Peacemakers International — George Verwer

They ask him, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Now, fortunately, we're not as carnal as the disciples. I'm sure that in none of our minds, since we've come to this conference, has there been any comparison whatsoever of ourselves with anybody else.

Isn't that right? That's the farthest thing from any of our minds. Well, I know very often, I can think back to the first OM conference I came to, and as I looked around at other people, I didn't know very many there.

And I can remember thinking to myself, boy, it seems to me, I don't know what terms I put it in, but I'm a little bit better than those people over there. And, well, I'm not, I don't think I'm quite as good as those people over there.

And whenever you come into the group, the temptation is to try to find your place. Where do you fit in the group? And so the problem the disciples had of looking for who was the greatest is a continuing human problem.

And Jesus called a little child to him to answer the question. He didn't answer it directly, but he said, I tell you the truth, unless you change, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever humbles himself, like this child, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Now, like all of the basic qualities in the kingdom of God, all the basic values are totally opposite to the way the world operates and thinks.

And here's a prime example. Whoever is the greatest must humble himself like this child. And the one who humbles himself like a child becomes the greatest in God's kingdom. Now, how is a little child humble?

I was just thinking on this today. You remember last night when I stepped up here to the microphone to welcome everyone, my little son Peter, three years old, was sitting over here on the side. You remember he said, Hi, Dad, and everybody laughed.

Now, I'm sure that my 12-year-old daughter would not have done that. But little three-year-old Peter is young enough to not really care what other people think. He is just himself. The older you get, the less yourself you become, because you become conscious of what other people are thinking.

And so the tendency is to put on layer after layer of coverings to try to make yourself what you think other people want you to be. But a little child is not without sin. It doesn't take long to find that out.

Mothers and fathers find out the sin nature quite early in their children. Not without sin, but they're humble. They say what they think. They are themselves. And for us to become great in the kingdom of God, we must humble ourselves.

Humility is the first basic principle of becoming a peacemaker. It's right at the very foundation. Now, how do you humble yourself? Well, I'm sure there are different ways to do it. But one of the best ways that I know to humble yourself is to admit you're wrong.

Now, we've got people here tonight who speak many different languages. We've got the group of Spanish speakers from Mexico in the back. Translation is going on for them over there. We may have one or two who only speak French here.

And I'm sure if we took a poll of all the languages that were spoken here, we have a girl from Korea and one from Singapore, a couple of Indians and several others, we'd probably get to 30, 25, 30 different languages spoken here tonight.

I know the hardest words in the English language to say, and I think it's true in other languages as well, are just three words. I was wrong. Very difficult to say. Not hard to pronounce, but very difficult to say.

I was wrong. Please forgive me. I was wrong when I said that. I wasn't wrong in what I said maybe, but in the way I said it, I was wrong. And I hope that even this far into this conference, that you're learning to say that you're wrong when you're wrong.

Learning to admit it. You know, many people are afraid to do that. They think, what will others think of me if I admit I'm wrong when I'm wrong? But I want to tell you something. Other people already know you're wrong.

And if you pretend you're not wrong when you're wrong, then other people lose confidence in you. But when you admit you're wrong, others' confidence in you increases because they see you're being honest.

And when you admit you're wrong and you ask forgiveness for being wrong, you become a peacemaker. The first way to be a peacemaker is not to go out and to get a peace treaty between Argentina and Britain.

Not many of us are being called on to do that, and nobody has succeeded in doing that, although the great world peacemakers have tried. But the first step to being a peacemaker is to admit when you're wrong, to allow humility to grow.

You know, if you scratch down deep enough in any problem between two people, you will find that one of the root causes of that problem is pride. And God is at work to tear down pride in each one of our lives.

Of course, there's a positive kind of pride, a confidence in the way that God has made us and how he has made us, giving glory to him, a positive kind of pride. But this kind of pride that covers over, that tries to pretend to be something else than what we are, is destructive.

And it is ripping the Church of Jesus Christ apart in many local congregations across the world. The first quality, foundational quality, of being a peacemaker is humility. The second one we find in verse 6.

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world!

Because of the things that cause people to sin, such things must come. But woe to the man through whom they come. If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into eternal fire.

If your eye causes you to sin, gorge it out and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. Now I have to admit there are things in that passage that I certainly don't fully understand.

But I believe that there is a basic principle that is being expounded by Jesus in this passage that we must deal with sin in our lives. We have a responsibility to deal with sin in our own lives. Now that's right next to humility because humility is at least in part the willingness to admit when we're wrong and to repent of that wrong and to make it right.

And in this passage, we're told that we have a responsibility not just to ourselves, not just to God, but as peacemakers going across the world, we are examples of the gospel that others will follow, little ones physically, little ones spiritually, those that are just born into the kingdom of God.

We have a responsibility as we stand before them, as we go out to share the gospel with them. And we have a responsibility to deal decisively with sin in our own lives because if we allow it to remain in our own lives, we disqualify ourselves from being peacemakers and we do damage to the gospel of the kingdom.

You see, the message of the gospel is not just a verbal one that we speak with our mouths. It's one that is spoken through a person who lives out the truth of the gospel, not perfectly, but truly and genuinely.

You move down with me to verse 10. We come to the next important insight into being a peacemaker. Here we have the parable of the lost sheep. We read in verse 12, If a man owns a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go and look for the one that wandered off?

And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.

What's that parable all about? Sheep? No, it's a picture of people and it tells us that the value of the individual, the value of each human being on the face of this earth before God is inestimable. God hates injustice.

God hates oppression. God hates exploitation. Because when those things happen, when there is injustice, individual men and women made in the image of God are subjected to treatment which is less than what that dignity of being created in God's image is all about.

And you know, right at the base of our motivation to go and to share the gospel is the fact that men cannot be fully human. They cannot be fully as God intended them to be until they have peace with God, until they are in right relationship with Him.

And where we see injustice in the world, of course the greatest injustice on the face of the earth is the injustice of the slavery of sin. But where we see economic injustice and slavery and abuse and other things happening, our hearts should pound and cry out and we should say these things should not be because our heart, our mind is remade by the Spirit of God and we see the value of each individual.

And this parable teaches us that God places a special value on the one that is lost, on the one that is out of fellowship with Him, on the one that is in jeopardy and in danger. And there are times when we have to turn away from our team and our safe and comfortable fellowship and go out to the person in desperate need.

There are emergency situations and we need, if we are peacemakers, to be ready to move and be available in evangelism to those that do not know Christ, the lost ones, in the eternal sense and also to those that are out of fellowship and in desperate need in their own lives.

Well, if you skip down with me now to verse 15, we come to the fourth foundation of being peacemakers. We looked in verse 6 at what to do with sin in our own lives. Deal with it. Confess it. Make restitution.

Repent. Make it right. We see in verse 15 what to do when you see sin in somebody else's life. Look carefully at verse 15. I'm reading from the New International Version. See what your version reads. If your brother sins against you, go and tell somebody else.

Is that what your Bible says? I think I misread here. That's what usually happens, isn't it? You know, if you see somebody sin, you go and you tell somebody else. You know what I just saw this person do?

And very soon it goes around, all around the neighborhood, all around the church. But Jesus says, if your brother sins, and some of the manuscripts say just sins, stops there. Others say sins against you.

If you see someone sin, if you see someone sin against you, take it either way. Go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. Other translations say in private. Now, how can you do that? What kind of attitude should you have when you go?

Well, we go right back to the first principle. In an attitude of humility, if you go and you say, you wretched sinner, how could you possibly ever have done such a stupid thing as that? There won't be much peace that will come about.

Why do you go? You go to bring about reconciliation. You go with a heart burden for that person. If he has sinned against you, you go having already forgiven him. But you go that his fellowship with you and with God might be restored.

I wonder how many of the problems that are being faced in local churches across this nation and around the world would be avoided if we followed the simple command of Jesus. If we saw someone who sinned, we would go to him.

And in humility, desiring to see reconciliation, we spoke to him, in private, not in front of others to embarrass him, but we spoke in private and we urged him to repent and to be reconciled with us and with others that he might have been out of fellowship with.

I think the actual meaning of this verse does not just imply that we should go once, but that we should go even again and again. There might be a period of preparation, of prayer, even fasting before we go.

But taking responsibility. If we see someone sin, we have a responsibility to do something about it. We shouldn't go immediately to the leader, to the pastor, to the elder and say, you know what this person has done.

We personally should go to the person and in love and humility present him with what we've seen. Now, I found that when you go, very often it's best to ask questions rather than to make any kind of accusation because you may not have seen the whole picture.

And I found that many times the best thing to do is to go and say, you know, I wonder if you could just explain to me something. The other night I happened to be at the same place you were and I saw this happen and I don't really understand what was happening.

Would you be willing to just explain to me what happened? Rather than accusing because you may not have all the facts, but to go in humility, desiring truth and reconciliation. And of course, we're given the pattern.

If there is no response, after we have prayed and after we have gone and maybe after we have gone several times over a period of time, especially if it's a serious sin, you know, the immediate reaction when someone comes to us, if we're involved in sin, the immediate natural reaction is to get our backs stiff and to reject the person and to not listen and not be willing to talk to him.

And if we realize that that's the natural reaction, we'll be ready for it. And won't feel rejected if the person isn't ready to receive us the first time. But ready to go again. And even again. But if there's no response at all, Jesus gives us the second step, verse 16.

If he will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. And again, what is the purpose of this? Is it to embarrass the person?

Bring two or three more so they might really shame him? Not at all. The purpose is reconciliation. The purpose of any godly discipline is to bring about life and usefulness. Restoration. Very often we have in our minds that discipline is a very negative thing.

It's destructive. But not godly discipline. Not biblical discipline. The purpose of discipline is to produce usefulness. Peacemakers are useful people. People that are needed in this world that is torn apart.

And then in verse 17, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. The extreme case of kind of excommunication because of a hardened heart.

But even then, the desire should be, if the person totally hardens his heart, the desire should be to see restoration and to continue praying and continue believing and continue to react in a way that would show love to this person.

Because the scripture makes it clear that not only should we love those that love us, but we should love our enemies. And even in the extreme of this last condition, you could say that the person was an enemy, but we are still to love.

Because the very trademark of the peacemaker is the way of love. Well, we see in verse 19, the power of agreement. And this is the fifth foundation of being a peacemaker that we see in this passage. The power of agreement, verse 19.

Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. There is power in agreement.

When there is peace, peace is active, it's not passive. Where there is peace, where there is harmony, where there is unity. Psalm 133 says how good and how precious it is when brethren dwell together in unity.

Throughout those early chapters of the book of Acts, we see the power that was unleashed when there was unity, when they were of one accord, one heart, one mind. The spiritual power that was released.

And we see here when two of you agree on earth about anything. And that agreement isn't just when we come up and we say, you know, let's pray that I get the money I need to go to Europe this summer. Will you agree with me on that?

Yes, I'll agree with you on that. It's not just that, it is that. But it is the deeper agreement of life of people who are in fellowship with one another, who are dealing decisively with sin in their life, who have God's viewpoint of the value of each individual, who are living in humility, who are living in obedience when they see sin in the life of another, and who are not afraid to go and obey the Lord and to go and to speak, even though it might mean rejection and embarrassment and awkwardness from that person.

People who are living in that kind of agreement, praying together, see God answer prayer and see dramatic things happen in answer to prayer. And I pray that on the teams that you go out on this summer, there might be agreement, deep, living agreement, that you might be moving all together in one direction, one heart, one mind.

And when you pray, you'll see things happen because God has given His promise that where there is agreement, He answers. Whatever they ask, it shall be done. And we need that kind of praying this summer and we need that kind of oneness if the task that we have in the countries that we're going to in Ireland, England among Islamic immigrants and Asians, and among Turks in Germany, and in France, and Belgium, and Italy, and Spain, and Austria, and Turkey, and Mexico, and Quebec, if the objectives that we have are going to be accomplished this summer, an eternal fruit is going to remain.

It's going to take this kind of agreement. We see the last principle in verse 21, the sixth principle of being peacemakers, and it is the principle of forgiveness. And in many ways, although it's last, it's so vitally important.

And the picture we get is Peter coming to Jesus. And we're not told exactly what had happened before Peter came to Jesus, but perhaps we can use a little sanctified imagination. Perhaps Peter and John were out preaching in the villages.

And you know the kind of impetuous person Peter was. And often, I can just imagine, as he got carried away in preaching, he may have said some things that were not said in quite the best way, the most loving way.

He may have ruffled some feathers that didn't need to be ruffled. And maybe some of the persecution that was suffered from time to time was not just because of the message, but the way the message was given.

John was a bit more sensitive, and perhaps John tried to come to Peter one day and gently say to Peter, you know, Brother Peter, it would be good if you just tried to be a little more careful in what you said and stick to the facts a little bit more.

Try not to offend people for unnecessary things. Maybe Peter's response to that was, who is John to talk to me about this? He has so many problems in his own life. And instead of listening to what John was saying to him and saying, is there really something to this?

He immediately gets defensive and starts accusing John. So John backs off. And maybe Peter remembers that Jesus taught that he should forgive. So he says, well, I'll forgive John this time. But a few days later, John comes to him again, and John is getting a little more irritated because Peter's not responsive.

And the same things are happening over again. And Peter blows up this time and accuses John again. And then Peter thinks, again, no, you know, the Lord told us we should forgive, and I'm going to forgive John.

Again, not thinking, is there something I need to change in my life? Then a few days later, the same thing happens. And this is too much for Peter. He forgave once, twice. This is too much. He goes immediately to Jesus.

That's where we come in verse 21. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? And you can almost see Peter standing there. And he asked Jesus the question.

And then, like us so many times, he doesn't wait for the answer. He just gives the answer himself, up to seven times. Now, remember, he was having trouble forgiving the third time. But he wanted to make it sound good to the Lord.

And you can see Peter standing there, waiting for the Lord to commend him. You're my best disciple, Peter. You're really understanding what I'm trying to teach you. But that isn't what Jesus said. He said, no, not seven times, Peter, but 70 times seven.

Now, anyone with a pocket calculator in your pocket? How many times is 70 times seven? 490. Now, what does that mean? Should we all have a little notebook? And in the notebook, we have a page for everybody we know, one page for everybody in our family, husbands would have two or three pages for their wives, wives would have six or eight for their husbands, one page for a pastor, one page for everybody here in our dormitory, especially those sleeping near us.

And every time somebody offends us, we'd quickly look in the index, find their name, turn to the page, and write it down. Offense, write it out, put the date, stamp it. Every time somebody offended us, we'd put it in the book, keep it here.

And then when we got to 488 times, 489 times, 490 times, close the book, put it down, and say, I'm not going to forgive you anymore. You've offended me too much. I was really patient for those 490 times, but I fulfilled the law, and I'm not going to forgive you anymore.

Is that what Jesus is teaching here? Of course not. He was teaching that we should forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive without any limit.

Because that's the way we have been forgiven. Jesus didn't say, I'll forgive 50 of your sin, but this other 50%, you hurt me too much. I can't forgive that. He didn't say, I'll forgive 95 of your sin, but this 5 here, you really, you know, you don't know what that costs me.

I can't forgive that. I'll forgive most of it, but not that. He has forgiven all of our sin. And just to make it crystal clear, Jesus tells this parable. You know it, about the king who was settling accounts, and then the man came before him, and he owed him a fortune.

And the king was about to throw him into prison, and the man said, please, and he got down on his knees, and he pled before the king, please give me a little more time. I'll pay you back, but I need some time.

And the king said, he was moved. Scripture said he was moved with compassion, and he forgave, he tore up the debt. And that same man who had been forgiven a fortune went out in the market, and he found a man who owed him maybe a few hundred dollars.

Now, a few hundred dollars is not nothing. And there are quite a few of us here tonight who would be very happy if we had a few hundred dollars in our pocket. But a few hundred dollars compared to a fortune is very, very little.

And I would be glad to somehow scrape together a few hundred dollars tonight if some of you want to trade with me a fortune for my few hundred dollars. And this man who'd been forgiven a fortune went out and grabbed the man who owed him a few hundred dollars.

And he said, pay me, or I'll throw you into prison. The man pled with him, but he threw him into prison. And the king heard about it. And we read in verse 32, the master called that servant whom he'd forgiven a fortune, and he said, you wicked servant!

I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I have had on you? In anger, his master turned him over to the jailers, until he should pay back all that he owed.

You wicked servant! Unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment is wickedness. It's just as wicked as murder. It's just as wicked as immorality. It's just as wicked as practicing homosexuality. It's just as wicked as any sin that you can name.

It is wickedness. And it is ripping apart families. It is ripping apart individuals. It's ripping apart churches. I remember when we went with the Logos to a port in northern Spain. And in that port city, there was a church that 20 years before, someone had gotten upset with somebody else in the church.

I don't think it was over a doctrinal matter. But some people in the church got on this side, and they said, this man is right. Others got on this side, and they said, no, this man is right. And that church did not split into two churches.

It remained together somehow. But half the church, for almost 20 years, would not speak to the other half of the church. And that spread through that whole province of Spain. And there were other churches in the same fellowship.

And some of them said, that man is right. They got on that side. And others said, no, this man is right. They got on this side. And those churches in that fellowship did not communicate with one another for almost 20 years.

And in that province of Spain, as in all Spain, there are more Jehovah's Witnesses than there are evangelical Christians. You can imagine the impact upon the unbelieving community, the power of the gospel in the lives of these people who were not speaking to each other for almost 20 years.

And when we were there, I remember in a pastor's conference, ministering on the subject of forgiveness, and one of the leaders of that church came up to me afterwards and he said, you know, just recently, we have begun to communicate with one another.

We've begun to ask each other's forgiveness. And the healing process is beginning after 20 years. I wonder how many of the young people of that church rejected the faith of Jesus Christ. How much damage was done.

You know, the church of Jesus Christ is like a mighty river dammed up behind a gigantic dam with turbines to produce electricity, the power to finish the job that Jesus Christ has given the church. And yet, it's just like going to one of these great reservoirs and with the water dammed up in back of the dam, just having like a bathtub plug and pulling it out of the reservoir and having all that water be lost and diverted away from going through to turn the turbines to produce the energy and the power.

The energy of the church of Jesus Christ has been given by the Spirit of God to accomplish the task of reaching the world for Christ and bringing blessing to all mankind. And yet, so often, that energy through bitterness and resentment and unforgiveness is drained away.

That strength that God gives the church to do the job is wasted away by God's people in resentment and bitterness and fighting with one another. I wonder tonight, as you think of your own life, how are your relationships?

How are your relationships, young people, with those back home? With father, with mother, with relatives, with people who used to be your friends? Have you forgiven? You have been forgiven. I have been forgiven everything.

Are you holding back that gift of forgiveness to others? When we forgive, it's a miracle. Let us just pray together. Father, we thank you for your gift of forgiveness to us. Just in this moment of silence, we would pray and forgive those that have hurt us and injured us.

In the name of Jesus, we forgive them and we receive your forgiveness.

In Jesus' name. At this time, we're supposed to be getting a telephone call from England, from Peter Maiden, but we've also heard that we're getting a telephone call from Germany, from Dale Roton. Dale Roton was the brother, together with one other and myself, that launched out to Mexico just 25 years ago this summer and one of the greatest, certainly, inspirations in my life has been the constant encouragement and challenge from Dale to press on in the battle.

Dale has been in many, many different situations in O .M., pioneering the work in Turkey and then pioneering the work in some of the communist lands, and he was then very much involved in the work in general, a little time back in the States, and then he was leading the ship Toulouse for a couple of years, and now he's settled for a while in Germany.

Now, while we're waiting for these phone calls, I think a number more ex-O .M .ers have arrived during the meeting, or O .M. graduates, people that have once been on Operation Mobilization, and we would like you all, some of you stood up down in the cafeteria, the food pavilion and book pavilion, but we'd like all of you ex-O .M. people, you've served on O .M. one time or the other, to stand up again.

I wonder if you'd be willing to do that, even if you're only for a short time, like one of our former ship captains, Captain Barrett, welcome. Let's remain standing. We'd like you to remain standing and just tell us when you were on O .M. and what you're doing now, very briefly.

We'll start over here with our captain friend and then insurance. Okay, you can sit down then. We'll try to go back there quickly. Paul was the director of the work in Iran. We praise God for them. Thanks for coming.

Yeah, good and loud, huh? One second. Just all stand up there. Hello.

Let's see if we're going to get you over the loudspeaker. Is this you, Peter? It's me. How are you doing? Where are you calling from? I'm calling from my bed in Carlisle, England.

Okay, we can hear you. We appreciate very much your taking time to phone. We realize now that it's about two in the morning, isn't it? No, no, no, it's only quarter to one. Only quarter to one, oh. Peter, how many recruits do you have so far in the British Isles?

200 marks. We would expect it to reach about 450 this year.

Well, we want to pray for each one of them. I wonder if you could bow in our night of prayer.

This is for travel. I'm going to Manchester in about four hours' time, four or five hours' time, and we're working on the final travel arrangement for the June Crusade, and I know the same thing's going on all over Europe, and we're just praying now for safety, travel, and that everyone will arrive.

And then I think over in Belgium,.

Appreciate the prayer request about interested in Southern Ireland.

Get them back, or we should just leave it there because of the time that's involved. We would like to just quickly get those people back up on their feet again. They all collapsed by the wayside. We're going to ask you just to give us your name now because we've run out of time.

We'd like to at least know your names. Bob and Joanne Barrett, probably more Summer Crusades than any people I know. Yes. Annie, I got that much. Crystal Harden. Up here in the front, Teddy Stevenson, one of our former secretaries and many other things.

David Levitt, good. Praying to go back to India soon, we hope. Carol and Nancy Engel now on the board of directors. Bob Billings. Of making phone calls all over the world. I used to live in Nepal, and I used to have to speak so loud from Nepal talking to Bombay that I was sure they were hearing my voice rather than the telephone connection.

The people in the house at least trying to sleep felt that way about it. Again, I would like to express our appreciation for each one of you has taken the time to come and be with us during this anniversary celebration.

Our goal is really just to give thanks to God for his mercy toward us and his overwhelming grace toward us over these past 25 years. I'd like you to turn now with me in your Bible to 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 12.

We do hope many of you will come back if you can tomorrow night. We're going to have a very short message, just one message, and then have a wonderful time of prayer. You can stay as long as you want hearing from different countries.

Tomorrow at noontime we have a pastor's luncheon. If your pastor's not coming, if he lives within range, why not challenge him to come? You can always put an extra plate out for lunch. And then we're having some mission leaders from a number of different mission societies come and be with us in the afternoon.

So today, tomorrow is going to be our most intensive day. I felt today was intensive enough, actually. So I don't know what will happen tomorrow. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, where Paul speaks about this messenger of Satan to buffet me, verse 7, lest I should be exalted above measure, verse 8, for this thing I besought the Lord three times that it might depart from me.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, reproaches, necessities, persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Failure is the back door, often, to success. I have another title for this message, which perhaps may be a mixture of a number of messages, called The Confessions of a Weak Missionary, or Missionary.

I think there's always a danger when we come into OM and we hear maybe just one message. We may hear a strong message on dedication, commitment, world evangelism. We may hear a strong message on forsaking all.

We may hear various people testify about answers to prayer, about great things taking place in various countries. And it's all good, but it's also good to keep it in perspective. And I believe these 25 years have been years of much failure.

Much failure. I believe these have been years in which we've had to, at times, very honestly confess sin and failure, wrong attitudes, spiritual pride, judgmentalism, you name it. And probably at one time or other it has crept in to this army of committed people as they moved out across the world to tell men and women of Jesus Christ.

As I shared a few days ago, about 23 ,000 have received some training in this training program. Some of them for several years. The average Indian stays four years in Operation Mobilization before he graduates.

That would be apart from those who may just come like for a weekend or a few months. And it's been exciting to go out to India again a few months ago to meet with 50 of the leaders of the work there, a work at that time about 450 strong.