Well, thank you, Pastor, for letting me be here, too. First time I ever went to China, I was standing on Tiananmen Square with our missionary, Kendell Allman and John Anderson, and it was baking hot and there were thousands of people there, and Tiananmen Square is huge. And as I stood there, I watched this line of people It was moving, but very slow. They would just take a step and then another step. It was so hot, some of them had umbrellas. And I asked Brother Lauma, what are they doing? They've been there, it looks like an hour. They've been, the line just going slowly forward. He said, Brother Godfrey, they're standing in line waiting their turn to see Chairman Miles' dead body. Past that broke my heart. I thought, I wouldn't stand five minutes to see some dead guy's body. They don't need to hear about a dead man, they need to hear about a living savior in China. And I wish you could go with me to China and see what God's doing there today. We have people being saved, we have churches, we've got a Bible college, Bible institute going in China. Now, all of that, you can't say too much about it, but I just want you to know, I've been there, I've seen it with my own eyes, and it's thrilling to see what God's doing. But then if you went with me down a few hundred, maybe a thousand miles or so to the south out in the Pacific to the islands of the Philippines, Linda and I traveled from one end to the other, from Dan to Beersheba, from General Santos to Ilocos Norte. And the Filipinos like us. They like us because we'll eat anything. And I like balut. I like century eggs. In the Philippines, it's adidas and shoestrings. That's chicken feet and chicken intestines, and they like it. But anyway, we can go to the Philippines and see more people saved there in a month than anywhere else the rest of the year. I've been down there on a trip, and I was flying back to Japan, and Linda wasn't with me, so I was sitting in the airplane on Manila Airstrip there, and I was flipping through some Japanese vocabulary cards. This young lady, Filipina, came and sat beside me and she said, sir, what are you doing? And I said, well, mom, I'm studying Japanese. She said, why would you do that? And I said, well, mom, I'm a preacher of the gospel. And when I go to places, I can't speak all the languages in the world, but when I go to places, I really want to be able to tell them about the gospel of Christ in their own language. And she said to me, Sir, would you tell me some more about that? And before we ever left the runway in Manila, she's on her way to heaven. I get to do, Linda and I, it's like our daughter, our oldest daughter, she said when she goes to the grocery store, it's like she has a sign on her back that says, please come talk to me. Well, we're that way wherever we go, sitting in an airport, on an airplane, out on the mission field. I could literally stand here, and I'm not going to do it, don't panic. I could stand here tonight all night long and tell you about people that we've been able to lead to the Lord standing in a line at an airport or out doing Bible clubs in some country or almost everywhere we go. I wish you could go and see that and experience it. I wish you could go with me to Japan. After the tsunami, now we've been back there since then, but two years ago after the tsunami, I went to Japan. And our missionaries, we went up on the mountain above the tsunami area. We slept on the ground in tents for a couple of weeks. It snowed on us four inches. The wind about blew us off the mountain one day. We were sleeping on the ground one night. They had a 7.2 aftershock. But every day we would take Bibles, well, Japanese Bibles, and clothing, and fuel, and food, and we'd go down to the tsunami area. And this area where we were at, the tsunami, was 90 feet high. And everywhere we went, we met people. One man said, my wife went down to get our kids from school. She got them. She drove up to where she thought she was in safety. But the tsunami came higher, and I never saw my wife and my kids again. And Japan's a needy country. And I could mention a lot of other countries, but I got into this story because I wanted to say this to you. In April, we're going to Germany to work with American military. In May, I'll be in Canada. But in June, I'm going with Brother Brooks to help head up our teams to get out the Bibles in the Fiji Islands. And so, you know, we don't just send the Bibles to Fiji. We will go to every school we can and give those Bibles personally to every teacher, every staff member, every young person in all the schools in Fiji. The Bibles we have already gotten and then this is a fringe benefit that we didn't start into this but it's worked out. Now we're going to have enough to give New Testaments to every elementary school child in all the Fiji. So if anybody, if you're interested in going to see me because I'm looking forward to it to go down there and see people saved in the islands. I want you to open your Bibles tonight to the book of Acts chapter 18. I preached Wednesday night out of the gospel of Matthew and last night the gospel of John and tonight chapter 18, the book of Acts. I mentioned last night my wife, I picked her up yesterday at the airport up in Gainesville, and I mentioned that her name is Linda. And I won't tell so many stories, I don't think, in my sermon. You can't ever tell about me. I've got more stories than I know what to do with. And a lot of them, I wouldn't even tell them if other people hadn't been there with cameras. If I were you, I would be here in the morning at breakfast time just to hear my story. And I'm not going to tell you what it is. But anyways, it'll be good. But my wife is Linda. We grew up in South Carolina. Our oldest daughter is Hannah. She went to college at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And she met a young man from Seattle, Washington. And they got married. And his mother's name was Linda. So they named their oldest daughter Linda. Our next daughter, Benita, is eight years younger, and she met her husband at Ambassador Baptist College, and he's from Herndon, Virginia. That's Washington, D.C. area. And his mother's name was Linda. Our third daughter, Lydia, she was four years younger still, and this young man came down to my house one day. I was teaching in the college there, and I was his professor, and he was just like this. He's sitting across the desk from me to ask my permission to ask my daughter Lydia to a Valentine banquet. And I looked across at my desk at this young gentleman and I said, young man, what's your mama's name? And I didn't know, I didn't really, I'm serious, I had no idea. He said, Linda, I said, conversation is over. You go back to Ambassador Babbage's college, leave me alone. We're not going to have this conversation. But that didn't help either. So all of our girls are married to our mother-in-laws. All right, Acts chapter 18. We'll get out of business and won't be here long. Acts 18 verse 1, After these things Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth, found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome, and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them in Ralt, for by their occupation they were tentmakers. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit and testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ." Let me just pause a moment here to say that's what we missionaries do. It doesn't matter what country it is, we go, we take this wonderful Word of God, and we open it, and we preach, and we teach Jesus Christ to them. We're not there to try to make them Americans. Why would we want to do that? We're not there trying to change their culture, even though the gospel may change some things. But we're there to present our wonderful Savior who saved us and has given us the privilege of doing that. So that's what we do. Verse 6, And when they opposed themselves and blasphemed, He shook His raiment and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads, I am clean. From henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles.' And he departed thence, and entered into a certain man's house named Justice, one that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue. And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house. Many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptized." Notice that order, that's important. But here's what I want to preach on tonight, verses 9 and 10. Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace." That's quite a command. But have you noticed that when God gives us a command like that, that there's usually a promise that goes with it? God said, don't be afraid, for, verse 10, I am with thee, no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have much people in this city, and he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. I want to speak to you tonight, and this will not be a long message, I want to speak to you tonight on this topic, serving God without fear. The chapter before this, in chapter 17, verse 6, it says that those early day believers had turned their world upside down. But I believe it's just as true when we get saved, God turns our world upside down also. Now I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand tonight, but I'm convinced some of you in this building, when you got saved, your people thought you'd lost your mind. If you're from a Catholic background or some other background or a Muslim background or whatever and you got saved, your world can be turned upside down and all of a sudden your life as you knew it before has changed and now you're living in a mixture of excitement and fear. How am I going to win my mother, my father, maybe? How am I going to win my brother, my sister, my co-workers? How am I going to explain to my boss that maybe God may call me to preach now? And what's going on in my life? These young missionaries who are here with you this week now, one of them's already been on, well, two of them on the field, two of them going. Can you imagine the emotions that they're going through? They may be thinking, how are we going to eat? Not what, how? Where's our money going to come from? Our church is going to love us and pray for us and support us. And how are we going to eat when we get to Mongolia or to Nicaragua or out in the Congo? And then they may be thinking, what am I going to eat? Because over in Mongolia, they have more horses than they have people. And they milk those mares just like cows. And when you walk in that horse skin tent, or you walk in that apartment in Mongolia, the first thing you get is a big bowl of hot salted horse milk. And you drink that bowl of hot horse milk, and then they come out with a second bowl, and it's fermented. And they give you that, and you take a drink, you pass it to the next person, and he takes a drink, and it goes in a circle, and you're praying, Lord, let that thing be empty before it gets back around your knee. They may be thinking, how am I going to leave my mom and my dad? How many of you think missionaries never get lonely? Do you think they're different than you are? Maybe you've never thought about it that way before. I know you look at them and you think, oh, God's called them and they can't wait to get there. That is true. But I'm just saying to you tonight, there's a mixture. There are mixed emotions when you set out to serve God. Some of you, you may not be going to Mongolia or Nicaragua or Dominican Republic, but you're wondering, dear Lord, can I trust you to help me give more next year to missions? Lord, can I pray better for these missionaries? What can I do? And how can they lead their mom and their dad? How can they lead the church? How will I speak when I get there? I've been to Mongolia several times. How will they speak when they get there? Did you realize that 90% of the world does not speak English? Even in those countries where they say they do, they don't. Anybody that tells you everybody in China speaks English, they're lying to you. I was in Uganda last May, I spent a good little bit there, and they told me that in Uganda they speak English. I was praying the whole time for a French speaker because I couldn't understand anything they said to me in English. How am I going to communicate with these people? How am I going to get across the gospel message without having them laugh at me? My dear friend, I mentioned him already this week, Ron White. Brother White went to Japan. He was from West Virginia. And he went to Japan. And he and Odessa, they started to learn Japanese. And he was studying really hard. And he was beginning to learn his Japanese pretty good. But he got to the place he could preach in Japanese if he wrote his sermon out. But if you've ever written a sermon out, you've got to stand there and read it. If you ever look up, you've lost your place. And he was just totally frustrated that he couldn't preach without reading his notes. And he just made up his mind, I'm not going to do that next week. I'm going to preach in Japanese. I'm going to memorize it. Whatever I've got to do, I'm not going to have to read my notes. And he worked all week long to get up and preach his first sermon without being tied to his notes. And he did a pretty good job, except he missed up one word. The key word in his sermon was sin, sumi. But he didn't say sumi, he said suma, which meant wife or wives. And he said all the problems that you're having in your life are these wives. All the sickness, all the suffering, all the bad things. That's why when you don't know the language well, you just keep changing one word. All these difficulties. It's these wives that you have. If you were to chase these wives out of your life, And you better be able to laugh at yourself, because if you can't, they're going to take care of it for you. Can God protect me? I like to be honest and transparent with people. Some of you are afraid to surrender because you're afraid God will send you to Africa. But if He sends you to Africa, that'd be the greatest day that ever happened in your life. It's a wonderful place and if you're where God wants you to be, you'll enjoy every moment of it. Why would we ever think that God wants us to be miserable? Why would we think God's going to send us to some place where we would hate it and be miserable? I don't believe that for one moment about our God. Can He send you to some place and give you safety and health and take care of you even when you eat the drink the horse milk, and we didn't have that. We lived in the desert. We ate rice and fish, rice and beef. They did eat goat meat and lamb and all that, but one of the first words we learned in Wolof was danka. We know what to eat with our hands, because we just ate out of one big plater bowl with our hands. Honestly, we'd rather eat with our hand than their spoon. But one day Linda wasn't with me and I was out in the village, hadn't been there long. And I'd gone to ask the chief if I could talk to his people. And he said, sure. But he said, he was eating a big bowl of fish soup. And he said to some of his men, he said, go get some soup for our visitor. So they went and they brought me a bowl of soup in there. And he's finishing his up. And he's eating with a big old tablespoon. And he's finished now. And he takes that spoon. and hands that thing to me, preacher. That's when you pray that the soup is really hot. Now, hang on. I'm headed somewhere. I like to have fun, but I know where I'm going, all right? I love the Bible. It's changed my life. I love the book of Acts when it comes to missions. And I've been reading again back through the book of Acts and Paul's missionary journeys. And I'm going to come back to 18 so you don't need to turn to all these chapters. But if you go back in the chapters prior to this 18th one where God gives Paul such a wonderful promise about not being afraid, you're going to see several things. You're going to see that being a missionary in that day and today means lots of travel. I mean in that day they did it on donkey, they walked, they took little ships, but it was a lot of travel. These missionaries today, I've given the God-free definition to furlough. I don't think y'all have heard this yet, let me give you what furlough is. Furlough means traveling fur and feeling low. They come back from their field and they gotta run here to that church, go see that church. There was a lot of travel in the book of Acts. They went on, and today missionaries go on ships and planes and jeepneys and trains and bicycles and canoes and subways. But we get where God wants us to go with the gospel. Number two, when I was reading through the book of Acts, another thing that impressed me again was every time they entered into new territory, the devil fought them with everything he had. You cannot do something successfully for God without having the devil resist you. And through the book of Acts, you see it? Acts chapter 13, where the great missionary church in Antioch sent out Paul and Barnabas In that very chapter, you'll find the first place they went, over to Cyprus, there was a sorcerer there who resisted them. In Acts chapter 14, it was unbelieving Jews, and they threw rocks at Paul, left him, they thought he was dead. In Acts chapter 15, there was the religious crowd. In Acts chapter 16, they were arrested, put in prison, beaten. In Acts chapter 17, there were words of mockery, people making fun of them. There was a young man here this evening, and he's going in the military, and I gave him, I think, some very good words of advice, because I've been there and done that. I said, young man, when you get where you're going, stake your ground out as a Christian. You can't make anyone else become a Christian. You can't twist their arm and force them to do it. But let them know from the first moment you get there that I don't blush to say I belong to Him. When we're out in the Philippines, and sometimes we stay in little Filipino hotels, as soon as I get in that hotel, I give a tract. I start pulling gospel tracts out of my pocket. I give a tract to every clerk in there. I give them to every waiter in the restaurant, because I want everybody there to know I'm not better than they are. I'm just a sinner saved by the grace of God, but I want them to know I belong to the King of kings and Lord of lords. And there was some resistance. Also in the chapters prior to this, occasionally you'll find there were some disagreements. How many of you know that we Christians sometimes have a hard time getting along? Now come on, don't sit there and look so pious at me. Sometimes, and even, listen, even among these great men of God, Paul and Barnabas, they had a disagreement. It wasn't over doctrine. It was over maybe personality. Paul didn't want to take John Mark with him, and Barnabas was his uncle and said, no, I think Mark will be a good man, let's take him. And they disagreed. But I want you to watch this. They disagreed, but God even used that disagreement to send out two missionary teams now. And you see that in the book of Acts. But I'm glad I don't have to stop with that. You can't read the book of Acts without seeing this. Everywhere they went, they had results. not always the same thing, not as many people saved in one town as the other, but everywhere they went. In Acts chapter 16 and verse 1, Timothy got saved. In Acts chapter 16 and verses 6 through 10, Paul had that great vision of the Macedonian man saying, come over here. In Acts chapter 16 as well, Lydia got saved, and then the servant girl, then the jailer. In Acts chapter 17 and verse 11, the Bible talks to us about those sincere seekers in the city of Berea who opened up the word of God and examined it. Now, with all of these things in mind, I want you to look again with me in Acts chapter 18. And I want to go back, I referred to it in verse number 8. And it says, many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptized. The order here in this verse is important. Now, folks, let me say this to you. You don't have to be a Baptist to go to heaven. But what you have to be is a Bible believer. This is God's Word. Every word, the first word to the last in it, it's God's Word. But here's the order God gives us. Everybody needs to hear it. And some of those who hear it will believe. And those who do believe are to be baptized. And then the discipleship process begins, and it talks to us about that here as well. In verse number 11, Paul continued there, teaching these people, building up a church. But in the middle of that, Paul, you just remember just a few pages before here, he had been stoned and left for dead. Sometimes missionaries go out and I could tell you stories today if I don't have the time to do it. We have missionaries right now today in some very dangerous places in this world. We have a missionary, a young missionary, they went to school with them out in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He went out to work with and take the place of a missionary, Mr. David Edens, who's been there for 40 years, who's translated almost the entire Bible into that language, Tamasheq. David Edens has a white camel. He rides out into those little settlements out across the Sahara and preaches the gospel. He has radio broadcasts. And right now we have a brand new young couple who are over there in the middle of the desert. And the United States government is putting a drone in placement in that little city where they live. Planting a target on it. But that's the way it is. And Brother Edens is trying to get back up there. They're in dangerous places. How do we go? How do we send these young missionaries to places that don't always look very promising? Going to Japan is not an easy place to go and see a lot of people saved. Going to modern-day Europe is not an easy place. Try going to Spain or France or Italy or Germany or England and win people to Christ today. You can win them, but it's not easy. Go to the Catholic countries in the world. Go to places where it's often difficult. How do we send these young missionaries out to the jungle or to the desert or to the big cities? How do we do it? How do you live for Christ in this multicultural, pluralistic world that we're living in? How many of you know, I mean, our thinking in America has become very confused. I was flying somewhere, I don't remember, I fly all the time and I have no idea where I was going. Sometimes I'm that way. But I was on a plane and this man sitting beside me was an executive for IBM. And I started trying to witness to him and he said, sir, I'm a Catholic, I don't have time to talk to you. And so he worked on his computer and so I was quiet for a while and after a while he closed his laptop up and I started trying to talk to him again. He said, sir, I've already told you that I'm a Christian, but I believe it's all the same. It doesn't matter if you're a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Hindu or an atheist or a Christian. It doesn't matter as long as you're sincere, it doesn't matter. And I said to him, sir, you shock me. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, when I sat down beside you, you told me that you worked for IBM. I just assumed you were rational." I said, you're sitting there without a smile on your face telling me that you believe in thirty million gods of Hinduism and no god of Buddhism and the Creator God of the Bible all at the same time. He said, well, I've never thought about it that way before. I said, sir, I'm not trying to be rude to you, but you better think about it a little bit. You can't believe all of those things at the same time. How do we do it then? How do we reach our community? How do we reach Ocala and Orlando and Gainesville and Florida and the United States of America? How many of you believe people can still be saved in America? They are being saved, they can be saved. How do we do it? We can do it because God said to Paul, stay in Corinth, be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace. And here's why, three simple reasons why we can do it. Why you can give more, why you can pray more, why these missionaries can get the job done. Number one, because we have a clear promise of the presence of God with us. He said, for I am with thee. all through the scripture, everywhere you go. And in Exodus chapter 3 and verse 11, it says, And Moses said unto God, Who am I that I should go? You missionaries, have you ever felt that way? Dear Lord, why would you call me? Lord, you sure you want me to go to Mongolia, the Sahara Desert, down in the Congo? Are you sure? And you know what God's answer to Moses was? Well, before I give you God's answer, have you ever thought about this? Moses had a problem. He didn't know where to bury Egyptians. Forty years before he had lived, had the riches and education of Egypt, and he tried to bury one of them in the sand. And he got him in trouble. God wanted them all in the Red Sea buried. But anyway, he had them. And now Moses said, Lord, who am I that I should go? Here was God's answer to him. And God says, certainly I shall go with thee. You know why they can go and not be afraid? Because God's down in Dominican Republic at work. Isaiah says, when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. Through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shall not be burned. The great commission in Matthew 28, Jesus told us to go and teach all nations. And you know that great command, but the command stands with this. Jesus gave the promise, lo, I'm with thee always, even unto the end of the world. And I love Hebrews chapter 13 in verse five. where God says, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Over in the book of Daniel, in the three Hebrew children, there's a phrase there that just jumps out at you. They were in the furnace, but there are two words we miss sometimes. They were in the furnace with God. We cannot go out. It doesn't matter. We just gave out thousands of Bibles in Ushuaia, Argentina. We called it the end of the world Bible distribution project. That's the southernmost city in all the world. And we tried to get a Bible into the hands of every person down there. You can't go to the southernmost part or the northernmost part or east or west. You cannot go where God is not. And he said you can go and you can do and your church can be strong because we have the promise of the presence of God. Number two. God says to Paul, for I am with thee, and no man shall sit upon thee to hurt thee. Not only do we have the promise of God's presence, we have the promise of God's protection. No man shall sit on thee to hurt thee. Hebrews 13, 6, so that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man shall do unto me. I've been bragging on Lent all week, but I know that, listen folk, I know the kind of wife I have. I can't think of many American women that would have lived with me in the places we've lived and done a lot of things and got stranded up in, five weeks, she and the three younger kids, five weeks stranded up in the middle of the jungle and I couldn't get back there. But we hadn't gone down into the jungle in Zaire, hadn't been there but just a few days. We lived in a house that hadn't been lived in in 30 years. Just a mud block house, sitting on the side of the mountain. The back wall was actually breaking loose from the house and leaning down the mountain. So in the corner of our bedroom, there was a big crack in the corner wall. So I stuffed plastic all in that crack. I don't know why, because the trusses sat on top of the mud block, and there was nothing between the trusses to the outside. It was just open. But I stuffed plastic all in there, and we went to bed one night. I nailed four posts to the end of my bed, draped mosquito net over it, tucked the mosquito net in under the mattress to keep the mosquitoes out. And we had gone to bed, and we hadn't gotten in there good. We heard a noise. and something was coming through the plastic. So I got out of bed on my side and I got my flashlight and my machete and I went around on her side of the bed and she said, honey, what is it? I said, you really don't want to know. And there was a big, there was this big black mamba going up the wall on her side of the bed. He said, well, why would you take your wife and why would you take your kids to a place? Let me tell you, because you can take them wherever God wants you to take them, or you can stay right here when you have the promise of the protection of God upon you. See, no one can harm us unless God allows it. back in 1990, Dr. Sisk. Dr. Sisk and Brother Umbrag and a pastor from Georgia who'd never been out of Georgia in his life to that trip. They went with me, they were going to go up at our village in the jungle, and we got out there and every plan we had fell apart. So we borrowed an old 1940-something German truck from this other missionary, big old truck, troop carrier, and we had 15 barrels of fuel. We had trunks on top of the barrels of fuel. We had suitcases on top of that. We put tarps over it. And Dr. Sisk and Brother Bragg and we're all sitting up on top of that thing. We left Kinshasa. Once you leave the capital, you start going up and down these mountains. It's just jungle and dirt roads. And we're going up this mountain Friday night. The truck wasn't running very well. We were going up the mountain, and all of a sudden, the truck engine stopped running. And the driver's in a panic. And he's trying to get it cranked. And finally, he gets it running. And for you young people, you won't understand this, but you older people will. He let the clutch out. And when he let that clutch out, sitting on that mountain, going up there, and that engine caught, and everything on that truck slid back afoot. Every rope broke, suitcases, trunks, and people. I looked back and I thought, I just killed my director because I couldn't find Dr. Sisk anywhere. Thankfully it was sandy soil and they were all right and now it's like 11 o'clock at night. It's sticky, 90 degrees, humid, and we're looking at that truck thinking we're not going to get back on this truck until we hit a level spot. And so we're walking behind it, lugging those things up the mountain, just lugging those trunks and suitcases. And by now, it's getting later. And finally, we got up on top of the mountain and leveled off and drove in a village. And the moment we drove into that village, just like that, we were surrounded by bandits with machine guns and machetes and clubs. And Dr. Sisk said, interpret for me. He was going to talk to what he thought was the chief bandit, and I started interpreting in the bandit. The bandit said, tell him to shut his mouth, I'll blow his brains out. And Dr. Seuss said, he felt strangely led to comply. That hasn't been 20 years ago, but all of us have different versions of that story, but Dr. Siss will never forget that story and Brother Bragg. The man who does our videos, Don Arnold, was on that trip too. We finally made it up to our village about four days later. Brother Arnold said, Brother Godfrey, I'm going to put your prayer card in every room of my house. And I think he did pray for me. But I'm telling you these stories, your experiences are not mine and mine are not yours, but here's the truth for all of us. When God gives you something to accomplish, you can do it because no man can set his hand against thee. Let me give you my last point. I love this point. The last part of verse 10. For I have much people in this city. Do you ever look at your city and weep? Do you ever think about that place where God's put you and envision a thriving church there? You know, the potential. I have much people. Last night I told you about Anton Anderson going to the Congo. Back in the fifties, Ray and Jean Thompson. went to the island of St. Thomas. They got there and they started winning people to the Lord and eventually started Calvary Baptist Church. And when they had people saved, they had a little problem because those people who got saved, some of them were married and they were having babies, and the babies could not get a birth certificate because you had to have a christening certificate to get a birth certificate. And Dr. Thompson went down to the government of St. Thomas and said, let me explain to you folk, we Baptist people don't christen babies. We believe you have to be old enough to understand the word of God and understand that you're a sinner and Jesus died. And when you trust Christ, then you're baptized to follow him. And he explained that and they changed the law in the Caribbean islands to let little Baptist babies get birth certificates. That was in the fifties. Now I want to tell you what you'll find tonight if you go home and Google Caribbean Islands religion, you'll find that over half of the population of the islands are Baptist. God said, you go where I tell you to. I've got a lot of people in that place. My dear friend Rick Martin, college student at House Anderson College, Missionary Bob Hughes came back from the Philippines dying with cancer, and they sent Brother Martin out to pick him up at the airport. On the way back to First Baptist of Haman, Brother Missionary Hughes said, I'm praying for somebody to go take my place in the Philippines. And God got a hold of Rick Martin's heart and said, I think I could do that. I don't know if you know Rick Martin or not, but Rick Martin's the most skinny, puny-looking little guy you've ever seen. People think his wife is his daughter. But he went to the Philippines, and he started a church, and he lived in a tiny little apartment, not even, I couldn't call it a house, and they're still in that same place, and they started a church, and they started a Bible college, and then they go out with their graduates, and they plant another church, and another church, and another church, and out of that one church today, there have been over 700 churches started out of one church. God said, you go where I tell you to go. And I could go on down the list telling you about people like that, but I'm finished tonight with this. Listen, folk, we must believe that the gospel does work. It's God's dynamite. We've got to believe that Muslims and Catholics and Jewish people and animists and Buddhists and Hindus, and I'm going to be honest with you, a lot of modern-day Americans and Europeans, if they do not know Christ as their Savior, they need to hear the gospel message. And we've got to lift up our heads and not feel sorry for ourselves and believe that we are taking with us in our hands the power of God for the salvation of men and women and boys and girls. That's why you have a missions conference. That's why we support mission. Look, if I did not believe in grace-giving, faith-promised missions, and we did not practice it as a family, I would never stand in this pulpit and tell you that you ought to do it. But we believe it from the bottom of our hearts. We believe that it's the most important thing in this world that everybody has an opportunity to accept Christ as their Savior. Let's pray together tonight. Dear Lord, thank you for your blessings. Thank you for the privilege of serving you. Thank you for these wonderful promises that we've seen that we can go wherever you send us or we can stay right here in this place and serve you without fear because you're with us. And no man can harm us without your permission. And you have much people in this city. I pray that you'd work in our hearts this week and tonight especially. Maybe you're calling somebody to go. Maybe you're impressing someone in this church that they can give more, they can pray more, they can love more. And I just pray that you'd work in our hearts this evening in Jesus' name.