind that you’re not going to get into missions but you’re going to start a sister church in Baghdad or among the six million who don’t have their first church in Northern Sumatra, getting involved as a church that costs you something. Boy, you’d be amazed how fast people do their homework. I would encourage the staff and the elders to pray, “Lord, where do you want us to start a sister church?” People really get excited about that as opposed to, “Well, here comes some lone ranger, let’s give him 50 dollars a month. Who was that anyway?” Or we wait for the only person that comes forward in a meeting, some tenderhearted little gal who thinks Jesus might want her to go to the mission field, so we say, “Okay.”

Let’s start drafting instead of waiting for volunteers. The tender hearts who volunteer are not necessarily the ones most gifted and most prepared to break ground in a difficult place. I think we’ve been cruel to send out some and disobedient to not push out others that we know God had given the gifts and the energy and so forth to go. Start thinking about our apostolic mission, praying, “Lord, where would you have us start a sister church where there aren’t any?” Then challenge the congregation month after month. Say, “Who’s going to go on our church planting team?” Because the local church sends the missionary, not the mission agency. Mission agencies like ours take our authority from the sending church and it’s a delegated authority to supervise your missionary. It’s your missionary, not ours.

If they have to be moved or they’re going to have a breakdown, we get on the phone and we say, “What shall we do?” and we send them to you. They’re not going to come to my living room. They’re your missionary. The kind of real partnership that takes seriously the sending and caring for your missionary will revitalize your church’s perspective, particularly if you increase communications. We have all the advantages today with videotapes. Instead of prayer letters, our missionaries are now sending videotapes home.

Are there any good resources for Muslims that you would recommend for outreach?

There certainly are good literature tools and with the Zwemer Institute, we will help you if you want to get something for Muslims, for Buddhists, or for Hindus. But understand that they’re no more likely to be interested in you handing them literature than you are when the Hare Krishna hand you literature at the airport. In other words, if you want to win these people to Christ, you’ve got to take them into your lives.

Americans are always looking for a way to stay uninvolved and somehow get the job done. When you start praying that your church will be involved, start with four families. Start with four families that would host internationals. How many of these people have ever been invited into an American home? They’re not going to feel loved and cared for and want to hear what you’re all about until they’re experiencing a home. Help them get a driver’s license and help them with their shopping problems. They are boggled when they come to a grocery store and see all these choices in America. They were happy to get apples back in Romania, not eight different kinds of apples. We’re going to have to get involved in their lives just like we do with any other kind of people and probably then give them some tools for reading and then help them in an investigative Bible study.

Maybe you need to have an international tea in the church instead of bringing them first to a service that doesn’t make any sense. If they come into your service as an orthodox Muslim and sit behind a nice married couple and the man has his arm around his wife, which is perfectly acceptable to us, the Muslim will say there is immorality in the church and he won’t hear a word John is preaching. You may have to work with them in a halfway transition until you bring them to a service and they have the proper orientation about what’s going on. Not in this church, but in some churches they get up there and some little gal with somewhat flimsy clothing is praising Jesus and this Muslim is just wiped out. He thinks he’s in the disctech nightclub and he can’t hear a thing. I mean, you tell him this is the word of God and forget it. You may have to help these people get ready for church before you can bring them into something they can’t follow.

You talked about the need to understand the relativistic mindset. Can you give us some tools that would aid in that?

I bet somebody else could help me out of this one quicker. What about tools for working with people who are in a relativistic mindset? Like I said, Francis Schaffer’s writings have helped me a lot. Oz Guinness. InterVarsity has got a lot of good stuff. When some of us grew up, we used to have tremendous arguments when we tried to witness if there is a God or if there is not a God? Do any of you remember that? Have you noticed that it’s gone away? We can’t get anybody to argue about that. They say, “Hey man, if it works for you, baby, hey, that’s cool. Hey, I got God right here on my left kidney.” It’s a different deal so you better understand what it’s all about.

Is there such a thing as a cross-cultural gift of evangelism as Peter Wagner claims? If there is, should people who don’t have it not go to another culture or do you just grit your teeth and go anyway? Can you help us to think through that issue?

Those are terrific questions and I think there is a truth to that. If two equally dedicated couples went out from this church to Algiers, Algeria, one would set up their home in a very American way for their security. Even though they would go out and witness to people, they would not ever have their best friends be Algerians. It’s not because they’re not spiritual, but it’s just the way they are. Another couple would just go Algerian all the way and start eating cous-cous and have their friends among Algerians and be able to soak up good friendships. Brainerd could not do that with Indians apparently. Another Indian worker could say, “Hey, me and Sitting Bull, we just go and shoot the bull.”

So there is a difference and yet picture missions as a team effort and the person who’s out there teaching the missionary kids. We’re not too worried about whether they get turned on by Turks. They’re keeping families there. Someone else is a facilitator. Others who need to be directly in evangelism and disciple making. They obviously have to be able to make friends among these Kuwaitis, otherwise it’s not going very far. So how do you test it? You spend time with internationals in your own city and find out whether they can really groove on Iranian food. Obviously some people are able to do this easier than others, but some will believe that they should go and help the effort anyway.

You should not be asking or have your people ask the question, “Is God calling me to be a missionary?” That’s the wrong question. Why? Because they picture themselves on a soapbox, one man army, preaching away bringing people to repentance. They know they’ve never even done that in their own culture. They’ve hardly brought anybody to Christ through the four spiritual laws, so the obvious answer would be, “Oh, I guess God doesn’t want me to be a missionary because I’m not one of these fiery evangelists that just jumps up anywhere and does that,” as if that was all the task amounted to. The question I think that’s more biblical is, “What contribution might I make to a church planting effort among an unreached people?” That might keep you in the States or that might send you overseas.

If it sends you overseas, you might be starting a business that enables the rest of the team to get into Baghdad and that enables you to train Muslim converts to be able to support themselves, and some other people may be the friend maker. They say, “Hey, look what followed me home.” Somebody else does the hospitality. Somebody else is the evangelist who gets them to deal with their sin problem. See? Somebody else is doing teaching and it has to be able to explain the difference between the Islamic concept of God and the biblical concept of God, which is something that most can’t do. The question is what contribution would they make if they were out there and is there any evidence that they made that contribution here before we send them out there to make that particular contribution?

Do you assume that the problem with the missionary visas is going to get more intense and that there will be even fewer countries offering missionary visas? I’m speaking especially among Muslim-dominated countries.

Yes, I anticipate that the missionary visa will become a dinosaur. Even “Christian countries” like Kenya are getting a bit tired of having professional missionaries. After all, they have church leaders and are thinking, “Now why are you guys still hanging around?” I think that missionary visas are even going to get less and less in the countries where the church is well established, nevermind the ones where it isn’t at all. So I think we have to just get that missionary visa concept out of our minds. Now, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t men sent from God. To not go as a missionary does not mean that you go as a secularized person. That’s ridiculous.

I may go and teach English and they say to me, “Why are you really here, Greg?” I’ve been waiting for that question, see? I don’t get defensive, I say, “Hey, that is really an interesting question. Let’s go to lunch, Mohamed. I’d like to tell you why I’m really here because obviously I can make a lot more money in America and I don’t like teaching English anyway.” And he thinks, “Oh, man, he’s going to tell me he’s with the CIA.” So we go to lunch and I say, “Now let me tell you what happened to me a few years ago, Mohamed.” I go into my testimony and I say, “I am here Mohamed, yes, because God sent me. I’m on a rescue operation,” and away you go.

He may ask, “Well, are you some kind of religious teacher?” I would say, “As much as I can be, but your government doesn’t give me a visa to be a religious teacher, so I come in the only way you’ll allow me to. It’s the same way if you come to my country. You’ll have to come in with one of the visas that we offer. But that’s got nothing to do with my real purpose. I’ve been sent by God. Not by my church firstly or by a mission agency firstly, but by God.” Do you think a sensitive Muslim isn’t touched by that?

Aren’t most men of God supposed to have secular jobs? I hope we don’t believe that spirituality means full-time clergy. Don’t we believe in the priesthood of the believer? I think that most people will have to hold down some kind of secular job. Now, there’s three kinds. One is the full-time job that really makes a contribution to the country. You reconstructionists will appreciate that. The other is a part-time job which enables you to get a visa in the country and is conducive to permeating the society for 15 to 20 hours a week. The other one is what I call a scrambler, which is a person who says, “Hey, I don’t want to teach verbs. If I’m out there, I want to just talk to people about Jesus.”