Matthew 28, verse 18. Let's hear the word of the living God. And Jesus came and spoke to him, saying, all authority has been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age. Amen. The Great Commission is great. It contains a great truth. Jesus is Lord of all areas of life. It contains a great commission to make disciples of all nations. It contains a great command and it contains a great promise. The Lord himself promises to be with us for all time. Now, careful reading of the great commission should make it clear we call to do far more than merely share the gospel. Jesus Christ declared, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. The Lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of life must be proclaimed and it must be practiced. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. Notice, we are not called to make converts or decisions, but disciples. We are to make disciples not only of individuals, it starts there, but also families, which is vital because families are the basic building block of Saudi. But we're also to disciple congregations and communities. But the Great Commission is going beyond all that. We're being commanded to make disciples of nations, not just some nations, all nations. Baptizing them in name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Complete submission to Almighty God is essential. teaching them to observe all things I've commanded you. Education is an essential part of the Great Commission. We're not just to teach faith and a few of our favorite things. We're to teach obedience to everything that the Lord has commanded. That is a Great Commission. What is our greatest priority? The Great Commission should be our supreme ambition. The last command of Christ should be our first concern. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to the salvation of everyone who believes. And we must never allow distractions or danger or disappointments or determined opposition to deter us from obeying Christ's great commission. The main thing is to keep the main thing. Our purpose in this is to make disciples, teaching obedience. The lifeblood of the church is its evangelistic zeal. No matter what the situation, no matter how adverse the circumstance may seem to be, our Lord's command is to preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. That verse, 2 Timothy 4 verse 2, was actually our college motto at Baptist Theological Seminary where I studied in Cape Town. Preach the word, be ready, in season and out of season. Now, have you noticed at the end of each of the gospels, they have the Great Commission and at the beginning of Acts, but in different situations to different groups of people with slightly different words and emphasis. So at the end of Mark's gospel, we are commanded, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. End of Luke, we're told, Luke 24, 47, repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations. And Jesus declared at the end of John's gospel, as the Father sent me, so send I you. And at the beginning of Acts, Christ makes it clear we are to be his witnesses in Jerusalem and to all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. By the way, this is how missiologists work out evangelism and missions. E0 is evangelism in Jerusalem, in your area, your language, your culture, your people, your neighborhood. That's E0. E1 is to Judea, the same culture, same language, just geographically a bit further away. And then Sumerians E2, you're crossing a boundary. These are people of a different culture, a bit further distant. And then there's E3, to the ends of the earth. So we distinguish in missions E0, which is evangelism, E1, E2, E3, which is crossing boundaries. So for example, if you're going to Saudi Arabia, You're crossing geographic boundaries, linguistic boundaries, cultural boundaries, religious boundaries. I mean, you're crossing all the boundaries you possibly can if you go to Saudi Arabia, or Tajikistan, or Kyrgyzstan, or Outer Mongolia. So notice the church has come on to be witnesses, not in Jerusalem or Judea or Samaria, and so we are to be witnesses where we are. We start where we are. our Jerusalem, our family, our community, our neighborhood. But then we must go a bit further. A nearby area, you're still speaking the same language, still speaking, it's still the same culture, but that's E1, now you've crossed one boundary. But then also, the church is ministering in Samaria, another culture a bit further away. And so that's what's part of, so this is our missionary duty. And we can't choose, well, I'd rather just stick to my own comfort zone. We've got to cross boundaries. When you consider the greatness of the Great Commission, Christ is commanding us to follow his example, to be sent even as he was sent, to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations, to be as witnesses to the very ends of the earth. to make disciples of all the nations, teaching obedience to all things that he has commanded. We are overwhelmed. Which of us can possibly feel adequate to the impossible task of discipling the nations? But remember the promised power. Every command of Christ comes with a promise. When the Lord commands us to go and make disciples of all nations, he promises he has all authority in heaven and on earth. And he promises, lo, I'm with you always, to the very end of the age. When the Lord commands us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, he promises miraculous power. And they went out, and they preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, confirming the word through accompanying signs. So when you work for the Lord, you can work with the Lord. And he confirms his word with his signs. When the Lord commanded that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his name to all nations, he promised power from on high. When the Lord commissioned his followers, as the Father sent me, so send thou you, he breathed in them and he said, receive the Holy Spirit. And at the ascension, when the Lord commanded his followers to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, he promised, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Nothing that God has commanded us to do is impossible. And as you read in the Book of Acts, the Lord went up in the Ascension, the Holy Spirit came down at the Pentecost, and the disciples went out. So that's the first part. And that's the way it should always be. That's the summary of the Book of Acts. The Lord went up, the Holy Spirit came down, and the disciples went out. A handful of disciples in an upper room went out and they changed the world. And here it's reached us here at the uttermost parts of the earth. Even here we talk about the Lord's great commission because they were faithful and chains of generations were faithful over the years. So the gospels even got to Cape Town and right here. The greatest experience is to come to Jesus. The greatest task is to disciple the nations for Jesus and the greatest priority is to go for Jesus. And so the first question is, have you come? And if you've come, are you going? I was called to Christ the 3rd of April, 1977, and I was immediately commissioned to be a missionary. The Lord made it so clear to me, and those around confirmed in the church, I was called to be a missionary for the rest of my life. And that was 47 years ago. I came to Christ, and since then I've been going for Christ. And that is the best and easiest way to do it. Changing the lives of others. Forgiving sinners, sharing the way of forgiveness with other sinners. Blessed Christians seeking to bless others. Now, we're on a farm, so it's good to notice we're not called to be buckets. We're called to be hose pipes, or channels, should we say, irrigation methods. We're not just to receive God's blessings. To whom much is given, much is required. To whom much more is given, much more is required. We're to be channels to pass on God's blessings to others. We are blessed in order to be a blessing. We are saved in order to serve. We are converted in order to convert others. The first recorded words of Christ in this early ministry were, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. So our Lord's call to repentance and to discipleship, follow me, and his call to evangelism, I will make you fishers of men, are interrelated. We're called to come to him for salvation, and then we go for him to bring the message of salvation to others. And this is what's missing in some Christians' lives. Some people have come, but they haven't gone for Christ. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, not just the sins of the church. Jesus is the light of the world, not just the light of the church, the light of the world. We've got to see the whole world in God's Word. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to Father except through me. We are lost. Jesus is the way. We are deceived. Jesus is the truth. We are dead in our trespasses and Jesus is the life. No one comes to Father except through him. This message we must make clear. There is no other way. There is no other religion. There is no other hope for mankind. You can go and visit the graves of Buddha and Confucius and Muhammad, Karl Marx, Lenin. You can visit all their graves, but there's an empty tomb in Jerusalem. We serve a risen savior. Our God is alive forevermore, and he's coming again. And that makes our message unique in the world. So Jesus commands us, go out into the highways and the hedges, compel them to come in that my house may be filled. We are continually commanded to go for Christ. freely freely you have received freely freely give jesus said he is not with me is against me whoever does not gather with me scatters abroad are you gathering or you're scattering you are either a missionary or you are mission field you cannot be neutral missions i like what some church have done they've got above the doorway leading out of the church, sometimes a sign at the end of the parking lot, you are now entering the mission field. That is a very nice sign, I like that. To remind people, church is not where it happens, church is where we are prepared for the work in the world for the rest of the week when we're witnessing to the world. Walking by on the other side of the road is not an option for Christians. So we know the parable of the Good Samaritan. Well, there was a church where they were having testimony time, and a man stood up and said, you know, the parable of the Good Samaritan is so relevant today. Just this last week, I was going to a luncheon engagement downtown, and there was a man lying bleeding in the gutter. And people were walking by on both sides of the road, and nobody was helping. And you know, said the man with rising indignation, when I came back from lunch an hour later, he was still there. No one had helped him. And it's often like that illness. Why doesn't somebody do something about this? But actually we should be saying, what can I do about this? Lift up your eyes, Jesus said. Look at the fields, for they're really ripe for harvest. Their mission fields all around. I went to my military service with a bit of a negative attitude because I wanted to be a missionary. All my life I'd wanted to be a soldier, that the time came for me to do my military service. I wanted to be a missionary, and I was angry at the time I was gonna waste. Jesus is coming soon, and here I'm gonna waste two years, and then the Lord just opened my eyes with, is this not a mission field around you? Surrounded by 2,000 young men, many of whom obviously didn't know the Lord. If that's not a mission field, what is? And so, sometimes you just gotta lift up our eyes. Maybe, just to notice, the local hospital, the prison, the taxi rank, the school, they're mission fields all around us. And Jesus commanded us, look at the fields. So we need to investigate, we need to understand the mystery challenge. This is the Operation World prayer map for the world. And you can see the darker the green, the higher the percentage of evangelical Christians in that area, in the main map. And then the red one in the middle is the darker the red, the more the unleashed people groups in the areas. And here you can see in orange, And on the map at the bottom left shows you how many Christians are on how many evangelicals. Evangelicals are dark blue. You can see the huge, the wheels of the numbers of unreached people, non-Christians are dark. And the Christians, dark blue are evangelical Christians. Other Christians are the likely, like non-Christians as well. How well do you know your world? Do you know that there are 12,000 ethno-linguistic people groups in the world? Now, when Jesus said, go into all the world and make yourselves every nation, he used the word ethni. The word in Greek is ethni, from where we get the word ethno from, or ethno-linguistic people group. In missiology, we don't think in terms of countries. We think in terms of nations, which is tribal, ethnolinguistic people groups. So for example, we've got to think in terms of reaching, say, the Chechewa people. But Chechewa people live in Zambia, and Malawi, and Mozambique. And Shungon people live in Mozambique, and they live in South Africa. And Avambo people live in Angola, and they live in Angola, in Southwest African Arabia. You can't only think in terms of countries. So you may say, we have a mission in China. There's a billion people in China. We have a mystery in Indonesia. There's 1,300 language groups in Indonesia. There's 700 language groups just in India. Do you know, in Nigeria, there's 148 ethno-linguistic people just in Nigeria. South Sudan's got 27 language groups. The Nuba Mountains of Sudan's got 50 language groups. When we're thinking in terms of reaching every nation, we've got to think of every ethno-linguistic people group. Yes, there might be missionaries and ministers and churches in Holland, but what about the Vietnamese boat people? What about the Moroccans in Holland? You've got to think of a wide variety of people. Now there's Syrians in Holland too. Is there a Syrian church? And so on. So you've got to think, of ethnolinguistic people. And you must think of religions. Do you know 21% of the world's population are Muslims? One in five people in the world is a Muslim. 13% of the world's population is Hindu. Now, this is another Operation World Map. The darker the, the brighter the yellow, the higher the percentage of evangelicals. The darker the red, the lower the percentage of evangelicals. And now here's another view of the church that's persecuted. There's 67 countries in the world which restrict religious freedom and persecute Christians. That's where the governments are hostile to Christianity and the laws. The red indicates moderate religious restrictions. The purple, violent, harsh, strict religious persecutions. Do you know 400 million Christians in the world live in countries where the gospel is persecuted? That means one in every six Christians in the world lives in a country where the government is hostile to Christianity. The Bible is a banned book in 67 countries. And that's why you need Bible smugglers like Frontline Fellowship, smuggling Bibles behind enemy lines, because there are countries where this is illegal. In 1982, when I first crossed the border from Swaziland into Mozambique, I was smuggling Bibles. It was illegal to have a Bible in Mozambique. It was illegal to have a missionary in Mozambique. It was illegal to have somebody under 18 in a church. And that's back under some royal shell back in the 1980s. He promised to make Mozambique the most atheist country in Africa, the first truly atheist country in Africa. Do you know Africa occupies 22% of the world's land surface, even though we only have 11% of the world's population. We're one of the least populated continents in the world. Do you know 41% of the people in Africa are Muslims? The top 17 countries in Africa are Islamic majority. This map shows the darker the green, the higher the percentage of Muslims. It goes from like 99% Muslim in Somalia and so on. And then the brighter the yellow, the higher the percentage of evangelicals. The brighter the blue, the higher the percentage of animists or witchcraft adherents. The darker the red, the higher the persecution index. And so you can see some of the worst countries in the world for Christians would be North Korea and Saudi Arabia, for example. Those would be the countries that persecute the church the most severely. Have you heard of the 10-40 window? This is missionally shorthand for the most needy mission fields on Earth. From the 10th degree latitude in the Northern Hemisphere to the 40th degree latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, stretching from the Indian Ocean across North Africa, the Middle East, South Central Asia, to the Pacific. That is the 1040 window. Six, no, sorry, there are four billion non-Christians in this area. Four billion non-Christians. The final emissions frontier. Most of the persecution of the church happens in a 1040 window. The highest human suffering index, the lowest freedom index, the least amount of mysteries in a 1040 window. There are, for example, more than a billion Muslims in this area. And of course, North Africa, the Middle East is one of the most needy, difficult mission fields on Earth. And so the 10-footy window is a missionary shorthand referring to the greatest missionary needs on Earth. Do you know for reaching 2 billion Muslims, there are 3,000 missionaries dedicated to reaching 2 billion Muslims. the most neglected mission field on earth. Where the church is doing the least, you have the most wars, the most persecution, the most unrest, the most terrorism, doesn't make sense. Where the church is doing the least, you have the most problems. What we bind will be bound, what we loose will be loosed. But you can't reap what you haven't sowed. You can have the best team, but if you're not on the field at the time of the football match, you lose. So this is South Sudan. This was an Episcopal church of Sudan, lovely wooden building with thatch, shot up by a mig from the Sudan government and a hot shrapnel ignited the thatch roof. Here's the pastor and his deacon standing in ashes of what used to be a beautiful church. Pastor Vasco in Loi at the Fraser Cathedral, seeing the West Wall after it was bombed the day after Christmas, year 2000. And my friends, Jeffrey and Vasco, outside the Louis Cathedral, the Fraser Cathedral in Louis, Equatorial in South Sudan, this church had been bombed 10 times, destroyed three times, rebuilt each time. The Muslims even come in and desecrate the graveyards and smash the crosses. This bomb, if it had exploded, would have taken a compound in the church where I was staying off the map. By God's grace, it didn't explode. Now, I don't think it's very clever to play with unexploded bombs. Some of our friends pulled out this bomb. And I said, why are you pulling out this 1,000-kilogram bomb? It's dangerous. And he put a skull across my head to point out dangerous. Yeah, it is. But why do you do this? He says, we need the explosives to give back to the Arabs. It is more blessed to give than to receive, I guess. But that's just a reminder. We have been in churches and been bombed on Sunday mornings while worshipping. I've come under rocket fire while preaching in churches in Sudan. Whole villages have been bombed and wrecked because of the scorched earth policy of the Arab government. Many of the children in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan are hiding in the rocks in caves to escape the bombings because Arabs come and bomb the schools. Now, we may have fire drills. Does your school ever have a fire drill, for example? But in Sudan, they have air raid drills. What to do if the school is bombed? And that's a real drill that they'll have air raid drills. In Iraq, in the Middle East, there used to be 1.3 million Christians in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. But after Americans liberated them, the Christians were slaughtered to such extent there's not 100,000 Christians left in Iraq today. They've lost 1.2 million Christians in Iraq since the Americans freed it. They freed it from a secular ruler who protected the church and replaced it with Muslim rulers who persecuted the church. That's not an improvement for the church. It is genocide. To go from 1.3 million Christians to 100,000 in the space of 10 years is a disaster. And then there's Syria. Christians in Syria are being targeted. Now, the government in Syria is another secular state that protects the church. President Assad, who is hated by the West, he actually protects the church to such an extent that Christians predominate in the army overwhelmingly because the Christians know the only thing standing between them and ISIS beheading them and their families is the government of Assad, which is a secular government. And so the West is determined to destroy Syria. Russia is trying to protect Syria and bolster them. It's just another case where Christians are in danger of being genocided. Egypt has a huge amount of Christians, millions of Christians, more than 10 million Christians just in Egypt today. And the previous government of Mubarak protected the Egyptian Christians and had a soldier outside every church to ensure they were protected from jihadist extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood. But Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton, as the Secretary of State, waged a war to remove the friend of Christians from Egypt and replace them with a Muslim brotherhood. Egypt used to be one of the safest places in the world for Christians, or in the Middle East for Christians to live, but it became one of the most deadly. The American funded Arab Spring. The so-called Arab Spring of 2011 under Obama was nothing but a Christian winter. They slaughtered Christians, beheaded Christians, burned churches, bombed churches, car bombs, kidnapping of Christian women, being forced to marry Muslim men, kidnapping Christian boys to bring them up as slaves to Muslims and forced to become Muslim and so on. Churches bombed and burned, old manuscripts of the Bible dating back to the first centuries, irreplaceable documents destroyed. Churches that have stood for a thousand years burned out and gutted. 79 churches destroyed in one weekend by the Muslim Brotherhood after the Arab Spring removed the government of Mubarak who was protecting Christians in Egypt. The amount of our Christian brothers and sisters murdered in Egypt. boggles the brain. And this is just one funeral of Christians massacred by Muslim jihadists in Egypt. These are brothers and sisters in Christ destroyed by these jihadists under the funding of the United States of America, mind you. There are many Christians in the Middle East dying. Libya, Egypt, these are countries destabilized in the Arab Spring. Do you know, before the Arab Spring, there were 15 million Christians in the Middle East. That's not a lot, but that is the birthplace of Christianity in the Middle East. Now there's less than 10 million. We've lost 5 million Christians out of the Middle East because of the so-called Arab Spring sponsored by Barack Hussein Obama's government and Hillary Clinton's State Department. And this is just tragic. I've got friends in Egypt, and what they suffer, it's unbelievable. And can you imagine a beautiful church that stood for centuries gutted by arsonists in one weekend? And I've heard Christians in America say, who cares about the Copts? They're not real Christians. The Coptic Christians are willing to die for Christ. I'll question this American salvation before I question the Copts' salvation. What have the people in America suffered in Christ? The Coptic Christians in Egypt, they get extra tax for being a Christian. You pay jizya, extra tax for being a Christian. They aren't allowed higher education because they're Christians. They're persecuted in every different way. And all they have to do to get themselves in a privileged position away from being persecuted is convert to Islam. How easy is that? And these millions of cops in Egypt have endured centuries of persecution and very violent persecution recently, thanks to Obama. And yet they stand firm for Christ. How can we question the salvation of people who are willing to suffer for Christ? And so the Copts are our brothers in Christ. We should be praying for them. We should be doing our best to support them. Pray for the church in Egypt. Now, if you can't read Coptic, this postcard says, they may destroy our churches, but they will never destroy our faith. And so we try to mobilize prayer for the persecuted church. We particularly need to understand Islam and we need to evangelize Muslims. So I've devised Muslim evangelism workshops and manuals and written the book, Slavery, Terrorism and Islam, Historical Roots and Contemporary Threats, which is one of the important handbooks to understand Islam. This got me a death threat fatwa for producing this book. So we produced the second and third edition. Third edition is three times the size of the original edition that they gave me a death threat fatwa for. And it's important that we understand Muslims. The largest unreached people group in the world are Muslims. The main persecutors of the church are Islam. Islam is the main competitor for the Christian church. Therefore, we really must understand Islam. I've helped to produce a number of films on persecution of the church by Muslim jihadists. And we've got this prayer post on our website that you can download, Pray for the Muslim World. And the 1040 window illustrated out there. The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Not even 3,000 full-time missionaries dedicate to reaching the two billion Muslims in the world. Therefore, pray to the Lord the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest field. The Lord commands us to go into all the world and to preach the gospel to all creation. I believe this is a command not only to go into all the geographic world, you know, like pins on a map, but to every level of society. We need missionaries to go into the world of business. We need Christian businessmen. We need Christian educators. There used to be a time when all the schools were run by missionaries. We need Christians in the judiciary. There's a lot of anti-Christian judges. It'd be nice to have some Christian judges, wouldn't it? We need Christians in government. We need Christians in entertainment, in economics, in medicine, sports, and the arts. There was a time when the greatest art in the world and the greatest architecture was designed by Christians. And we need to proclaim the gospel of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. We're dealing with the primary issue of sin. People are not just innocent victims needing deliverance. We are guilty sinners needing forgiveness and mercy from Almighty God. As I said earlier, the middle letter of sin is I. Selfishness is at the heart of it. And as the Father sent me, so I am sending you. And as with Christ's incarnation, we need to become one with and identify with the people we are sent to. We need to live and speak the gospel in their language and in their culture. The field is the world, and the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom. Now Matthew 13 has a parable of the seeds and the sowers, and you probably think you know it, but there's two parables of the seeds and the sowers. In the first parable of the seeds and the sower, we are the sower, and the scripture is the seed. And the field is the hearts of men. We should be sowing God's word like just doing gospel literature and evangelizing as we travel. Always have gospel literature in your pocket and just always be ready to sow the seed wherever you go. So we are the sower and the field is the hearts of people. But there's another parable of the sower where God is the sower. We, the sons and daughters of the kingdom, are the seed, and the world is the field. So just as we're sowing the gospel in people's hearts, so God is sowing us. And where God plants us, we need to put down roots, and we need to be fruitful where God puts us. So that's another form of ministry, is it not? You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. We need to be shining God's light. Now just think, if you see the moon at night, you know that the moon has no light, don't you? The moon has no source of light of its own. It's just a rock. But the moon is, when it's shining, it's reflecting the light of the sun. We can't see the sun. We're now in darkness. We're in that side of the world that's in darkness at night. But if we look up at the moon, the moon is shining at us. It's a testimony, a witness to the light of the sun. The moon can see the sun, and it's reflecting it to us. So in the dark, the moon is sometimes a full moon, sometimes a half moon, sometimes a quarter moon, sometimes a crescent moon. And sometimes there's clouds obscuring and you can't even see the moon, right? So think of our witness like that. Am I a half-moon Christian? Am I covered in clouds of sin and doubts and fears that the world can't see the reflection of the sun? Am I reflecting the son of God in my life? We have no light of our own, but God calls us to be the light of the world, but he is the light of the world. The only light we can have in us is when we reflect his glory to the world. through the fruits of the Spirit. So what is the best sermon illustration? If you think, what is the very best sermon illustration I could ever give? Well, you won't get the best sermon illustration from Billy Graham or any of the great evangelists. In fact, the best sermon illustration is the life of integrity, the testimony of a Christian neighbor, a Christian colleague, or a Christian family member. Because how many times have you tried to witness to people and they say, I'm not interested. I've got a Christian uncle or Christian Christian sister or something, Christian husband, and they behave like this, this, and this, and they're not interested. Have you come across that? Sometimes the Christians have such bad testimonies that they push people away from the gospel. I don't want to be a hypocrite like that person. And yet there's others who are attracted because they see the life of integrity of some Christian, how they handle suffering and how they handle injustice, and then they're attracted. So in Sudan, I've come across Muslims who've come to the border. A whole Muslim battalion in one case that came and said, we want to become Christians. We want to fight for the South. A whole Muslim battalion of the Sudan army defected. I've actually interviewed them. We've got film interviews. These people have recorded my book, Faith on a Fine Sudan. A Muslim company. Imagine. We all want to become Christians. They are so attracted by the integrity and the courage of these Christians and their tenacity, and they're so repelled by the cruelty of their Muslim government, the National Islamic Front government, they decide to come over and be converted and join the Southern cause against the Arab North. Now that is a powerful testimony. How can you beat the testimony of somebody who goes through hardship? Well, and I had the case of my own wife going through cancer, fighting cancer, 11 years. And people saw someone who, she would say to these doctors and so on, I'm not afraid, I know where I'm going. And to have that integrity, a steadfastness in the storm, a person of integrity in the middle of a deadly disease like cancer, now that is a testimony that wins people to Christ. Now at evangelism workshops and great commission courses, biblical worldly seminars I've conducted around the world, and that's throughout Europe, America, Africa, I've regularly found, when I've surveyed, the vast majority of delegates came to Christ through personal evangelism, one-on-one, family, friends, strangers, but in one-on-one personal witnessing and counseling. So far, I've not come across anyone who reports it being converted to gospel music. Music is for worship and for glorifying God. Music is not primarily for evangelism. Well, it can assist. I once met one person who claimed in Nigeria he came to the Lord through gospel TV, but I didn't get to speak to him to find out if he really was saved. I don't know of anyone offhand who's been converted through TV. It's possible, because the spoken word of God is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. Even in large groups of hundreds, I've seldom found more than 3% who could say with myself they were converted to an evangelistic crusade. Now, I was converted to an evangelistic crusade. I walked into a cinema expecting to see a film, and there was an evangelistic rally that the local church had organized, and that brought me to the Lord. So it does happen. People do get converted to evangelistic rallies. But most people are converted through one-on-one personal evangelism. So let's just do a study here. How many of you here came to the Lord through a gospel crusade like me, evangelist crusade? Anyone else? One of them. Anybody here came to the Lord through literature? Bibles, books, tracts? There's always a few people who can say yes to that. And then what about, how many of you came to the Lord through personal evangelism? A family member or a stranger or a friend shared the gospel with you? Let's raise those hands nice and high. person of answers, one on one, somebody spoke to you. That's quite a decent amount of people. That's pretty normal. And this is the thing, we are to be those sowing seed. Now you will find the hard part where the seed will not get in. You will find the rocky soil where the roots can't develop. You will find the weedy soil where it takes root, but it can't bear fruit because the weeds choke the plant. And you will find the good soil where you get a good harvest. So what type of soil are you and the kind of people you're ministering to? The field is the world. The good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tears are the children of the wicked one. So the weeds belong to the devil. We should not be weeds. The field is the world, the good seeds are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one. The tares are the weeds. Now, one of our good friends is Dr. James Kennedy. He's a member of our board. He founded Evangelism Explosion. Now, he had a big church. James Kennedy had a massive church. He might have had 12,000 people coming to his church, I think members of his church. He had multiple services on a Sunday, many services during a week. I once went as his guest speaker for admissions week. I had more than 24 meetings in one week in his church. So many different midweeks and other activities on the go. But James Kennedy said the most important thing he did was door-to-door personal one-on-one of angels. He would never accept a meeting for Thursday night because every Thursday night he'd be going door-to-door, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel. So when I first met him, I knew about this and I wanted to get his reaction, so I provoked him. I said, Dr Hindi, I believe that every Thursday night you are knocking on doors and doing personal evangelism, that you won't even accept a conference invitation for Thursday night. I'm surprised that with your many ministries, he's been writing TV, he had like 12 million people watching him on TV, he had more than 14 million on his radio program, produced 50 books, some bestsellers, millions sold, and here he's doing door-to-door. And he was reaching for the door handle as I said this, he stopped, he turned around, he looked at me with intent, he said, Peter, that is the most important thing I do. I doubt if many of these ministries around me are gonna last long after I'm gone. But this ministry, one-on-one personal evangelism, multiplication, that's going to last for eternity. And so James Kennedy believed the most important thing he did was personal evangelism. Jesus said, therefore, whoever confesses me before men, him I will confess before my father who is in heaven. Whoever denies me before men, him I will deny before my father who is in heaven. When my daughter Andrea was Just five years old, my mother took her to the shopping center in Cape Town, which is Cavendish Square. And there's a big display or show for children during the holidays run by some magician. And so my mother was trying to avoid it, scratching around the edge of the square to get to the shop she's heading to. And the magician leading this spotted my daughter and said, hey, little girl, come over here. We have magic for you. And my mother said that Andrea responded in a loud voice, and you know, five-year-olds do not need a PA system. She said, the whole shopping center could hear. My Lord Jesus does miracles, and it's better than your magic. Yeah, I mean, out of the mouth of babes. And there was this, the man was just left there, jaw open. I mean, what could he say? Shortly after that, my daughter was traveling with me on a KLM flight to Amsterdam, and we had just taken off, and I was settling into a book, and my daughter shouted out, we're Christians! So I said, well, yes, Andrea, we are. Put my book to one side, said, but why do you bring that up now? She said, the lady was asking if there's any Christians we should let her know. So I thought a bit, and I said, that must be if there's any questions we should let her know. But she was so primed, so ready to shout out with joy, I'm a Christian, and we should be more enthusiastic. We should be more like the children who are ready. They don't mind if it's a bit embarrassing or awkward, but they will make the stand for Christ. And that's so encouraging and such a rebuke to us. We dare not let opportunities to witness for Christ pass us by. These opportunities come past. I was just coming to Swaziland now, There was a group of white people on a plane that looked to me like they might be missionaries, but the children looked very dull. I mean, if you spoke to them, they smiled, but the rest of the time, they looked kind of very subdued. And so I've got some interesting tracks with me at all times. So I looked and I found, OK, what have I got here? Oh, you're a good person. But I also had a... 101 funniest one-liners to offer. So I gave this to this kid, sort of brightened him up. And when I started to speak to the parents, what are they doing here? Are you on a mission? They said they're coming to do eye surgery. And very interesting, where do you come from? Utah. So there's a lot of Mormons in Utah. They said, yes, we Mormons. So the Mormon mission is coming into your country. And I'm so glad I took the opportunity to share the gospel with them because they Mormons, they are trusting in a different type of Jesus. You know, the Mormons believe that God comes from a celestial planet near Culver, somewhere out in outer space, and that Jesus is the brother, the younger brother of Satan. Satan and Jesus are brothers. As we are, God once was. As God is, we one day will be. And that's Mormon teaching. They literally believe God has multiple wives and all sorts of bizarre things. Very strange idea. I mean, imagine Jesus and Satan being brothers. So they've got another gospel. They have another Jesus. Now, they can be nice people, and obviously they're doing some good things, and they're coming here to do eye surgery. Good for them. But they've got a wrong gospel, and there's only one way of salvation. That's the Lord Jesus Christ, not just the brother of Satan. I mean, we're talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only way of salvation. Now how terrible if you miss the opportunity to reach these people that are just passing by. I had a few moments of interconnecting with them. Just a few because we're on the same plane. But you can't let these opportunities to witness pass by. Afterwards it's gone. You never get another chance. Some of these people you pass by. So I try and sow gospel seed, guards at the gate, people at the petrol station, people at the shop counter, wherever it is. You can sow gospel seed. The police stop you at a traffic stop. You can hand out gospel literature to them before they start asking for your driver's license, registration papers. You give them tracts. And I mean, why not initiate? Sometimes I've given conversations. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Ray Comfort Way of the Master evangelistic programs. They've got million dollar bills, which are tracks. So it's the million dollar bill, and it's asked the million dollar question, would you be willing to sell one of your eyes for a million dollars? Nobody wants to sell one of their eyes for a million dollars, because their eyes are precious to you, right? Well, your eye is only the window to your soul, and yet there are people who sell their soul for a few cents. Marilyn Monroe was a Hollywood actress who says, Hollywood is a place where they'll give you $10,000 for a kiss and a few cents for your soul. And what is it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but he loses his own soul? So I've sometimes started a conversation with people, you know, would you sell one of your eyes for a million dollars? Can I ask you the million dollar question? Where will you go when you die? heaven or hell. And sometimes you can ask, how can a holy God allow sinful people like you and I into his heaven? If God was to ask you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you say? So he sent me with this million dollar bill, which is actually a gospel tract. It's got the gospel on one side. And so I was driving in Zambia, and I get to a police roadblock, and I want to do an evangelistic outreach. So as we stop, I put this million dollar bill out the window, Anyway, there's so many opportunities to witness, and if you've got good evangelistic tracts, you've got a good opportunity. Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him the son of man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory, in his father's and of the holy angels. Do not be intimidated into silence. Fear God, not man. On this occasion, this picture is of an imam of the Islamic Propagation Center International in the largest mosque in the southern hemisphere. This is the mosque in Durban, and this is a group of frontline people in training and We took them into the mosque to show how to interact with Muslims, so we had a bit of a debate there. And it's a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel with people, even if they're Muslims. When I went into South Ghana army, South Ghana infantry, on my call up, I had a missionary tell me, you must make your witness for Christ early. Don't wait a few weeks before people discover you're a Christian. make your witness early, so I was told, so important, at your first meal, don't look like you're scratching the back of your head. When you give thanks for food, do it obviously so that you're praying. Other Christians will identify that you're a Christian by the person who's willing to pray before his meals. So I gave a full, serious prayer before my meal, and as I lifted up my eyes, everybody was laughing. And then I saw why. My meat was missing. And then one of the pagans sitting on the table laughed and said, but didn't Jesus say you should watch and pray? And they're all laughing. So I learned in future when you pray, you put your fork into the meat, put your arm around that. You protect what you're praying for. So Naomi spoke about pain-tain, the pain garden. No pain, no gain. Some sadist comes up with concrete blocks. Honestly, who on earth comes up with this sort of idea, with concrete blocks? But these are the kind of exercises I do. Concrete block PT and pillar PT. Pole PT, running with poles, running with tires, this is the fast plate, or bike fast. You're given tires, drums, poles, you've got to work as a team. Because it's not the first one across the line, it's the last of your platoon across the line, you've got to finish as a unit. So sometimes we'd have to run with One of our people had passed out, he was too weak between our shoulders. We'd have to take the backpack or the rifle of another soldier struggling and run, his feet off the ground, sharing between you. You've got to finish as a team, you work as a team. And obstacles are not put there to stop you. The army builds obstacle courses not to stop you. The whole goal of an obstacle course is to teach you obstacles are only there to be overcome. How fast can you overcome them? And sometimes you need teamwork, but you've got to overcome these obstacles. And whether it's through the mud, over the barbed wire, whatever, but as a unit, we learn to work together. And there's so much to learn that everywhere in missions is obstacles are just there to be overcome. And we were taught discipline. We were taught perseverance, endurance. And at the first chaplain's period, I asked the chaplain if I could speak. And I turned and I faced the hundreds of men that were in my company at that time. And I knew I had to say it. My heart was pounding. I was terrified. It's very intimidating. But I mean, I was just a new recruit, private rifleman in infantry. I turned and I said, I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart. I want to honor him in my next two years here. If anyone else feels the same, please see me afterwards. Let's start a Bible study and a prayer fellowship. And that's where our mission began. Babasaheb prayer fellowship in the South Konami, every night we met. Well, some nights we may not have personally been able to attend because of night duties, patrols, ambushes, but those who were in base met every night continuously for the next two years. And on the border, we planted Bible study and prayer fellowships. Our group of three grew to six, grew to seven, eight, nine, 10, 12, 24. We keep growing. At the end of our two years, there were 84 meetings for the last meeting. And some of those people end up going to Youth with a Mission, Operation Mobilization, WIC. Whitcliffe Bible Translate says, people end up all over the world. Just an extraordinary thing that from our time in the army, this Bible study and prayer fellowship ministry started all over. And our mission frontline fellowship grew out of this time in the South African infantry. And we saw prayers answered. There were pagans there who didn't take the Lord seriously. One of the people, he was taking the Lord's name in vain and our people rebuked him and said, God will judge you, you stiff neck. And he broke his neck in a Up till shortly after that, and they had to put him in one of these neck braces. You know, we've got this neck brace for a couple of weeks. And even the pagans were laughing at him. God has judged you, you stiff-necked. So even the pagans were quoting scripture. Then there was this other pagan, taking the Lord's name in vain. He was rebuked by one of our Christians. He picked up his either coke tin or beer tin, and there was a bee sitting on the tin, stung him on the tongue. Aw. He couldn't swear or talk for a few weeks. And there were things God did to bring people down and to bring people to him. And we got, just recently, somebody turned up at our mission, and I hadn't seen him in 45 years. And he said, your people led me to Christ. He mentioned one of the people in our Bible study and prayer fellowship at Grahamstown, 600 infantry. And he said that he was so irritated by these Christians, he did everything to break them down. And he said, because he is a corporal, and so he had a bit of rank over them. And he just gave them more and more unreasonable punishment duties. And he said they were singing and even forbade them to sing. And they said, corporal, you can order us to do a duty, and we'll do it. This was scrubbing toilets and so on. But you can't stop us praising God. That we have to do every day, all the time. So they were singing praise to God, even though the man forbade them. And they said, we can't stop doing it. And they continued to do what he told them to do, but they could not stop singing. And so this chap was now a Christian. And missionary, he brings along his wife to introduce her to this insane Christian who turned six out of an infantry after that. and how prayer fellowship brought him to the Lord ultimately. And I didn't even know he had come to the Lord. So we were involved in some pretty severe battles up in the border of Angola, fighting the Cubans and the Soviets. Even today, you can Google Earth's Lomba River. And you can see the graveyard of Soviet tanks and armored cars, an entire division of Soviet and Cuban mechanized division wiped out by the South Korean Defense Force at the end of the Cold War, at the culmination of the battles up in Angola, Cuito Cuanavale, Lomba River, absolutely devastating, and the Lomba Bridge. Can you imagine what force can lift a tank up in the air and bring it crashing down on its back, broken pieces. This is one 155 millimeter howitzer from a Saab G5, which took this tank and just blew it to little pieces. Direct hit. I mean, that's marksmanship. And it was out of these battles that drew missions to all parts of the world. And right now, these Soviets Our tanks are still there. And literally, you can spot it from Google Earth. So UNITA Freedom Fighters, we worked amongst them, helped train chaplains. We came across many a shot down Soviet and Cuban aircraft. This is a MiG taken out by an American Stinger. And these are what young men looked like back in the 1980s in South Africa. Our gap year was two years in the infantry. they turn boys into men. And that's why some people get a bit surprised. They try to mug old men like me, and they forget this is the generation that fought Mangola, and we're not that easy to mug. And the wimps today, these guys who don't know if they're Arthur or Martha, these characters in gender confusion, that didn't happen in our generation. Our generation, tough Boers and South Africans who went to the war there, you wouldn't want to mess with them. And they need to remember, people of my age group are not the sort they should mess with. We've been to war. We don't fear man. We fear God alone. And so out of all this grew missions. Frontline Fellowship developed in the South Konami, and we to this day continue to send missionaries all over the world. and our literature is supplying Africa with a hundred tons of Bibles a year completely free. Jesus said, there's no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake and for the gospels who will not receive a hundredfold more now in this time. Houses and brothers and sisters, mothers, children, lands with persecutions and an age to come eternal life. Sacrifice is required. The Lord just adds, with persecutions, with all the blessings. This is the main road in Angola. It's a big red road, big red strip on the map, Mitchell map. But when you get there, it takes imagination to work out where the road is. When I talk about the developing world, in this case, mostly weeds. We spend more time under the bonnet fixing the car than behind the wheel driving it. Hard roads. World Missionary Press Gospel Booklets, All Nations Gospel Books, and so on, smuggling them across the river, crocodile infested rivers in Tangola. There'd be no space in the canoe for us. We'd have to get behind and push it across, swim across on the side of boats, pushing these in Tangola. And in Angola, you could just see shot out, exterior decorating by Gorbachev and sons. And the roads are so bad, you literally have to end up with people carrying the box of Bibles on their heads. And this is in areas where landmines are the national plant. But we smuggled in thousands of Bibles in Tangola. And here you see mother and father walking on areas in Danesboro landmines carrying the baby and the AK-47 and all their possessions on their head. And that's in their head? Sorry? In their head? What's in their head? All their possessions just wrapped up. They don't have suitcases or backpacks. So we're coming to a village. in Angola, Coando Camango province. The Portuguese called us the ends of the earth. And as our team approached, they could hear the sound, and they immediately recognized the tune, but they didn't know the words. People were singing, in Uvumbundu, I am Festiburg, a sonce of God. A mighty fortress is our God. Martin Luther's great hymn of the Reformation. It was the 31st of October, and they were celebrating Reformation Day. But what do you see that's missing in this church? There's no building. The building's been destroyed. But it didn't stop them from meeting together for worship. Now, you can actually see our vehicle in the back there. Pick up truck. And they didn't have any Bibles or communion elements. So the next time we brought through communion elements for them, and these people, they had lost their church, everything had been destroyed. They had one Bible amongst them. We brought in Sunday school materials. We heard people say, this is the greatest gift anyone could ever ask for, the word of God in my own language. I've been praying five years, man, copy the word of God. Later, we were able to get a legend in South African history. This newsletter tells you about him. Colonel Jan Breitenbach is an absolute legend. He was the founder of the South African Special Forces, one of the first of the paratroopers, and he went into Angola and recruited thousands of Angolan, Portuguese-speaking Angolans, who used to be communists, to join the South African Army, 3-2 Battalion, forged them in battle. Well, he, when he retired from the army, joined our mission. and came with us, camps, went across, ministered throughout Southwest Africa, Angola. We decide to walk into Angola and preach to the communists. And you can never forget the message of Colonel Breitbart. He preached like he fought. He hit his targets. And so he stands up and he says to this, which is a ceasefire at that moment. So there was Angolans and South Africans, what they called the Joint Military Monitoring Commission, JMMC, 1989. And so Colonel Breitmarck stood up and said to them, well, we were preaching in our units all over the place. And then he borrowed a helicopter and we went to different places across the border to preach to the communists. And Colonel Breitmarck begins by saying, I'm Colonel Jan Breitmarck of 3-2 Battalion. My men and I, we've killed thousands of you communists, thousands. We never had any trouble killing you. Our problem was catching you. You ran so fast. And he said, why did you run so fast? You broke Olympic records running away from the fire. Even when you outnumbered us 10 to 1, you fled like the spineless, yellow-bellied coward you are. You're afraid to die, and you should be afraid to die. If you knew what was waiting for you one second on the other side of the grave, you'd crawl across the minefield to beg for freedom to show you the way of salvation in Jesus Christ. Your God is Karl Marx. Your religion is atheism. Your commissars are the priests of Satan. You're all doomed. You're damned. You're lost. You're going to burn in hell forever. And so Colonel Bateman preached like this to these guys. And we got into trouble that night when we got back to southwest Africa. The colonel was confronted by a commandant as he came across the airstrip saying, The lines have been humming. Pick Porter is hopping mad. The Bastion's been screaming for your blood. The Bastion is headquarters in Bintra. Sector 10 has passed on the order. You and Hammond are to be out of the country by tomorrow morning. So Colonel Breitmark fired the first shots of the war, and he is expelled from the country for upsetting communists by preaching gospel to them. Apparently the communists were so upset, their soldiers were so demoralized, they had to pull him back from the front, they had to bring in special psychologists to counsel him because these men were shattered, their confidence And so we had done some psy-ops, which had messed with their brains, apparently, and now they were all upset. And so the South African government was ordering us to be kicked out of the country. And they said, you and Hammond are trying to restart the war. At that point, they were having peace negotiations. Still, it's good to preach the gospel, even when the communists don't like it. This is how a mission often starts, Cape Town, in the shadow of Table Mountain, heading up to the border, going across. And this is as we're driving into Sudan, up in northern Africa. And when you come into Ambush Alley, and you see shot-out tanks, it revolutionizes your free life. If you think the tanks couldn't survive, these armored cars couldn't survive, how is our soft-skinned vehicle going to survive in Ambush Alley? revives your prayer life. When you're driving in areas where ambushes are likely, where landmines are likely, you want to know you're right with God. What I've said to many of our men before we've headed into the field is, don't take anything into the field that you're not willing to lose, including your own life. Are you willing to die for Christ? If not, don't even go. Don't take anything in the field you're not willing to lose, and that includes your own life. So we've taken many vehicles into the field. Now, this one here, you'll wonder why we've got the Christian flag there. We don't like friendly fire. The Americans like friendly fire. When my father was in the Royal Artillery in North Africa, he said they called the American Air Force the American Luftwaffe because they bombed everyone, including the British. So the Americans were meant to be the Allies, but the Americans kill a lot of their friends and allies because, as they say, kill them all, let God sort them out. The Eighth Army, we were British, were diving for cover when the American Air Force came overhead because they were afraid the Americans would bomb them, and sometimes they did. So my dad said he wasn't just diving for cover from the Italians and from the Germans, he had to dive for cover from the Americans too. So to avoid friendly fire, we will travel with a Christian flag to make it clear we are not with the Arabs, we're not with the United Nations. So at least our side won't shoot us. Maybe the Arabs will shoot us, but you don't want to be shot by friendly fire. Yes. What do you recommend? So I should wrap up and of course, are we not expecting rain tomorrow? Okay right well let's see if we can wrap this up. This is what a typical road looks like in Sudan. That's what a river looks like. See the bridges have been blown up. So notice river, road. We have to waterproof all of our literature, like waterproof containers, because when you cross rivers, we're often up to chest height in water. And so you need the snorkel for the engine to breathe, and we need all of our literature completely sealed, waterproof. I'll tell you more about the war in Sudan tomorrow, but there's These people said they were hidden people fighting a forgotten war. The people of South Sudan have won their war. They are now independent. South Sudan is a free and independent country. The last war of decolonization ever. And these are our friends. I was heavily involved helping the Sudanese People's Liberation Army. from 1995 through till 2005 when the ceasefire came, and in 2011 when they became a free and independent country. We continue to smuggle Bibles up into the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, which is still behind enemy lines, to help the persecuted church. But these are the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, and we train their chaplains for them, ministered throughout the Nuba Mountains, seeking to help the persecuted church, and working behind enemy lines for Christ. There's a book on this, but we'll let you know about that another time.