Update From India

I just want to give you a little update on India. For those of you that don't know, I got to go for about 17 days to India and teach in four different cities. We have a new crowd tonight. How many people besides Ajay, Pradeep, and Sunita have been to India?

I think we only have one, right? Anyone else been to India? No. Okay. Someone told me, they said, we know what you're saying. Yes, just one, right? Ajay was saying, no, who was it that told me today? They were right by Ajay, and then every time I said something about India, they were making sure Ajay was shaking his head, yes, to confirm that that, in fact, was true.

So Ron Farrar can look at Pradeep tonight, too, to make sure that's the case. So I just want to give you a little update to give you kind of a heart for what was going on there. In a sense, you were there as you would pray for me, and the church elders decided that the church would pay for me to go, and I'm very thankful for that.

I remember we were sitting there, and Scott said, well, how is it going to be paid for? And I said, I don't know, but I'm not really into missions letters, trying to drum up my own business. I'm just going to trust that the Lord will get us there.

And then the elders said, well, if our pastor's going to preach the gospel and teach, then we need to support him and send him, and so I was very, very thankful. What I'll do is I'll give you an update on the trip, and then we'll look at some passages that might spur you on, because I'm thinking, we don't do enough as a church in missions, and I'm wondering which one of our kids is going to be the first one to go be a full-time missionary.

Has that ever happened in BBC? Sent out someone as a full-time missionary? I mean, in a sense, I want it to be one of my children, not the first, but one of my children. I just don't know if I want them to go so far away.

It was an eight-hour flight from Boston to Milan, and everything there was on Alitalia, so it was a very quiet plane. We take off, and then they pass out about 19 bottles of wine to every person. You can't say no, and it's all free, and then it just got loud and boisterous, and everybody's passing the cheese around and all so happy.

I'm just thinking, this is just amazing. You know, breakfast, you've got to have wine for breakfast, and all these things. I was just looking around thinking, I'm just taking notes about all you people.

And then I had a few-hour layover in Milan, a three-hour layover there, and then it was a nine-hour flight from Milan to Bombay, so it's just about the same distance, and then we flew over Iraq, and you could just see all the sand and the pipelines and all that stuff, and so it took a long time to get there.

I walk in to the airport, and just that heat wave of Bombay hits you, and it's humid and it is hot, and there are just different sights and different smells, and I thought, I can't believe I'm actually in India.

I'm in Asia, and I first looked around, and just like America, people run up and try to grab your luggage and mess around with it. The same thing happened with India. I'm like, don't touch that. I walked outside, and there was Bill Shannon and Jeremy, who lives there now, and so then they took us to the hotel, and I have to admit, when I first got there, Bombay is, how many million people, Pradeep?

I don't know, is it 20, up to 20 million maybe, 15 million? Something like that. I thought, how can I get home? I can't stay in this place. If this is India, I can't take it. It just was so intense, and you're just right by the airport, and it's on top, and everything's on top of you, and all these buildings, and again, just all the different animals outside, and just people, and I thought, I've got to have some water, because it's dry, and it's hot, and I was too afraid, literally, to go outside and walk down the street to get water, because it was nighttime, and I thought, what am I going to do?

So I asked Jeremy, let's go get water, and so we went down there and found some water. The next day, we went to go teach a Bible conference to open a Bible fellowship in Bombay, so we took a taxi, so I'm waking up thinking, all right, I'll just eat whatever food they give me, and Lord, just help me.

I don't want to get sick. I like Indian food, but I don't know if it's going to be too hot, or too many weird things in it, and so we get there. The cab takes us, and the cab driver has this little tariff card.

It's an old meter, and then he looks at the card, and then tells you, well, he didn't want to do that, and so he wanted a couple hundred rupees to take us, and it was only supposed to be 93, so Jeremy gave him the money.

He gave him 100 rupees, which is about $2, let's see, 50 rupees a dollar, so about two bucks, and the guy, I mean, this is, welcome to India. The guy takes the money, the cab driver, and throws it in his face, and starts yelling.

Jeremy goes, just follow me, so I'm like, okay. What do you do if they just scream, kill those guys right there? We needed police protection. There were hardly any policemen that I could see. Do they wear the undercover most of the time?

I just could hardly see them. What is going on? Maybe Ajay needs to go back to be a policeman, Christian policeman. We need those kind, and so then we taught, and then not many pastors showed up to the first conference.

We were teaching on church growth, because everyone wants the church to grow, but just what methods do you get the church to grow? I'm still upside down in time and everything else, and they said, well, we've ordered Chinese food for lunch.

I said, okay, I can do Chinese, there's Chinese stores everywhere, and Wes Jamieson, he oversold me on the whole thing. He was telling me how bad it was, and he said one day he went out to eat, and I think, Pradeep, it was your family that took him out, and he said there was this very high-caste Brahmin restaurant or something, and he said there's this big, long burrito thing with a bunch of, this is Wes's words, green paste on it, and Wes said he just got sick, and Wes was telling me all these stories, and I thought, oh, no, and so I really, for the first time, I was praying, God, sanctify this food, and so we just ate the food, and everything was fine, and it got a lot better when we went to Pune, and Pune is a large city as well, four hours inland, and Pune is known by Americans and other Westerners as the place where the Bhagwan Rajneesh's ashram is, it's his community.

Remember that guy who had all those Rolls Royces, and had the sex commune up in Oregon, and now has died, and now you can go there, and you have to give them an HIV negative test, buy some clothes, Indian clothes, and then have some entrance fee, and you can just go in there, and so I was told that when you walk around Pune, and you're this, obviously a white guy, they're going to all think you're here for the ashram, and I thought, well, I may have the exact opposite reason, I'm here to preach the gospel to the ashramites kind of thing, and we got there, and it was so amazing, Bombay with all the hecticness, and I just thought, I don't know if I can do this, then going to Pune, and then we got around a group of Christians, Disciples Community Church with Pastor Chris Williams has 70 members in Pune, just 70 members, but once you got around the people, you know how it is with other Christians, and you just think, I don't even know you, but I love you, and you don't even know me, but you love me, and I thought that's exactly what it was like, so the second I got in Pune, I thought, I'm just with friends, I'm with family, and this is much nicer, and they took us out to a nice country club for dinner, and then the teaching started the next day.

Pune is an amazing city, because it's kind of western, yet you just go down an alley, and there's all these people. A Disciples Community Church is really a good church in a sense that, this is going to sound self-serving I guess, Disciples Community Church is very much like our church, it's very much with our theology and our philosophy of ministry, local church is primary, train up men in the ministry, send them out, train up ladies, send them out, and it just was a good kindred bond that we had.

They have an orphanage that they teach, not unlike Amy Carmichael, that they teach the prostitutes' children, and so you can imagine, there's all these temples around there, and so with temple and cultic worship, they'll just round up a bunch of the ladies, not they DCC, but pimps will round up some ladies, give them X amount of money, take them to the temple, they'll prostitute themselves, and then of course, nine months later, they're going to be children, and so this church, DCC, not only do they have a leprosy ministry, but they have a ministry to the children, and so it is amazing to see some of these kids as they teach them not only English and science and botany, but they teach them, guess what else?

The gospel. There are 60 kids there, and there's a bunch more waiting to come in. I thought, I love this place already. The pastor was preaching through Romans verse by verse, and I said, this is just right up my alley, and so we began to teach there, very different place, besides teaching without shoes on, you'll be teaching, you'll hear some banging, and outside, there'll be some monkey just banging on the shed, and I'm like, oh, and you know, the thing is, nobody notices, so I'm shocked, you know, and thinking, wow, this is just so amazing.

Some of the kids in this congregation act like monkeys when I'm preaching, but they're not really monkeys, and then all of a sudden, the lights will go out, and I'm looking around, and that one person is going, except me, because they're all used to it.

You got to shut down the power sometimes, and then just kind of carry on. Let's see, I've got so many things to say, I don't know what I want to do. We were in Bombay, I have to tell you this story, and the beggars all come up to the cars, especially if they see Americans, or Europeans, which we look like, they come up to the cars, and I'll never forget, it was kind of, welcome to Bombay, I thought, I've got to get out of this place.

I'm in the back seat, and so is Bill Shannon, and then the front seat is Jeremy, and he's from Seattle originally, lives there now, although it's interesting to hear Jeremy talk, and to see how he acts.

He's got some kind of Indian slang now, not slang, but Indian grammar, and Indian ways of speaking, just being there a couple years, and I could see how you just are there, and you just, you know, you come to New England, and you say, you know, law and order, I mean, that's just what you do, and Jeremy's in the front, and so the lady's putting her hand in, and it's a prostitute, and she's wanting the money, and so Jeremy said no, and he's saying nai, nai, no, no, in Hindi, and then she grabs his arm, like, I want money, and so Jeremy's like, I was thinking to myself, I'm glad I'm not in the front seat, Providence of God.

I kept singing that song, 408 in the hymnal, have faith in God, he watches over his own, I just kept singing that over and over, and at the time, I'm just shocked, because you just don't see this, and it's so crowded, and there's rickshaws, and animals, and people, and cars, and buses, those red buses, they, people are just insane, aren't they?

They just will just keep going, and you will get out of the way, and you think people honk a lot here? In LA, if you honk, you get shot. In Boston, you just honk a lot. There, you just honk continually, it is non-stop honking, just, I'm here, I'm passing you by, and so then, the cab driver said to the prostitute, quit that, I assume that's what he said, I couldn't tell, it was in Hindi, but that was his intonation, she starts hitting the cab driver, and then the pastor starts spitting, and I just thought, wow, what is going on?

Pradeep did not warn me of this, Ajay is lax in his debriefing, and I just thought, give me to Poonam, but once we got around Christians, it really was sweet fellowship, and I thought, this morning, notice when I was slamming Hinduism, I wasn't saying mean things about Indians, I was saying mean things about the system that 83 of them are stuck in, Hinduism has nothing to do with not liking people from India, because I love people from India, and love them more now that I got to meet them, but it has to do with Hinduism.

Fellowship with Other Christians

Let's stop here just for a second, I want to have you turn to Psalm 55, verse 14, just to talk about fellowship with other Christians, and here, David had something that I had, and that we, as Christians, wherever we go, you find other Christians who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and who are loved by Christ, and you just have this kind of fellowship.

By the way, as you're turning there, this is a cricket shirt, Kim said to me, you know, we're not really big on trinkets and stuff like that, so maybe you can get a cricket bat for the kids, and a ball, and let's get, and Kim said, can you get me a cricket jersey?

I said, alright, that can't be too hard, and the dollar's strong, and so I'll just go around. I probably went to 30 stores, do you have a cricket jersey? And I thought, that's just the way it goes, your wife wants one thing, a cricket jersey?

So when I finally found them, we took this rickshaw, and went all the way over to JM Road in Pune, and we went over there, and everybody's excited to be in this part of town, because they were opening up a brand new subway, and of course, in India, everything is not carnivore, omnivore kind of thing, it's veg and non-veg, so wherever you look, veg, non-veg, you know, the flight from Milan to Bombay, do you want veg or non-veg?

And so you go to subway, and they have two trays, veg and non-veg, and so I found these cricket jerseys, and I thought, this has been so difficult to find them, I'm just going to buy one for every member of the family, because I'm so happy to get a By the way, you'll see people playing cricket everywhere, and I'm sure this is British influence, you'll look down an alley, and the alley will have cows, water buffalo, chickens all running around, and it'll literally be, you know, that wide, is that aisle, and then you'll see five kids, who are in between all the animals, playing cricket, because they just love to play cricket, and if you see Psalm 55, 14, this is something that I experienced, just a friendship, and a camaraderie, and a kinship, and just a warmth with other Christians.

David said, we who had sweet fellowship together, walked in the house of God in the throng, and that's really what it was, and remember the New Testament church in Acts chapter 2, verse 42, they broke the bread, and they had what?

Apostles teaching, yes, and prayer, but they had fellowship, koinonia, that's exactly what that was, and why don't you take a look at another verse, if you would please, 1st John chapter 1, verse 3, to just remind you, and I think this is really amazing, I've established some friendships over there, that I'm sure I'll have for the rest of my life, with other like-minded believers, with Christians, why?

Because we're so similar, no, I'm not like them at all, and I made no bones when I got there, about somehow acting like an Indian, I'm not an Indian, and I don't know the culture, and you know, I wear shorts, and when they drink out of a water bottle, rarely do you see them touch their lips to the bottle, right, where everyone that I saw, you'd get a bottle of water, and you just leave a space there, and drink it, right Ajay, I saw one guy on the way home, Shirat, he was drinking out of the bottle, I said, what are you doing drinking out of the bottle, he said, well, I'm not sharing with anybody else, it's my bottle, I said, you're American, you're Western, and am I right Ajay, you're kind of just giving, pardon me, some of them do, okay, well, wherever I was, when I would drink water, they would all stare, and so I thought, I better just stop doing that, you're from Hyderabad, what do you know, you're a Southerner, okay, 1st John 1, 3, it's the same kind of thing, this is why you can have sweet fellowship with Christians, wherever you are, that we have seen and heard, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and so I didn't need to know a whole lot about the culture, I just needed to know that they were people, and God loved them, and I loved them, and it was just a sweet time of fellowship, once we got to Pune, we stayed there for 5 days, teaching a conference, and we would teach morning, noon and night, it was really non-stop teaching, and in between all the pastors and the pastor's wives, and everyone else would come up and ask questions, have a lot of questions, I would say this church, on average, knows more than many of the pastors there, and they just need materials, and they need training, and I think ended up maybe 300, 325 people came to this church for the conference, some people came from 29-hour train rides, how long did it take John to get there, probably 20, 20, yeah, one man I met, he took a 29-hour train ride, because he wanted to preach the gospel better, his accent was so thick, I could barely understand him, but he could understand me perfectly, he said he spoke 5 languages, and he didn't travel first class, he didn't travel AC, can you imagine, 29 hours in the hot Indian train to get there, and his ministry is going from village to village, walking around, preaching the gospel, because some, as Ajay said, I talked to him earlier today, and he said, I want to go back, because some people haven't even heard the name Jesus, and this man just goes from village to village, on foot, preaches the gospel, I said, can you read English, oh yes, and he showed me the Grace to India magazine, now Disciples Community Church sponsors Grace to India, and they play John MacArthur's tapes on India radio, and then if you can't hear the radio show, then you can send it to them, and they'll send you tapes for free, and literature for free, so John's got a good presence there, and it's run by the Disciples Community Church, and Chris Williams, I called Chris the John MacArthur of India, because that's kind of who he is, and so I said to this man, I said, can you read English, yes, how many resources do you have to teach the Bible, well hardly any, and I thought, I know what's going to happen, this church has given me some money to go, and so, in a sense, I don't want to tell you, because I don't want to take away my rewards, but it's really, you're a part of it, so here's what I did, Grace to India prints, Ajaynis prints these books, that John puts out, and you can buy them for like one and two dollars, so John's new chosen 12 disciples, or what's the 12 apostles, the new one, 12 ordinary men, thank you Carl, you can get it for two bucks, it's probably paperback, I mean, it is paperback, and it's probably two bucks, and so they sell the commentaries, so I said to the guy at Grace to India, I said, how much for the entire MacArthur commentary set, like 18 commentaries on the Bible, he said, 2 ,250 rupees, so I'm going, that's 50 bucks, that's nothing, that's 40 some bucks, so I went up, and I said, all right, bring me a whole set tomorrow, and I'm going to give it to this guy, and it's just this, you know, this is one of those things that you just, it makes the trip, and so, because I'm thinking, you know, it's just funny money, it's like Las Vegas money in a sense, because it's got all these zeros, and you know, it's like, I'll never forget when I was about 10 years old, my grandma, Grandma Nona, gave me a hundred dollar bill from Yugoslavia, I just thought I was just king, got a hundred dollar bill in my pocket, and so, you know, you've got all these rupees, and thousands of rupees, so I just paid him 2 ,240 rupees of your money, congregations money, I thought, I'm just, this is going to be an expense, and so they bought, they got them all ready, they thought I was going to take them back on the plane, and in comes my friend, and I said, I have a gift for you, I said, these are the, this is the entire MacArthur commentary set, and it was like the whole world, you know, the cars become really slow, and everything, and just kind of, just this vortex, guy travels 29 hours, because he wants to be a better gospel preacher, and he's not in it for the millions of dollars are people, he's in it for the ones, and twos, and threes, that don't even know that there's a creator of everything, they think everything's a God, and then he said the exact right thing, he didn't say, oh, you know, you're just the best American I ever met, and just, you know, you're, you're just a great guy, he said, he just looked up, and he goes, I praise God for this gift that you, that you gave me, and I thought, then I said, of course, of course, me, I said, I said, I'm expecting you to read those things, and he said, oh, I will, and you could just tell, I mean, that was like gold to this guy, and it cost him probably 2 ,000 rupees just to get up there, and then to have that gift, and so you pray, this man will use these commentaries, because he wants to know God's word, and he was so excited, because you can't get American, what's it, what is it, warfare, jihad in the Bible, or something, I used to know MacArthur's books, too many of them being written, Carl, do you know, terrorism, jihad, and the war, or something by MacArthur, yeah, and you can't get that very much in India, because it's the jihad stuff, and you, it's banned in Pakistan, by the way, and he told me, my friend did, he said, I've read that book, I want you to know that I tracked that jihad book down, and I read it, so he's going to be reading commentaries for months to come, and I'm just thrilled that we as a church could help him, I said, he said, then he, afterwards, he said, the next day, next year, maybe I could have a MacArthur study Bible, I said, all right, next year, oh, man, all right, turn to Psalm 117, we have to, we better look at our Bibles a little bit, you'll hear stories in the next several months, I do have some pictures, and maybe we'll have a slideshow some night, or something, I didn't have time to get it put together this week, but Psalm 117, this is a very famous Psalm, because sometimes people open up the Bible, and say, what's the very middle chapter, because I want to know what God's will is for me, in fact, this is the middle chapter, but that's not necessarily the best way to find God's will, it's also known as the shortest chapter in the Bible, and I think it's the shortest, well, then it's the shortest Psalm, if it's the shortest chapter, Psalm 117, something that really hit me when I was there, when I think of Jews and Gentiles, I can kind of make the connection, but I didn't really think of how big the Gentiles were, India has one billion people, one billion, it is a huge continent, and when we were singing songs about God loving the world, one time, I just began to cry, thinking, my thought of humanity has been too small, therefore, my thought of Christ atoning work has been too small, I'm thinking about things, and just a little micro level, I mean, everything just revolves around me, and look at this Psalm here, this is, to me, has India written all over it, and every time I read it, I'm going to think of India again, as we see the people, all the peoples rejoicing God, and Psalm 117 is a call for that very thing, it says, praise the Lord, and again, that's all capital Lord, that's the covenant keeping God, His real name, Yahweh, praise the Lord, all nations, laud Him, all peoples, and remember this morning, I said in Sunday school, read the Bible for what it doesn't say as well, I don't mean add in things in the white spaces, we ought not to do that, but I'll never forget what Ken Doerr said once when he came to this church, he said, I listened, Mike, to what you preached and what you didn't preach, that's how I judged you when you were preaching, I thought, you know, that's interesting, what people say and what they don't say, because they have a reason for not saying certain things, and here, he says, praise the Lord, all nations, all the nations, not just the Jews, this is something that's larger than that, laud Him, all peoples, and he's not saying, praise all these gods, can you imagine in India, as I said this morning, 330 million gods, any kind of God you want, you can find that God, and just to think of like Ganesh or some of the other gods, I mean, it is just insane to me to just think that there are that many gods, we in America usually just have one God and that's ourself, and he's saying, he's to be praised, he's commanding, you've got to be praised, God is to be praised rather, and then he gives a reason, verse 2, a reason why we should exalt Him and praise and worship Him, for His loving kindness, His steadfast love, His loyal love, His covenant-keeping love is great towards us, then he gives another reason, and the truth of the Lord is everlasting, and then just like the psalm starts, the psalm ends, praise the Lord.

Now, if I don't think properly, I start thinking theologically all the time, now that theologically is fine, but sometimes it's too abstract, so when I think about the world, for God so loved the world, the first thing I start thinking about is this, God has two kinds of love, and God's first love is a creator love, where He loves all His creation, He gives them rain, and He gives them children, and He gives them enjoyment, then God has another kind of love, and this love is special love, this is for His elect, this is for His people, and it's the love of Christ dying for them, and so I start doing all those kind of theological things, and they're fine, and it's true, but when I went to India, I just thought, how can I explain to our people, back in West Boilston, that the issue of God and the world, and dying for the world, is a lot bigger than what I thought about, and what do I mean by that?

Turn to 1 John 2, and let me explain a little bit, sometimes we read verses about the atonement, and then there's an argument, did Jesus die for the elect only, or did He die for everyone, and we'll get into these theological arguments, and it's okay to do that, I'm fine with that, because I think we should rightly divide God's word, but where the greatness of the atonement is meant by the author, then let's focus on the greatness of the atonement, not the extent of the atonement, or lack of the extent, in other words, 1 John 2, 1 and 2, this is where everybody goes to argue, some will argue, well Jesus died for the whole world, He died for each and every person, and others will argue, no, He died for not only the Jews, but He died for the Gentiles too, and so we start trying to figure out, is it for everyone, is it not for everyone, and verses like this don't really help us, because John's intention is not the extent of the atonement, John's intention is the immensity, or the greatness of the atonement here, now he's just got done talking about in chapter 1, about confessing sins, and God is faithful to cleanse our sins, then he says in chapter 2, verse 1, my little children, can't you just imagine John saying those things, my little children, I am writing these things to you, that you may not sin, I'm writing you a book, so that you, it will help you not sin, there's all kinds of mystical ways, maybe not to sin, but the most practical way is, you just know more about the Bible, you pray that God would help you, I don't want you to sin, it's like a grandpa, I want the best for you, and if anyone sins, because he's a realist, and he's already, he said in this book, if you don't say you have sin, you're a liar, right, so he knows that we sin, but if anyone sins, we have an advocate, we have a lawyer, we have somebody who will stand up in our place and speak for us, with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he's not going to be standing there, and worried about his own sins, because he's righteous, he's standing there for other sins, certainly not his own, and he himself, emphatic, when you see that in the Greek text, himself, he's drawing attention to that as Christ, he himself is a propitiation for our sins, what's propitiation mean?

Payment, satisfaction, sometimes it's used, God's angry at sinners, right, and so God pours out his anger on his son in our place, right, he pours out his wrath, his just wrath, his right wrath, he pours out on his son, and as the son receives that in full, he drinks the cup of his wrath to the dregs down all the way, that he has made appeasement of the Father's wrath, and we call that word propitiation, and I just like to say that word, not only is it great, but it's just a nice word, propitiation, you want to say it?

Propitiation, what's my other favorite word? Sacerdotalism, it just sounds good, doesn't it? I just like to say that, I haven't said that in three weeks in India, propitiation, sacerdotalism, both are completely opposite, but here, now think about this, he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world, I'll let you argue about the extent of the atonement all you want, but may I say to you that this is not necessarily an argument about the extent of the atonement, this is an argument about the immensity and greatness of the atonement, how great is the atonement, that Jesus died just for Jews?

Jesus said, I've come for my people, it was prophesied of him in Matthew chapter 1 verse 21, that he is coming to be a savior of his people's sins, but all of a sudden, now I'm looking back to Psalm 117, and all the peoples are to praise him, when John is writing this, he is trying to make us think that Christ's atonement is not something just small and myopic, it's something great, he didn't die for just our sins, but also those of the whole world, he's not talking about each and every person of the whole world necessarily, he's just talking about the immensity of it, and so when I was there, I was very, to use the phraseology, I was blown away to think, look at all these people, and it made me think, if it wasn't for election and God's sovereignty, I don't think India would have a chance, I looked around and I thought, 1 billion people, the statistics are this, 83 Hindu, 13 Muslim, 2 Roman Catholic, 2 Sikhs, 1 Christian non-evangelical, and 1 evangelical, what do you do with a country like that?

What do you do with the gospel? But I said to myself, you know, when God calls those in eternity past, Christ dies for those, I mean I'm just preaching Ephesians to myself, then the spirit is going to come and seal them, God in his economy has told us to go preach the gospel, and through the preaching of the gospel, people become saved, there's a means in the end, the end is already decreed, the means are pray for them and go preach the gospel.

And so, I didn't preach the gospel to that many people, but I tried to train pastors and to do that very thing. Turn to John 6, 37, and let me give you a little hope for India, for those who wonder what could God do in a country like that, I mean it is dark, Wes told me that he kind of felt, Wes Jamieson, he kind of felt like oppressed in some of the temple areas, I never felt that, I just looked around and thought, these people are slaves to sin, they're blind, they're doing Satan's will, but I didn't feel any kind of presence or anything, I did look around and just would see the Ganji type river steps, can you imagine that, where you see the steps down into the water, and some people are washing clothes in the water, some people are, you could see the sewer going into the water, some people were, you can see the children playing there, I walked by and would see all these flowers, matter of fact, it was really neat when you get ready to preach the gospel, they call you to the front and they give you a garland like they would a politician or some kind of king or something like that, and I thought, wow, so they would give me a garland and I don't know if I offended them, but before I preached I took it off because last time I've had any flowers close to me, it was Easter time here and that bug just flew right in my mouth, I thought, I don't need any Indian bugs in my mouth, and so I took the garland and set it over there, and so there's garlands down by this river because they're worshipping even the river, and there's just, you can buy things to set to the river God, there's a little trough here that you can buy something to give to the God, and then the God comes over and eats those things, the cow, and so there's all these things, and so I saw a bunch of ashes over there, and I said, what are those ashes, it looked kind of like charcoal except it was finer, and then Sammy, who's a local, he's from Puna, we were over in Nasik, but he said, that's what you think it is, that's a dead body, they cremated and just laid the ashes there, and so soon then they'll just take those ashes and throw them into the water, and I thought, how do you turn a world upside down like India without God's sovereign hand, I believe in the sovereignty of God and salvation, not because it's just in the Bible, but even if I was a pragmatist I'd have to believe, what am I going to do, the salvation of all these souls is left up to us and our ingenuity, and man's free will, I'll tell you, their will is not free at all, you show me someone that goes to India and goes down to a temple area and say, they all have free will, you wouldn't believe in free will anymore, their will is bound to their nature, and their nature is depraved, and they do have choices, and their choice is, do I sin this way or do I sin that way, that's their freedom of their will, that's the freedom we had before God gave us a new nature, and then we choose accordingly, I just looked around, I said, there's no hope for India unless these verses are true, and look at these verses, it does give me hope, and it's going to be my prayer that some of you, not only Ajay goes back to preach, but some of you say, you know, what am I alive for, what do I live for, maybe you go to India and maybe you go to somewhere else, but wouldn't it be great to be able to send those people out, send you out, I long for the days where the kids just sit and listen to missionaries who come and preach the gospel and look at the kids in the eye and say, maybe it's you who needs to go, where are those days, where are those churches, John 6, 37, all that the Father gives me shall come to me before time began, and that special transaction in the Trinity, all that the Father gives me shall come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out, there's confidence in this, the mission will be accomplished, God is not going to lose one person, there's not one person in India that God wants saved that's not going to be saved, Jesus said in verse 38, for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, and this is the will of him who sent me, that of all he has given me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day, this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day, yes man is responsible, but God is sovereign, God's sovereign over man, and I just think to myself, there is hope because I do believe that, same with us, how can you go around this entire county, this city, this is not really much of a different place than India in a sense, it's 83 Hindus over there, 13 Buddhists, so you've got 96 of the population who doesn't believe the right gospel, well what about our situation, what about our situation here, is it any different, you think this is 80 Christian where we live, 80 Christian dress, 80 Christian terminology, people say they believe in the Trinity, and I don't care if you're a secular Christian or a secular Catholic, it doesn't matter, we have this mission field, how are these people going to become saved, well I know if God has chosen them, it's just a matter of time before he's given one of us the privilege to preach the gospel and they will believe, won't they, have you ever gone door to door evangelizing, I was scared to death, by the way I should not have been scared, but I was scared, I was in seminary, I was scared to death and you had to do it for a class, you know who I was mainly afraid of, is the old grandmas were the most intimidating, the biker guys with long hair and tattoos, they were the sweetest, they were sweetest could be I knocked on the door, hi I'm with Grace Church and we'd like to invite you to such and such, and the guys are like nah no thanks, and some of the older ladies, I love old ladies, and this has nothing to do with you know, I don't like senior citizens or anything like that, but a couple of them I ran into have tainted my life, I can't sleep, I believe in what I believe, and I'm going to be an XYZ until I die, get off my property, and I'm like how could I ever do this, I'm frightened, but you know the good news is, as I taught these men in Nasik and Urundabad, God does not care when you evangelize how many people you convert, because you can't convert anyone, God gets glory when you tell people about the great savior, there's a savior who forgives sins, his name's Jesus, this is who he is, this is what he's done, and when you go home at night you don't have to say, I led five people to the Lord, I can sleep well, you say I preached the gospel to five people, and no one responded, but God was glorified, I didn't have to water down the gospel to get more people to believe, so I can put the tick marks on there, there's a law in northern India that says you cannot proselytize people from their religion, and so they're persecuting some Christians, not in the state where I was, but I told the people, the pastors in my conference breakouts, I said remember this, you can never convert anyone anyway, now they still might prosecute you and use the law, but remember, you can't convert anyone, how can you make a dead person live, there's absolutely no way, it's like that drunk laying there, and the guy was slamming Spurgeon, he's like yeah that's one of your converts, Spurgeon in London, look at that drunk, Spurgeon says I know it's one of my converts, because if it was a Lord Jesus Christ convert, he wouldn't be drunk anymore, how are we going to try to convert people to be who we are, this is a supernatural thing, and it only comes through the preaching of the gospel, all right, how much time do we have, we don't have much time, but let's go to my two favorite evangelists in the Bible, Revelation chapter 11, and let's just end here, maybe we'll have India part 2 next week, who knows, I have lots of things to talk about, translators, and ways that you can get involved, so maybe we'll just wrap it up next week, but let's just look at Revelation chapter 11 to finish, and I just love this passage, because God enables those, he calls to do his job, and this is extraordinary, yes, but it would thrill me, if we could turn into a church that wouldn't say, oh let's give $300 a month to this missionary, that's an okay thing to do, and I want to do that, the elders are committed to, with Bob Dunn helping us, to support more missionaries, to support more like-minded missionaries, to be more of a global church, if you will, not politically correct or global, but think on a bigger scale, but wouldn't it be great, if we sent somebody out from this church, and this church paid for that person's salary, that's real missions, that's the real way where you say, you know, you don't have to go around, and I could say the word, but I probably should not say it, so if you ever think that in the pulpit, then you just don't say it, who go around and lower their standards, to different people to get money, so they can go out on the mission field, versus one church that supports them, and they say, I'm responsible to the elder board, and only the elder board, and I'm going to go preach the gospel, and I'm going to do exactly, what this church wants done locally, but I'm going to do it internationally, I'm waiting for the day, that will be the great day in this church for missions, when we fully support someone, who goes and either teaches, or supports, or works in the orphanage, whatever he or she does, those are the days of missions, instead of going around, trying to have 50 of the cost, go for administrative fees, like I'm some authority on missions, I'm not, but I want to be, don't you?